"No skid marks on the pier," said Detective Carrier. "The windshield's shattered. And the driver's got what looked to me like a bullethole over the right eye. You know the drill, Slug. I'm sorry, but we're going to need your gun."
Katzka nodded. And he gazed, wearily, down at the water. "Tell the diver he'll find my gun right about there. Unless the current's moved it."
"You think you fired off eight rounds?"
"Maybe more. I know I started with a full clip."
Carrier nodded, then he gave Katzka a pat on the shoulder. "Go home. You look like shit warmed over, Slug."
"As good as that?" said Katzka. And he walked back up the pier, through the gathering of crime lab personnel. The van had been pulled out of the water hours before, and it now sat at the edge of the container yard. Streamers of seaweed had snagged on the axle. Because of air in the tyres, the van had turned over underwater, and its roof had sunk into the bottom ooze. The windshield was caked with mud. They'd already traced its registration to Bayside Hospital, Operations and Facilities. According to the Facilities manager, the van was one of three owned and operated by the hospital for the purpose of shuttling supplies and personnel to outlying clinics. The manager had not noticed any of his vans were missing until the police had called him an hour ago.
The driver's door now hung open, and a photographer was leaning inside, shooting pictures of the dashboard. The body had been removed half an hour ago. His driver's licence had identified him as Oleg Boravoy, age thirty-nine, a resident of Newark, New Jersey. They were still awaiting further information.
Katzka knew better than to approach the vehicle. His actions were being called into question, and he had to keep his distance from the evidence. He crossed the container yard to where his own car was parked, outside the fence, and slid inside. Groaning, he dropped his face in his hands. At 2 a.m. he'd gone home to
HARVEST
shower and catch a few hours of sleep. Shortly after sunrise, he'd been back on the pier. I'm too old for this, he thought, too old by at least a decade. All this running around and shooting in the dark was for the young lions, not for a middle-aged cop. And he was feeling very middle-aged.
Someone tapped on his window. He looked up and saw it was Lundquist. Katzka rolled down the glass.
"Hey, Slug. You OK?"
"I'm going home to get some sleep."
"Yeah, well before you do, I thought you'd want to hear about the driver."
"We have something back?"
"They ran the name Oleg Boravoy through the computer. Bingo, he's in there. Russian immigrant, came here in '89. Last known residence Newark, New Jersey. Three arrests, no convictions."
"What charges?"
"Kidnapping and extortion. The charges never stick because the witnesses keep disappearing." Lundquist leaned forward, his voice dropping to a murmur. "You ran into some really bad shit last night.
The Newark cops say Boravoy's Russian mafia."
"How sure are they?"
"They ought to know. New Jersey's where Russian mafia has its home base. Slug, those guys make the Colombians look like the fucking Rotary Club. They don't just make a hit. They chop off your fingers and toes first, for the fun of it."
Katzka frowned, remembering the panic of last night. Treading water in the darkness as men ran on the pier above, shouting words in a language he didn't understand. He was having visions now of dismembered fingers and toes, of Boston streets littered with random body parts. Which made him think of scalpels. Operating rooms.
"What's Boravoy's connection to Bayside?" he asked.
"We don't know."
"He was driving their vehicle."
"And the van' s full of medical supplies," said Lundquist. "Couple thousand dollars' worth. Maybe we're talking black market. Boravoy could have partners at Bayside siphoning off drugs and supplies.
And you just caught him delivering the goods to their freighter."
"What about that freighter?You talk to the Harbourmaster?"
"The ship's owned by some New Jersey firm called the Sigayev Company. Panamanian registry. Her last known port of call was Riga."
"Where's that?"
"Latvia. I think it's some breakaway Russian republic."
The Russians again, thought Katzka. If this was indeed Russian mafia, then they were dealing with criminals known for pure and bloody viciousness. With every legitimate wave of immigrants rode a shadow wave of predators, criminal networks that followed their countrymen to the land of opportunity. The land of easy prey.
He thought of Abby DiMatteo, and his anxiety suddenly sharpened. He hadn't spoken to her since that 1 a.m. phone call. Just an hour ago, he'd been about to call her again. But as he was dialling her number, he realized that his pulse had quickened. And he'd recognized that sign for what it was. Anticipation. A joyful, aching, completely irrational eagerness to hear her voice. They were feelings he had not experienced in years, and he understood, only too painfully, what they meant.
