The Sisterhood

by Michael Palmer

  Ben shook his head. “No, pal, he’s not,” he said firmly. “He’s, a damn good cop. I’ve known him for as long as I’ve been in practice. Whether you believe it or not, he doesn’t want to see you fall.”

  “Then why the fuck did he arrest me?”

  “Had to.” Ben shrugged. “Pressure from all sides and a ton of circumstantial evidence. Motive, opportunity, weapon—you know all that.”

  David clenched his fists. “I also know that I didn’t kill that woman,” he said.

  “Well, John Dockerty’s not one hundred percent convinced you did either. Otherwise he wouldn’t be trying to work on Marcus Quigg, the pharmacist who—”

  “Dockerty told me who he is,” David broke in. “But, Ben, I never met the man. Why would he want to do this to me?”

  “One of the big three,” Ben said. “Vengeance, fear, money.”

  David shook his head. “Ben, until Dockerty said his name, I’m sure I never heard it before. Marcus Quigg isn’t exactly John Jones, you know. If I took care of a Quigg … no, vengeance doesn’t make any sense at all.”

  “Unless it was a sister or daughter,” Ben said. “Different name.”

  “I guess.” David slapped the desk in exasperation. “But there are just too many unpredictable events to believe anyone could have planned to frame me. Way too many.”

  “David, right now it can’t do anything but harm to try and overthink this thing. There simply isn’t enough information … yet.” Ben paused, twisting his wedding band as he searched for words. “David,” he said finally, “I wasn’t going to bring this up today, but maybe it’s best that I do. I told you yesterday that I wanted complete honesty from you, yes?” David nodded. “You didn’t mention to me that you were once accused of deliberately overmedieating a cancer patient of yours. Is that true?”

  David stiffened. Disbelief widened his eyes. “Ben, I … this is crazy,” he stammered. “That was at least nine years ago. I was completely exonerated. I … how do you know about it?”

  “Lieutenant Dockerty knows. I don’t know who, but someone tipped him off.”

  “The nurse, it must have been that goddamn nurse. How in the hell …?”

  “What happened?”

  “It was nothing. Really. I ordered pain medicine on a dying old lady—every four hours as needed. And believe me, she had plenty of pain. Well, I found that this one nurse was too damn lazy to check on whether she needed it. So I changed the order to every two hours, lowered the dose, and took out the ‘as needed’ part so the woman had to receive it. The next day the nurse reported me. There was an inquiry and I think she ended up getting censured.”

  “Well, now it seems she’s getting even,” Ben said. “Listen, David, you must tell me everything. No matter how insignificant it might seem to you. Everything. This nurse coming forward after nine years may be yet another coincidence. There was the article in last night’s paper. But if someone put her up to it, we’ve got even more problems than we realized. And maybe, just maybe, you have the answer inside you without even knowing it.”

  “Maybe …” David’s voice drifted off. For a few seconds he squinted and scratched above one ear.

  “What? What is it? Do you remember something?”

  David shook his head. “I could swear something popped in and out of my mind. Something someone said about Charlotte Thomas. I …” He shrugged. “Whatever it was—if it was—is gone.”

  “Well, go home and take it easy, pal. We’ll meet again tomorrow. Same time?”

  “Same time,” David said weakly.

  “Say, listen, if you’re free tomorrow night, why don’t you plan on coming here at four. We can talk, then you can come home and have dinner with us. You can meet Amy and the kids and get a good meal in the bargain. She’d love to get to know you. Would even if I hadn’t told her you were paying for little Barry’s orthodontia.”

  “Sounds fine,” David said with little enthusiasm.

  “Do you good,” Ben added. “Besides, Amy has this sister …” He smiled, then suddenly the two of them were laughing. David couldn’t remember the last time he had.

  “You’re losing it, Shelton,” David said as he paced through the apartment. “You’re losing it and you know it.” The two hours following his departure from Ben’s office had seemed like ten.

