Charles Braden stepped outside the Thirty-third Street entrance of NYCH and dialed Melanie Collins’s number on his cell phone.
“Yes,” she said sleepily.
“Melanie. It’s Charles Braden. I’m sorry to wake you so early, but there’s been a problem with Earl Garnet.”
“Problem?”
“Yes. I blame myself. My son had just received the upsetting news that Garnet was the man in the taxi with Kelly the night before she disappeared. I went to Garnet’s room and confronted him about it. Now I know I shouldn’t have, but-”
“What happened?” Her sudden alertness told him he had all her attention.
“He started going on about how you had been deliberately making patients sick so you could then diagnose bizarre syndromes and act the hero. Even said you killed a few, made one of your former victims slip into a coma to silence her, and, get this, accused you of trying to kill him. Now I think it’s the drugs, but they had to sedate him-”
“I’m on my way-”
“Melanie, that’s not the worst of it. The man has this crazy idea Kelly found out what you were doing, and that you murdered her to keep her quiet.”
“Oh, God.”
“Fortunately just the two of us were in the room. He’s not talking much to anyone right now, but I thought you should know. Even ridiculous rumors like that, once they get rolling, can snowball.”
“I appreciate the heads-up.”
I’ll bet you do, he thought, hanging up.
Now all he had to do was wait. He glanced at his watch and saw it read nearly six. The coffee shop would be open in a few minutes.
He dialed medical records at Lena Downie’s extension. Chaz would be waiting there for his call.
“Dad?”
“So what do you think?”
“You were right. She’s definitely dirty. I can’t believe the woman got away with it for so long.”
“Because no one was looking.”
“But she killed who knows how many over the years.”
“And Kelly, remember.”
The silence on the other end of the phone hung between them, pregnant as a held breath. “I guess I thought I’d feel so different finding her killer,” Chaz finally said, his voice funereal. “Rage, relief, free – something. Instead, I’m just empty inside.”
“That’s to be expected-”
“Expected! My life’s been chained to her fucking corpse. Now she’s turning to dust, and what do I have – closure? What a fucking joke. And you say, ‘That’s to be expected.’ ”
Charles winced at Chaz’s anger.
“Chaz, why don’t you join me in the coffee shop so we can talk. We still have to decide how to proceed-”
“How did Garnet take it when you confronted him?”
“Not well.”
“Did he deny it?”
“He went a little wacko, to tell you the truth.”
“I’d like to wacko him-”
“Now you stay away from him, Chaz. This whole thing has to be done properly, and legally. Then you’ll finally feel free. I promise you.”
He could hear his son breathing at the other end of the line. The seething rage in that sound frightened him. “Chaz, promise me you’ll stay away.”
“Okay,” Chaz said, after a few more seconds.
“Now come and have coffee with me.”
“I can’t. Since I was here all night anyway, I put myself on call. I just got beeped for a cardiac case coming in by air ambulance.”
“You?” His son never took weekend calls. Considered excusing himself from it the privilege of being chief.
“Yes, I know. But a couple of loudmouths in my department started to complain about my never putting myself on the schedule. This’ll shut them up for a while.”
Charles walked over to the Starbucks on the ground floor and ordered an espresso. He needed to clear his head after practically having to guide Chaz through Melanie’s files most of the night. His son might not be the dimmest light on the board, but he was a far cry from the brightest.
He found a chair in the corner where he could be reasonably sure of not being disturbed. The place would soon fill up with people on their way to the seven o’clock shift, and he needed to think.
It had been a long road.
The evening when he’d killed her twenty-seven years ago burned as fresh in his mind as the night it happened.
When she’d called the maternity center that morning, he had no idea it would end that way. She was so abrasive, insisting he keep Chaz from trying to follow her and threatening vague revelations that would ruin their name. He had to find out what she knew, and convinced her to meet him one more time that evening. She took the last train to Albany, and he picked her up at the station, then drove her to his office. It was deserted at night.
She’d initially limited her threats to what Chaz would be blamed for – “failing to properly supervise a resident in a case where the patient died.” She hadn’t provided details, and he practically laughed at her, saying, “I’m afraid that happens all the time in a teaching hospital, dear. If that’s all you have to threaten me with, you’re out of luck.” He wanted to goad her, find out if she’d discovered more deadly secrets.
