The Society

by Michael Palmer

  “Well, Gordo,” he said, “if anyone can pull off a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound Cyrano, my money’s on you.”

  He smiled and patted his partner on the back, but something had started gnawing at him. When he was retracing his steps through the hospital, searching for the way someone could have gotten fentanyl into his body, and trying to tie the frame-up to the serial killer, he wondered about Gordo simply because he was around that fateful morning. Now another piece had fallen into place—the OR shoes. Gordo had ready access to his locker, and Will kept the key to it on the ring with his car keys. If the man really wanted to, there were any number of ways he could have gotten the key to make a duplicate. In fact, Will felt certain, within recent weeks Cameron had borrowed his car at least once—maybe even twice.

  Troublesome, though, in linking Gordo to the phone calls was that even with his voice electronically distorted, the killer had absolutely no accent, and certainly no brogue. There was no way Will could believe the caller was Gordo—no way until now. Opportunity, method—all that was missing to close the circle was motive.

  “We should get going,” Susan said. “In an hour I have some varicose veins to make magically disappear. Hey, Cyrano, knees slightly bent, head more erect, and keep your tip up.”

  “Since when did you become interested in my tip, lass?”

  “Come on, Will, this is Cyrano de Pigsty.”

  With a flourish Will thrust a phantom sword deep into Cameron’s gut.

  “Keep your tip up, Gordo,” he said.

  Over the short drive to the Excelsius Cancer Center, Susan had Will fill in the rest of last night’s story, including more about the unsettling call from Patty to Augie Micelli.

  “If you’re worried, then I’m worried,” she said, “but I certainly sense that this is a very capable woman who almost surely can take care of herself. If she hasn’t called, it’s probably because whatever operation she was involved in simply isn’t over yet.”

  “I hope you’re right, and I appreciate your listening to me.”

  “Hey, I’m all for young love. Like The Boss sang at the Fleet Center last night: ‘I wanna die with you Wendy on the streets tonight in an everlasting kiss.’ ”

  “‘Born to Run.’ ”

  “Exactly.”

  “So he did get to you.”

  “Just don’t let Yo-Yo find out.”

  The parking lot of the mammography unit of the Excelsius Cancer Center was largely deserted.

  “How should we do this?” Susan asked.

  “Carefully, that’s how. Very carefully. The man’s sanity seemed to be hanging by a thread. I know it would probably go smoother if just you went in, but the truth is, Newcomber and I have some unfinished business, and I really do want to face him again. I didn’t leave his office easily or without comment, even with that gun waving at me. It was clear that something was terrifying him. The man was screaming at me like a banshee. When I first called him about changing his referral from you to me, he sounded angry way out of proportion to the situation. Same deal yesterday. The thing is, even though I was the one who was there, I’m not at all sure it was me he was frightened of. I tried to calm him down, to convince him I wasn’t a threat. I told him Grace’s story—how she made it all the way back from the gutter. I begged him to get in touch with me, to let me help him with whatever was wrong, but he just got more and more agitated until it really did seem as if he might pull the trigger.”

  “And you want me to be the first one through his office door?”

  Will turned her to him by the shoulders and perched her chin up on his fingertips.

  “Maybe that’s not such a good idea after all.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Susan said. “I’ve met him before, remember? Besides, who could shoot someone with such an angelic face as this?”

  The entrance to the mammography wing of the Excelsius Cancer Center was on the south side. The waiting room was empty save for two women in their fifties and the silver-haired receptionist who had let Will visit Newcomber on his last visit.

  “Dr. Davidson,” she said, “nice to see you again.”

  Will nearly corrected her, then remembered making up the name. He made a major upward revision of his initial impression of the woman’s sharpness. Susan’s expression said that she had caught on immediately.

  “Thank you for remembering me, Mrs. . . .”

  “Medeiros. Martha Medeiros. I have a thing about remembering names and faces. Sort of a hobby.”

