The Sisterhood

by Michael Palmer

  “I … I guess if it’s okay with Christine, it’s okay with me,” he said finally.

  Christine tightened her lips and nodded.

  “It’s decided, then,” Joey announced. “There’s food in the house. This time of year, there’s not too many folks on Rocky Point, so you shouldn’t be bothered. I’ll draw you a map. Take Christine’s car. We’ll follow you to the highway just in case. It’s nice up there. Especially if the rain is through for good. There’s an old clunker jeep in the garage. The keys are in the toolbox by the back wall. Use it if you want. Okay?”

  “Give me a minute to pack a couple of things,” Christine said. “And to leave a note for my roommates that I won’t be home tonight.”

  “Okay, but not too long,” Joey replied. “And, Christine? Tell your friends to keep the door locked—just in case.”

  “Mr. Vincent, you have bungled things badly. Possibly beyond repair. Hyacinth took a great risk helping you escape that mess in the hospital, but never again. This time I want results. The girl first, then Dr. Shelton. Understand?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I understand.” Leonard Vincent slammed the receiver down, then rubbed at the thin mat of dried blood that had formed over the stitches in his head. That twit Hyacinth wasn’t his type, but for being cool in a crunch he had to hand it to her. After regaining consciousness, he had been unable to keep his feet. He remembered her helping him to a stretcher. Seconds later, a doctor arrived. It was then that the woman really put on her show, explaining how this poor orderly had slipped and smacked his head on the floor, and how she would take care of all the paperwork if the guy would just throw some stitches into the gash.

  Yes, sir, Vincent thought, he certainly did have to hand it to ol’ Hyacinth. Then he remembered the way she had looked at him just before she sent him out of the hospital—the hatred in her eyes. “You asshole,” she had said. “You absolute asshole.”

  The memory triggered a flush of nausea and another siege of dry heaves—his third since leaving the hospital. Vincent held on to a tree until his retching subsided. “People are gonna die,” he spat, fighting the frustration and the pain with the only weapon he knew. “People are gonna fuckin’ die.”

  Carefully, he eased himself behind the wheel of his car and drove to Brookline, He turned onto Belknap Street just as another car, heading away from him, neared the corner at the far end. Vincent tensed as he peered through the darkness, trying to focus on the car before it disappeared around the corner. It was red—bright red. The killer relaxed and settled back into the seat. He stopped across from Christine’s house and scanned the driveway. The blue Mustang was gone.

  Muttering an obscenity, he reached inside the glove compartment and pulled out the envelope Hyacinth had given him. “Well, Dahlia, whoever the fuck you are,” he said, “I guess you get the doctor first whether you want it that way or not.”

  He tore open the envelope and spread David’s emergency sheet on the passenger seat. Across the space marked “Physician’s Report” the words ELOPED WITHOUT TREATMENT were printed in red. The information boxes at the top were all neatly typed in. With an unsteady hand, Vincent drew a circle around the line of type identifying next of kin.

  CHAPTER XIX

  The wharf was dark, quiet, and even more eerie than usual. John Dockerty backed inside a doorway and listened until the echo of his footsteps had been absorbed by the heavy night. It took several minutes to sort out the random sounds that surrounded him. Clinking mooring chains. Gulls caterwauling over a midnight feast. The lap of harbor swells against thick pilings. The reassuring drone of a foghorn.

  Gradually the tension in his neck relaxed. He was alone on the pier.

  Through the silver-black mist he scanned along the row of warehouses, ghostly sentinels guarding the inner harbor. Then he crossed the narrow strip of pavement and ducked into a small alley. At the far end a slit of dim light glowed from beneath an unmarked warehouse door. Dockerty knocked softly and waited.

  “Come in, Dock, it’s open.” Ted Ulansky’s voice boomed in the silence.

  Dockerty slipped inside, closing the heavy metal door quickly behind him. “Christ, Ted,” he said. “I spend twenty fucking minutes sneaking around to be sure I’m not followed, and you bellow at me louder than the foghorn out there.”

