Critical Judgment (1996)

by Michael Palmer

  Abby took the staircase to the basement and left the hospital through the service door. The notebook, and the conclusions buried within the data, were the legacy she would leave for Lew and the Alliance. A significant number of the NIWWs had had an MRI that preceded their major complaints. There was some sort of scam going on at PRH, she reasoned--some sort of kickback deal with the radiologists, the hospital, or both. But no one appreciated that many of the patients involved in the scam had been exposed to cadmium. And, together, the magnetic field and the intense ultrasound were somehow interacting with the cadmium to produce symptoms.

  Abby mulled over the explanation as she drove home. It was weak, she acknowledged--as tenuous as wet tissue paper. It was a square peg she was trying to hammer into a round hole. But it was a theory with some data to back it up. And that was more than the Alliance had been able to accomplish in their three years of trying. There was no reason for her to feel she had failed.

  She pulled into her driveway with no recollection of having gotten into the car or driven home. It was a familiar phenomenon Abby had long ago labeled auto-hypnosis--one of the most consistent signs of extreme exhaustion. For nearly twenty-nine hours now, from the moment the phone in her bedroom had rung with Joe Henderson's call, she had been awake and on the move. Studying the data in her notebook could wait, she decided. She could not function without a few hours of sleep.

  She entered the house through the back door and went immediately to the answering machine, desperately hoping for some news of Josh. There were two messages. A woman from Patience Auto Glass had called to see if there had been any problem with their service. Then there was a no-message hang-up. Abby rewound the tape just a bit and listened again. Whoever it was had waited through her greeting message and a good ten seconds into the recording before hanging up. She turned up the volume and listened a third time. It was a stretch, but she swore she could hear breathing. Josh!

  "Say something," she muttered. "Come on, say something."

  She took off her slacks and blouse--the outfit she had worn for her ill-fated appointment with Henderson--and put on a light cotton nightshirt. Then she opened the front door to check on two days' worth of mail. The metal mailbox was screwed to the house, just beside the front door. She opened the top of the box and was about to reach in when the wooden doorjamb next to her face burst apart, showering her with splintered wood. An instant later, there was a soft crack from somewhere up the hill far to her right. Before she could even react, there was a metallic snap from the mailbox, and the side blew off. Abby cried out and instinctively ducked and backed away. Then she saw the bullet holes above her in the wood. She flattened out on the stoop and pulled the screen door open with her fingertips. As she did, another bullet tore through the screen and snapped a hole in the partially open front door. Except for the single faint crack, she hadn't even heard any of the shots.

  Her body was on red alert now, her heart hammering against the inside of her chest, her lungs unwilling to accept air. She had completely misjudged Kelly Franklin. The woman had sold her out to Quinn as soon as she had hung up. Damage control was now being initiated.

  I think he's not as hard as he wants everyone to believe. Isn't that what Franklin had said about her pal, Quinn? Well, screw you, lady, Abby thought. Screw you.

  Desperately, she scrambled back into the house on her hands and knees and kicked the door closed with her feet. Then, gasping for breath, she snaked on her belly to the bedroom phone. Behind her the picture window in the living room shattered inward, showering the sofa and braided rug with glass. Cringing from the noise, she dived between the bed and the wall. She was reaching across the quilt to call 911 when the phone rang. She hesitated, then snatched up the receiver.

  The voice, almost certainly a man's, was raspy and muffled.

  "Get out!" it said. "Get out now!"

  Bathed in an icy sweat, she put down the receiver, then snatched it up again and called the police. The officer who answered knew immediately who she was and where she lived.

  "We'll send someone over soon, ma'am," he said as if she had just called to report a stray dog in the neighborhood.

  Make it someone other than the man who just shot at me, she wanted to reply.

