“He’s a distinguished surgeon and teacher of other surgeons who has never in the past committed a crime and, as far as I know, never lied about anything. I admit I haven’t seen or heard any of the evidence against him. I assume it’s pretty compelling, or we wouldn’t all be here. But I think when you look into it, you’ll find he didn’t do it.”
The captain was watching the man in the suit throughout Carey’s answer. But who was he? Had Folger said “marshal”? Carey had a vague notion that marshals were the people who transported prisoners, or took them into formal custody in court or some such thing. But why would a police captain be deferring to somebody like that?
“Do you know this building well?”
Was he just giving Carey a chance to lie about something? “I ought to. I was born here,” said Carey. “When I finished my residency I came back. I’ve been here nearly every day for a couple of years.”
“Do you know how he got out of the building?”
Carey stared at the grain of the wood of the table. This was the question, he thought. It was best to ignore the implication, to pretend the word “know” had not been used. “If I were to guess, I would guess that he didn’t get out: that he hid somewhere in the building and found himself too weak to go on, or fell asleep.” It occurred to Carey that he might very well have made a terrible mistake. What if that had been Jane’s plan? It would explain why her car was still parked behind Carey’s office. It made perfect sense to put him in bed in another unoccupied room, slip a different bracelet on his wrist, and let him rest until the police had left the hospital. They had told him they’d searched, but why should they tell him the truth?
The captain shook his head. “No, that was what we thought too. But Mr. Pankowski’s staff took officers into every room, every broom closet and storeroom in the building. We even searched every laundry bin and garbage can big enough to hold a man. He has definitely left the building. It’s too bad you weren’t here when it happened. They were beeping you, but—”
Carey was ready for this one. “They were?” He took out his pager and looked at it. He flipped the switch off and on a few times. “I wonder how …”
The man in the dark suit leaned forward and held out his hand. “I’m pretty good with those. Can I see it?”
Carey slid it toward him. The man picked it up, worked the switch, examined the display, opened the little hatch at the end, and took the battery out. He put the battery back. “You had the battery in backwards, with the poles reversed.” He closed the hatch and flipped the switch with his thumb. The beeper went
Carey’s heart beat faster, and he tried to calm himself. The man had convicted Carey in his mind, but at least he was not writing a number down. That meant that Jane hadn’t called. She was safe. Carey accepted his pager. “Thanks, Mr.…” He frowned. “I’m sorry. Too many names at once.”
“Marshall. You’re welcome.”
Carey knew he had to say something. “What a dumb thing to do,” said Carey. “It must have been that way all day.” Then his mind scurried to see if he had made a mistake. They could probably check the paging service to see when he had answered his last beep.
But the policemen seemed to miss it. The captain said, “Where were you this evening after the operation?”
“I had dinner and went to a movie.”
“What restaurant?”
“I walked to Garibaldi’s on Merman Street.” He took out his wallet and read the credit card receipt. “It’s 597 Merman Street.”
“I know that place,” said the captain. “What was the movie?”
Carey said, “
“What would have happened if something went wrong with the patient?”
“What are you referring to?”
“You know. The things you mentioned. Dahlman starts hemorrhaging and needs to be operated on again. That kind of thing.”
“After Leo Bortoni’s shift, Arthur Hicks was on duty. He’s a good surgeon, and there are always others on call. In my judgment, the best surgeon in an emergency would not be the one who’s been working for fourteen or fifteen hours.”
“But you wanted to be here. What for?”
“To check on him. It was my responsibility to ensure that my patient was responding well: to see for myself, in other words.”
Folger glanced down at his notebook and looked surprised. “I don’t think I have any more questions right now.” He looked directly at the man in the dark suit. “Do any of you?”
The man in the dark suit was silent and motionless.
Folger said, “Thanks very much, Doctor. I assume you’ll be going home from here?”
“I suppose so,” Carey said. “Unless my patient turns up.”
“We’ll let you know if he does.”
“Thanks.” Carey stood up. The others remained seated, waiting for him to leave. He opened the door and stepped out, then turned around to close it. The last thing he saw confirmed his impression. The captain, the female detective, and the uniformed officer were all looking attentively at the man in the dark suit. The man in the dark suit was staring straight into Carey’s eyes until the door closed.
Agent Marshall said quietly, “That’s what I was afraid of.”
Captain Folger shook his head. “It’s hard to believe that a man like that would put himself in this kind of trouble.”
Marshall sighed. “Have you ever read any medical books?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“There’s not much in them. You don’t learn to be a surgeon by studying. After medical school you do four years of surgical residency at some hospital, helping out and doing the easy ones. Then you go find yourself the best surgeon you can, and you spend the next three or four years finding out how he does it and trying to learn to do it too. Dahlman was the one McKinnon picked out. McKinnon owes him what he has, what he does, who he is.”
“It’s a damned shame to see him paying off like this.”
Marshall looked at the papers in the file in front of him and shook his head. “Fifteen minutes for a nine- millimeter round at twelve feet, and a sixty-seven-year-old is up and running. If I ever take a hit, McKinnon is the one I want to dig it out of me. He would have been, anyway.” He tossed the file on the table and rubbed his eyes wearily, then squared his shoulders. “All right. Can you spare two officers around the clock for McKinnon?”
“I guess we’ll have to.” Folger turned to the policewoman.
“I’ll put a team on it right away,” she said.
“I’ll have them take care of the wiretaps in Washington. The phone company will set it up so his phones can be monitored from there.”
“Thanks. That will save us some man-hours.”
“We’ll do the lab work and print identification on whatever your people find here. Anything else you need, don’t be shy. The worst I can say is no, and you know in advance I won’t want to. I’d like to wrap this up in the next couple of days, but for now let’s act as though it’s going to get long and ugly.”