Provoked, she let slip she also had something on him – the odd irregularities about his records – and that Dr. Cam Roper knew, might even investigate the maternity center and the home.
He’d known at that instant she’d have to die, and Roper, too. Once either of them found out the gravity of his secret, there would be no bargaining. The two of them were too straight for that.
The nearest weapon he’d had on hand were the heavy metal stirrups his pregnant ladies put their feet into when he examined them. He grabbed one, came up behind her, and smashed her in the temple. She was unconscious but not dead.
He’d stripped her, tied her up, and taped her mouth in case she woke up. Putting her in the trunk of his car, he drove to his house, where he burned her clothes in the basement incinerator. In the boathouse he found an old anchor, chain, and padlock. After midnight he drove to Trout Lake and commandeered an old rowboat from one of the cottages. As he’d attached the anchor and chain with the lock, she’d started to regain consciousness. She cried as he rowed her to the middle of the lake, and he never forgot the terror in her eyes as he dumped her in.
He shuddered.
Now all he had to do was catch Melanie Collins in the act of finishing off Earl Garnet. Actually, a little after the act, then let Chaz present the evidence of what she’d been up to all these years. Thankfully, Kelly’s letter to Cam Roper suggested she’d found out about Melanie’s first two victims and intended to reveal her discovery. It would be an easy sell to convince the authorities she’d confronted Melanie, and that Melanie killed her to keep her quiet.
Too bad Earl had to die. It would have been possible to convict Melanie without having her kill him, useful even, if he had bought the idea of her guilt so completely he’d have been willing to declare far and wide that her conviction cleared the Braden name. But that had been naive. He obviously still harbored deep suspicions, starting with the break-in at Mark Roper’s house and ending God knew where. It became necessary to change strategy on the spot and goad Earl into yelling the same paranoid-sounding accusations that Mark Roper and Lucy O’Connor had been led to make – to help ensure he’d seem as off base as the other two and that anything any of them had said would be easier to dismiss in the aftermath – then serve him up to Melanie.
He took a long sip of the hot drink.
It scoured his esophagus and ignited a small fire in his empty stomach.
As for Mark and Lucy, they’d be frozen corpses by now. “So tragic,” he would say to reporters. “If only the man had listened to me. I tried to tell him just two days ago to be patient, that there appeared to be new evidence pointing to Kelly’s real killer, but obviously he barged ahead on his own. From the start he seemed obsessed with blaming her death on our family, to the point he began making up the most fantastic stories. That he lost his life trying to find nonexistent remains to support these allegations is a waste beyond words. And what did his futile search prove? Simply how wild and baseless his accusations were. That his resident died trying to save him makes it a doubly senseless loss. Two young lives gone for nothing!”
He smiled at how easily he’d sent Mark rushing off half-cocked. A carefully staged mention of smotherings and eugenics, combined with the young man’s lifelong resentment of all things Braden, and he assumed the worst, taking Lucy with him. Such a hothead, just like his father.
What better way to deflect an investigation that might discover his former baby business – purely a commercial venture, albeit illegal – than have his chief accuser run around making the charges so extreme no one would take them seriously? Just imagine, Charles Braden III as some crazed fanatic who had murdered deformed newborns, then buried them under the orphanage lawn. He chuckled at the outlandishness of it.
Of course, setting Mark up like that had been risky, but after O’Connor arrived on the scene he’d had to take the chance. A more sober questioning of the birth records might have revealed the truth.
Still, as much as it might be a masterstroke luring them to their deaths the way they had tonight, everything would have been over and neater had they died in the blast. For one thing, they couldn’t have saved the talkative old crone. Fortunately, she still didn’t pose much of a threat. According to one of his cronies at Saratoga General, she was a “likely,” as in “likely to croak.”
One reassuring fact – there would be such a media furor in the wake of charging Collins with so many murders, including Kelly’s, none of the recent events in Hampton Junction would garner much scrutiny anyway. His past secrets, and the present one at Nucleus Laboratories, should be safe.
