The Society

by Michael Palmer

  This was business—pure and simple.

  “So, B.T.,” she said, setting a bag of M&Ms down on the keyboard of his computer, “what’s going on here? You’re on days, yet here you are.”

  “Oh, this is big, Patty,” Tomasetti said, loosening his belt a notch before tearing open the M&Ms, “real big. I told them I’d man the phones. Sort of control central. Look at me—I’m so excited about this one that I’m cleaning my gun, even though I’m not even out there in the field.”

  “That is excitement. . . . So?”

  “So what?”

  Tomasetti poured the last half of the bag onto his desk blotter and divided the candies up by color.

  “So what gives? What’s going on?”

  As she asked the question, Patty felt an eerie tightening beneath her breastbone. She had been on duty all day and had called in any number of times, yet she hadn’t heard so much as a whisper about something big going down. Now she felt certain that she had been purposely excluded from whatever it was. Margie Moore, one of the secretaries, swooshed by, packed up for home, and headed for the door.

  “Hey, Patty, hey, B.T.,” she said, “hope this is it.”

  “Us, too,” Tomasetti said. “We’ll all be at the top of the pig pile if it is. Have a good one, Margie.”

  “B.T.,” Patty asked after the secretary had left, “does this have something to do with the HMO killings?”

  “You’re shitting me, right?”

  “I’m not shitting you. Now, what’s going on?”

  “Boy, have they ever cut you out of this one.”

  Patty boiled over. Hands on hips, she swept around the desk and stood at Tomasetti’s elbow, towering over him with menace that she did not have to conjure up.

  “Goddammit, B.T., tell me and tell me now!”

  “Okay, okay. Nobody told me not to tell you anything. I thought you already knew, it once being your case and all. I thought you knew. Brasco’s set up a meeting with the killer. It’s going down in”—Tomasetti checked his Timex—“fifty-five minutes.”

  “That’s not possible. The killer’s never even made contact with us. Not once, except for those damn letters he leaves at the murders.”

  “Well, it wasn’t exactly us he made contact with. It was that doctor, the one you’ve been . . . what I mean is—”

  “Will Grant,” Patty said, exasperated that if Tomasetti knew, undoubtedly the rest of the squad knew as well—probably her father, too. Just how badly was it possible for her to screw up?

  “Yeah, him,” Tomasetti said. “Apparently the killer told Grant he could put a personal ad in the Herald if he ever needed to meet.”

  “We took that information off the tap on Grant’s phone. I gave it to Brasco and Lieutenant Court myself.”

  “Well, Brasco used it and set up a meeting with the killer.”

  Patty was feeling more uneasy by the second.

  “Where?”

  “At a place called Camp Sunshine, believe it or not. It’s an old, run-down, unused summer camp on Lake Trumbull, north of Fredrickston. I’m surprised you didn’t know about all this.”

  “Well, I’m not. Who picked the place?”

  “The killer. Brasco allowed him to choose the meeting place so he wouldn’t be suspicious. But Brasco’s had our SWAT team geared up for like two days now. The moment he gave the word, they infiltrated the area. There’s a chopper on standby, too.”

  “I know the camp. Brian, the killer’s too smart for this. Way too smart. How did Brasco get him to believe he was talking to Will Grant?”

  “Patty, I’m sorry. I know this was your case.”

  “I appreciate your concern, but don’t worry about it. I only look soft. In here where it counts”—she pointed to her heart—“I’m tough as nails. Now tell me how Brasco convinced the killer he was talking to Grant.”

  “VDS,” Tomasetti said simply. “Voice duplication and substitution. From what I understand, an R and D company on one-twenty-eight has been under contract for this and they’ve come up with a machine that can take a person’s voice and substitute someone else’s for it.”

  “I know about setups where a man can speak and a girl’s or boy’s voice can come out. Vice people all over the country are using it to contact predators who want to set up a rendezvous with young girls or young boys they meet online. But you’re talking about recording a specific person’s voice and then having it speak someone else’s words?”

  “Exactly. So the killer responds to the ad and calls Grant, and Brasco intercepts the call and uses Grant’s voice to say his words. Apparently the killer bought it hook, line, and sinker. You know, just because Brasco doesn’t look too bright doesn’t mean he isn’t.”

  “Yes it does. Brasco’s using Will Grant without Grant’s knowledge, and by doing so, he’s putting him in harm’s way. I’ve been on this killer—these killers—for months. They never make a careless or dangerous move, even though it might seem like that’s what’s happening, and they don’t care a rat’s behind for anyone’s life but their own, and that includes Grant’s. If Brasco thinks he’s outsmarting these people, he’s even dumber than he looks, and that’s saying something.”

  “I never heard you talk that way.”

  “I might be just getting started. You have directions to the camp?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But what? Brasco said not to let anyone come out there?”

  “Something like that.”

  “B.T., give me the fucking directions.”

  Tomasetti slid a paper from one corner of his desk and passed it over. “Copy it, and tell them you stole it from my desk without my knowing it, okay?”

  “You got it. Thanks, pal. How much time do I have?”

