The Society

by Michael Palmer

  Will knew he had enough problems of his own to work out without trying to track down the source of this odd conflict. Still, he also knew there was no way he wouldn’t do it.

  “Guys, listen,” he said, “I don’t have a good explanation for this, but I’m sure there is one—at least I think there is one. I’ll check with someone in radiology here, and then I’ll speak to the person at the cancer center who did those mammograms.”

  It was only then that he recalled his unpleasant encounter over the phone with radiologist Charles Newcomber. That time he had gone over Newcomber’s head and prevailed, but it would be a pleasure to put the pompous prig on the hot seat once again.

  “Please keep us posted,” Mark said.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Will replied, knowing that this time the encounter with Newcomber would occur in person, and that this time he would have the hospital X-rays tucked under his arm. “I will.”

  Alone in his office, Augie Micelli sipped on a brandy, stared across the room at a spider plying its trade in the corner, and scratched boxes around words on a yellow legal pad—his way since college of working through problems. From the portable CD player on the floor by his desk, Gene Ammons’s soulful tenor sax was playing “Willow Weep for Me.” A drug addict, Ammons was known as Jug, perhaps for the way he drank, Micelli thought fondly, or maybe for the stretches he did in the jug before, at forty-nine, he died.

  Although Micelli had been there at his desk for several hours with a drink close at hand, he was still far more sober than not. There was significant work to do, so he had been treading the delicate line between maintaining a clear head and keeping the shakes in check. It was a case that, when all was said and done, might not even pay the electric bill. But if Will Grant was telling the truth, if he had been framed and was now being purged from medicine much as Micelli, himself, had been, taking the case had been the right thing to do. Now the trick was seeing to it that Grant never made it anywhere near a courtroom, and that meant figuring out how he could have been railroaded so smoothly.

  Spread out across the desk and on the floor around him were articles, xeroxed book pages, and printouts from the Internet, all dealing with the narcotic fentanyl. Usual dose; onset of action; route of administration; duration of action; pharmacologic effects; side effects; symptoms of overdose; chemical formula; metabolites. Gene Ammons had moved on to “I Remember You,” Micelli’s favorite on the album, which was to say the one that made him feel most blue.

  “Not good,” he muttered as he considered the case, “not good at all.”

  The only explanation that fit all the facts was that Will Grant was both an addict and a liar. Micelli bounced the eraser of his pencil on an article dealing with the pharmacokinetics of sufentanil, ten times more powerful than fentanyl, eight hundred times more powerful than morphine, and of carfentanil, which was nearly fifteen times more powerful even than that. He found himself thinking about a statement from one of his law-school professors, and wrote it in block letters at the bottom of the yellow sheet.

  IF YOUR BELIEFS DON’T FIT WITH THE FACTS, THEN JUST POUND THE HELL OUT OF THE FACTS UNTIL THEY DO.

  He snatched up the phone and dialed. Will Grant answered on the first ring.

  “Okay, Doctor,” Micelli said, making a series of boxes around the words, “take me through that day again.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Embarrassed, angry, frustrated, humiliated, impotent. Patty couldn’t remember ever having felt more uncomfortable. For more than two months her life had been consumed by the need to find a killer and bring him—or her—down. Now, to all intents, her part in the case was over. She would be helping to keep the day-to-day operations of her unit moving along while Wayne Brasco would be working with Sean Digby, who had come on board well after she did, and a veteran detective named Brooks, who had transferred to Middlesex from Hampden just a month ago.

  “Look at it this way,” Jack Court had tried to explain to her, “with me tied up with this case along with the others, you’re going to be like running this place. Brooks is too new to have that responsibility, and Digby is too green. The rest of them aren’t nearly as competent as you are.”

  Bullshit!

  In some ways, it felt as if she was leaving the force altogether. She sat at her desk, grateful that the phone hadn’t rung and that no one had felt the need to stop in and talk to her. Set in neat piles on the floor around her were the tangible products of countless hours of work and thought about the managed-care killer—stacks of documents, computer printouts, interviews, newspaper clippings, photographs, and transcripts.

  It wasn’t right, she was thinking as she identified each of the piles with a carefully printed sheet and bound them with heavy rubber bands. There was some sort of commission or ACLU lawyer someplace who would be more than happy to take up her banner and prove in court that she was being removed from her case without just cause. But then, even if she could find such a champion, her career on the force would be over. It was lose–lose for her all the way around. If she could just hang in and get past this disappointment and embarrassment, there would be other times for her to prove herself. In fact, although she wasn’t about to tell Court or Brasco, she wasn’t totally certain she was going to let go of this case yet.

  Even thoughts of Will and the night just past weren’t enough to give her flagging spirits much of a boost. He was a bright, caring, terrific guy—totally genuine and very attractive. Making love with him was great while it was happening, but she knew, as she suspected he did, too, that both of them were stressed, vulnerable, and needy. The passion, spontaneity, and chemistry between them were real, and she had absolutely no regrets, but she suspected Will would agree that they would probably have been better off to have waited.