He had quickly disconnected. And had spent the last hour in a deepening depression.
He gazed off towards the pier. By now the ship could be a hundred miles out to sea. Even if they located it, there would be a jurisdiction problem. He said to Lundquist, "I want everything there is on the Sigayev Company. I want any links toAmity and to Bayside Hospital."
"On my list, Slug."
Katzka started his car. He looked at Lundquist. "Your brother still in the Coast Guard?"
"No. But he's got buddies who're still in."
"Run this by them. See if they've boarded that freighter lately." "Doubt it. If she just sailed in from Riga." Lundquist paused, glancing up. Detective Carrier was crossing towards them, waving.
"Hey Slug," said Carrier. "Did you get the message about Dr. DiMatteo?"
Instantly Katzka turned off the engine. But he couldn't shut off the sudden roar of his own pulse. He stared at Carrier, expecting the worst.
"There's been an accident."
A lunch cart rattled down the hallway. Abby woke up with a start and found she was lying in sheets damp with sweat. Her heart was still pounding from the nightmare. She tried to turn in bed, but found she couldn't; her hands were tied down, her wrists sore from chafing. And she realized that she had not been dreaming at all.
This was the nightmare, and it was one from which she could not wake up.
With a sob of frustration she sank back against the pillow and stared at the ceiling. She heard the creak of a chair. She turned her head.
Katzka was sitting by the window. In the glare of midday, his unshaven face looked older and wearier than she had ever seen him before.
'! asked them to take off the restraints," he said. "But they told me you'd pulled out a few too many IV's." He rose and came to her bedside. There he stood gazing down at her. "Welcome back, Abby. You're a very lucky young lady."
"I don't remember what happened."
"You had an accident. Your car rolled over on the South Expressway."
"Was there anyone else…"
He shook his head. "No one else was hurt. But your car was pretty much totalled." There was a silence. She realized he was no longer looking at her. He was looking somewhere at her pillow instead.
"Katzka?" she asked softly. "Was it my fault?"
Reluctantly he nodded. "Based on the skid marks, it appears you were travelling at a high rate of speed. You must have braked to avoid a vehicle stalled in your lane. Your car veered into a highway barrier. And rolled over, across two lanes."
She closed her eyes. "Oh my God."
Again there was a pause. "I guess you haven't heard the rest," he said. "I spoke to the investigating officer. I'm afraid they found a shattered container of vodka in your car."
She opened her eyes and stared at him. "That's impossible."
"Abby, you can't remember what happened. Last night, on the pier, was a traumatic experience. Maybe you felt the need to unwind. To have a few drinks at home."
"I'd remember that! I'd remember if I'd been drinking-' "Look, what's important right now is-'
"This is important! Can't you see, Katzka?They're setting me up again!"
He rubbed his hand over his eyes, the unfocused gesture of a man struggling to stay awake. "I'm sorry, Abby," he murmured. "I know this can't be an easy thing for you to acknowledge. But Dr. Wettig just showed me your blood alcohol level. They drew it last night in the ER. It was point two one."
He wasn't facing her now, but was gazing blankly out the window, as though just the act of looking at her had taken too much out of him. She could not even turn her body to confront him face to face; the restraints wouldn't allow it. She gave a violent yank on her bonds, and the pain that stung her chafed wrists almost brought tears to her eyes. She was not going to cry. Damn it, she was not going to cry.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on channelling her rage. It was all she had left, the only weapon with which she could fight back. They had taken everything else away from her. They had taken even Katzka.
She said, slowly: "I was not drinking. You have to believe me. I was not drunk."
"Can you tell me where you were going at three in the morning?" '! was coming here, to Bayside. I remember that much. Mark called me, and I was coming to…" She stopped. "Has he been here? Why isn't he here?"
His silence was chilling. She turned her head to look at him, but could not see his face.
"Katzka?"
"Mark Hodell hasn't been answering his pages."
"What?"
"His car's not in the hospital parking lot. No one seems to know where he is."
She tried to speak, but her throat felt as if it had swollen shut, and the only sound that came out was a whispered: "No."