  She set the receiver down, and then, overwhelmed by the adrenaline of fear and anger, she cried. Fifteen minutes later, when two police cars pulled up in front of the house, she had washed her face, put on a Stanford Med sweatshirt and a pair of jeans, and brewed a cup of tea. Through the shattered plate-glass window she saw Sergeant Sullivan emerge from the front cruiser, laughing and chatting with a man wearing jeans and an Oakland Raiders windbreaker. Without bothering to announce their arrival, they began inspecting the carnage around the front stoop. The other cruiser, Abby noted, had "Captain" painted just above the blue accent stripe on the right fender. The officer who stepped out--Captain Gould, Abby remembered Sullivan calling him--was in uniform, complete with cap. He looked to be six four or five and had on mirrored sunglasses and cowboy boots.

  From bad to worse, was all Abby could think.

  As Gould approached up the front walk, he noticed her watching and gave her a half salute. She nodded and motioned him in. He paused briefly to speak with the two men inspecting the bullet holes, then entered without knocking. Abby predicted with exact accuracy the first words out of his mouth.

  "Dr. Dolan, I'm Captain Gould. I've heard a lot about you."

  "Well, now you're hearing that someone tried to kill me.

  Gould slipped off his sunglasses with Clint Eastwood deliberateness and dropped them into a case on his belt.

  "Who?"

  Abby debated what her answer should be, then finally shrugged and said, "I think it was Lyle Quinn."

  The policeman laughed out loud.

  "Pardon me, Captain," Abby said, "but I don't think this situation is particularly funny."

  She knew that her temper, under marginal control in the best of circumstances, was already smoldering from profound fatigue and anger. The last thing she needed to do now was to blow up at the captain of the Patience police force.

  "Pardon me, Doctor," he replied, "but there are two things I think you should know. First of all, Lyle Quinn and his wife are at St. Margaret's Church right now helping my wife, among a dozen or so others, prepare for tonight's auction and dance."

  Abby felt embarrassment burn in her cheeks, along with irritation at this latest example of Patience cronyism.

  "What's the other thing?" she asked stonily.

  "Well, excuse me if this seems insensitive, Dr. Dolan, but Sergeant Sullivan and Detective Jacques out there tell me that the shots that hit your house were most likely fired from a ledge on the side of that hill over there." He pointed toward the spot. "I make that three hundred yards, maybe a little more. Lyle was a decorated officer in the Rangers. With the sort of high-powered rifle and sniper scope available at any army/navy store, he could have put a hole in the O in Stanford if he had wanted to." He gestured at the lettering on her sweatshirt. "Same goes for most of the hunters in this community, which is to say most of the men. Believe me, Doctor, the fact that you're alive means that nobody was trying to kill you."

  "Right after the shots were fired, a man called me. He muffled his voice with a handkerchief or something, but his message was clear enough."

  "And it was?"

  " 'Get out.' That's all he said. 'Get out now.' "

  "See, I told you whoever was up on that ledge was just trying to make a point."

  "Get out, Captain," Abby said sweetly.

  "What?"

  "That was the message to me. Now it's my message to you. I was shot at, Captain, not picketed. I'm simply not in the mood for your smug sarcasm right now. So, please, leave me alone. I'm tired, I have a headache, I want to get some sleep, and it's clear that this farce of an investigation is going to lead nowhere."

  Gould hesitated for a few seconds, then shrugged and said, "Suit yourself."

  He took a step to
ward the door before turning back to her.

  "Dr. Dolan, I don't approve of that caller's methods, but I believe you should pay attention to what he said. There's a lot about this town that you just don't understand. We depend on each other a great deal here. You stamp on someone's toe on the east side of the valley, and someone on the west side is sure to say, 'Ouch!' "

  "Nicely put. Thanks for your advice. I'll watch where I step."

  Gould glared at her and looked for a moment as if he was going to say something else. Then he simply marched down the walk to his cruiser and drove away. A few minutes later, without so much as a word to her, Sergeant Sullivan and the detective left as well.