  “Just goes to show what confidence I have in you, Dock. Come on over and park your duff.” Ulansky pumped Dockerty’s hand, then motioned him to a high-backed oak chair beside his desk. He was an expansive man with a physique that bore only a faint resemblance to the All-American linebacker he had been at Boston College two and a half decades before.

  “Nice place,” Dockerty said sarcastically, looking around the large, poorly lit office. “Is this it?”

  “This is it,” answered Ulansky with mock pride. “The fabled Massachusetts Drug Investigation Force headquarters. Want a tour?”

  “No, thanks. I think I can manage to take it all in from here.”

  In fact, the MDIF, while not publicized, had gained an almost fabled reputation for quiet efficiency and airtight arrests. Ulansky, as head of the unit, was gradually acquiring a superhuman reputation of his own. The office, however, was hardly the stuff of which legends are made. It was stark and cold. Bare cement walls were lined with filing cabinets—more than two dozen of them—all olive-green standard government issue. Inside the metal drawers, Dockerty knew, was virtually every piece of information available on illegal drug traffic in the state.

  In one corner of the room, partially covered by Ulansky’s carelessly thrown suit coat, was a computer terminal connected through Washington with drug-investigation and -enforcement agencies throughout the country.

  Ulansky lowered himself into his desk chair. “A drink? Some coffee?” Dockerty shook his head. “Must be serious business for you to come out here in this rat’s-ass weather, then refuse a drink.”

  “I guess,” Dockerty said distractedly, reopening his battle with some obstinate strands of hair. “I appreciate your coming out.”

  Ulansky buried a shot glass of Old Grand-Dad in a single gulp. “Believe me, with the Czernewicz fight on live from the coast tonight, you’re about the only one of the precinct boys who could have gotten me out of the house. Jackie Czernewicz, the Pummeling Pole. You follow the fights?”

  Dockerty shook his head again. “Too much like a day at the office for me.”

  Ulansky smiled. “Tell me, then,” he said, “what prompts a visit from you to this Hyatt Regency of law enforcement?”

  “I’m involved in a really weird case, Ted.” Dockerty scratched the tip of his nose. “An old lady got murdered while she was a patient at Boston Doctors Hospital. Morphine. So far I’ve narrowed the field of suspects down to about three dozen. Even made one arrest.”

  “Yeah, I read about that,” Ulansky said. “A doctor, right?”

  “Right. A ton of circumstantial stuff against him, but way too neat, if you know what I mean. The captain, that pillar of justice, got pressure from some fat cat at the hospital and insisted that I bust the doctor. I did it, but I’ve never been convinced. Now the guy’s lawyer has been murdered. Ben Glass. You know him?” Ulansky grimaced and nodded. “Well, he was knifed. Outside the doc’s apartment door, no less. There are bullet holes all over, and the apartment door’s smashed in. There’s blood in the hallway and even on the wall.

  “A little while ago the doctor gets brought to the emergency ward at the hospital soaked and freezing and half crazy. Then, before he can get any treatment, he splits with another guy. By the time I hear about it and get to the hospital, there’s no record he was ever even there. For all I know he may be dead by now. I’ve got the usual lines out for him, but I’m at a stone wall with the rest of the case. I feel like the whole fucked-up mess is partly my fault for letting the captain talk me into arresting him.”

  “How can we help?”

  “My only hope of breaking something open is a pharmacist named Quigg. Marcus Quigg. Owns a little drugstore in West
Roxbury. He swears that this Dr. Shelton filled a big prescription for morphine the day this woman was OD’ed.”

  Ulansky’s moon face crinkled as he worked the name through his memory. “We’ve got something on the man someplace,” he said. “I’m almost sure of it. What about a C two twenty-two?”

  “Quigg’s got one. The doctor claims it was stolen from his office, that he never ordered any morphine.”

  “Signature?”

  “Only a maybe from the guys at ident. They tell me Shelton’s signature is a scrawl. Easy to duplicate.”

  “So maybe it is his,” Ulansky said.

  “Maybe.” Dockerty shrugged. “My hunches have been wrong before.”

  “Sure, about as often as a solar eclipse.”