  Outside, the steady rain continued, punctuated now and then by the muted timpani of distant thunder. One minute the three rooms felt like an empty coliseum, the next like a cage. It was becoming harder and harder to sit, more and more difficult to concentrate—to focus in on anything. Call someone, he thought. Call someone or else ignore the rain and go run. But stop pacing. He picked up his running shoes and stepped to the window. Sheets of rain blurred the somber afternoon sky. Then, as if in warning, a lightning flash colored the room an eerie blue-white. Seconds later, a soft rumble crescendoed and exploded, reverberating through the apartment. He threw the shoes in his closet.

  This is how it felt; he recognized it. After the accident. This is how it all started. Still the restlessness increased.

  Is there anything in the medicine chest? Didn’t Lauren always keep something here for her headaches? Just in case the pacing won’t stop. In case the loneliness gets too bad. You don’t need anything, but just in case. In case the sleep doesn’t come. In case the night won’t end.

  He paced from one end of the hall to the other, then back. Each time he paused by the bathroom door. Just in case …

  All at once he was there, reaching for the mirrored door of the medicine chest. Reaching, he suddenly realized, toward himself. He froze as his outstretched hand touched its reflection. His eyes, glazed with fear and isolation, locked on themselves and held. A minute passed. Then another. Gradually, the trembling in his lips began to subside. His breathing slowed and deepened. “You’re not alone,” he told himself softly. “You have a friend who has learned over eight hard years to love you—no matter what. You have yourself. Open that door, touch one fucking pill, and lose him. All those years, and he’ll be just … gone. Then you will be alone.”

  His hand dropped away from the mirror. Resolve tightened across his face, then pulled at the corners of his mouth until he was smiling. He nodded at himself—once, then again. Faster and faster. He saw the strength, the determination grow in his eyes.

  “You’re not alone,” he said as he turned from the mirror and walked to the living room. “You’re not alone,” he said again as he stretched out on the sofa. “You’re not …”

  Twenty minutes later, when the phone rang, David was still on the sofa. He skimmed over the last few lines of the Frost poem he was reading, then rolled over and picked up the receiver.

  “David, I was afraid you hadn’t gotten home yet.” It was Ben.

  “Oh, no, I’m here,” David said. He smiled, then added, “I’m very much here.”

  “Well, enjoy your free time while you have it,” Ben said excitedly, “because I think within a day or two you’ll be back to work.”

  David felt an instant surge. “Ben, what’s happened? Talk slowly so it registers.”

  “I just received a call, David, from a nurse at your hospital. She said that she can positively clear you of the murder of Charlotte Thomas. I’m meeting her at a coffee shop in a couple of hours. I think she’s for real, pal, and if I’m right, the nightmare’s over.”

  David glanced down the hall in the direction of the bathroom. “Thank God,” he said, half to the phone and half to himself. “Ben, can I come? Shouldn’t I be there?”

  “Until I know what this woman has to say I don’t want you involved. Tell you what. Expect me at your place at nine—no, make that nine thirty—tonight. I’ll fill you in then. With luck, our dinner tomorrow night will turn out to be a celebration.”

  “That would be wonderful,” David said wistfully. “Tell me, who’s the nurse?”

  “Oh, she said she’s met you. Her name’s Beall. Christine Beall.”

  At the mention of her name David
felt another momentary surge. “Ben, that’s what I was trying to think of in your office. Remember? When something popped in and out of my head?”

  “I remember.”

  “Well it was something she said. Christine Beall. Right after I shot my mouth off to Charlotte’s husband. She whispered to me that she was proud of the way I stood up to Huttner, and … and then she said, ‘Don’t worry. Things have a way of working out.’ Then all of a sudden she was gone. Ben, do you think …?”

  “Listen, pal, do us both a favor if you can. Try not to project. A few hours, then we’ll know. Okay?”

  “Okay,” David said. “But you know I will anyway, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I know,” Ben said. “Nine thirty.”

  “Right.” David checked his watch. “Will you at least synchronize with me so I don’t go too nuts waiting for you?”

  Ben laughed. “Five of five, pal. I have five of five.”

  “Four fifty-five it is,” David sang. He set down the receiver.

