Implant

by F. Paul Wilson

  And then she died. And Diana blamed him.

  And Duncan blamed himself.

  He had never realized what grief could mean, never imagined he could mourn the loss of another human being the way he mourned Lisa. And he knew it was all his fault . . . all his fault . . .

  Until the audits and investigations were completed. Then he knew who was really to blame.

  The rasorial crew of Medicare auditors finished their quest for any improprieties that might grease his path to the gibbet, always in full view of his steadily diminishing patient flow, and the worst they could come up with were a few errors in the coding of certain procedures.

  The quality assurance examiners found no cases, not one! of unnecessary surgery. Every single procedure met or exceeded recommended . . . .

  Indications.

  No apology, though, from the Guidelines committee and their fugleman, McCready. They'd moved on to other hatchet jobs.

  Except for a few loyal patients who wrote letters on Duncan's behalf, no one had come to his defense throughout the entire ordeal. His colleagues had kept their heads down. Even some A.M.A paper-pusher was quoted as saying the amount Duncan billed was "excessive." Duncan learned the meaning of alone.

  The long-delayed reports finally got forwarded to the State Board of Medical Examiners. The "coding irregularities" did not result in any net gain on Duncan's part, actually he lost money, but still he was issued a warning to be more careful in the future. Since there was no evidence of fraud or negligence, or of performing even a single unnecessary procedure, the board exonerated him.

  But where was that publicized?

  In a small paragraph buried deep in the Banner. But the Washington Post, which had broken the original story that started this nightmare, never mentioned it.

  The public flogging was over, but it had dragged on too long. Referral patterns had changed. Generalists who used to feed his practice had found new surgeons.

  His practice was ruined. He'd been held up to national scorn and then cleared. But his reputation remained tainted.

  He could have shrugged it off, all of it, if Lisa still were alive and Diana still behind him.

  But Lisa was gone. Dear, dear Lisa, who left without a goodbye, blaming him for all her pain.

  Diana, too, blamed him. And soon their marriage went the way of his practice.

  But he wasn't to blame. He'd done nothing wrong. Couldn't she see that? It was the committee . . . that damned Guidelines committee.

  McCready and his claque of pharisaical louts had plundered his life and then casually moved on.

  Duncan had actually entertained thoughts of buying an assault rifle and blowing them all away. But then McCready had died, and the Guidelines committee disbanded, leaving Duncan with no target for the monstrous, smoldering mass of rage, coiled and writhing within him.

  But he got over it, got past it, to use the current phrase. After all, he still had his son, Brad had stuck by him from beginning to end.

  And Oliver, of course. Steadfast, sedulous Oliver. Without them . . .

  Well, he just might have shoved a gun barrel in his mouth. So he started anew, new state, new specialty, new persona.

  And everything seemed fine until the president revived the Guidelines committee. It was then that Duncan realized that the rage had never gone away. Like a cancer, it had metastasized throughout his system until it now lived in every tissue.

  And still he might have controlled it if so many committee members hadn't begun looking around for someone to enhance their appearance for the heavy TV exposure they expected . . . and come to him, because he had the implants . . .

  The irony should have been delicious.

  Make me look good for the cameras . . .

  He stopped himself from hurling his glass across the room. No sense in wasting good scotch. So now five of the original seven were gone. McCready from natural causes, four Duncan's doing, and two left . . . the two youngest who were unlikely to seek out cosmetic surgery.

  Almost time to call it quits. The new committee was in complete disarray, The Guidelines act moribund. One more strike, the biggest of all, and it would be dead.

  Just like Lisa.

  And he wouldn't have to worry about Gin interfering with the last target. She'd be too off balance after today. Wouldn't even know about that patient. She'd be home, enjoying a day off.

  And then he'd quit. Flush the TPD and wait for his moment to dissolve the last implant.

  Which reminded him, he had to move the TPD. He'd left it in his top drawer in case Gin went for another look. Now that the games were over, he'd have to find a new hiding place.