"It's too early to draw any conclusions, Abby. His pager may be broken. We don't know anything yet."
But Abby knew. She knew with a certainty that was both immediate and shattering. Her whole body suddenly felt numb. Lifeless. She didn't realize she was crying, didn't even feel the tears sliding down until Katzka rose, tissue in hand, and gently wiped her cheek.
"I'm sorry," he murmured. He brushed her hair off her face, and just for a moment, his hand lingered there, fingers resting protectively on her forehead. He said, more softly, "I'm so sorry."
"Find him for me," she whispered. "Please. Please, find him for me."
"I will."
A moment later she heard him walk out of the room. Only then did she realize he had untied the restraints. She was free to leave
HARVEST
the bed, to walk out of the room. But she didn't.
She turned her face into the pillow and wept.
At noon a nurse came in to remove the IV and to leave a lunch tray. Abby didn't even look at the food. The tray was later removed, untouched.
At two o'clock, Dr. Wettig walked in. He stood by her bed, flipping through the pages of her chart, making clucking sounds as he reviewed the lab results. At last he closed the chart and looked down at her. "Dr. DiMatteo?"
She didn't answer him.
"Detective Katzka tells me you deny drinking any alcohol last night," he said.
She said nothing.
Wettig sighed. "The first step towards recovery is acknowledging you have a problem. Now, I should have been more aware. I should have realized what you were struggling with all this time. But now it's all out in the open. It's time to deal with the problem."
She looked up at him. "What would be the point?" she said dully. "The point is, you have some sort of future worth salvaging. A DUI is a serious setback, but you're an intelligent woman. There will be other careers open to you besides medicine."
Her response was silence. The loss of her career felt almost insignificant at that moment, compared to the greater grief she felt over Mark's vanishing.
"I've asked Dr. O" Connor to evaluate you," said Wetfig. "He'll be in sometime this evening."
"I don't need a psychiatrist."
"I think you do, Abby. I think you need a lot of help. You have to get beyond these delusions of persecution. I'm not going to approve your release until O" Connor clears it. He may decide to transfer you to the Psychiatry unit. That's his call. We can't have you hurting yourself, the way you tried to do last night. We're all very concerned about you, Abby. I'm concerned about you. That's why I'm ordering a psychiatric evaluation. It's for your own good, believe me."
She looked straight up at him. "Fuck you, General."
To her immense satisfaction, he flinched and stepped away from the bed. He slapped the chart shut. "I'll check in on you later, Dr. DiMatteo," he said, and left the room.
For a long time she stared at the ceiling. Only moments ago, before Wettig had walked in, she had felt too weary to fight. Now every muscle had tensed and her stomach was in turmoil. Her hands ached. She looked down and realized they were knotted into fists.
Fuck all of you.
She sat up. The dizziness lasted only a few seconds, then passed. She'd been lying in bed too long. It was time to get moving. To regain control of her life.
She crossed the room and opened the door a crack.
A nurse looked up from her desk and stared directly at Abby. Her nametag said WSoriano, RN. "Do you need something?"
"Uh, no," said Abby, and quickly retreated back behind her closed door.
Shit. Shit, they were keeping her a prisoner.
In bare feet she paced a circle around the room, trying to plan her next move. She couldn't think about Mark right now. If she did, she'd just curl up in bed again, crying. That's what they wanted her to do, what they expected her to do.
She went to the chair by the window and sat down to think. She considered the moves open to her, but couldn't come up with any. Last night, Mark had said Mohandas was on their side, but now Mark was missing. She wasn't going to trust Mohandas. She wasn't going to trust anyone in this hospital.
She went to the nightstand and picked up the phone. There was a dial tone. She called Vivian's number, and got a recording. Then she remembered that Vivian was still in Burlington.
She called her own home, punched in her access code, and listened to the messages from her answering machine. There had been another call from Vivian, and by the tone of her voice, the call had been urgent. She'd left a Burlington number.
Abby dialled it.
This time Vivian answered. "You barely caught me. I was just about to check out of here."
"You're coming home?"
"I've got a six o'clock flight to Logan. Listen, this trip has been nothing but a wild goose chase. There were no harvests done in Burlington."
"How do you know?"
