The Society

relevant enough to share with the rest of us.”

“I. . um. . wanted to dig into things a little deeper before-well, yes, yes, that’s exactly what happened.”

Brasco raised his hands in a “suit yourself” gesture.

“I’ll take over interrogating this suspect from here,” he said.

“Mind if I listen in?”

“I think you’ve done enough for one day. Why don’t you interview the staff? We can discuss this whole business with Jack later on.”

“You’re in charge,” Patty said.

“You’re damn right I am,” Brasco replied.

ERRTBECN

Deflated by this latest round with Wayne Brasco, Patty mulled over the two new letters as she gathered her things and prepared to leave the offices of Fredrickston Surgical Associates. They had to be part of a multiple-word message-a saying?. . a place?. . a company name? She was the last of the investigating crew remaining, but she was reluctant to go, sensing that her involvement in the managed-care murders might soon be over.

You can only do what you can do, sister, she reminded herself. You can only do what you can do. The world was full of Wayne Brascos and Jack Courts. If she was going to make it, she would have to learn how to deal with them. Well, the hell with them, she thought, heading for the door. If they want me off this case, they’re going to have to pry me off.

“Sergeant?”

Will Grant stood just a few feet behind her.

“Yes?”

“Do you have a couple of minutes?”

In addition to the stack of reports she had to write covering the past few hours, there was a session scheduled at the office with Lieutenant Court and the other principals in the managed-care case.

“I’m in a bit of a rush. Perhaps-”

“It’s very important.”

“Something you didn’t tell Detective Brasco?”

“Something I chose not to tell him.”

The vulnerability in his eyes made her uneasy. She reminded herself again about the ingratiating charm of sociopaths.

“I suppose I can listen. You know, we’re wary of people who try and drive a wedge between members of an investigating team. We call it splitting.”

“Forgive me for saying it,” Will replied, “but it didn’t seem to me as if Lieutenant Brasco was treating you as a teammate.”

“Is your office empty?”

Will settled in behind his desk. Patty took the chair directly across from him.

“That was a very frightening session I had with your teammate,” Will began. “I would bet that he’s not a legend on the force for his subtlety.”

“He has other strengths.”

“He thinks I killed those people.”

“Did you?”

“I fix people. I play with my twins every chance I get, and I work at a soup kitchen that I helped start, and when people are broken or hurting, I fix them.”

“That’s reassuring to hear,” Patty said, realizing that, at some level, it was.

“Lieutenant Brasco came in armed with a number of items from my past. I don’t like the man at all, but I have to admit he did an amazing amount of homework in a very short time.”

“And?”

“He didn’t do enough.”

“Did you tell him?”

“He was so aggressive that I was afraid to say a word to him about myself without having a lawyer. And I can’t even afford to get the squeaky brakes on my car looked at, let alone hire a lawyer.”

“You may have to.”

“I sure hope not. That’s why I wanted to speak to you.”

“You should have spoken to Lieutenant Brasco.”

“Do you know about the information he had about me?”

“Yes, I. . I know about it.”

“The restraining order my wife took out on me?”

“Yes.”

Will withdrew a file from the bottom drawer of his desk.

“I admit I have a bit of a temper,” he said, “but Maxine, my ex, makes me look like a puppy. She’s capable of going off like a volcano. The night our neighbor called the police, she had gone absolutely berserk for almost no reason. She threw a pot and a vase through the window, but wouldn’t admit to doing it. In fact, when the police came, she insisted that I did it. At the officer’s insistence, she requested the restraining order. Neither the police nor the court wanted to hear my side of the story.” He passed the file over. “The day after Maxine filed the restraining order, she had it rescinded. Our marriage counselor insisted on it, because Maxine told her the truth. In case I ever needed it, which I haven’t, two of our closest friends wrote notarized letters stating that they had been present at times when Max went off at me almost as violently as she did that night. Fortunately, she has never blown up like that against the kids. In fact, they say she’s done much better at controlling her temper since her lover moved in with her.”

Patty scanned the documents, which were impressive. She knew that in the case of restraining orders, the police and courts invariably sided with the wife until matters could be sorted out. Generally speaking, the policy was as it should be, but there were still times when husbands were penalized unjustly.

“There were other issues, as well,” she said, sensing some thawing of her feelings toward the man, as well as some guilt that it was she who had failed to dig deeper before passing over the information about him to Brasco. “An arrest in college for assaulting a police officer.”

“We were protesting the firing of a black faculty member,” Will said wearily. “The man I shoved was campus police. He wouldn’t stop prodding us with his nightstick. He pushed me, I pushed back. He got his feet tangled up and fell. There were like a hundred witnesses. Eventually, when the truth came out, he was put on probation.” He produced another file from his desk, this one considerably thicker than the other, labeled Medical License Renewals. “I put this stuff together because, when we apply for a medical license or renewal, the form asks about arrests.”

In addition to documentation of the incident outside the dean’s office, there was extensive material dealing with a fight in medical school that resulted in Will’s arrest and subsequent exoneration.

“The guy was psychotic,” Will explained. “He was also tougher than I was, and he beat the snot out of me. Six months later he got expelled for cheating and repeated acts of violence.”

“You seem to bring out the worst in people.”

“I guess you might say that, but thankfully, there are those who would disagree with you.”

“One more thing,” Patty said. “The lab.”

Will rolled his eyes in frustration.

“Brasco almost took my head off over that, but it was like the moment he saw my name and the word murder together in some computer search, he stopped looking.”

Patty used the tip of her tongue to moisten her lips, which had become unpleasantly dry.

“Go on,” she said.

“I was a social activist all the way through school. Heck, I would be more of one now, too, if I had the chance. In med school we formed an organization for protest, mostly against the pharmaceutical industry for giving medical equipment to impoverished students with their company logo on it. We named our group after a comic book-the Justice League-but we never really did much because we were just too busy trying to survive med school. Shortly after the lab explosion, some unnamed source told a reporter that it was us.”