friendly.
Carey knew it was time to start causing trouble. “What do you mean, ‘missing’?” Carey simulated the amazement he might have felt. “That’s crazy! He’s seriously injured and tranquilized. You’re trying to tell me he just got up out of bed? He was supposed to be restrained. And where were the policemen who were supposed to be watching him? We should be looking for him.”
“We’ve already done that,” said the policeman. “But he’s not in the building anymore.” As the policeman stepped off down the hall, Carey almost smiled. Jane was out. She had done it. The policeman said, “I think you understand we’d like to ask you some questions—about his condition and so on.”
“Of course,” said Carey. He followed the older policeman down the hallway, reminding himself that he couldn’t let himself get lazy now. He had to think. The man had said “Captain” Folger—a very high rank, the sort of policeman who was in charge of a station, not the sort who wandered around looking for people.
Then Carey felt rather than heard something behind him: the younger one, Detective Kohl, was following a few paces behind them. Was he cutting off Carey’s retreat, or was his position simply the result of starting to walk after his boss had? Carey decided that, for the moment, he had better not assume anything was meaningless.
Captain Folger opened the door to the conference room at the end of the hall, and to Carey’s surprise, he went in and closed it behind him. Detective Kohl stepped to Carey’s side. “Have you ever had a patient walk off before?” Carey decided he was trying to distract him.
“Usually if they chicken out, it’s before I operate.”
The detective seemed to think that was a very witty thing to say. He laughed, then said, “I guess he can’t have gone far.”
Carey shook his head. “I’m amazed he went anywhere. He’s sixty-seven years old, he’s lost blood, he’s been bruised by the impact of the bullet, he’s—”
“Oh, yeah,” Detective Kohl interrupted. “I’ve seen it a few times, and I know what you mean. Whatever’s going through his mind, he hurts.” He said it with a satisfaction that reminded Carey that this man was no friend of his.
The door opened, and Captain Folger beckoned and stepped aside. “Thanks, Doctor.”
As Carey went past him into the familiar room, Folger began to recite names. Carey listened, aware that he should hold the names in his memory, but they were just words. “This is Officer Graley, Officer Wilchevsky, Mr. Marshall, and I’m Captain Folger, in case you didn’t catch it before.” Nobody stood to shake hands.
As Carey had expected, the captain did the talking. “Dr. McKinnon, I should say at this juncture that we appreciate any help you can give us. If you would be more comfortable consulting an attorney before you say anything, we understand: there’s no way to predict whether you might open yourself up to some kind of malpractice litigation or other legal problems. It would cause delay that’s probably unnecessary, but after all, we do need to respect your rights, too. Because this is an official police inquiry, it can’t be off the record and could come out in court.”
Carey admired the smooth, affable way the captain had spoken. It seemed to him that Folger had probably read him his rights and set a trap at the same time. If Carey was here to delay the police, Folger had offered him a simple way to do it. But that would confirm their suspicion that he was the enemy.
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” he answered. “Will it?”
“I can’t give anybody legal advice,” said Folger. “And I don’t know anything about all these civil suits against hospitals and doctors. We just do the criminal stuff.” He paused. “Want to go ahead?”
Carey nodded.
“Our logs say officers brought Richard Dahlman in here at seven-fifteen this evening. The hospital records say you operated on him at eight-fifteen. Is that right?”
So this was going to be about the subject of times. He didn’t want to talk about times. That would help them isolate exactly when Jane had slipped Dahlman out, and if they knew when, they would know where it had happened. People might remember having seen Jane there. He answered with names. “Yes, I operated. Dr. Shelton was anesthesiologist and Dr. Stern assisted. The surgical nurse was Mrs. Brooks.”
“What did you do to him?”
“I removed fragments of a bullet from his left shoulder—five, I think. Very small—particles, really. The main projectile had expanded as it passed through, and glanced off a bone. That seems to have been what caused the pieces to come off. It also caused a fracture with bone chips, torn musculature, and damage to a major vein. The main artery was not severed, and there appeared to be no significant nerve damage.”
“How long did that take?”
“Not long. It couldn’t have been more than forty-five or fifty minutes at the outside.”
Folger looked at his notes. “The anesthetist keeps a timed record. Did you know that?”
“Of course,” said Carey. “That’s right. If you need exact times, you should get Shelton’s notes.”
“We have.” He frowned, then handed the sheet of paper to Carey. “Is this his handwriting?”
“I guess so,” said Carey. It said fifteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds. “He usually keeps his own notes.” He handed the paper back.
“Fifteen minutes. That seems like world-record speed.”
Carey shrugged. “Faster than it seemed to me, at any rate.” He added, “No surgery is entirely without risk. We don’t keep a patient open any longer than necessary. When I was sure I had removed the foreign objects that had shown on the X-ray, repaired the damage to the vein to stop the bleeding, and sutured the muscles, I closed.”
“What kind of risk are you talking about?”
Carey cocked his head. “Infection, adverse reaction to anesthetics, shock and possible cardiac arrest, hemorrhage …”
As Carey spoke, he was aware of each of the people in the room. Did the young woman’s squinted eyes and pursed lips mean she was trying to understand, or did she disbelieve something he was saying? How could she?
Folger was looking down at his notes. “Why were you the one to operate?”
Carey had not prepared for this question, and it astounded him that he had overlooked it. He constructed his response cautiously. “Dr. Leo Bortoni was the surgeon on duty at the time,” he said. “When the patient was brought into the emergency room, I was on my usual rounds, visiting my surgical patients. I knew Leo was in surgery at the time. The procedure is to phone one of the surgeons on call, but of course I was on that list, and was already there, so I stepped in.”
“And you met with the patient.”
“I went to the emergency room to examine him.”
“What was his condition?” Folger’s eyes weren’t on Carey’s. He seemed to be glancing at the man in the dark suit across the table. What was his name again?
Carey sensed that some kind of trap was being prepared. “He had a bullet wound in his left shoulder. As I said before.”
“Yes, but I was wondering if there was anything else. I mean, was he unconscious, delirious, anything like that?”
“He was weak, and in quite a lot of pain. The wound had bled profusely, but the E.R. doctors had it pretty well stopped by the time I arrived. He was conscious. He’s a surgeon, so he was acutely aware of his condition and knew already that he would need to undergo a surgical procedure.”
“What did you talk about?”
“That’s about it.”
“You were alone with him for a time, right? And you knew him personally. All of a sudden he shows up with a bullet wound. You didn’t ask him how that came about?” So there it was. They already knew.
“Well, no,” said Carey. “He told me that much. He said he had been wanted for murder and the police—one of the officers who brought him in—had shot him.” Carey thought about it, and decided that if there was a record being made, then there was no reason he could not use it to preserve Dahlman’s denial. “He said the whole thing was a terrible mistake. He had not killed anybody, and the person who had done it had framed him. I couldn’t imagine Richard Dahlman as a murderer.”
“Why?” This time Carey was sure. The captain was watching the man in the dark suit for a reaction, maybe for unspoken instructions of some kind.