'! checked the airport here. And every other airstrip in the area. On the nights of those transplants, there were no midnight flights logged out of here to Boston. Not a single dinky plane. BuffingtoWs just a cover for them. And Tim Nicholls provided the official paperwork."
"And now Nicholls has vanished."
"Or they got rid of him."
They both fell momentarily silent. Then Abby said, softly: "Mark's missing."
"What?"
"No one knows where he is. Detective Katzka says they can't find his car. And Mark doesn't answer his pager." She paused, her throat closing over.
"Oh, Abby. Abby…" Vivian's voice faltered.
In the brief silence, Abby heard a click on the line. She was gripping the receiver so tightly her fingers ached.
"Vivian?" she said.
There was another click. And then the line went dead.
She hung up and tried to call again, but there was no dial tone. She tried the operator, tried hanging up again and again. Still no dial tone.
The hospital had disconnected her telephone.
Katzka stood on the narrow walkway of the Tobin Bridge and stared down at the water far below. From the west ran the Mystic River, on its way to join the waters of the Chelsea River before flowing out to Boston Harbour and the sea. It was a long drop, thought Katzka, imagining the force with which a body would impact on that water. Almost certainly a fatal drop.
Turning, he gazed past the late-afternoon traffic whizzing by and focused on the downriver side of the bridge. He traced the hypothetical sequence of events that would follow a body's plunge. The corpse would be carried by the current into the harbour. At first, it would drift along below the water's surface, perhaps scraping across the bottom silt. Eventually the body's internal gases would expand. This would happen over a time span of hours to days. It depended on the water temperature and the speed with which the gas-forming bacteria multiplied in the rotting intestines. At a certain point, the corpse would float to the surface.
That's when it would be found. In a day or two. Bloated and unrecognizable.
Katzka turned to the patrolman standing beside him. He had to shout over the sound of traffic. "What time did you notice the car?"
"Around 5 a.m. It was pulled over in the northbound breakdown lane. Right over there." He pointed across the lanes of whizzing cars. "Nice green BMW.! stopped right away."
"You didn't see anyone near the BMW?"
"No, sir. It looked abandoned. I called in the licence number and confirmed it wasn't reported stolen. I figured maybe the driver had engine trouble and left to get help. It was a hazard to traffic, sitting there. So I called the tow truck."
"No keys in the car? No note?"
"No, sir. Nothing. It was clean as a whistle inside."
Katzka looked back down at the water. He wondered how deep the river was at this point, and how fast the current was moving.
"I did try calling Dr. Hodell's home, but no one answered," said the patrolman. "I didn't know at the time that he was missing."
Katzka said nothing. He just kept gazing down at the river, thinking about Abby, wondering what he should tell her. She had looked so heartbreakingly fragile in that hospital bed, and he couldn't bear the thought of inflicting any more blows. Any more pain.
I won't tell her. Not yet, he decided. Not until we find a body.
The patrolman looked down at the river, too. "Jesus. Do you think he jumped?"
"If he's down there," said Katzka, 'it wasn't because he jumped."
The phones had been ringing all day, two L?N's had called in sick, and charge nurse Wendy Soriano had missed lunch. She was in no mood to be pulling a double shift. Yet here she was at 3.30 p.m., facing the prospect of another eight hours on duty.
Her kids had already called twice. Mommy, Jeffy's hitting me again. Mommy, what time is Daddy coming home? Mommy, can we use the microwave? We promise we won't burn the house down. Mommy, Mommy, Mommy.
Why didn't they ever bother Daddy at work?
Because Daddy's job is so much more fucking important.
Wendy dropped her head in her hands and stared down at the stack of charts flagged with doctors' orders. The residents loved to write orders. They breezed in with their fancy Cross pens and scribbled such earthshattering instructions as: "Milk of Magnesia for constipation," or 'bedrails up at night'. Then they presented the flagged charts to the nurses like God passing instructions to Moses. Thou shalt not tolerate constipation.
With a sigh, Wendy reached for the first chart.
The phone rang. It better not be the kids again, she thought. Not another Mommy he's hitting me call. She answered it with an irritated: "Six East, Wendy."
"This is Dr. Wettig."
"Oh." Automatically she sat up straight. One didn't slouch when speaking to Dr. Wettig. Even if it was on the phone. "Yes, Doctor?"