  He lifted his glass.

  Par, Regina.

  Mind your own business and we'll all live happily ever after.

  If not . . .

  Gin lay in her bed in the dark, listening to the tick of the old mantle clock from the other room. An awful night alone, grappling with her doubt, her confusion. But she'd passed through that fire, emerging with a new perspective.

  She hadn't imagined this. For a while there she'd been dazed and unsure, rocked back on her heels by the way everything had gone so wrong today. But she was on her feet again.

  It's not over, Duncan, she told the darkness. You're smart . . . no, you're brilliant. Somehow you got way ahead of me on this. You probably think you've won. But I know what I saw, and I know what I know.

  This is not over.

  28

  THE WEEK OF OCTOBER

  SUNDAY GINA WAS GOING TO FIND OUT EVERYTHING ABOUT Duncan.

  She started her engine as Duncan's black Mercedes pulled to a stop at the end of his street. She couldn't park outside his house, or even on his block. Duncan lived in an ultra-exclusive Chevy Chase neighborhood of large, stately, Federal-style homes on half-acre lots in which her little red Sunbird would stick out like a garbage scow at the Potomac Yacht Club. But one of the hallmarks of the neighborhood's exclusivity was limited access. The brick-pillared entrance opened onto a secondary road near a small, upscale strip mall. Gin had camped in the mall's parking lot most of yesterday and all of this morning and no one had bothered her.

  Yesterday had yielded nothing of interest. Duncan had gone out only once, stopping at a liquor store, a gourmet coffee shop, a gas station, and an electronics specialty shop. "Caliguire Electronics," read the sign over the front door. "Audio, Video, Surround Sound, Satellite Dishes, Custom Electronics." Gin remembered Duncan talking about his satellite dish on occasion. This was probably where he'd got it. .

  "Boy toys," she'd muttered.

  And then it struck her, custom electronics. Duncan needed some sort of miniature ultrasound transducer to dissolve his implants. Something small enough to hide on his person and aim at his victim when he got within range. Something pocket-sized, Ohmigod! His pager. His old-fashioned oversized beeper. She remembered how he'd had it in his hand when she saw him with Allard, and how it had gone off as they were standing with Senator Vincent on the hearing room floor before Senator Marsden gaveled everyone to their places. A few minutes later Senator Vincent was convulsing behind the dais.

  What if it was oversized for a reason other than Duncan's stubborn unwillingness to part with a less than state-of-the-art piece of equipment? What if his pager was a mini-transducer?

  Could Duncan have used this place or someplace like it to fashion one for him?

  The question nagged Gin the entire time he was inside, which stretched out almost to an hour. Finally, he came out and returned home.

  Gin had seriously considered the idea of returning to the electronics shop to question the owner about transducers disguised as beepers, but then Gerry's words came back to her.

  No more Nancy Drew stuff.

  Gerry . . . she missed him. She wished he'd call.

  But it was good advice. Not only was she too old to be Nancy Drew, she didn't want to be a detective, being an internist was quite enough.

  And besides, questioning the folks at Caligu
ire might prompt a call to Duncan.

  Better just stick to following him around.

  Nice way to spend a weekend.

  So now it was Sunday evening, the light fading, and this was the first Gin had seen of Duncan all day. She'd worried that he might have another way out of his neighborhood, but a drive by his house an hour ago had revealed the Mercedes parked at the top of the semicircular drive before the front door of his brick colonial.

  Then the radio gave her the most likely reason why he'd - chosen now to be on the move. The Redskins game was over.

  They'd lost. Again.

  She put her car in gear and waited to see which direction he turned.

  Whichever way, she'd be close behind. She wasn't crazy, not psychotic, not even neurotic, and she wasn't going to let anyone make her think so.

  Duncan had secrets. He lied about where he went on his afternoons.

  She was going to find out where he really went. He wasn't going to be able to sneeze without her saying Gezhunteit.

  She was not going to drop this.