  His elation was brief. Over the past few days, conscious thoughts of Christine had been submerged in the nightmare. At that moment David realized they had never been far from the surface.

  “It wasn’t you, was it?” he said softly. “You know who did it, but it wasn’t you.”

  His concern for Christine faded quickly as the impact of Ben’s call settled in. He clenched his fists and pumped them up and down. A grin spread over his face, then a giggle, then a laugh. He rushed to his record collection. Seconds later he was bouncing through the living room, throwing jabs and uppercuts at the air. The music from Rocky filled the apartment.

  Fanfare still in his ears, he walked down the hall and into the bathroom. He stood before the medicine cabinet and looked at himself. “You made it, buddy,” he said to his reflection. “Stronger than ever now. I’m proud of you. Really.”

  Out of curiosity, not need, he reached up and pulled open the door.

  The shelves were empty.

  A shower and long-overdue letters to his brothers killed an hour and a half. Feasting on spaghetti with Ragu sauce did in another thirty minutes. The seven o’clock news made it two hours until Ben.

  David paced impatiently for a while, then pulled his chess set from the closet along with his copy of Chess Openings Made Simple. Within a short time he gave up. Renewed thoughts of Christine made it impossible to concentrate. Somehow, in the short time they had talked, in their brief contacts, she had touched him deeply. There was a disarming, innocent intensity about her—an energy he had seldom seen survive the years in medical or nursing school. Then, too, there were her eyes—wide and warm, inviting and exploring one moment, flashing with anger the next. More and more, he found himself hoping, even praying, that she had no direct involvement in the death of Charlotte Thomas. By nine o’clock he had convinced himself that there was no way she could have.

  For a time he entertained himself by measuring what he knew of the woman against Lauren. Quickly he realized that, as typically happened, he was attributing qualities to Christine that he wanted to be there. “When are you going to learn, Shelton?” He chastised himself loudly, then returned to the chessboard.

  By nine fifteen he was pacing again. Once he heard the elevator gears engage and raced out into the hall. Then he remembered that he would have to buzz Ben through the downstairs foyer door. Still, he waited out there just in case. The elevator stopped one floor below.

  He returned to the apartment and spent five minutes playing out a conversation with Wallace Huttner in which the surgical chief apologized for jumping to such misguided conclusions and suggested that they might explore the possibilities of a partnership. David practiced a refusal speech, then, in case Huttner was truly contrite, one of acceptance.

  At precisely nine thirty the downstairs buzzer sounded. David leaped to the intercom.

  “Yes?”

  “David, it’s me.” The excitement in Ben’s voice was apparent despite the barely functional intercom. “The woman is for real. Sad, but very much for real. It’s over, pal, it’s over.”

  The word sad stood out from all the others. “Come on up,” David said as he pressed the door release. His voice held surprisingly little enthusiasm.

  Thirty seconds later the elevator clattered into use. Shit, David thought, it was her. He stood in the open doorway and listened to the groaning cables. Turning his nightmare over to Christine Beall was not the way he had wanted it to end, no matter what her actions had put him through. He was halfway to the elevator when the car light appeared in the diamond-shaped window of the outside door. A second later, the car crunched to a halt. The automatic inside gate rattled open.

  David stopped several feet away and waited for Ben. Five seconds passed. Then another five. He took a tentative step forward. The door remained closed. Finally he peered through the grimy window. Ben stood to one side, leaning calmly against the wall.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” David asked, swinging open the heavy door. The lawyer’s eyes stared at him, moist and vacant. His face was bone white. Suddenly the corners of his mouth crinkled upward in a half-smile.

  “Ben, not funny,” David said. “Now cut the crap and come on out of there. I wanna hear.”

  Ben’s lips parted as he took a single step forward. Crimson gushed from his mouth and down his chin. David caught him halfway to the floor. The back of Ben’s tan raincoat was an expanding circle of blood. Protruding from the center was the carved white handle of a knife.

  Sticky, warm life poured over David’s hands and clothes as he dragged his friend from the elevator.

  “Help!” he screamed. “Someone, please help me!”