  Dockerty accepted the compliment with a tired grin. “I need a handle on that pharmacist, Ted,” he said. “The man bends, but he won’t break. I figure if he’d take a payoff to do something like this, he must have dirtied his hands on something else at one time or another.”

  “Well,” Ulansky offered, “we can go through the files and check the computer for you. I have a feeling something’s down on paper about him.” He paused, then continued in a softer voice. “Dock, you know that if we can’t find anything on him we can easily set something up that will work just as well. Maybe better. You want that?”

  Dockerty tensed, then rose and walked slowly to the far side of the room. Ulansky moved to add something, then sat back and let the silence continue. Dockerty rested one arm on a filing cabinet. For more than a minute he studied the blank wall. “You know, Ted,” he said finally, “in all these years on the force I’ve never once purposely set anyone up. If I did it this time, I know it would be to make up for mistakes I’ve already made.” He shook his head and turned back to Ulansky. “I don’t want to do it, Ted. No matter what my fuck-ups may have put that doctor through, I don’t want to do it.” Ulansky nodded his understanding. “Look,” Dockerty added, “check everything you can to dig something up on Quigg. Call me first thing tomorrow. If I’ve got nothing and you’ve got nothing, we’ll talk.”

  “Don’t worry, Dock,” Ulansky said stonily. “If Marcus Quigg has so much as pissed on a public toilet seat, I’ll find out. Don’t worry your ass about that at all.”

  “That was it, that was the exit. I told you one twenty-seven and you just breezed right past it.” David, bundled in an army blanket, sat wedged against the passenger door. He glared at Christine, but turned away before she noticed.

  “Sorry,” she said flatly. “My mind was on other things.” She took the next turnoff and doubled back. Traffic was light, but her difficulty concentrating was such that she kept their speed below fifty. For a time they drove in silence, each aware that the tension between them was building.

  Finally Christine could stand no more. She pulled into the dirt parking lot of a boarded-up diner and swung around to face him. “Look, maybe this wasn’t a good idea—maybe we should go back.”

  David stared out the window, struggling to comprehend the existence and the incredible scope of The Sisterhood of Life. Christine had given him only the roughest sketch of the movement, along with the promise of more details in the morning. Still, what she had told him already was awesome. Several thousand nurses! Dorothy Dalrymple one of them! He had listened, his eyes shut, his head close to exploding, as her factual, curiously dispassionate voice divulged secrets that could easily decimate the hospital system to which he had dedicated so much of his life.

  Now he felt sick. Tired and angry and sick.

  Christine sensed his mood, but could not contain her own growing frustration. “Dammit, David,” she said, “I’ve been trying to explain to you as best as possible what has happened. I didn’t expect a reward, but I didn’t expect the silent treatment either.”

  “And just what did you expect?” Irritation sparked in his voice.

  “Understanding?” she said softly.

  “My God. She kills one of my patients, gets me thrown in jail for it, causes my friend to be murdered almost in my arms, and wants me to understand. And … and that Sisterhood of yours. Why of all the presumptuous, insane …”

  “David, I told you about The Sisterhood of Life because I thought you deserved to know. Back there at my house you seemed willing to listen and at least try to understand. Instead all you’ve done is pull into a shell and come out every few miles to snap at me. I’ll tell you one last time. I did not cause you to be arrested. I didn’t even know it had happened until I read it in the papers. I imagine The Sisterhood is responsible, and that sickens me. I joined the movement because of its dedication to mercy. Now I discover it’s involved in despicable crimes—against you, against Ben, and God knows whom else. If I had known ahead of time, I would never have allowed any of this to happen. Why else do you think I went to Ben to confess?”

  She paused for a response, but David was staring out the window. “I thought you might be able to help me work things out,” she continued, “but that was foolish of me. You have every right to be angry. Every right to hate me. I’m going home.”