  Gin watched him turn south, she let a car get between them before she pulled out and followed. When he turned onto East-West Highway, she had a pretty good idea where he might be headed.

  Sure enough, he pulled into the surgicenter.

  Now what? She couldn't exactly pull in behind him and follow him into his office.

  His office . . . he had that rock garden with the pool and all those thick bushes outside his office window. Maybe she could get a peek.

  She found a parking spot half a block down and trotted back. Homing in on the glow from Duncan's windows, she crept along a grassy buffer between the surgicenter and the neighboring office building and lowered into a crouch as she neared the rear wall of the rock garden. Duncan's office windows were just past that If she could get a look . . .

  Look at me, she thought. Creeping across lawns, spying on people . . .

  This wasn't her. And hadn't she sworn she wasn't going to do the Nancy Drew thing? Was this the behavior of a stable personality?

  Maybe I do need help.

  The thought chilled her, but she shook off the doubts. She had to see this through.

  She parted the branches of a small evergreen, from its ginlike odor she guessed it was some sort of juniper, and peered through the plate glass into Duncan's office.

  He was seated at his desk. Gin settled onto her knees and watched, hoping he'd do more than just straighten papers. It was getting cold out here in the wind.

  She caught her breath as he leaned to his right and unlocked the top desk drawer. She leaned forward, all but thrusting her face through the prickly juniper as she watched him remove the TPD from the drawer, heft it in his hand, then rise and wander about. He opened cabinets and poked inside, lifted bottles, pulled out books and journals, peered into the space they left, then shoved them back.

  What's he doing?

  He seemed to be looking for something.

  Or somewhere.

  Finally he pulled a volume the size of the Merrk Manxal off a top shelf, placed the bottle of TPD in the rear of the gap, then slid the book back in.

  He was hiding the TPD.

  Gin was dumbfounded.

  Why would he hide the bottle when he had a locked drawer for it?

  Maybe he had no further use for it. Or maybe he'd never used it. But then why was he hiding it now?

  Damn! Why didn't any of this make sense?

  Suddenly the office went dark. Duncan had turned out the lights. Gin spun and scampered back to her car. It was good to get the heater going again. She watched Duncan's car turn back the way it had come on East-West. She gave him a good lead, then swung around and followed.

  When she saw him turn into his neighborhood, she turned east and headed for Connecticut Avenue. For Adams Morgan. For home.

  She'd had enough Nancy Drew for one night. In two days of trailing him she'd learned two things, one, he liked to hang out at Caliguire Electronics, two, he'd changed the hiding place of his bottle of TPD.

  No answers. Just two facts which did nothing but engender a whole slew of new questions. She didn't need more questions. She had questions coming out her ears. She needed answers, dammit!

  Maybe tomorrow. When Duncan left early to go to his golf club, Gin would be right behind him. She'd find out where he really went. Maybe a mistress. Or maybe something to do with that little bottle of TPD.

  Hopefully she'd be able to cross one question off her lengthening list.

  29

  MONDAY

  OKAY, DOC. SHE S ALL SET.

  Duncan walked over to the corner of his office where Harry stood on a small aluminum utility ladder. Dressed in a Guns n' Roses T-shirt, he was heavyset, maybe forty, with a receding hairline and a ponytail. He was positioning some of the bric-a-brac on the top shelf around the sensor. When he finished, he stepped down and pointed to it.

  "Would you ever know it was there?" Duncan scrutinized the shelf.

  The sensor was a small brown rectangle the size of a cigarette box. It blended neatly with the woodwork, appeared almost a part of the cabinet. The camcorder lens looked like some sort of glass bauble.

  Duncan nodded approvingly. "Only if I knew exactly where to look."

  "Cool. Now just stand still a moment while I get us some power " He plugged a transformer into the outlet to the left of the sink. "All right. Now move your arms." Duncan waved his arms and saw a red dot begin to glow on the sensor.

  "Smile," Harry said. "You're on Candid Camera."

  "What about that little red light?" Duncan said.