  “Maybe fifty minutes now. You’ve gotta really bust it in that Camaro of yours.”

  “Speed is my middle name.”

  “I thought that was Danger.”

  “Danger’s my Confirmation name.”

  Patty grabbed the directions, made a quick stop at the Xerox machine, and raced out to the parking lot.

  The piper’s on the loose and he must be paid.

  The killer’s proclamation, issued shortly before he assassinated Dr. Richard Leaf with surgical planning and precision, resonated in her mind as she skidded out of the lot and into a tight right-hand turn. There was no shaking the grisly belief that soon, very soon, people were going to die.

  By seven forty-five, when he returned to Fredrickston General, Will had given up on recruiting Patty to join the small safari about to explore the hospital for his clothing bag. Several calls to her cell phone had succeeded only in reaching her voice mail, and a wishful call to her place fared no better.

  With a dense overcast and intermittent drizzle, night had descended prematurely. Around him, it was business as usual—visitors filing through the revolving glass doors along with a scattering of employees, many of whom Will knew. Two of them grinned uncomfortably and nodded, but most of the others simply averted their eyes and studied the pavement. Even though none of them meant anything special to Will, it was painful to be innocent and to be judged, and it would be an incredible relief to be reinstated. But that reinstatement, he knew, was still anything but automatic.

  The board, the hospital, and the Society had been placed in a very difficult position. It would make the decision much easier for each of them if, by some miracle, his Chuck Taylors were found and the insoles tested positive for fentanyl. That possibility seemed remote. The most likely scenario, he believed, was that tonight they would find nothing and would be left speculating about what might have happened to his clothing. Even if Micelli’s theory about the shoes was right, it was unlikely that someone resourceful enough to frame him would allow the evidence just to lie around. Of course, it was also possible they would have felt confident enough in the sophistication of the frame-up to leave the shoes where they were.

  “Good evening, Doctor.”

  Jill Leary, a trench coat belt
ed about her trim waist, came up from behind and touched him on the arm.

  “Hey, welcome back,” Will said. “I really appreciate your doing this.”

  “No problem. I hope we find something, but as you said in my office, there will be some significance if we find nothing at all. I’ve tried, but I still haven’t been able to poke any holes in your theory, except to say that in hospitals dumb things happen all the time, and yours wouldn’t be the first clothing bag that was inadvertently thrown out.”

  Will sighed, momentarily and inexplicably consumed by an immense fatigue.

  “I suspect we’ll be left with that possibility,” he said.

  Leary’s look was understanding. Guilty or not, it said, she appreciated that he had been through a great deal. Will immediately felt his composure begin to regroup. Kindness and compassion cost so little.

  “Let’s wait inside for the others,” she said finally. “I’m sure Sid wouldn’t mind.”

  Will followed her into the hospital. A few minutes later, Augie Micelli arrived, wearing a rumpled navy blazer, gray slacks, a red power tie, and a dominating cologne. He looked like a premature retiree in Florida or Arizona, but he seemed excited and, best of all, totally sober. His eyes were bright and keen and showed none of the ennui Will had noted when they first met. Micelli was accompanied by a nattily dressed black man carrying a briefcase, whom he introduced as Gil Murray, an assistant DA from Middlesex. Behind Murray was Robert McGowen, a young uniformed Fredrickston policeman whom Will had worked with a number of times in the ER. The Law Doctor guided them over to a deserted corner of the lobby.

  “So,” he said, clasping his hands together enthusiastically, “this mighty task force has been assembled to answer the question of what became of Will Grant’s clothing bag. Ms. Leary, thank you for sacrificing your evening on our behalf.”

  “No problem.”

  “Dr. Grant and I have each spent a good deal of time on the clinical side of hospitals, and so are well aware of the chaos and confusion that can accompany a medical emergency such as his. Officer McGowen assures me that the many cases he has helped haul to the ER here have taught him the same thing.

  “Given that a massive amount of the drug fentanyl was in Dr. Grant’s body that day, and given that Dr. Grant is adamant in his denial of having taken any, we are forced either to brush him off as a loser and a liar or come up with another explanation. I have chosen to discard the loser–liar alternative and instead, after considering and rejecting many possible scenarios, have chosen to focus on his OR shoes, which, at least as of this moment, appear to be missing. A chemist at one of the pharmaceutical houses that manufacture fentanyl believes that my theory is physically and physiologically possible, provided enough drug is soaked into the insole. Everyone ready?”

  “All set,” McGowen said.

  “Well then, the supervising nurse in the ICU is expecting us, as is the nurse in charge of the ER. This shouldn’t take too long. The idea of having Gil and Officer McGowen along is that if, by any chance, we actually come up with something, it will immediately need to be handled by strict chain of custody. Gil has plastic bags and gummed seals we can all sign, and Officer McGowen will take the bags directly back to the station.”

  “Do you really expect to find anything after all this time?” Leary asked.

  “The truth is, I don’t know what to expect. People in hospitals—in most workplaces, for that matter—tend to ignore anything that isn’t directly their job. It’s not that hard to imagine a custodian, or nurse’s aide, or even a nurse working his or her way around a clothing bag, assuming someone else had placed it there for a reason.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Any other questions?”

