continues all the way back, wrecks everything in its path. I’ll end up like an Alzheimer’s patient, lying in the fetal position, waiting to die, all alone in my own brain, the most terrifying thing I can imagine.”
That was the truth, Savich thought, and wondered how he’d deal with something as devastating as that if it hit him. He said, “I wouldn’t like it at all. You know this disease causes you to say things that are inappropriate?”
“I’m a doctor, Agent Savich. I’m not stupid. I know all of this. I did a lot of reading about it after I was diagnosed at Duke.”
Savich continued. “Sometimes you remember what you’ve said and other times you don’t.”
“Sorry what did you say?”
“Sometimes you—”
“That was an attempt at a bad joke, Agent Savich,” Dr. MacLean said, grinning up at him. “But please understand, no matter what was wrong with me, I would have sworn on the grave of my grandpa that nothing could make me say anything to anyone about my patients. It’s my goal to help them, not harm them.” He paused and sighed. “But I know I have. Jackson told me.”
“You’ve already spoken about three of your patients to a friend and layperson, in public. It would appear that one of your patients found out about it, and you scared him or her so badly that he or she has made three attempts on your life. Two attempted hit-and-runs, here and in Lexington, and then the bomb on your plane on your flight back to Washington. If it weren’t for Jack’s piloting skills, you’d be dead, as would he.”
“It’s so bloody difficult to believe I could do something like that.”
“I imagine it is,” Sherlock said. “We need you to tell us about the patients you spoke about to your tennis partner, Arthur Dolan. Perhaps we’ll eventually need the names of all your patients, but it’s likely the person who wants you dead is one of the three, particularly since Arthur Dolan was killed shortly thereafter up in New Jersey.”
His haggard face suddenly looked austere. “That’s ridiculous. I never said anything to Arthur about my patients. He died in an auto accident, always did drive too fast. Molly was screaming murder, but I told her to take a Valium, everyone said it was an accident.” He suddenly seemed to calm, and said, his voice light, “Do you know, Arthur had a great backhand, but he was slow. I usually won our matches. Still, I’ll miss playing with him. It was such good exercise. He’d come down here one week, I’d go north the next. He was also a golfer, better at it than at tennis. Arthur and I only talked about sports, he didn’t know anything else.
“Now, as for that car nearly hitting me in Lexington, I know it was a drunk driver. The cops agreed.” He sighed. “Poor Arthur. At least for him, it was fast and clean and over with.”
“And the first attempted hit-and-run here in Washington, sir?” Sherlock asked.
“It was the Plank area, lots of drugs there. Maybe it was someone whacked out on heroin. The guy split. I would, too, after being such a jerk.”
Why all this denial? Savich wondered. Or had his brain simply reduced it to nothing, only a footnote, and who cared? Savich said, And the bomb in your plane?”
There was dismissal in his light voice. “That’s a no-brainer. Jackson’s a federal cop, he has enemies, don’t you think? Bad guys who want revenge?”
Savich met Sherlock’s eyes for a moment, then focused again on Dr. MacLean’s face, those gray eyes clear now, filled with sharp intelligence, insult, and fear. “You don’t remember speaking about three of your patients to Arthur Dolan?”
His clear, smart eyes focused solidly on Savich’s face. Anger washed color over his pale face. “What the devil do you mean? Tell tales of my patients to a friend? Naturally not. What kind of professional ethics do you think I have? Besides, I told you, we only talked about sports.”
Down the rabbit hole, Savich thought. He said patiently, “No, sir, it has nothing to do with your ethics, it has to do with your disease.
“When we were investigating the first attempt on your life, we found a bartender at your golf club in Chevy Chase who’s known you and admired you for years. He said he remembers listening to you speak to Arthur Dolan over martinis. He remembers you speaking about three of your patients, all well known, and that’s why the bartender listened, and didn’t forget.” Unfortunately, the bartender had been working so he didn’t hear all that much, but enough to know something was very wrong.