  "That just means it sensed motion. You tripped the . . . . circuit.

  "Yes, but the light is a giveaway. The whole idea is surreptitious surveillance, Harry. Kill that light."

  "No problem." Duncan sipped his morning coffee as Harry climbed back up his step ladder and began whistling while he removed the back plate of the motion detector.

  Harry seemed to love his work. Why not? Duncan was paying him handsomely for playing at his hobby. Duncan remembered how excited Harry had been when he had challenged him to miniaturize an ultrasound transducer. That had taken weeks, but the big bill had been more than worth it.

  This little chore, on the other hand, was a piece of cake. . Duncan had told him he thought one of his employees might be pilfering. He'd said he had a pretty good idea who but wanted to catch the culprit in the act. Which was true. He wanted to see if Gin would try again.

  Harry had said that was cool. Yeah, what with the labor laws these days, you just about had to catch someone red-handed before you could give them the cot.

  Harry's solution, a video camera activated by a motion detector.

  "All right," Harry said, coming off the ladder again. "The light's disabled. Now, remember, the only time you want this thing on is when you're out of the room. Otherwise you're gonna find yourself fast-forwarding through umpteen hours of yourself sitting at your desk or making coffee or whatever."

  "Mostly whatever, I should think," Duncan said. "I often engage in whatever while I'm here."

  "Cool," Harry said. He laid a finger on the upper edge of the transformer.

  "Okay. Two little buttons here. This one turns the power off, this one on. Just before you leave, click it on. That'll arm the sensor. Any movement then will trip the sensor which'll turn on the camera and you'll be taping for the entire time someone's here until a full minute after they leave. It's also got a date and time readout that'll appear in the corner of the picture. I fixed the cam with a wide-angle lens so's you've got the whole office covered."

  Duncan said, "Cool."

  "You know, if you decide to make this a permanent setup, I can rig the camera directly to a VCR and,''

  "Just temporary, Harry, I assure you. And here is your check." Harry glanced at the amount, said, "Cool," one last time, packed up his tools, and was gone.

  Okay, my little cygnet, Duncan thought, staring into the blind eye of the video camera. The next
step is up to you.

  He glanced at the clock. Perfect timing. Harry had arrived early and done his work quickly, leaving Duncan a few minutes to spare before scrubbing for the day's first surgery.

  An abbreviated schedule today, mostly minor procedures. Dr. Van Duyne was due here about noon and Duncan wanted a clear field when he toured him and the others around.

  He pushed The ON button, moved an empty carafe in front of the transformer, and headed for the locker room. The back of his neck tingled with the knowledge that his movement had triggered the sensor and his exit was being recorded.

  Gin rushed through her dictation and other paperwork so she'd be ready to tail Duncan when he took off. She'd had to hustle. The way he'd whipped through those procedures this morning made her think he was in a big rush to leave. But once surgery was over, he seemed in no great hurry to go anywhere.

  Gin was up and down the stairs, keeping an eye on Duncan's office, ready to grab her coat as soon as he looked like he was going to leave.

  But he seemed to be killing time. On one of her surveillance runs she glanced out into the parking lot and saw the mysterious Dr. V. and two other men get out of a gray sedan.

  So that's why he's hanging around.

  Twenty minutes later, Duncan was leading the trio downstairs on a tour.

  "And here are the nether regions. My brother's lab and our records room."

  The good-looking Dr. V. looked relaxed, but his two suited friends were as stiff and uptight as they were clean-cut. Nosy too. Peeking into every closet, every cubbyhole, asking questions in low voices Gin could not pick up.

  "Just showing these gentlemen around," Duncan told Gin as they passed. "Don't let us disturb you." He didn't bother with introductions.

  She followed the group upstairs and watched the two suits point to doors and windows as they conferenced with each other. Neither of them smiled once. What were they? Lawyers? Accountants? Security consultants?

  Then the entire entourage, including Oliver, retired to Duncan's office and closed the door.