As long as his men found the woman with Victor’s files. They’d been damn lucky to overhear that conversation.
He took another sip of espresso.
As he waited for the buzz to hit, he heard the thud of heavy rotors arriving over the hospital and raised his eyes.
Must be Chaz’s case, he thought.
Chaz huddled in the doorway leading to the heliport on the hospital roof. The blast of the rotors stirred up clouds of dust and debris, making it necessary for him to turn away, protect his eyes, and cover his mouth. Beside him the men and women of the ER team did the same. He stayed apart from them a little to keep out of their way as they would be the first to the helicopter. However, they were all puzzled by how little advance information they’d been given. All they knew from dispatch: they were receiving two hypothermia cases, a man and a woman, one of them a near-drowning victim in critical condition. Normally they would get vitals, names, and circumstances. Nobody liked surprise packages in this business.
The craft rocked to a landing on the pad, the rotors whined down, and the ER people, crouching low, ran for the doors. The crew already had them open and slid a stretcher halfway out the craft to their waiting hands. As nurses, residents, and orderlies crowded around their charge, Chaz, still hanging back, couldn’t tell if it was the man or woman. He was able to see that IVs were up and running through warming coils, that one of the attendants was ventilating the victim, that the oxygen passed through a tube immersed in what he assumed was a basin of hot water, a pretty good improvisation. Wires lead to an O2 saturation meter, a catheter bag dangling from a side rail indicated urinary output – Jesus, he thought, everything’s been done. There must be a doctor on board.
Someone still inside the ambulance handed out a half dozen tubes of blood, then a syringe wedged in a styrofoam cup overflowing with crushed ice, the standard way to preserve serum slated for acid-base testing. No doubt about it, a physician had gift-wrapped this case so it could bypass emergency and go straight to intensive care. Chaz stepped forward to take charge when a nurse lifted down a portable monitor that beeped out a very slow pulse. As she moved to secure the piece of equipment at the foot of the stretcher, the victim’s face came into view.
“Lucy O’Connor?” Chaz said, so stunned he waded into the throng of people who were beginning to wheel the woman into the hospital, getting in their way.
“Hold it right there, Chaz!” said a man’s voice over the noise of the helicopter. “Your services won’t be required.”
He looked up to see Mark Roper, wrapped in blankets but standing, being helped out of the passenger compartment. Stunned, Chaz yelled, “What the hell’s happened?”
Mark brushed off supporting hands and walked right by him, leaving the ambulance attendants shaking their heads in dismay.
“He ought to be on a stretcher,” one of them said to Chaz.
“Yeah,” echoed his colleague. “Instead, he took care of her the whole way.”
“I’m fine!” Mark yelled over his shoulder. “First I get Lucy to ICU.” He swung his gaze to Chaz. “Then you and I are going to talk.”
Melanie Collins ran across the parking lot toward the front door. She could still make this work. Her gaze traveled up to the floor where Earl lay sedated and helpless. Acutely psychotic patients had been known to possess super-human strength, enough to smash a window despite being drugged, and jump. An early-morning haze of dust, exhaust, and grime blurred the outlines of the building and would provide her with the cover she’d need to break the glass with a chair and shove him through. He overpowered my attempt to stop him, she could claim, appearing suitably shaken and distraught, maybe even verging on hysterical, after screaming for help.
But high overhead, a streak of azure showed through tattered gray clouds and tried to pin a blue ribbon on the start of an otherwise mediocre-looking day. It just might succeed, judging by how quickly the smog seemed to be dissipating. By the time she got to his room, there’d not be enough mist to conceal her from the street.
No, better stick to her original plan. She slipped a hand into the pocket of her lab coat and fingered the loaded syringe of short-acting insulin. It might take an hour to produce seizures, perhaps longer, but in the end would be neater. Convulsions were a natural complication of the E. coli 0157:H7 organism; it accumulated on receptor sites in the brain as well as in the kidney. And she’d be at the resuscitation stressing that fact, loading him up with antiseizure medication that wouldn’t work and dismissing the need to give him sugar if anyone suggested it. She didn’t necessarily need to kill Earl, just let the seizures knock off enough neurons that he would never talk again. Like Bessie.