  Abby found a handyman listed in the local paper who was willing to bring a sheet of plywood right over and nail it across the window. When she had finished cleaning up the glass in the living room, she considered trying to doze off in a chair until the repairman arrived, but she was too wired from her ordeal and too furious at just about everyone who had anything to do with Patience, California.

  First the red pickup, now this. Get out! Get out now. Lyle Quinn was delivering his message with all the subtlety of a wrecking ball.

  Well, I've got news for you, Lyle, Abby thought. I'm off the fence now--but not on the side you expected.

  She went to the basement, retrieved her notebook, and began plodding through the data once more. Unlike her previous efforts, though, this time she knew what question to ask: which came first, the illness or the test?

  Abby wasn't surprised when the repairman took much longer to arrive than he had promised. Although there was no way the man could have any idea what she was doing, she was just paranoid enough to close her notebook and conceal it in a kitchen cabinet until he was finished. Her preliminary survey of the data was confirming what she suspected. Somehow the MRIs were preceding certain symptoms, not just diagnosing them.

  It was after three. Almost thirty sleepless hours now. The handyman talked incessantly as he worked, sharing town gossip with no regard for whether Abby knew the person or not. She brushed off several questions about the nature of the damage to the front of the house, then finally explained it away as blandly as she could--some vandals on a spree.

  Still, bullet holes were bullet holes, and she could only imagine what a juicy yarn he would be spinning for his next customer about the crazy lady from the big city. She was smiling at the notion that no story the man could conjure up would come close to matching the truth, when the phone began ringing.

  Reflexively, Abby hurried to the bedroom nightstand. But then she could only stand there, staring down at the phone through one ring, two, three. One more ring and the answering machine would kick in. Thinking about the hang-up she was certain had been Josh, she forced herself to pick up the receiver.

  "Hello?"

  "Abby, this is Kelly Franklin." The woman spoke in a near whisper. "Are you alone?"

  Abby felt her temperature rise a degree at the mention of the woman's name.

  "I'm not," she said coolly. "There's a repairman fixing a shattered window in my living room. What do you want?"

  "Please get rid of him, Abby. I have to know you're alone before we can talk. I need to change phones and call you back. Is ten minutes long enough?"

  "What's this all about?"

  "Please. It's very, very important."

  "Where are you?"

  "Right now I'm at the library. Please--trust me."

  Abby sank onto the bed. Why should I, lady?

  "Okay, Kelly," she said. "Ten minutes."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  It took some fast talking and a twenty-dollar tip, but at last the handyman got the message that Abby wanted him to take a break--now. He was halfway down the front walk when Kelly Franklin called again. This time Abby snatched up the phone.

  "Your friend Quinn had someone deliver an ultimatum to me with a high-powered rifle, Kelly," she said. "You led me to believe you wouldn't tell him about our conversation for twenty-four hours. It was more like twenty-four minutes."

  "I never said a word to him. I swear I didn't."

  "Spare me. You said you thought he was all bark and no bite. Well, those bullets were the real thing. They wrecked the front of my house, and they scared the hell out of me. Our staunch protector, Captain Gould, pooh-poohed the whole deal. He thinks that whoever pulled the trigger was an expert marksman who was just trying to frighten me out of town. I didn't bother pointing out to the man that one hiccup, one little gnat in his expert marksman's eye, and any further attempts to frighten me out of town would have been unnecessary."

  "Abby, please believe me. I never even saw Lyle after we spoke. Of course, he may have a tap on my phone--that doesn't seem beyond him. But I never said a word to him or anyone else. I was far too busy following up on some of the things you told me."

  She was clearly upset at Abby's accusation, but Abby reminded herself of Lew's warning that the woman was a consummate actor. Still, according to Captain Gould, Lyle Quinn was at church all afternoon. If Kelly hadn't called him, she had to be right about the tap on her office phone. Abby felt some of the hard edge of her anger toward Kelly begin to soften.

  "Where are you calling from now?" she asked.

  "My car. I don't trust the office phone. And there are always people hanging around pay phones, waiting to make a call."