  Stacked on top of one another, the piles of exhaustive work reached two feet or more. Reluctantly, Patty hauled them down to Court’s office. As far as she could tell, neither the lieutenant nor Brasco had looked at much of what she had amassed to this point, and there wasn’t much chance they would now. The two men were sniggering about something, but stopped abruptly when she arrived and didn’t bother to explain what it was.

  “All right, Pat,” Court said with fake cheer, “let’s get this over and get you onto a couple of new cases.”

  “I thought maybe we could take a few minutes and I could explain how all this is organized,” she said. “I have these areas cross-referenced. Here’s the key I put together for that.”

  She passed over three sheets, single spaced—the product of hours of work. Brasco favored her with a disinterested grin and set the sheets down on the stack, where they would likely remain for eternity. Court, perhaps sensing an impending escalation in tension, cleared his throat.

  “So, Pat,” he said, “is there anything else you feel we should know before we get on with business?”

  “Well, yes, as a matter of fact there is.”

  “Okay, then, go on.”

  Could Court have possibly been more patronizing? Brasco clearly had one use and one use only for women, but the lieutenant had a bright social worker wife and two daughters. Surely his disregard for her couldn’t just be that she was female.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I just want you to know that something feels off to me about this whole thing. I keep sensing that the real object of this guy’s anger isn’t the managed-care executives, it’s us—I mean the police.”

  Brasco raised his hands in bewilderment.

  “Sergeant, maybe it’s because I don’t have a master’s degree like you do, but that theory of yours just went right over my head. What’s to question? This whack-job’s mother croaks because of something a managed-care company does to her—maybe a premature hospital discharge, maybe refusal to have her evaluated in an emergency ward. They do such things all the time, only this time the lady dies and her kid just happens to be a professional killer—or else he becomes a damn good one in a big hurry. He sets out to right the wrong of her death, while at the same time
humiliating the HMOs and terrifying their executives.”

  “An arrogant, egomaniac son of a bitch,” Court added. “Just like all the others who go around killing to make a point.”

  “I know that’s what the profiler is telling us,” Patty said, “and that may be the whole deal, but—”

  “But what?” Brasco demanded, his voice up an octave or so.

  “It just seems too neat, that’s all. Why would he just tell us it’s about his mother the way that he did?”

  “Because that’s what it’s all about!” Brasco exclaimed. “He’s insane over losing her. Now we even know her name.” Brasco was mindless of the glare from Court.

  Patty felt as if she had been slapped.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The letters,” Brasco replied, now clearly into his braggadocio too deeply to back out. “After that neurosurgeon bought it, I went over all the letters with the cryptographer. It only took us a couple of hours. The M and N were the key. According to him there’s a ninety percent chance the killer’s spelling Remember Clementine.”

  “The mother’s name is Clementine?”

  “That’s right. So now all we have to do is scan the databases of all the hospitals and also the medical examiner’s office, looking for the death of a woman named Clementine. Meanwhile, we’re going to—”

  “Wayne, listen,” Court cut in, “if you haven’t any further questions for Pat, perhaps it’s best to just let her get on with her work.”

  Patty had already caught on that Brasco was supposed to shut up about whatever it was they were planning to do. It took somewhat longer for him to come to that conclusion.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah, sure,” he said. “Listen, thanks for all the paperwork, doll. We’ll keep you posted.”

  Patty willed herself not to burst into tears and also not to leap on Brasco and claw off his face. At the moment, there wasn’t a damn thing she could do except to find a safe, quiet place to lick her wounds. If Brasco caught the killer, good for him. But she decided for certain at that moment, one way or another, he was going to have competition.

  “You got it,” she said.

  Head high, she made a military about-face and left Court’s office, taking pains to close the door softly behind her.

  “Wayne, what in the hell were you thinking,” Court said as soon as it was clear Patty wasn’t going to return. “I thought we decided she was out. If she’s out, then just let her go. I agree with you that trapping the killer through that drug-addicted doctor is the way to go. But sharing anything with her can only mess things up. She’s screwing the guy, for chrissakes.”

  Jack Court slid the black-and-white eight-by-ten photo from an envelope on his desk. Patty and Will were locked in an embrace just inside the open door of his condo.

  “A work of art,” Brasco said.

  “It’s a good thing the guy who took this owed you a favor.”

  Brasco puffed out his chest like a pigeon.

  “Sometimes it’s better to have a little bargaining session with a perp than to bust him or, even better, her.”

  “Keep your methods to yourself, Wayne.”

  “As you can see, they work. Ol’ Gary’d been set up in the bushes opposite Grant’s place off and on for days. This wasn’t exactly what he was looking for, but he’s photographed Ms. Moriarity before, and there she was at five A.M. this morning, all bleary-eyed and sexed out. Given the high profiles of Grant and the managed-care killings, he felt it might have made it all the way to the front page.”

  “I’m glad you were able to dissuade him. I have much better uses for this photo.”

  “Like payback for a certain colonel.”

  “Tommy Moriarity bad-mouthed me out of a promotion I deserved. When we bust the managed-care killer, I don’t want his frigging daughter snagging the headlines. Now, with this photo, there’s not a damn thing Moriarity will do about my taking her off the team.”