"I want to follow up that blood alcohol level on Dr. DiMatteo.
And I want it sent out to MedMark Labs."
"Not our lab?"
"No. Route it directly to MedMark."
"Certainly, Doctor," said Wendy, scribbling down the order. It was an unusual request, but one didn't question the General. "How's she doing?" he asked. "A little restless."
"Has she tried to leave?"
"No. She hasn't even come out of the room."
"Good. Make sure she stays there. And absolutely no visitors. That includes all medical personnel, except for the ones I specify in my orders."
"Yes, Dr. Wettig."
Wendy hung up and stared at her desk. During that call, three more flagged charts had been deposited there. Damn. She'd be taking off order sheets all evening. Suddenly she felt dizzy from hunger. She still hadn't had lunch, hadn't even had a break in hours.
She glanced around, and saw two LPN's chatting in the hallway. Was she the only person working her butt off here?
She tore off the order for the blood alcohol level and deposited it in the lab tech's box. As she rose from the desk, the phone began to ring. She ignored it; after all, that's what ward clerks were for.
She walked away to the sound of two lines jangling. For once, someone else could answer the damn phone.
The vampire was back, carrying her tray of blood tubes and lab slips and needles. "I'm sorry, Dr. DiMatteo. But I need to stick you again."
Abby, standing at the window, merely glanced at the phlebotomist. Then she turned back to the view. "This hospital's sucked all the blood I have to give," she said, and stared at the dreary view beyond the window. In the parking lot below, nurses scurried for the hospital doors, hair flying, raincoats flapping in the wind. In the east, clouds had gathered, black and threatening. Will the skies never clear? wondered Abby.
Behind her came the clatter of glass tubes. "Doctor, I really do have to get this blood."
"I don't need any more tests."
"But Dr. Wettig ordered it."The phlebotomist added, with a quiet note of desperation, "Please don't make things hard for me."
Abby turned and looked at the woman. She seemed very young. Abby was reminded of herself at some long-ago time. A time when she, too, was terrified of Wettig, of doing the wrong thing, of losing all she'd worked for. She was afraid of none of these things now. But this woman was.
Sighing, Abby went to the bed and sat down.
The phlebotomist set her blood tray on the bedside table and began opening sterile packets containing gauze, a disposable needle and a Vacutainer syringe. Judging by the number of filled blood tubes in her tray, she had already gone through the motions dozens of times today. There were only a few empty slots remaining. "OK, which arm would you prefer?"
Abby held out her left arm and watched impassively as the rubber tourniquet was tucked into place with a snap. She made a fist. The antecubital vein swelled into view, bruised by all the earlier vein punctures. As the needle pierced her skin, Abby turned away. She looked, instead, at the phlebotomist's tray, at all the neatly labelled tubes of blood. A vampire's candy box.
Suddenly she focused on one specimen in particular, a purple-topped tube with the label facing towards her. She stared at the name.
VOSS, NINA
SICU BED
"There we go," said the vampire, withdrawing the needle. "Can you hold that gauze in place?"
Abby looked up. "What?"
"Hold the gauze while I get you a Bandaid."
Automatically Abby pressed the gauze to her arm. She looked back at the tube containing Nina Voss's blood. The attending physician's name was just visible, at the corner of the label. Dr. Archer.
Nina Voss is back in the hospital, thought Abby. Back on cardiothoracic service.
The phlebotomist left.
Abby paced over to the window and stared out at the darkening clouds. Scraps of paper were flying around the parking lot. The window rattled, buffeted by a fresh gust of wind.
Something has gone wrong with the new heart.
She should have realized that days ago, when they'd met in the limousine. She remembered Nina's appearance in the gloom of the car. The pale face, the bluish tinge of her lips. Even then, her transplant was already failing.
HARVEST
Abby went to the closet. There she found a bulging plastic bag labelled: Patient Belongings. It contained her shoes, her bloodstained slacks, and her purse. Her wallet was missing; it was probably locked up in the hospital safe. A thorough search of the purse turned up a few loose nickels and dimes in the bottom. She would need every last one.
She zipped on the slacks, tucked in her hospital gown top, and stepped into the shoes. Then she went to the door and peeked out.
Nurse Soriano wasn't at the desk. However, two other nurses were in the station, one talking on the phone, another bent over paperwork. Neither was looking in Abby's direction.
