'I hope you do, ' Cary Dunleavy said. 'That was a curious little exchange, ' Kate said after Jared had replaced the phone on the bedside table. 'At least the half I got to hear.'
Jared recounted his conversation with the nurse for her. 'They've gone ahead with the surgery. That's great, ' she said, deliberately ignoring the reference to her situation. 'Ellen's bleeding must have slowed enough to chance it…'
Her words trailed off and Jared knew that she was thinking about her own situation. 'Katey, ' he said. 'Listen to me. Zimmermann is dead and Ellen isn't and you're not, and I'm not. And as far as I'm concerned that's cause for celebration. And I meant what I said to Dunleavy You are innocent-of everything. And we're going to prove it. Together.' He leaned over and kissed her gently. Then he straightened and said, 'Rest.
I'll wait with you until we hear from Metro.'
Kate settled back on the pillow. A moment later, as if on cue, the day supervisor and another nurse strode into the room. 'Dr. Bennett, ' the supervisor said, 'Dr. Jordan is in the hospital. She'll be furious if she finds out we haven't even done morning signs on her prize patient, let alone any other nursing care.'
'Don't mind me, ' Jared said. 'Nurse away.'
The supervisor eyed him sternly. 'There are vending machines with coffee and danish just down the hall. Miss Austin will come and get you as soon as we're through.'
Jared looked over at Kate, who nodded. 'I'll send for you if they call, ' she said. 'Very well, coffee it is.' He rose and swung his parka over his shoulder with a flourish. As he did, something fell from one of its pockets and clattered to the floor by the supervisor's feet. The woman knelt and came up holding a minature tape cassette. 'Did that fall from my parka? ' Jared asked, examining the cassette, which had no label.
'Absolutely, ' the supervisor said. 'Isn't it yours?'
Jared looked over at Kate, the muscles in his face suddenly drawn and tense. 'I've never seen that tape before.' His mind was picturing smoke and flames and blood… and a hand desperately clawing at the pocket of his parka. 'Kate, we've got to play this tape. Now.'
He turned to the nurses. 'I'm sorry. Go do whatever else you need to do.
Right now we've got to find a machine and play this.'
The supervisor started to protest, but was stopped by the look in Jared's eyes. 'I have a machine in my office that will hold that, if it's that important, ' she said. Again, Jared saw the hand pulling at him, holding him back. For Christ's sake, Paquette, let go of me. I'm trying to get you out of here. Let go! 'It just might be, ' he said. 'It just might be.'
'So, Norton, first that brilliant letter to the newspapers about the ballplayer and now this biopsy thing We asked you for something creative to stop Bennett, and you certainly delivered.'
The entire tape, a conversation between Arlen Paquette and Norton Reese, lasted less than fifteen minutes. Still, for the battered audience of two in room 201 of Henderson Hospital, it was more than n enough. 'It was my pleasure, Doctor. Really. The woman's been a thorn in my side from the day she first got here. She's as impudent as they come. A dogooder, always on some goddamn crusade or other. Know what I mean?'
For Kate and Jared, the excitement of Reese's disclosures was tempered by an eerie melancholy. Paquette's conscience had surfaced, but too late for him. The man whose smooth, easy voice was playing the Metro administrator like a master angler was dead-beaten, burned, and then most violently murdered. 'You know what amazes me, Norton? What amazes me is how quickly and completely you were able to eliminate her as a factor. We asked, you did. Simple as that. It was as if you were on top of her case all the time.'
'In a manner of speaking I was. Actually, I was on top of her chief technician-in every sense of the word, if ya know what I mean.'
'Sheila.' Kate hissed the word. 'You know, I tried to believe she was the one who had set me up, but I just couldn't.'
'Easy, boots. If you squeeze my hand any tighter, it's going to fall off.'
'Jared, a woman lost her breast. Her breast!'
'You must be some lover, sir, to command that kind of loyalty. Maybe you can give me a few pointers some time.'
Maybe I can, Arlen. Actually, it wasn't that tough to get Sheila to switch biopsy specimens. She had a bone of her own to pick with our dear, lamented, soon-to-be-ex pathologist. I just sweetened the pot by letting her pick on my bone for a while beforehand. Norton Reese's laughter reverberated through the silent hospital room, while Kate pantomimed her visceral reaction to the man. 'I wonder, ' Jared mused,
'how the lovely Ms. Pierce is going to respond when a prosecutor from the DA's office plays this for her and asks for a statement. I bet she'll try to save herself by turning State's evidence.'
'She can try anything she wants, but she's still going to lose her license. She'll never work in a hospital again.'
'Well, you really stuck it to her, Norton. With that chemist from the state lab in our pocket, Bennett's father- in-law doing what he can to discredit her even more, and now this biopsy coup, I doubt she'll ever be in a position to cause us trouble at the Omnicenter again. Our friend is going to be very impressed.'
'And very grateful, I would hope.'
'You can't even begin to imagine the things in store for you because of what you've done, Nort. Good show. That's all I can say. Damn good show.'
'We aim to please.'
The tape ran through a few parting formalities before going dead. Jared snapped off the machine and sat, looking at his wife in absolute wonder i would have broken, ' he said. 'Pardon?'
'If those things had come down on me like they did on you, I would have cracked-killed someone, maybe killed myself. I don't know what, but I know I would have gone under. It makes me sick just to think of how isolated you were, how totally alone.'
'That's where you're wrong. You see, you may have had doubts about me, and justifiably so, but I never had doubts about you, so I wasn't really as alone as you might think.'
'Never?'
Kate took her husband's hand and smiled. 'What's a doubt or two between friends, anyway? ' she asked.
Friday 9 August
Though it was barely eight-thirty in the morning, the humidity was close to saturation and the temperature was in the mideighties. August in DC. It might have been central Africa. Silently, Kate and Jared crossed the mall toward the Hubert H. Humphrey building and what was likely to be the final session regarding her petition to the FDA for action against Redding Pharmaceuticals.
The hearings had been emotional, draining for all concerned. Terry Moreland, a law-school classmate whom Jared had recruited to represent them, had been doing superb work, overcoming one setback after another against a phalanx of opposition lawyers and a surprisingly unsympathetic three-man panel. One moment their charges against the pharmaceutical giant would seem as irrefutable as they were terrifying, and the next, the same allegations were made to sound vindictive, capricious, and unsubstantiated. Now the end of the hearings was at hand — all that remained were brief closing statements by each side, a recess, and finally a decision. 'Yo, Kate! Jared! ' Stan Willoughby, mindless of the sultry morning, trotted toward them carrying his briefcase and wearing a tweed jacket that was precisely six months out of phase with the season.
He had attended all the sessions and had testified at some length as to Kate's character and qualifications. 'So, this is going to be it, yes?' he said, kissing Kate on the cheek and shaking Jared's hand warmly. Over the months that had followed the arrest and resignation of Sheila Pierce and Norton Reese, the two men, Willoughby and Jared, had formed a friendship based on more than superficial mutual respect. In fact, it had been Jared who suggested a year or two of cochairpersons for the department of pathology, and who had then cooked the I dinner over which Willoughby and Kate had come up with a working arrangement for dividing administrative responsibilities. 'We can't think of anything else that could go wrong-I mean go on-this morning, ' Jared said. 'You were more correct the first time, ' said Kate. 'Most of this has been pretty brutal. First, all the threads connecting
