The Society

irony. The day after Cyrill’s funeral, his friends and former employees at Unity approached me with an offer I couldn’t and didn’t want to refuse, and I gave my blessing and control of my stock to them. A couple of days later, the wheels of merger commerce were turning, and turning fast.”

“Gloria, tell me something,” Patty said, now barely able to stay in her seat, “assuming this serial killer, who has led us to believe he is avenging his mother, picked the CEOs he was going to murder randomly or according to the ease with which he could get to them, don’t you think it’s strange that two out of four of the victims would never have allowed Excelsius Health to take over their companies had they stayed alive? My research has shown that in this state alone he had about a hundred managed-care companies to choose from.”

“I suppose so, but what about the other two-Marcia Rising’s company and that other one? They’re not on this list.”

“No,” Patty said thoughtfully, “no, they’re not. Dr. Leaf’s widow was not at all involved with his business affairs nor, it would seem, his personal affairs, either. I think it would be a good idea to speak with people at his company-Rising’s company, too.”

“You could be way off base,” Gloria said.

Patty gathered her things, stood, and embraced her hostess warmly.

“You’re right,” she said, “I could. You know something, though, that quote I told you from my father, the colonel, about education, isn’t the only one he’s famous for. There’s another. He writes it on the board in just about every class on police work that he teaches and shouts it out at the students.”

“I’m all ears,” Gloria said. “What is it?”

“It’s I hate coincidences.”

Gloria took Patty’s arm warmly as she led her to the door.

“I hope you solve these crimes quickly, dear,” she said.

“I just might,” Patty replied, her thoughts continuing to whirl. She stopped and turned to her hostess. “One last thing.”

“Yes?”

“Does the name Clementine mean anything to you?”

Gloria shook her head.

“Nothing,” she said, “except for the movie.”

“Movie?”

“I’m something of a movie buff-especially westerns. My Darling Clementine was an old John Ford film with Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp. Mid-nineteen forties, I would guess. It’s really a classic-maybe the best of the dozen or so movies that have been made over the years about the famous gunfight at the OK Corral.”

“Interesting,” Patty said, no longer surprised by any revelation from this woman, and wondering if there could be any connection at all between the film and the killer. “Where did that gunfight take place? Wasn’t it Kansas?”

“You might be thinking of Dodge City. No, the gunfight at the OK Corral took place in Arizona. Tombstone, Arizona.”

CHAPTER 25

Something big was going on.

Patty knew it the moment she set foot in her office. There was an electricity in the air. People who generally flew out the door the moment their shifts were over were still there. One of them, Brian Tomasetti-a burned-out department lifer but a favorite of hers nonetheless-was actually cleaning his service revolver.

Something was definitely up.

After her meeting with Gloria Davenport, Patty had gone over to see Marcia Rising’s husband, a surgeon named Michael Springer who was in practice in Norwood, toward the South Shore. Springer, who still seemed genuinely distraught over his wife’s murder, knew a great deal about medical politics, managed care, and his wife’s company. What he didn’t know was anything about Excelsius Health or any merger plans with Marcia’s Eastern Quality Health. Still, it was possible one was in the works. That made two victims connected with the merger list, one maybe or maybe not. The pendulum swung several degrees toward coincidence, but not nearly far enough for her to dismiss the belief that the killings were not the least bit random, and also that they were not the least bit related to the death of anyone’s mother.

This was business-pure and simple.

“So, B.T.,” she said, setting a bag of M amp;Ms down on the keyboard of his computer, “what’s going on here? You’re on days, yet here you are.”

“Oh, this is big, Patty,” Tomasetti said, loosening his belt a notch before tearing open the M amp;Ms, “real big. I told them I’d man the phones. Sort of control central. Look at me-I’m so excited about this one that I’m cleaning my gun, even though I’m not even out there in the field.”

“That is excitement. . So?”

“So what?”

Tomasetti poured the last half of the bag onto his desk blotter and divided the candies up by color.

“So what gives? What’s going on?”

As she asked the question, Patty felt an eerie tightening beneath her breastbone. She had been on duty all day and had called in any number of times, yet she hadn’t heard so much as a whisper about something big going down. Now she felt certain that she had been purposely excluded from whatever it was. Margie Moore, one of the secretaries, swooshed by, packed up for home, and headed for the door.

“Hey, Patty, hey, B.T.,” she said, “hope this is it.”

“Us, too,” Tomasetti said. “We’ll all be at the top of the pig pile if it is. Have a good one, Margie.”

“B.T.,” Patty asked after the secretary had left, “does this have something to do with the HMO killings?”

“You’re shitting me, right?”

“I’m not shitting you. Now, what’s going on?”

“Boy, have they ever cut you out of this one.”

Patty boiled over. Hands on hips, she swept around the desk and stood at Tomasetti’s elbow, towering over him with menace that she did not have to conjure up.

“Goddammit, B.T., tell me and tell me now!”

“Okay, okay. Nobody told me not to tell you anything. I thought you already knew, it once being your case and all. I thought you knew. Brasco’s set up a meeting with the killer. It’s going down in”-Tomasetti checked his Timex-“fifty-five minutes.”

“That’s not possible. The killer’s never even made contact with us. Not once, except for those damn letters he leaves at the murders.”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly us he made contact with. It was that doctor, the one you’ve been. . what I mean is-”

“Will Grant,” Patty said, exasperated that if Tomasetti knew, undoubtedly the rest of the squad knew as well-probably her father, too. Just how badly was it possible for her to screw up?

“Yeah, him,” Tomasetti said. “Apparently the killer told Grant he could put a personal ad in the Herald if he ever needed to meet.”

“We took that information off the tap on Grant’s phone. I gave it to Brasco and Lieutenant Court myself.”

“Well, Brasco used it and set up a meeting with the killer.”

Patty was feeling more uneasy by the second.

“Where?”

“At a place called Camp Sunshine, believe it or not. It’s an old, run-down, unused summer camp on Lake Trumbull, north of Fredrickston. I’m surprised you didn’t know about all this.”

“Well, I’m not. Who picked the place?”

“The killer. Brasco allowed him to choose the meeting place so he wouldn’t be suspicious. But Brasco’s had