She glanced down the hall and saw the cart with the evening meal trays come rattling into the ward, pushed by an elderly volunteer in pink. The cart came to a stop in front of the nurses' desk. The volunteer pulled out two meal trays and carried them into a nearby patient room.
That's when Abby slipped out into the hall. The meal cart blocked the nurses' view as Abby walked calmly past their desk and out of the ward.
She couldn't risk being spotted on the elevators; she headed straight for the stairwell.
Six flights up she emerged on the twelfth floor. Straight ahead was the OR wing; around the corner was the SICU. From the linen cart in the OR hallway, she picked up a surgical gown, a flowered cap, and shoe covers. Completely garbed in blue like everyone else, she just might pass unnoticed.
She turned the corner and walked into the SICU.
Inside she found chaos. The patient in Bed 2 was coding. Judging by the tensely staccato voices and by all the personnel frantically pressing into the cubicle, the resuscitation was not going well. No one even glanced inAbby's direction as she walked past the monitor station and crossed to Cubicle 8.
She paused outside the viewing window just long enough to confirm that it was, indeed, NinaVoss in the bed. Then she pushed into the cubicle. The door swung shut behind her, muffling the voices of the code team. She pulled the curtains over the window, to shut off all view of the room, and turned to the bed.
Nina was sleeping, serenely unaware of the frantic activity going on beyond her closed door. She seemed to have shrunk since Abby had last seen her, like a candle slowly being consumed by the flame of her illness. The body beneath those sheets looked as small as a child's.
Abby picked up the nurses' clipboard hanging at the foot of the bed. In a glance she took in all the parameters recorded there. The rising pulmonary wedge pressure. The slowly falling cardiac output. The upward titration of dobutamine in a futile attempt to boost cardiac performance.
Abby hung the clipboard back on the hook. As she straightened, she saw that Nina's eyes were open and staring at her.
"Hello, Mrs Voss," said Abby.
Nina smiled and murmured, "It's the doctor who always tells the truth."
"How are you feeling?"
"Content." Nina sighed. "I am content."
Abby moved to her bedside. They looked at each other, neither one speaking.
Then Nina said, "You don't have to tell me. I already know."
"Know what, Mrs Voss?"
"That it's almost over." Nina closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
Abby took the other woman's hand. "I never got the chance to thank you. For trying to help me."
"It was Victor I was trying to help."
"I don't understand."
"He's like that man in the Greek myth. The one who went into Hades to bring back his wife."
"Orpheus."
"Yes. Victor is like Orpheus. He wants to bring me back. He doesn't care what it takes. What it costs." She opened her eyes and her gaze was startlingly clear. "In the end," she whispered, 'it will cost him too much."
They were not speaking of money. Abby understood that at once. They were speaking of souls.
The cubicle door suddenly opened. Abby turned to see a nurse staring at her in surprise.
"Oh! Dr. DiMatteo, what are you…" She glanced at the closed curtains, then her gaze swiftly assessed all the monitors and IV lines. Checking for signs of sabotage.
"I haven't touched anything," said Abby.
"Would you please leave?"
"I was only visiting. I heard she was back in SICU and-' "MrsVoss needs her rest?The nurse opened the door and swiftly ushered Abby out of the cubicle. "Didn't you see the No Visitors sign? She's scheduled for surgery tonight. She can't be disturbed."
"What surgery?"
"The re-transplant. They found a donor."
Abby stared at the closed door to Cubicle 8. She asked, softly, "Does Mrs Voss know?"
"What?"
"Did she sign the consent form for surgery?"
"Her husband's already signed it for her. Now please leave immediately."
Without another word, Abby turned and walked out of the unit. She didn't know if anyone noticed her departure; she just kept walking down the hall until she'd reached the elevators. The door opened; the car was filled with people. She stepped inside and quickly turned her back to the other passengers and faced the door.
They found a donor, she thought, as the elevator descended. Somehow they found a donor. Tonight, Nina Voss will have a new heart.