  "All of a sudden you're starting to sound as paranoid as the rest of us."

  "I'm beginning to feel that way. Abby, I was bothered by some things you said the first night we were together. Especially a question you asked about openings on the northeast face of the cliff. You didn't explain the question, but it seemed clear to me you wouldn't have brought the subject up unless you knew something."

  "I saw an old slide of the cliff, and it looked as if there were openings then. So a friend of mine and I scanned the face with high-powered binoculars. There almost certainly were openings there at one time--three of them. But they've been sealed off or camouflaged somehow."

  "I know."

  "What?"

  "I know there were three windows. One of my good friends works at the library. I told her I wanted a book on the Patience mine. She found one locked away in the archive room. It's waiting on reserve for you."

  "I'll stop by there tomorrow."

  "If it's possible, it might be better if you could go now. The library's closed tomorrow until one."

  "I haven't been to sleep since yesterday morning," Abby said, rubbing at her eyes.

  "Abby, I believe you now. Something has to be going on at Colstar. Something that I don't know anything about. And I'm frightened. I left a note for you in the book explaining some things I've found. I ... I probably shouldn't have done that."

  Resigned as much as curious, Abby stuffed her nightshirt under the pillow and dragged a brush through her hair.

  "I'll be at the library in fifteen minutes," she said.

  "Thank you. You'll understand more when you read my note to you. But, first, stop by the registry of deeds in the basement of town hall. Ask for volume fifty-eight, and look on page one-seventeen."

  "Page one-seventeen, volume fifty-eight."

  "The registry's open until four. The library closes at five."

  "Anything else?"

  "Yes. Forgive me for doubting you. Whatever it takes, I'm going to find out why people in this company have been keeping secrets from me."

  "Just be careful."

  "I will. Read the note I left for you and do what it says. I'll contact you through your pager later today or this evening. And, please, don't call me at the office."

  She sounded agitated now, her words spilling out one on top of the last.

  "Easy does it, Kelly. We'll get to the bottom of things."

  "No!" she snapped. "They lied to me. I hate being lied to. I don't detest anything else as much."

  Without waiting for a reply, she slammed the receiver down.

  Abby gazed longingly at the bed. As a resident, she had once don
e four straight months of alternating thirty-six hours on, twelve hours off, and had held up reasonably well. In fact, during training there was a certain cachet that surrounded "doing a thirty-six." But now she knew there was nothing heroic about long stretches without sleep, and a lot that was not only stupid, but for a physician, downright dangerous.

  The Patience town hall, located on the small village green not far from the police station, was the only granite building in town. Like most everything else in the valley, it was postcard perfect, with a manicured lawn and a tree-lined duck pond in back. The cornerstone put the construction of the building at 1922.

  On the way into town Abby stopped at the convenience store for a sixteen-ounce cup of hi-test coffee and a sugar fix in the guise of a jelly doughnut. In fifteen or twenty minutes she would feel as if another thirty or forty sleepless hours were quite within her capabilities. The chemically induced bravado would last for an hour or two, but the crash that followed would be the biologic equivalent of Black Monday.

  No one took any particular notice of her as she crossed the marble-floored foyer and followed the signs down to the registry of deeds. The wizened man dozing behind the counter could well have been there since the cornerstone was laid.

  Abby cleared her throat, startling him to his feet.

  "Excuse me, I need to review some records," Abby said. "Volume fifty-eight."

  "Can't take the volumes out of that room."

  "I know."

  "We close in an hour."

  "I know."

  "You real estate?"

  "Medicine."

  "Oh."

  The man had resumed his nap before Abby passed by him into the dimly lit registry. The space smelled of mold, dust, and old paper. The volumes, hundreds of them bound in khaki, canvaslike fabric and embossed in gold, filled five or six long rows of shelves, as well as shelves lining the stone walls. She found volume fifty-eight with ease, but wondered how she would have found anything if she had had to depend on the man at the desk. What, she wondered, had brought Kelly Franklin here in the first place?