The Society

Just three years later, there was more-another arrest, this time for assaulting a fellow med student at some sort of book burning.

“Book burning?” Patty asked.

“That’s what it says here,” MacDonald replied. “The other student’s name was Streeter-Owen Streeter. Apparently, no official charges were filed.” Patty was recording the information when MacDonald said, “Wait, this is interesting.”

“What?”

“Will Grant was picked up as a suspect in the bombing of a lab at the medical school. Same year.”

“Arrested?”

“I don’t think so, but the Amherst police were impressed enough to put him in the data bank.”

“I wonder why?”

For a few seconds, MacDonald was silent.

“I think I know,” he said slowly.

“Go on.”

“There was someone in the lab at the time of the explosion-a janitor, it says here. He was killed.”

MURDER!!!

Patty wrote the word across the center of a blank page in her notebook, then added drops of blood coming off the legs of the M and Rs. She noted the date and for the time being ended her conversation with MacDonald, but not before extracting his promise to keep searching the intervening years for more on Grant and to call her if anything additional turned up. Her shift was about to begin, and even before this latest turn of events, she was behind in her paperwork. Still, strongly sensing that this was no dead end, she was unwilling to put matters on hold. Using the Net, she jotted down the names and URLs of the newspapers in Amherst, as well as the nearby towns and cities, including Northampton and Springfield. Before she could make her way into those newspapers’ back issues, the door to the office opened. It took just a few seconds to recognize the voices of two men as Jack Court and Wayne Brasco.

“I don’t care if she did embarrass you in front of the Norfolk guys, Wayne, there’s no way I can take her any further off the case unless she fucks up.”

The overhead fluorescents flickered on. Patty’s cubicle was farthest from the door-just a few paces from Court’s office. Brasco’s was just inside the door.

“I could work better with Sonnenblick or even Tomasetti,” he said.

“You don’t have to work with her, Wayne, just put up with her. Throw her a crumb here and there. Show her how real detectives handle a murder investigation. The moment she steps out of line, she’s off the case.”

Patty heard Brasco grunt as he settled in front of his desk, then Court’s footsteps as he headed down the row of detectives’ cubicles toward her. He stopped when he realized she was at her desk, the nonplussed expression on his hawklike face clearly stating that he was calculating how much, if anything, she had heard.

“Morning, Patty,” he said.

“Lieutenant.”

Patty slid her arm over the notebook to cover up the macabre rendering of the word MURDER.

There was an unpleasant pause before Patty’s CO favored her with one of his most engaging, yet insincere, smiles.

“We’ll be meeting in the conference room at eight,” he said. “Carry on.”

The moment she heard the exchange between the two men, Patty conducted and resolved the internal dialogue surrounding whether or not to share her information and suspicions regarding Will Grant. She returned Court’s nod and remained motionless until she heard the door to his office close. Then she slipped the spiral notebook off her desk and into her shoulder bag.

CHAPTER 9

Impassioned Plea Helps Doc Lambaste Managed Care

Four hundred of the city’s best and brightest, including Governor John A. Fromson, sat in stunned silence at Faneuil Hall last night as Fredrickston surgeon Willard Grant emotionally and effectively chastised managed-care companies for placing profits before patients and before physicians. .

The article was the headliner in Section B of the Globe-the City Section. There were two copies of the paper on Will’s desk when he arrived at the office, along with two copies of the article itself, neatly cut out by the Associates’ dauntless receptionist, Mimi. There was also a copy of the Herald, which contained an article saying essentially the same thing, albeit in many fewer words.

Will had begun his day as usual by making rounds at the hospital, where nearly everyone seemed already to have heard about the forum and his unofficial victory over Boyd Halliday. Several people-two nurses, a lab tech, and a ward secretary-buttonholed him to share their own angry managed-care stories. Two others felt the need to tell him how pleased they were with the care their HMOs were providing for their families. Even his patients seemed to have heard some version of the debate.

Will persistently denied doing anything special, but in truth he was puffed over the turnabout he had been able to effect in the encounter with Halliday. He was not, however, at all pleased that the Willard cat had been let out of the bag. Even his office staff was surprised and amused that he was not a William. It didn’t help that the classic horror flick that had initially caused his dubbing as Ratboy had not too long ago been remade, and to generally favorable reviews, as well. As he flipped through a dozen excited e-mails, mostly from Hippocrates Society colleagues, Will wondered if he had ever even bothered telling the twins his true given name. Most likely, he acknowledged, even if he hadn’t, Maxine had found a way.

In addition to the article, Mimi had dutifully left a copy of the day’s appointment schedule on his desk. Patient visits, sandwiched about the removal of a large fatty tumor from a woman’s back, were light. This was exactly the mellow, stress-free day he would have prescribed for himself after an evening that hadn’t ended until nearly two in the morning.

He was scanning the list of patients when he remembered the card Detective Sergeant Patricia Moriarity had given him, along with the request that he call her. He had little doubt she wanted to speak to him about the managed-care murders. Others in the Hippocrates Society had already been questioned. He took the card from his wallet and studied it absently as he thought about the woman. In all likelihood there had been a shoulder holster and pistol under her vest. Except for the one time a friend had dragged him to a firing range, he had never even held a real handgun. Patricia Moriarity lived by one. He gave a moment’s thought to calling her, then wedged the card alongside his desk blotter, protruding out as a reminder. This just wasn’t the time he wanted to be grilled about serial killings and his views on managed care.

“Dr. Grant, it’s Mimi. Could you come out here, please?”

Will did as the intercom requested and found Grace Peng-Grace Davis, he remembered-seated alone in an otherwise empty waiting room. He was struck, as he had been yesterday, with the remarkable transformation in the woman, who had essentially been a bag lady not that many years before.

“Do you have a moment to speak with me?” she asked, quite obviously agitated and distressed.

“Sure, come in to my office.”

She settled into one of the two walnut-stained, Danish modern chairs that Jim Katz’s interior-decorator wife had chosen for each of the offices.

“My insurance company is Steadfast Health,” she said.

“I’ve done some business with them.”

Will hadn’t actually had all that much contact with the company, but he had operated on a number of patients whom they covered. From what he recalled, Steadfast Health was smaller than most of the HMOs, and for the most part more civil.

“Well, they are refusing to allow you to do my surgery.”

“When did they say that?” he asked, wondering if somehow last night’s forum and the resulting publicity