  She tried for a coquettish smile that missed by about four decades.

  “This is—”

  “I know, I know, Dr. Hollister,” she said proudly. “Sandra?”

  “Susan,” Susan said. “That’s remarkable. Absolutely amazing. It’s been about a year since I was here.”

  “Thank you. I enjoy shocking people.”

  “Consider me shocked.”

  “Mrs. Medeiros, we’re here to see Dr. Newcomber.”

  “Was he expecting you?”

  “No, but we just need to pick up a set of mammograms from him.”

  “Well, Dr. Newcomber isn’t here.” Will and Susan exchanged disappointed glances. “He never comes in on Thursdays until after one. It’s like his day off, only it’s just half a day. Dr. Debra Grossbaum is here. Can she help you?”

  Susan stepped forward and handed over the release signed by Grace Davis and notarized by Attorney Jill Leary.

  “All we need are these films. Can you help us out there?”

  “I can try. I think our film copier’s broken, though, so you’ll have to look at them here.”

  Again disappointment.

  “We can’t take them out?”

  Martha shook her head. “It’s a strict policy.”

  “Any idea when the copier will be fixed?”

  “None. Dr. Grossbaum just made a call about it a little while ago. Let me call Daphna in the film library and see what she can do.”

  Martha retrieved Grace’s X-ray number from the database, then called the librarian.

  After almost five minutes with the phone tucked under her chin, during which she registered two new patients, Martha set the receiver down, a puzzled expression darkening her face.

  “Mrs. Shemesh in the library says the copier isn’t expected to be fixed until at least tomorrow. No one seems to even know what’s wrong with it.”

  “That’s okay,” Will said, frustrated, “we can view the films here.”

  “Well, that’s a problem, too,” Martha replied. “She can’t find them. They’re not signed out, so she thinks they’ve just been misfiled. She’s going to keep looking.”

  “What about a computerized storage service?” Susan asked.

  Martha made another call, then shook her head. “Daphna says they’re talking about getting a service like that, but not yet. Apparently they’re quite expensive.”

  “Always the bottom line,” Will muttered.

  “Pardon?”

  “Nothing. We’re just a bit disappointed.”

  “Daphna is upset, too. She apologizes and says she’ll keep looking. Do you want to wait or should I call you?”

  Will glanced over at Susan and shook his head apologetically. At the same time, he could tell she was wondering, as was he, if the disappearance of Grace Davis’s mammograms was something more than a clerical error and coincidence.

  What in the hell is going on? he could almost hear her thinking.

  He wrote their office number down and then, remembering that their receptionist would be quite certain she knew nothing of a Dr. Davidson, he scratched it out and replaced it with his home phone. It was doubtful Martha Medeiros would be calling anyhow. If Grace Davis’s films were gone, they were gone for good.

  Will passed the number over and then hesitated, hoping against hope that the film librarian would ring in with good news.

  “I guess we should have called first,” he said finally.

  “I can certainly leave a message for Dr. Newcomber that you
were here. Or maybe you can try calling him or stopping by this afternoon.”

  “We’ll figure something out,” Susan said. “Meanwhile, feel free to leave him a note that we were here, and tell your records-room person that we’d appreciate her doing everything possible to find those films.”

  “I’ll do that,” Martha said, coming out from behind the reception counter to bring a clipboard with some forms over to one of the new arrivals. As she turned back, she stopped, staring out the window. “Now, that’s funny,” she said to Will and Susan.

  “What?”

  “That’s Dr. Newcomber’s car in the parking lot—that silver Lexus sports car over there. It’s his pride and joy. Maybe it broke down and someone drove him home. I didn’t notice it when I came in to work at seven-thirty, because my husband dropped me off at the main entrance, but it must have been there.”

  Will had noticed the exquisite SC model when they arrived.

  “Those cars don’t break down,” he said. “Maybe he got here before you came and he’s stayed in his office.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Could we check?”