By the time the car reached the lobby, she had already worked out the sequence of events that would be taking place tonight. She had read the records of other Bayside transplants; she knew what was going to happen. Sometime around midnight, they would wheel Nina into the OR, where Archer's team would prep and drape her. There they would wait for the call. And at that precise moment, a different surgical team in a different OR would already be gathered around another patient. They would reach for scalpels and begin to slice skin and muscle. Bone saws would grind. Ribs would be lifted, exposing the treasure within. A living, beating heart.
The harvest would be swift and clean.
Tonight, she thought, it will happen just the way it has before. The elevator door opened. She stepped out, head bowed, eyes focused on the floor. She walked out the front doors and into a driving wind.
Two blocks away, cold and shaking, she ducked into a phone booth. Using her precious cache of nickels and dimes, she called Katzka's number.
He wasn't at his desk. The policeman who answered the extension offered to take a message.
"This is Abby DiMatteo," she said. "I have to talk to him now! Doesn't he have a pager or something?"
"Let me transfer you to the operator."
She heard two transfer clicks, then the operator came on. "I'll have Dispatch radio his car now," she said.
A moment later, the operator came back on. "I'm sorry, we're still waiting for Detective Katzka to respond. Can he reach you at your current number?"
"Yes. I mean, I don't know. I'll try calling him later." Abby hung up. She was out of coins, out of phone calls.
She turned and looked out the phone booth, and saw scraps of newspapers tumbling by. She didn't want to step out into that wind again, but she didn't know what else to do.
There was one more person she could call.
Half the phone book had been torn away. With a sense of futility, she flipped through the white pages anyway. She was startled to actually find the listing: I. Tarasoft.
Her hands were shaking as she dialled collect. Please talk to me. Please take my call.
It was four rings before she heard his gentle "Hello?" She could hear chinaware clattering, the sounds of a dinner table being set, the sweet strains of classical music. Then: "Yes, I'll accept the charges."
She was so relieved, her words spilled out in a rush. "I didn't know who else to call! I can't reach Vivian. And no one else will listen to me. You have to go to the police. Make them listen!"
"Now slow down, Abby. Tell me what's happening."
She took a deep breath. Felt her heart thudding with the need to share her burden. "Nina Voss is getting a second transplant tonight," she said. "Dr. Tarasoft, I think I know how it works. They don't fly the hearts in from somewhere else. The harvests are done right here. In Boston."
"Where? Which hospital?"
Her gaze suddenly focused on a car moving slowly up the street. She held her breath until the car continued around the corner and vanished.
"Abby?"
"Yes. I'm still here."
"Now, Abby, I understand from Mr Parr that you've been under a great strain lately. Isn't it possible this is-'
"Listen. Please listen to me.t' She closed her eyes, forcing herself to stay calm. To sound rational. He must not have any doubts at all about her sanity. "Vivian called me today from Burlington. She found out there weren't any harvests done there. The organs didn't come from Vermont."
"Then where are the harvests done?"
"I'm not entirely sure. But I'm guessing they're done in a building in Roxbury. Amity Medical Supplies. The police have to get there before midnight. Before the harvest can be done."
"I don't know if I can convince them."
"You have to!There's a Detective Katzka, in Homicide. If we can reach him, I think he'll listen to us. Dr. Tarasoft, this isn't just an organ matchmaking service. They're generating donors. They're killing people."
In the background, Abby heard a woman call out: "Ivan, aren't you going to eat your dinner? It's getting cold."
"I'll have to skip it, dear," said Tarasoft. "There's been an emergency…" His voice came back on the line, soft and urgent. "I don't think I need to tell you that this whole thing scares me, Abby." "It scares the hell out of me, too."
"Then let's just drive straight to the police. Drop it in theft laps. It's too dangerous for us to handle."
"Agreed. One hundred percent."
"We'll do it together. The bigger the chorus, the more convincing our message."
She hesitated. "I'm afraid that having me along may hurt the cause."
"I don't know all the details, Abby. You do."
"OK," she said, after a pause. "OK. We'll go together. Could you come and get me? I'm freezing. And I'm scared."
"Where are you?"
She glanced out the phone booth window. Two blocks away, the lights of the hospital towers seemed to pulsate in the blowing darkness. "I'm in a phone booth. I don't know which street it's on.
I'm a few blocks west of Bayside."
"I'll find you."
"Dr. Tarasoff?"
"Yes?"
"Please," she whispered. "Hurry."