  He pulled the knife free and threw it on the carpet, then rolled Ben’s body face up. The lawyer’s dark eyes stared unblinkingly at the ceiling. David checked for a carotid pulse, but knew that the blood, now oozing from one corner of Ben’s mouth, was the sign of a fatal wound to the heart or a main artery.

  “Please help.” David’s plea was a whimper. “Please?”

  The stairway door at the far end of the hall burst open. Leonard Vincent stood there, his massive frame darkened by the light behind him. Almost casually, he reached to his waistband and withdrew a revolver. The ugly silhouette of a silencer protruded from one end.

  “It’s your turn, Dr. Shelton,” Vincent rasped, certain he was facing the man Dahlia had described. He had followed Christine Beall to a coffee shop and recognized the criminal lawyer with whom she was meeting. Dahlia’s response to his call was immediate: Glass first, then Shelton, and later the girl. Now, thanks to the lawyer, he could handle the first two almost at once.

  David stumbled backward and tried to straighten up, but his hand, covered with blood, slid off the wall and he spun to the carpet. Inches away was the knife. He grabbed it by the tip and hurled it at the advancing figure. It fell two yards short. Vincent picked it up and calmly wiped the blade on his pants. He was less than fifty feet away. Between them, Ben’s lifeless body stretched across the corridor. Light from an overhead bulb caught the huge man’s face. He was smiling. His smile broadened as he raised the silenced revolver.

  David scrambled backward, his mouth open in a soundless scream. His mind registered a spark from the tip of the silencer at the instant the doorjamb beside his ear exploded.

  He dove head first into his apartment, flailing with his feet to close the solid wood door. The latch clicked shut moments before a soft crunch and the instantaneous appearance of two dime-sized holes by the knob.

  David looked wildly about, then clawed himself upright. He raced to the living room. The fire escape! Opening the window, he looked down at his stockinged feet. For a moment he thought about the closet and his running shoes. No chance, he decided. With a groan of resignation, he stepped out onto the metal landing. There was a crash from inside the apartment as the front door burst open. An instant later David was racing down toward the alley, four flights below.

  The night was tar black and cold. The metal
steps, slippery in the driving downpour, hurt his feet, but the discomfort barely registered. Just beyond the third floor, his heel caught the edge of a step and shot out from under him. He fell hard, tumbling down half a flight. Several inches of skin ripped from his right forearm. Above him, there was a loud clank as Leonard Vincent stepped onto the fourth-floor landing. At that moment David had the absurd notion that he should have opened the window to the fire escape, then hidden in the closet.

  I’ll bet it would’ve worked, he thought, as he scrambled, panting, toward the second-floor landing. He slipped again, electricity pulsing up his spine as he slid the final few stairs. Through the metal slats overhead, he saw the man, a faint dark shadow moving against the night sky.

  On his hands and knees, David struggled to release the ladder from the second-floor landing to the alley. Through his soaked shirt needles of rain stung his back. The metal slats dug into his knees. The ladder release would not budge.

  With a glance above him, David grabbed the side of the landing and rolled off. He hung there for a moment, trying to judge the distance to the pavement, then dropped. He felt and heard the crunch in his left ankle as he hit. The leg gave way instantly. He screamed, then bit down on the edge of a finger so hard that he drew blood.

  Lying on the wet pavement, he heard the clanging footsteps and grunting breaths of the man overhead. The killer was nearing the second landing.

  David stumbled to one foot, then hesitated. If the ankle were sprained, there would be discomfort, but he could move. If it was broken, he was about to die. Teeth clenched, he set his left foot down. Pain seared through the ankle, but it held—once, then again and again. Suddenly he was running.

  At the end of the alley he looked back. The man had lowered the ladder and was calmly stepping off the bottom rung.

  Clarendon Street was nearly deserted. David paused uncertainly, then decided to try for heavily trafficked Boylston Street. At that instant he saw a figure half a block from him walking in the opposite direction toward the river. Instinctively he ran that way. His gait was awkward. Every other stride was agony. Still, he closed on the figure.