  “I . . . um . . . I suppose so. Let me call.”

  Martha dialed Newcomber’s extension, waited a few rings, and then hung up.

  Will flashed on the unbridled fear in the strange little radiologist’s eyes, on the shaking of the gun in his hand, and on the vibrant flush of red in his cheeks.

  “I think we should check in there,” he said, motioning down the hallway. “Susan, I don’t like this.”

  Clearly bewildered, Martha hesitated and then finally withdrew a ring of keys from her desk drawer.

  Will was still ten feet away from Newcomber’s door when the air changed. It was a smell familiar to him after almost two decades of hospital work—an amalgam of feces, urine, blood, and body odor. It was the scent of death. He moved to stop Martha Medeiros, but the knob to Newcomber’s office turned in her hand. She swung the door open and stumbled backward, uttering a strangled, gurgled cry, her hand across her mouth.

  The rancid odor of well-established death flooded the room.

  The portly radiologist sat bolt upright in his high-backed leather chair, held in place by a band of duct tape pulled firmly across his throat. His wrists were similarly bound to the arms of the chair. His dress shirt was ripped open at the front, revealing a fleshy, hairless chest that was pocked by half a dozen or more dark, penny-size sores. Even from across the room, Will could tell they were burns. Still attached by an edge of adhesive to his glistening pate, Newcomber’s silver hairpiece flopped down over his left ear. His gray-green eyes, like a taxidermist’s marbles, stared sightlessly across the room. Dried blood cascaded around the corners of his mouth from the nostrils of a nose that was quite obviously broken.

  Martha’s legs had gone out from beneath her. Will eased her gently to the floor and then stayed in the doorway as Susan hurried over to the desk. The fewer people in the room until the police arrived, the better, and this man was far beyond needing medical intervention. Susan didn’t bother confirming Will’s clinical impression.

  “No obvious mortal wounds or injuries,” she said.

  “A coronary?”

  “Maybe. Will, I think these are electrical burns.”

  “Some sort of cattle prod, maybe. It’s possible he died while he was being tortured.”

  “Jesus.”

  From her place on the floor, leaning against the wall, Martha tried to speak, but managed only a piteous whimper.

  “Easy does it, Mrs. Medeiros,” Will said. “We’ll help you in just a minute. I’m going to call nine-one-one.”

  “Wait, come in and look at this.”

  Will checked to make certain Martha was secure against the wall, then crossed over to the desk. Impaled on the pen and pencil of Newcomber’s hand-tooled leather pen holder were two cards—plain white, three inches square. The letter C was printed meticulously on one, the letter M on the other.

  CHAPTER 28

  The Excelsius Cancer Center was set on a verdant lot in the bedroom town of Moorland, four miles west of Fredrickston. Within five minutes of Will’s 911, the first of what would be nine police cars from three jurisdictions arrived. The Cancer Center was cordoned off, and patients with appointments were told to reschedule. Seated alone in one corner of the mammography unit reception room, Will waited until a graying, pot-bellied Moorland police officer had finished taking a statement from Susan and motioned that it was his turn. On the way over, he stopped briefly to speak with her.

  “Just another routine day at the office,” he whispered.

  “Poor little guy. So, with those two letters, do you think it was the same person as killed the others?”

  “I don’t know what to think. This isn’t the usual high-level target or even the MO of the managed-care killers, but those two alphabet letters would certainly suggest that’s who did this.”

  “You still think it’s more than one.”

  “I do. In fact, it’s a little hard to believe Newcomber would have allowed a single person to truss him up like that without putting up a fight. The office looked just like it did when I was here before, and you saw when I slid open his drawer that his gun was right there, so I don’t think there was a struggle.”

  “I don’t know about you,” Susan said, “but I can handle this sort of thing in the hospital a lot better than I can out here in the real world.”

  “I understand. Same here. You think a heart attack?”