  She turned and started the engine. David reached across and shut it off. “Wait, please. I … I’m sorry.” His speech was halting and thick. “I’ve been listening to my own bitterness and anger and trying to understand where they’re coming from. I thought it was my pain talking, or frustration, or even fear, but I’m starting to know better. I liked you—maybe more than I would allow myself to accept. That’s what’s doing it. I didn’t want to believe you were any part of this. Now you tell me that you were part of it, but you ask me to believe you didn’t know what your Sisterhood was capable of doing. Well, I want to believe that. I do. It’s just that …” He gave up fumbling for words. How much of what she had told him had actually sunk in? “Look,” he said finally, “I’m absolutely exhausted. I can’t seem to hold on to anything. Please. Let’s call a truce for the night and just get up to Rosetti’s place. We’ll see what things are like tomorrow. Okay?”

  Christine sighed, then nodded. “Okay, truce.” Hesitantly, she extended her hand toward him. He clasped it—first in one, then both of his. The warmth in her touch only added to his confusion. Why did it have to be her? Why? The question floated through his thoughts like a mantra, over and over again, easing his eyes closed and smothering the turmoil within him. He heard the engine engage and felt the Mustang swing onto the roadway in the instant before he surrendered to exhaustion.

  “David? … I’m sorry, but you have to wake up.” Christine pulled the blanket away from his face and waited as he pawed his eyes open. “Are you feeling better?”

  “Only if there are degrees of deceased,” he mumbled. He pushed the blanket to his lap and peered through the windshield. They were parked on the shoulder of a narrow pitch-black road. “Where are we?”

  “We’re in lost,” she said matter-of-factly.

  Her humor, unexpected, nearly slipped past him. He glared at her for a moment, then stammered. “But … but we weren’t going there. I think we should take the next right, or at least the next left.”

  “At least …” They both laughed.

  “What time is it?”

  “Two. A little after. We were right where the map said we were supposed to be, then all of a sudden, about fifteen or twenty minutes ago, the landmarks disappeared.” She handed him Joey’s drawing.

  David opened his window and breathed deeply. The air, scrubbed by four days of rain, was cool and sweet with the scents of autumn. An almost invisible mist hung low over the roadway. Within a few breaths he could taste the salt captured in its droplets. Then he heard the sea, like the thrum of an endless train, up through the woods to their right. “Have we passed Gloucester?” he asked.

  “Yes, just before I got lost. ”

  He smiled. “You did fine, Christine. The ocean’s over there through the trees. It sounds as if we’re pretty high above it. I’ll bet a Devil Dog we’re near this place Joey marked as ‘cliffs.’ ”

&
nbsp; “Bet a what?”

  “A Devil Dog. You see I … never mind. I’ll explain tomorrow. Assuming I’m not too foggy to figure out what this map says, and if there are no other roads between us and the ocean, we should be close to the turnoff for Rocky Point. I vote straight ahead.”

  She eased the Mustang back onto the road and into the darkness.

  After a quarter of a.mile, the pavement rose sharply to the right. Moments later, they broke free of the woods. The sight below was breathtaking. The steep slope, dotted with trees and boulders, dropped several hundred feet before giving way to the jet black Atlantic. Overhead, a large gap had developed in the clouds, exposing several stars and the white scimitar of a waxing moon. Christine pulled to the side and cut the engine.

  “Even if we had no idea where we were, we wouldn’t be lost,” David said gently. “See that dark mass on the other side of the cove? I think that’s Rocky Point.”

  Christine did not respond. She stepped from the car and walked to the edge of the drop-off. For several minutes she stood there, an ebony statue against the blue black of the sky. When she returned, tears glistened in her eyes. The rest of their drive was made in silence.

  The little hideaway, as Joey had called it, was splendid—a hexagonal glass and redwood lodge suspended over the very tip of the point.

  “David, it’s just beautiful,” she said.

  “You go ahead and open the place up,” David said. “I’ll be along.”

  “Do you need help?”

  David shook his head, then realized he was not at all sure he could make it on his own. He pushed himself out of the car and onto the crutches. Immediately the dizziness and nausea took hold. He struggled to the bottom of the short flight of steps leading to the front door. For hours tension and nervous energy had helped him overcome the pain and the aftereffects of his hypothermia. Now, it seemed, he had nothing left. He grabbed the railing, but spun off it and fell heavily. In seconds Christine was beside him, supporting him, guiding him inside.