Still, having to rush a case like this made her uneasy. She usually took days to plan her approach and pick her times. Even with Bessie, rushed as that was, she’d prepared carefully, substituting the contents of a multidose heparin bottle with just enough insulin that the nurse would draw up the shot, then throw the bottle away. The result – someone else gave the agent and disposed of the evidence. That’s how she liked doing things – cleverly, cleanly, and at a distance. Earl would be a hands-on operation.
At first the corridor was empty when she arrived, it being another twenty minutes before people would begin to show up for shift change. Then halfway down the hallway a nurse emerged from a patient’s room carrying a flashlight. She’d be conducting the last bed check before going off duty. “Body search,” the residents called it, since this was when the people who’d died in their sleep were usually discovered.
“Morning,” said Melanie. “Dr. Braden phoned me about Dr. Garnet. How is he now?”
“Out like a light,” said the woman.
“I’ll just peek in on him.”
“Want me to come with you?”
“No, I’m fine.”
The nurse shrugged and went on with her work.
Melanie paused outside Earl’s door, checked that no one else was near, and went in.
Charles Braden finished a second espresso and glanced at his watch. What was taking Chaz so long? He must be having trouble with his case, but they ought to be spending this time mapping out the best way to approach the dean.
Charles knew he’d have to coach his son through it, without appearing to do so. There couldn’t be any mistakes in explaining how they knew to suspect Melanie, such as the one he himself had made with Garnet – practically admitting he’d had access to Mark’s files. However, Chaz and he would now be able to claim that Roper and Garnet had showed them those reports during the investigation. There’d be no one to say otherwise, once Melanie took care of Garnet.
He glanced at his watch again. She must be in the hospital by now. How she’d get rid of him he had no idea. Any number of the tricks in the arsenal she’d built up over the years ought to do the trick. But he hadn’t heard a code blue over the PA system yet. Maybe she’d arranged for him not to be disturbed, and they wouldn’t find him for hours. Should he go back upstairs and recheck on Garnet himself, pretend he’d just dropped by, show concern after the man’s psychotic episode this morning-
The door to the coffee shop opened and in walked Chaz.
Good, thought Charles, until he saw the look in his son’s eyes. Even from the other side of the room he could see the pupils were far too big, the whites far too wide, the circles far too large. The rage in them pushed aside the rest of his face. “Chaz, what’s the matter-”
Mark Roper stepped into the room wearing OR greens. Behind him were three uniformed policemen.
The five of them marched forward, but Charles saw only his son’s horrible gaze as he descended on him. Oh, Jesus, he knows.
“Now, Chaz,” he said, getting up out of the chair. There had to be a way he could still bluff himself out of this, at least for long enough to make an escape. He didn’t know how Roper had survived, but there was nothing to implicate him, Charles Braden III, in what went on tonight. Ironically, all those wild accusations that he’d primed Mark to make might save him now, make the police hesitate. “Son, tell me, has something happened?”
Chaz’s hands shot out, his fingers splayed wide as if he were holding a basketball. “You! You took her from me. The one love I had.” He started to run. “I could have kept Kelly. You ruined that. Destroyed me. Let everyone think I did it.”
Charles stood his ground, certain he’d be obeyed. “Chaz, you stop this nonsense!”
“Oh, it’s not nonsense,” Mark said, his voice filling the room. “Sheriff Dan Evans has your men. The two that can talk are telling everything. Not just what they did on your behalf this last week. Seems they used their special skills at procuring information to ferret out all your past secrets, including the fact that you murdered Kelly and why, as insurance – in case they ever had to bargain their way out of a tight spot.”
“No!” said Charles. “They’re lying-”
Chaz leapt at his throat.
They crashed over backward as his son’s fingers closed around his neck. Charles tried to yell, but already the thumbs were crushing his windpipe. He attempted to claw them off.
“You never had faith in me,” Chaz screamed. “Never. You ruined everything I ever tried to do. But Kelly! How could you ruin Kelly?” He broke into a wail as raw and screeching as a wounded animal’s.