Dr. MacLean looked affronted, then, inexplicably, the anger and insult died out of his eyes and he began to laugh. The laugh must have hurt his ribs or his chest because he drew up short, breathed lightly for a moment, then said, his voice suddenly confiding, deep and rich, like a storyteller’s, “Was one of the names Lomas Clapman?”
“Yes,” Savich said. “Why don’t you tell us about him.”
Dr. MacLean’s eyes glittered; he looked suddenly revved, excited, and there was something mischievous in his manner, like he was flirting with make-believe and being drawn right into it. “Clapman’s an idiot, a buffoon, all puffed up in his belief he’s got the biggest brain in the known universe. He worships himself, lives happily mired in self-deception. Ah, how he hates Bill Gates. He always calls Gates ‘a little bugger.’ I mentioned that many people think Bill Gates is not only extraordinarily smart, he’s a stand-up guy, what with his foundation doing more good for people than any of the so-called relief agencies. Why not see if he could outdo Gates’s foundation? He could certainly afford it.
“You see, I was trying to pull him away from this obsession he has with Gates, trying to channel his energies toward a positive goal. It didn’t work. He yelled at me. You know what? I leaned back in my chair and laughed back at him. He threw a paperweight at me and stormed out.” Dr. MacLean shook his head, still laughing. “What an unprincipled yahoo. I didn’t see him again after that. He didn’t even call to cancel his weekly appointments.”
Before the disease had struck him, Sherlock doubted she would have ever heard Dr. MacLean speak in that sneering, dismissive, mocking voice about a patient. Had he really laughed at his patient? She doubted it. She wondered if he would remember speaking like this to her and Dillon. She said, “Did Mr. Clapman tell you anything that, if made public, could hurt him?”
“Yes, certainly,” MacLean said, no hesitation at all, not a single protest about physician ethics or scruples. “Lomas built his company on the back of his supposed best friend and partner. He sold his first plane design, some sort of low-flying tactical aircraft, to the government back in the early eighties—fact was, Lomas stole his friend’s idea and schematics right out from under him. His partner was an inventor, his head in a different reality, and he didn’t even notice when Lomas put the patents under his own name. As for the partnership agreement, it didn’t cover the patents. The poor schmuck killed himself maybe fifteen years ago, dead broke. Can you believe that?”
Sherlock said, “Was Mr. Clapman seeing you because he felt guilty about what he did?”
“No, not really. He thought he deserved every unethical dime in his coffers. Nah, he saw me once a week because he wanted to brag about how great he was, and I was forced to sit there for fifty minutes and listen to him. His wife left him, you know, and I can’t say I blame her.”
Savich said, “If that got out, I imagine it would have considerable negative impact on Mr. Chapman personally and on his company, not in mention lawsuits from his partner’s widow and family.”
“You think Lomas tried to kill me? Excuse me,
“Possibly,” said Savich. “But you know, it just doesn’t seem enough to me.”
MacLean laughed. “Lomas also falsified performance trial data, massaged the stats on his fighters to meet government requirements. I told him to put a halt to that, that it would come to light, things like that always did. I remember he actually giggled, said it was all history now, anyway.”
“Bingo,” Sherlock said.
MacLean stared at them, a drug-happy smile on his face, his eyes glittering, a bit manic. “You think old Lomas would try to knock me off for that? He told me straight out that everybody does it, that the Pentagon knows everyone does it, and so they simply make allowances, they even have tables that show the range of acceptable deviations, that sort of thing. He said it was all a big game.”
Sherlock said easily, “Could you tell us exactly why Lomas Clapman was seeing you, Dr. MacLean?”
“He was impotent. After all the tests and a couple of tubs of Viagra, his doctor recommended he see me, see if his inability to sustain an erection was mental or emotional.”
Savich said, “Did you help him?”
“I’ll tell you, Agent Savich, Lomas is so filled with envy and arrogance, I think it would take God himself to
