ICU.
As he trudged aimlessly down the hall, he almost walked into Jay Mercier, Natchez's sole hematologist. Like the other small-town specialists who found themselves treating everything from poison ivy to gout, Mercier served as a general-purpose oncologist, diagnosing almost every neoplasm in the county, then either treating them himself or acting as the contact person for specialized care in large metropolitan centers. He was one of the busiest doctors in town, yet Chris had always found him generous with his time, especially with consultations. Chris thought of pulling him aside and asking about the possibility of intentionally inducing cancer in human beings, but if he did, Mercier was certain to pepper him with questions about such an off-the-wall scenario.
'Morning, Chris,' Mercier said with a smile. 'How's that resistant pneumonia coming?'
'I think the vancomycin's going to do the trick.'
'Good. That kid was looking shaky.'
They had slowed enough to stop for a fuller conversation, but Chris forced himself to continue down the corridor. Once he rounded the corner, the exit was only a short walk away, but without quite knowing why, he stopped and leaned against the wall like a man taking a smoke break. Less than a minute later, he had his answer. When Shane Lansing rounded the corner, Chris stepped directly in front of him, blocking his path.
The surgeon looked surprised, but not afraid. 'You reconsider that golf game?'
Chris looked hard into Lansing's eyes. 'Are you fucking my wife, Shane?'
Lansing blinked, but he betrayed no deep emotion. 'Hell, no. What are you talking about?'
Chris stared without speaking for a few moments. 'I think you're lying.'
Lansing's eyes narrowed. He started to speak, then he closed his mouth and tried to sidestep Chris.
Chris caught him by the arm and slammed him against the wall. 'Don't walk away from me, you son of a bitch.'
Lansing looked stunned, probably more by the directness of the confrontation than the physical attack. 'You've lost your fucking mind, Shepard!'
'I'll bet you've been through a lot of these scenes, haven't you? A ladies' man like you? Well, guess what? This time you're not going to skate. If this were junior high school, I'd just whip your ass and let it go. But there's a kid at stake in this. And I know enough about you to know you don't really give a shit about Thora. Oh, you like fucking her, I'm sure. You like knowing she wants you. But the whole package doesn't interest you, does it?'
Lansing's eyes continued to betray nothing. But then, in the crackling silence, Chris saw a chink in his armor. It was smugness. Lansing could not conceal the superiority he felt-a secret superiority undoubtedly based on his intimate knowledge of Chris's wife-her body, her emotions, her intentions. And then a far more frightening scenario entered Chris's mind.
'Or
Lansing had abandoned all pretense at innocence-or so it seemed to Chris. He was saying something, but Chris didn't hear. His reptilian brain was reacting to the fist he felt rising from the surgeon's waist. Chris was no boxer, but he had wrestled for three years during high school. He threw himself backward with the momentum of Lansing's punch, then grabbed the extended wrist and hurled the surgeon bodily over him, smacking him to the floor.
Lansing's breath exploded from his lungs. Chris flipped him onto his stomach, shoved a knee into his back, and wrenched one arm behind his back. As Lansing yelped in pain, two nurses rounded the corner and stopped, gaping.
'Move on!' Chris shouted. 'Leave!'
They scurried down the hall, but never took their eyes off the scene.
Chris put his mouth against Lansing's ear. 'A friend of mine almost got killed last night. You may know that, or you may not. But remember this: you're not the only one involved here. There's Ben, your kids, your wife, Thora, and there's me. Most of those people can't defend themselves. But
Lansing grunted.
'I thought so. Now, if you're innocent, you just call the police and press charges against me. I'll be waiting at my office.'
Chris heard a buzz of voices approaching from around the corner. He got to his feet and walked through the glass exit doors, then trotted to his pickup. As he drove out of the parking lot, he saw the hospital administrator standing outside the door, staring after him.
When Chris reached the clinic, he told Holly not to disturb him, then walked into his private office, buzzed the front desk, and asked Jane to get Dr. Peter Connolly of the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York on the telephone.
Pete Connolly had risen high in the world of oncology, but six years ago he had been a professor of hematology at the University Medical Center in Jackson, Mississippi. Then Sloan-Kettering had tapped him to head a new clinical research unit focusing on simultaneous organ and bone marrow transplantation. During his stint in Jackson, Connolly had started UMC on the road to gaining the designation of National Cancer Institute-of which only eight existed in the United States.
Jane buzzed Chris's phone, and he picked up the receiver. 'Yes?'
'I'm on the phone with his nurse. Dr. Connolly is teaching some residents how to harvest bone marrow right now, but he'll try to get back with you before lunch.'
'Thanks,' Chris said, trying not to feel disappointed. You couldn't expect to call what was arguably the best cancer center in the nation and get one of their top researchers on the phone without a wait. 'Tell her I appreciate the quick response.'
'She can give you his voice mail if you want to leave a message.'
'Okay, yeah.'
'Hang on.'
After a couple of clicks, he heard a digital voice say, 'Please leave a message.'
'Peter, this is Chris Shepard calling from Mississippi. I've got a pretty strange question, so I'm just going to lay it out and give you time to think about it. I want to know if it would be possible to purposefully induce cancer in a human being in such a way that a pathologist wouldn't detect that it had been done. I'm talking about blood cancers, and an eighteen-month time frame from diagnosis to death. I know this sounds crazy, but we dealt with some pretty crazy stuff back at UMC. I know you're busy, but I'd really appreciate it if you could get back to me when you get a chance.'
Chris hung up and buzzed Jane. 'When Connolly calls back, don't make him wait. Get me out of a room, no matter what I'm doing.'
'I will.'
'Unless I'm doing a pelvic.'
'I know.'
'Thanks.' Chris took a deep breath, walled off the paranoid fears writhing in his brain, and walked out to face the day's patients.
Alex jerked erect in bed with her Glock in her hand and her eyes wide-open. Blue light streamed through a crack in the drapes on her right. It took her several seconds to remember where she was: a guest room in Chris Shepard's house. There was a desk against one wall, stacked with household bills and papers. It looked like the kind of desk housewives used to handle day-to-day business.
As Alex stared at the desk, her cell phone began to ring inside her purse. It had been ringing before, she realized. That was what had awakened her. What frightened her was that her private cell phone-the one she used to run her murder investigation-was lying silent on the bedside table. The phone in her purse was her official phone.
