“But it wasn’t.”
“No,” he said, “it wasn’t. The newspaper chose to shoot first and ask questions later, just like your Lieutenant Brasco.”
“Did they ever find out who did it?”
“A Ph.D. who had been booted out of the lab because of doctoring some research results and costing them a big grant. It was in the papers. I don’t have the article, but I’ll bet it wouldn’t be hard to find.”
“I’ll bet it wouldn’t,” Patty said glumly.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I mumble sometimes. So, do I get to keep all this to show Lieutenant Brasco?”
“I’ll make copies and send them to you. I have your card.”
“Make the copies and just hang on to them,” Patty said. “If, as you say, the killer really has adopted you to be his public voice, we’ll be seeing each other again very soon.”
“I’d like that very much,” Will said.
For the first time, there was a glint of mischief in his eyes.
For the first time, Patty didn’t avert hers.
CHAPTER 11
Will wondered how many times he had heard that maxim from his parents, or how many times he had used it on his own kids.
Well, he hadn’t done anything other than pick up the receiver, so why was he feeling so worried? The answer to that question was, of course, that three wealthy, powerful corporate executives had been murdered, and the police were under intense pressure to arrest someone. Motive, opportunity, method. Delightful Lieutenant Brasco had latched on to him like a mastiff on a bone, hitting over and over on the fact that Will scored high on two of the three suspect requirements. And as for the third, the mastiff was quick to point out, anyone could pull a trigger, and almost anyone could go online for a few hours and learn how to blow someone up.
“Why don’t you just save us all some time and hassle and tell us you did it so we can reassure the public and get you some much-needed help?”
“Why would I go out of my way to plant those alphabet cards in my desk?”
“Don’t make me answer that, Dr. Grant.”
At the end of the morning, after Will had shared his documentation with Patty Moriarity, it seemed to him as if she might be a small port in the gathering storm. But even if she did believe he was being used by the killer, it was doubtful she had much clout. Brasco didn’t seem to care much about how she felt one way or the other.
To no one’s surprise, Will was on call again both for the group and as backup for the ER. The evening was pleasantly hectic. A code 99 at eleven had the emergency physician backed up, so Will waded in, suturing both the winner and loser of a tavern brawl, evaluating a woman with belly pain, and even stabilizing a child with a febrile seizure until the pediatrician arrived. The busy pace helped keep his mind from drifting too much to the chilly electronic voice and the notion of what it must take to cold-bloodedly kill a person, let alone three.
Patty had told him the significance of the two letters in the envelope and had disclosed the other six after extracting the promise that he would share the information with no one. At various breaks in the evening, he tried playing around with the eight letters, but nothing leapt out at him that made any sense.
At two o’clock, suddenly drained, he made his way up to the surgical on-call room and dropped face-first onto the bed. When the jangling phone shattered a bizarre, X-rated dream featuring a scantily clad, green-eyed brunette with a shoulder holster, he had been deeply asleep for three uninterrupted hours. Remarkable. The switchboard operator apologetically reminded him that he had asked for a five-fifteen wake-up call. Just before he tarnished his reputation by calling her insane, he remembered his eight-o’clock case.
If it was possible to call anyone with cancer of the pancreas lucky, Kurt Goshtigian qualified. In general, by the time pancreatic cancer caused any symptoms, it was too late for anything except condolences and maybe some palliative chemotherapy. But Goshtigian’s tumor had been diagnosed by accident on a CT scan done after a beam swung loose on the construction site where he was working and struck him in the lower chest. There was nothing more than a deep bruise from the impact of the beam, but an incidental finding, still well-contained in the portion of the pancreas referred to as the head, was a cancer. Now, a week later, Will was about to cure that cancer through the surgical approach known as a Whipple procedure.
He showered, dressed in a fresh set of scrubs, and paid his customary early-morning visit to the ER lounge for coffee, OJ, and a doughnut with the soon-departing night-shift crew. He was surprised to find Gordo there, powdered sugar still flecked in his beard like Christmas snow. He was regaling the nurses with one of his trademark jokes-the one dealing with lan MacGregor, seated at his usual spot at the bar, deeply and morosely in his cups and, of course, speaking in the heaviest of brogues.
“‘. . See that pier out there,’ MacGregor says, ‘I built that pier. So, do they call me MacGregor-the-Pier- Builder? Noooo! And that shed over there. I built that, too. Do they call me MacGregor-the-Shed-Builder? Noooo! And. . and that stone wall out there? I set every single one of them stones in place myself. So am I known as MacGregor-the-Stone-Setter? Noooo! But fuck one lousy goat. .’ ”
Will joined in the laughter. Even though he had heard the joke enough to qualify as an expert on it, Cameron’s delivery was hilarious enough to make it fresh every time.
“Gordo, what are you doing here at this ungodly hour?”
“Kristin’s snoring woke me up. She swears it was me waking us both up, in addition to the neighbors and a bunch of them in the cemetery down the street, but I know better. Since the powers that be are about to put me on probation for not getting my discharge summaries dictated, and since I’m going to be spending twenty or thirty hours assisting you with that Whipple, I thought I would come on in and get caught up.”
“Kristin’s like a hundred and fifteen pounds,” Will told the crew. “Somehow, I can’t imagine her snoring any louder than a sparrow if she ever even snores at all. My money’s on the Scotsman here. Did you guys save me my jelly stick?”
“We practically had to pry it out of Dr. Cameron’s hands with a crowbar,” a nurse said, “but there it is.”
“Hey, Gordo, you know jelly stick’s my lucky doughnut. I can’t start a big case like this Whipple without having had one.”
“Mea culpa,” Cameron said, “but excuse me for pointing out that it’s the poor slob you’re operating on that needs the luck.”
“Good point.”
Will knew he wasn’t kidding himself about the jelly stick. For as long as he could remember, he had been a creature of lucky maneuvers and talismans, of lucky shirts and rituals. Although his superstitions didn’t run so deep as to paralyze him or even alter his life very much, he did cling to certain routines and clothing when playing poker with his friends in their monthly game or when preparing to do a case in the OR.
After fifteen minutes of small talk, and another Scottish joke, Cameron headed off to the dictation carrels in the record room and Will made his way to the medical library. The Whipple he was about to perform on Kurt Goshtigian was among the most complicated of surgical procedures. Developed in the thirties, the technique was necessitated because the pancreas is anatomically not clearly separated from the GI structures surrounding it-the gallbladder, the duodenum segment of the small intestine, the bile duct, and often the stomach, as well. After the cancerous head of the pancreas and parts of the other organs were removed, the remaining portions would be sutured back to the small intestine to restore continuity and function. Gordo’s sarcastic reference to Will’s painstaking, time-consuming technique in the OR notwithstanding, if things went well, the operation would take four to six hours, and the result would be a cure.
Will had performed or first assisted on fifteen or so Whipples over the years-certainly enough to feel confident about the procedure. Still, the technique and anatomy were complex and variable enough to warrant reviewing them before stepping into the arena. It was crucial before beginning the Whipple to examine the area thoroughly
