drug?'
'What was the dosage?'
'I don't remember, but I can call my office and find out.'
'Use my phone.'
Amanda called her secretary and told her to get the information from the Dupre file. Amanda relayed the results of the tox screen to Dodson. He seemed surprised.
'Are you sure your secretary read the report correctly?' Dodson asked.
'Yeah. I remembered the result once she told it to me. Why?'
'The readings are not what I'd expect to find if a person was taking a prescription amount.'
'What's the problem?'
'That strong a dose would leave him dopey as hell.'
'What do you mean by dopey?'
'He'd be ambulatory but his legs wouldn't work all that well and he'd have trouble thinking clearly.'
'Why would Travis take so much that he'd get dopey?'
'I have no idea. Maybe he was double-dosing or maybe he just made a mistake.'
While Amanda remembered what Kate had said about the tranquilizers found in the Israel and Pixler autopsies, Dodson studied her battered face again.
'Are you involved in something dangerous, Amanda?'
She looked up. Dodson saw fear in his patient's eyes.
'Why would you ask that?' Amanda said.
'Your face for one thing and . . . well, something happened . . . .'
'Something involving me?'
She was terrified. Had Ben been threatened? Were the men who attacked her coming after him?
'I may be wrong but I think someone broke into my office and went through your file.'
Dodson explained about finding the paper from Amanda's file under his desk.
'My secretary didn't look at your file and I'm certain that the paper was not under my desk the evening before I found it because I remember dropping a pen on the floor. The paper was sticking out. I'd have seen it when I picked up the pen.'
Amanda stopped listening to Dodson. The men who had kidnapped her had read her file and Dodson's diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. The pockmarked man had used the phrase 'experiments in pain.' When she'd been taken hostage by the surgeon, he terrified her with his plans to subject her to experiments that would measure her pain threshold. The surgeon had stripped her, and that is why her captors had forced her to strip. Amanda's fear was replaced by anger. The bastards had intentionally manipulated her emotions to force her to relive the horror of her capture by the surgeon.
'Amanda?'
Dodson's voice brought her out of her reverie.
'I don't want to frighten you, but I felt that I had a duty to let you know.'
'I'm glad you told me,' Amanda said. Dodson was struck by the steel in her voice. 'You've helped a lot.'
Chapter Forty.
Amanda shut the door to her father's office. He came to his feet when he saw her face.
'Jesus, Amanda--what happened?'
'I was attacked last night. Three men kidnapped me in the parking garage.'
Frank rounded his desk. 'Are you okay? Did they . . .'
'They hit me a few times, but they didn't do anything else. Physically, I'm fine. I'm just scared, and that's what they wanted. But I'm mad, too.'
'Did you call the police?'
'No. I can't. You'll understand when I explain what happened. Sit down, Dad, this could take a while.'
Amanda started by telling Frank Billie Brewster's story about the Michael Israel suicide and the assertion of Pedro Aragon's man, Sammy Cortez, that Israel had really been murdered on the orders of powerful men who worked with Aragon and called themselves The Vaughn Street Glee Club.
'Cortez was willing to talk about Pedro Aragon and the club until Wendell Hayes visited him at the jail. Billie thinks that Aragon's men kidnapped Cortez's daughter to shut him up and used Hayes as the messenger.'
'Any lawyer would tell a client not to talk to the cops.'
'I don't think that Hayes was just any lawyer. Remember Paul Baylor told me that he thought the wounds on Dupre's hands and forearm were defense wounds?' Frank nodded. 'Dupre says that Hayes smuggled the knife in and attacked him.'