  Will found himself wondering about the managed-care bureaucrats who shelved Micelli’s career as a physician without so much as the courtesy of an interview. The companies were the Charybdis whirlpool that would suck a physician under even after he had survived the Scylla that was the Board of Registration in Medicine. He was, he saw now, facing the same peril. Guilty or not, his license had been preemptively suspended by the board as a result of his suspension at the hospital. In all likelihood, even if he was deemed acceptable to practice by the board, many of the multiple managed-care panels to which he belonged would remove him as a provider of treatment for their subscribers simply because he once had been suspended. It would be okay for him to practice surgery, they would in essence be saying, but not to earn a living doing it.

  His involvement in the Society and that damn debate at Faneuil Hall were sure not to help matters. There probably wasn’t a managed-care company within a thousand miles that wouldn’t relish the opportunity to bring the hammer down on his career. This was the first time he realized that, regardless of whatever happened today or even down the road, he might well be finished as a doctor.

  Easy does it.

  Satisfied he had waited long enough for questions, Micelli turned and led the group down the hall to the elevators. In nearly ten years at the hospital, except when accompanying a patient’s litter, Will had never used any of the elevators. He suspected that not one of the other three would have passed on the stairs for just one flight, but Micelli was leading this expedition, and there was nothing about the man that suggested he would ever opt for the more physically challenging of any two options. As they headed down the corridor, Will found himself behind the others and next to Gil Murray.

  “Thanks for doing this,” Will said. “I’m really grateful.”

  “I would do just about anything for Augie,” Murray replied, his voice a bit like James Earl Jones’s. “I had a back operation a few years ago under general anesthesia, only I wasn’t asleep during the procedure and had no way to tell anyone, because I had been given a drug to paralyze my muscles. Some unkind remarks were made about me when my surgeon thought I was asleep. I heard them all. Augie fixed me up with some people who were able to prove that was the case, and he even found an organization named Anesthesia Awareness that’s made up of others who’ve experienced the same thing.”

  “I’ve heard of them,” Will said, cringing at Murray’s story.

  “It’s one of the worst things that’s ever happened to me. Augie helped me get a settlement for what I went through, but it’s the other things he did that really mattered. He’s had some tough times, and doesn’t take such good care of himself, but underneath it all he’s the best.”

  “I’m learning that.”

  “On the way over, Patrolman Bob there told me that Augie had helped his dad, as well.”

  Up ahead, Micelli was holding open the elevator door, motioning them to hurry up. Loss of a child, loss of self-esteem, loss of health, loss of a hard-earned profession. No one would argue that Will wasn’t going through a devastating situation, but the Law Doctor still had him beat.

  Nurse Anne Hajjar, usually on the day crew, was waiting for them in the ICU. She was, as usual, radiant and upbeat, even though, she explained, she was working a double because of a hiring freeze on RNs. She nodded to Will, her expression neutral if not a bit cold. He felt a deep pang. They had worked so well together for so long back when life was normal. Now her respect for him seemed all but gone.

  Hajjar turned her attention to Micelli.

  “So, what are we after here?”

  “The truth,” Micelli said.

  He gave her a quick capsule.

  “No chance,” she said. “The only thing we are more short of than nurses is storage space. There’s a little closet over there where we keep some supplies and cleaning stuff, but I go in there all the time, and I’d have to be as deaf, dumb, and blind as the Pinball Wizard to miss a clothing bag with Dr. Grant’s name on it.”

  “Is there any other possible place? Wedged way up under the bed Dr. Grant was in?”

  Without debate, Hajjar entered the cubicle where Grace was sleeping, knelt down, and peered under the bed. She returned shaking her head.

  “No go.”

  “C
an you think of any other possible space besides that closet?”

  Hajjar gave Will a prolonged look. Then, perhaps reflecting on the way things once were between them, she went to the other cubicles and looked under each of the other beds.

  “Nada,” she reported.

  “Could we check the closet?” Micelli asked.

  “Suit yourself. Just you, though. The rest of you will have to wait over there. A couple of our patients are touch and go right now. I don’t want any commotion.”

  Will watched as Hajjar led the Law Doctor to the far end of the unit and a supply closet that Will knew wasn’t any more than six-by-six. The inspection took less than a minute. Without a word, Hajjar returned to her patient, and Micelli came back grinning sheepishly.

  “Nothing I didn’t expect,” he said. “Even if we don’t find anything here or in the ER, I have documents drawn up for each of you to get notarized stating that fact.”

  “Stop by my office after we’re through,” Leary said, “and I’ll notarize whatever you need.”

  Almost subconsciously, she glanced down at her watch. Will, who was again feeling deflated and peeved with himself for getting so enthusiastic over Micelli’s theory in the first place, felt his spirit sink another notch. Jill Leary could and probably should be at home with her kid right now, not offering to notarize worthless documents for him. She was a genuinely caring soul, but there was no way this fruitless expedition was going to supply the hard evidence he needed to free up the board, the hospital, and the Society to reinstate him. Absolutely no way.