The Society

edge of his massive desk. Will decided to press on. Either the man was going to break down or he was going to go ballistic and let something slip to explain why he was reacting so excessively. Certain he was in command of the situation, Will made the slightest move forward again. The moments that followed were a blur. Newcomber suddenly yanked open the right-hand drawer of the desk, jammed his hand in, and came out with a snub-nosed revolver clutched in his stubby fingers. Hand quivering, he aimed it at the center of Will’s chest.

Will had never had a gun pointed at him for any reason. He froze, his mind frantically sorting out the possibilities available to him. There was no way to tell how close Newcomber was to pulling the trigger, but the amalgam of fear and fury in his expression said that a shooting, accidental or purposeful, could happen any moment. Will raised his hands and took a step back toward the door.

“Easy, Charles,” he said. “Easy. Don’t do anything you’ll regret.”

“Now, get out!”

His eyes still fixed on the portly radiologist, Will backed away. Without looking, he reached behind him, grasped the knob, and opened the door. He could now whirl and dive into the hall, but if the man began spraying shots, one or more of them was bound to hit.

“I didn’t come here to cause you any trouble,” he heard himself saying.

Newcomber said nothing. The revolver drifted slightly to the right, away from Will’s chest. The man’s tension seemed as if it might have lessened just a bit.

Will risked pressing on. “Listen, Charles, whatever is going on with you, maybe I can help. I’m a really good doctor. I’m sure you are, too. We only want what’s best for our patient. That woman Grace Peng Davis is very special. She was once a hopeless alcoholic-a real fringe player in life, an outcast. Then she got sober and pulled herself out of the gutter. Yesterday she almost died from her first chemo treatment. Now therapy for her cancer is going to be a problem. She doesn’t deserve this. Charles, we’re doctors. If there’s something the matter with all this, we need to help her.”

“Get out,” Newcomber rasped, now clearly hyperventilating. “Get out or I swear I’ll kill you.”

“Call me,” Will said. “Wolf Hollow Drive in Fredrickston. I’m in the book. Please call and we can talk.”

He backed through the door, half expecting to see flame suddenly spit from the muzzle. Finally he pulled the door closed, turned, and hurried down the hall.

Charles Newcomer sank back into his chair, sweat accumulating beneath his toupee, soaking through his shirt, and glistening across his forehead and upper lip. More than a minute passed before he loosened his grip on the revolver. Finally, some of his composure regained, he lifted the phone and dialed. An answering machine took his call. There was no greeting, only a beep.

“Listen,” he said, “Will Grant was just here. He knows something’s wrong with Grace Davis’s mammogram. You told me she was the last one. You promised me no one would ever know. Well, Grant’s suspicious. He’s going to keep poking around. I can handle him, but I’m going to destroy the films-all of them. I want the rest of the money you owe me, I want the videos, and I want out.”

He slammed the receiver down.

“You promised,” he muttered, removing a printout list from his desk drawer, folding it in thirds, and slipping it into the pocket of his sports coat. “The money, the video, and a ticket out of here. You promised.”

CHAPTER 22

For the second time in six hours, Will entered the hospital from which he had been professionally and physically suspended. This time, though, the security guard in the lobby merely looked at him and nodded. He was expected. The phone in his condo was actually ringing when he arrived home, shaken and bewildered from the bizarre encounter with Charles Newcomber. As with every call now, Will lifted the receiver expecting to hear the killer’s unsettling electronic voice.

“Grant?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Sid Silverman.”

Sid, listen, Will came close to blurting out. I’m really sorry I came into the hospital this morning. I had to see a patient of mine.

“What’s up?” he managed instead.

“We need you to come into the hospital for a meeting. Three o’clock.”

“What’s this about?”

“I’d rather everyone learned about this at the same time, but I can tell you that just a little while ago, your friend the serial killer called Jim Katz.”

“But why would he-”

“Sears Conference Room, third floor, three o’clock.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll be there. Should I bring my lawyer?”

“You can do what you want, but you won’t need one.”

“Sid, I trust you so much that I won’t bring one,” Will replied, with syrupy sarcasm.

What now? Will wondered as he entered through the lobby and headed downstairs to radiology. What can the psycho possibly do to me now that he or someone else hasn’t already done? Surely the killer couldn’t have selected Jim Katz as Will’s replacement. Katz was a political conservative, who had nothing to do with the Society, and in fact was on the board of one of the managed-care companies. He was independently wealthy and was just playing out the string in his surgical practice because he loved the hard-earned stature and universal respect he enjoyed throughout the hospital. In fact, Will, Gordo, and Susan often wondered if Katz would be one of those whose health collapsed shortly after his retirement or who took to drinking for lack of anything stimulating to do.

It was two-thirty, and always the multitasker, Will had taken advantage of his free pass into FGH by making an appointment to review Grace’s chest X-rays with Rick Pizzi, the radiologist on duty. Disappointed that there was no message from Patty waiting for him at the condo, he had called from a pay phone and spoken briefly with her.

“That was a really nice night, thanks” was the extent of her comment on their lovemaking.

“For me, too,” he’d replied, wanting to say much more.

Patty, having spent much of her day on the case to which she was no longer assigned, was behind in chasing after those cases to which she was, including the wounding of a shopkeeper during a holdup. There wasn’t time for more than the brief exchange of reports of her interview with the widow of Ben Morales and his encounter with Charles Newcomber.

“Let’s talk later if we can,” she said, “but with the shooting they just set on my plate and this next interview, I think I’ll be working most of the night.”

The too-brief conversation had left Will with an aching emptiness in his chest. He left for the hospital reminding himself that over the past fifteen years, Maxine was the extent of his serious involvement with women. That hardly qualified him as an expert.

Radiology was, as usual, busy. Rounding a corner, Will nearly collided with Gordon Cameron. The Scotsman was a spectacular vision in a boldly striped dress shirt, paisley tie, and deep burgundy trousers, held up by a pair of broad plaid suspenders. Each of the colors seemed to clash with every one of the others, as well as with his thick, red-orange beard.

“Will, me boy, you’re off a couple of floors! We’re meetin’ in the conference room on three.”

For years, any contact with Cameron raised Will’s spirits. Today, though, he had to hold his niggling concern about the man in check. It was hard to look directly at him without demanding to know if he was the one who had somehow managed to poison him with fentanyl.

“Gordo, you have really cloaked yourself in sartorial splendor this day,” Will said. “You are positively intimidating. If Braveheart had dressed this way, I believe he’d still be charging through the heather, slicing off heads, and mooning the British.”

“Trust me, lad, you don’t know the half of it. The hard part of pulling this outfit together was finding a set where the suspenders and thong matched.”