  “After we get this jerk,” Brasco said, “maybe we should have a little talk with Tough Tommy about a couple of promotions.”

  “Maybe we should,” Court said. “Maybe we should at that. So, are we all set with the VDS people?”

  “Just about. Later today, they tell me. Believe me, this is the way to go.”

  “And they assure you they can do this?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “Good enough. Stay on them. So long as they don’t screw things up, we’re all set for tonight. Meanwhile, we’ll keep up the search for Clementine.” Court examined the photo once more. “Cozy little scene, this.”

  “I can’t believe Iceberg Patty’s caved in like this. I suspect Tommy’ll do just about anything to protect his little darling from the fallout. I’ll tell you something else, too: Whether it’s drugs or aiding and abetting, or both, Will Grant is dirty. He’s going all the way down with this, and if we’re lucky, she’s going to fall with him.”

  With her mood as gray as the afternoon sky, Patty took Route 128 north to Lexington. She had Beethoven’s darkly heroic Third Symphony, the Eroica, playing at almost top volume. Given the disillusionment and the politics of deception that surrounded the piece, it was the perfect choice for the day. This was the masterpiece Beethoven had originally planned to publish as the Bonaparte Symphony when, in 1804, Napoleon turned his back on democracy and the people and crowned himself Emperor of France. In a Beethoven biography she had read not long ago, it was written that, upon hearing of the tyrant’s action, the composer ripped the title page from the score.

  Patty knew that Jack Court bore some resentment toward her. Until this latest session, though, she never realized how much. Wayne Brasco and he were always tight, but his behavior today was unconscionable—risky, too, given that Tommy Moriarity could easily quash any advancement for him should he learn about the way his daughter had been treated. Well, she wasn’t going to tell her father anything, but neither was she going to slink off the case on which she had worked so diligently. Brasco, with all the intuition of a mollusk, seemed to be following a script written by the killer. Find Clementine, get the names of her children, and arrest the suckers. It was as simple as that. And maybe it was, too. But Patty’s intuition would not stop crying out that something wasn’t right.

  Resting on the seat beside her was a printout with the names and addresses of the four executives that some individual or group had murdered. Assumptions are the detective’s greatest nemeses, her father had once told her class at the academy. When a case isn’t going well, clear your mind of all assumptions and force yourself to go back to the beginning. Patty hadn’t been able to get hold of the widower of Marcia Rising, but Ben Morales’s widow was waiting to meet with her, as was Cyrill Davenport’s. Richard Leaf’s distraught widow had agreed to be interviewed again, but only if absolutely necessary. Patty had decided to leave her for last.

  Morales, murdered with a single shot to the head, was victim number one. He was a young, vibrant leader, active in civic affairs, who seemed, on paper at least, to be a man of compassion and character, able to handle wealth and power without making many enemies. It was the descriptions of him by his friends and coworkers that troubled Patty most as her investigation progressed. Marcia Rising, though respected by many, seemed to have been avaricious and ambitious to a fault. Cyrill Davenport was a reserved, methodical, moneymaking machine, who at times showed open disdain for his alcoholic wife. And Richard Leaf was, from what Patty had learned about him, a megalomaniacal, womanizing egoist, who believed he was above most of society’s laws. None of the three would have been a poster child for the managed-care industry, and it was easy to see how the killer might have chosen any of them to be the first victim—but not Ben Morales.

  The Morales home, on a quiet, unostentatious street, had a well-groomed front lawn that today featured a bicycle with training wheels lying on its side. Patty had met both of Morales’s young daughters and felt as ill today thinking about what life held in store for them as she had during that initial i
nvestigation. Morales’s wife, Wendy, opened the front door before Patty had reached it. She was a trim, fair-skinned blonde who seemed to have aged years in the two months since her husband’s death. She served Patty some tea and willingly answered her questions.

  “Does the name Clementine mean anything at all to you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “How about Marcia Rising?”

  “Still no bells. After you called and asked about her, I looked for her name when I cleaned out Ben’s desk at work, then again when I went through his study upstairs. There was nothing.”

  Wendy was maintaining her composure, but Patty could see the inestimable pain in her eyes.

  “Are you all right to do this?” Patty asked.

  “There really is nothing left for me from all this except to help find Ben’s killer.”

  “I appreciate that. Okay, how about Dr. Richard Leaf?”

  “The latest victim. From what I read in the paper this morning and heard on the news, he’s not a man I would care to know.”

  “Me, either.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever read his name or heard Ben mention him, but I didn’t look through all the boxes again after Ben was—after he was killed.”

  “Are those boxes still here?”

  “Upstairs. It’s fine with me if you want to look through them.”

  “I do. How about Cyrill Davenport?”

  Wendy shook her head.

  “The truth is, I was crying a lot going through Ben’s things, and I don’t think my concentration was really all that good.”

  “I understand.”

  “If you don’t mind working in his study, I can set you up there. Our nanny is away, but I’ll do my best to keep the girls out of your hair.”