  “Torture first, then heart attack. I didn’t see any wound that looked as if it could have been mortal. I wonder if he survived long enough to tell them whatever it was they wanted to know.”

  “Maybe they didn’t want to know anything. Maybe they were just doing it for the fun of it.”

  “Ugh.” Susan shuddered, then put on her trench coat. “Well, I’ve got to get back to the hospital. After this little adventure, I’m really not up for doing any surgery, but my poor varicose-vein lady is already there and, believe it or not, they’re holding the OR for me.”

  “Give ’em heck,” Will said wistfully.

  “Listen, my friend, before you know it, you’re going to be back in the OR, beating yourself into the ground again.”

  “I hope so.”

  “We’re all pulling for that to happen.”

  All minus one, Will thought.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Any ideas what we should do about Grace’s missing X-rays?”

  “Not really. I’m not certain there’s anything we can do. Let’s talk about it later.”

  “Fine. Thanks again for coming here with me, Suze.”

  “You’ll understand if next time I beg off, huh?”

  “I won’t even bother asking.”

  She motioned toward the window.

  “Looks like my cab’s here.”

  “I owe you one.”

  “At least.”

  As Susan headed off, over her shoulder Will could see the portly Moorland police officer speaking with a new arrival—a tall, angular man wearing a neatly pressed, belted tan trench coat. Moments later, the man quickly approached Will.

  “Dr. Grant, Detective Court, State Police. If you’ll wait right over there, I’ll be with you in a couple of minutes.”

  Court. Patty’s CO. He had to know where she was.

  For fifteen minutes Will waited. The crime-scene people came and hauled their equipment down the hall. Soon after, an ambulance crew arrived and wheeled off Martha Medeiros, who was now virtually catatonic. Will recalled the pride in her expression as she boasted about her unusual skill with names and faces. He found himself wondering if the killers thought for even a moment about the spouses, friends, children, employees, and other victims of their zealous beliefs. He knew it was a stupid question.

  “So, Grant, another death, and here you are.”

  Court had come up from his left and now stood there, staring down at him with piercing, slate-gray eyes.

  �
�Here I am,” Will echoed sweetly.

  Court had already set the tone for their exchange, so Will felt there was nothing to be gained by trying to act as if the two of them were on the same side. The detective pulled a chair around to face him and settled in, his keen eyes still probing.

  “You going to be able to shed any light on this?”

  “I saw those two letters on the pen holder in there, if that’s what you mean.”

  “So you think your phone pal is responsible for this murder, too?”

  “It does seem like a logical conclusion.”

  “For someone who drugged his way out of medicine, you are a smug son of a bitch. I can see why Brasco doesn’t believe you.”

  “I couldn’t care less what Brasco thinks of me—you, either, for that matter. Where’s Detective Moriarity?”

  “Where were you last night at nine?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “You going to answer my question, or do you want to see how miserable I can make your life?”

  “Where’s Moriarity?”

  “I’m going to give you five seconds to answer me, then I’m going to walk away. If I do that, you can count on being arrested before you leave this building. Now, where were you last night?”

  Before three of those seconds could elapse, a young, acne-faced, uniformed policeman came rushing over.

  “Lieutenant Court,” he said with breathless excitement, “the station just radioed. The victim’s got a record, sir. Ten years ago. Molesting a young boy in Fort Worth, Texas.”

  Court’s glare could have frozen magma.

  “You get the fuck home, right now. You’re suspended.”

  “But—”

  “Get out of here. Tell your CO I’ll speak with him later, and after that go sit in a corner and think about what you just did.”

  “But—”

  “Go!”

  Will watched as the decimated young man shuffled toward the door, still, it appeared, in the dark as to what he had done wrong.

  “A little hard on the lad, doncha think?” Will said.

  “He deserved worse for speaking like that in front of a witness. You’re next if you keep dicking around with me. In case you couldn’t tell, I’m not in a very good mood. Now, where were you at nine last night?”