Charles struggled to draw breath and couldn’t. His hands pried and twisted at the fingers, but didn’t budge them. If anything they squeezed harder. A loud ringing filled his head, drowning out the shouts that rang through the room. His vision grew dark around the edges, and his son’s terrible, pained eyes, circles within circles, spiraled him toward two black pits.
Melanie found Earl lying flat on his back, the IV in his arm, a cardiac monitor attached to his chest. The latter surprised her. Had he already started to complain of palpitations? Deplete his potassium and give him a lethal arrhythmia – that had been her original plan. Too bad she couldn’t wait.
She walked over to the bedside and stood over him. His face hung slack, his mouth drooped open, and his respirations were shallow, the way she’d expect to see any patient who’d been brought down with a major tranquilizer. It gave her a sense of total control over him.
So look how we ended up, Earl. Couldn’t have guessed this when we were classmates, could you? Who’s the hotshot now? You’ll be remembered as Kelly’s killer, and I’ll be wringing my hands and saying, Who would have thought it?
She pulled out the syringe, uncapped the needle, and jabbed it into the side portal of the plastic tubing.
Still, you very nearly got me.
She pushed the plunger all the way down and opened the intravenous valve wide, flushing the solution into his vein.
Except it wouldn’t run through.
The normal stream of drops that should be dripping from the bag into the plastic tubing wasn’t there.
Was the line blocked?
She bent down to check where the tubing joined the angiocath that had been inserted into the vein. Usually the first sign of obstruction would be a backup of blood.
It looked clear.
Then the problem had to be the angiocath itself. It might have torn the vein, and the IV was simply seeping into the tissues of his arm, not through the bloodstream where she needed it.
Damn.
She’d have to change it. But most of the insulin would still be in the tubing. In a few minutes she could make the switch, run it in, and be out of there.
She quickly found an equipment tray on the counter, located a new angiocath, and broke it out of its package.
Then she stooped over Earl’s arm, removed the bandage anchoring the old one to the skin – and stared.
It had never been inserted in his vein. It lay taped to the surface of his skin, the needle capped.
“What the hell…”
She looked up, and saw Earl staring at her, eyes wide-open and alert.
The bathroom door opened, and out stepped a resident with red hair and the short-haired nurse who’d been taking care of Bessie.
Melanie felt warm, as if the room had gone on fire. “What are you doing here?” She mustered her most imperious tone, intended to make underlings out of anyone she used it on.
“They came to do the DONT on me, Melanie,” Earl said, before they could answer. “You remember. N is for narcan, as in reversing the effects of narcotics, such as morphine. Then, after they brought me around, they heard what I had to say about you.”
Earl’s quiet voice cut into her like a scalpel. It became hard to breathe. She cast around for some way to regain control. “What are you talking about, Earl? Now you let me restart your IV before I call a code forty-four.” She looked over at the others. “He had a psychotic episode this morning, and his infection is getting worse.” She’d adopted her confiding manner, the one used to bring friends and families over to her side and away from the patient’s. She also scanned their name tags. “So Tanya, and Dr. Roy, I know you two meant well, and if you will just get back to your business, we’ll say this little episode never happened-”
“You know, I talk to Bessie McDonald every day,” Tanya interrupted, speaking so softly it might have been a whisper.
Melanie’s fright escalated. “You what?”
“When I brush her hair and clean her nails – she used to be fastidious about that. Oh, don’t worry, she can’t speak back. Never will. I do it in case she can somehow hear or sense that I’m there, caring for her.”
“Well I’m sure that’s very commendable-”
“How could you have harmed her so?” Tanya continued. Her voice floated across the room. It made Melanie shiver.
Dr. Roy took a step toward her. “And I want to know if I’d given her sugar when we found her, would it have made a difference?” He had a harder edge to him. “That will haunt me until the end of my days.”
Testosterone defined an adversary so much better; it made him far easier to deal with. “You come an inch closer, Dr. Roy, and I’ll lay charges of intimidation and menacing behavior, not to mention libel-”
The sound of ripping tape cut her off. She turned to see Earl holding up the tubing that had been attached to his arm. He’d wound it into a loop. “You won’t be laying charges, calling any code forty-fours, or doing much of anything once we analyze what you injected in here.”
Her mouth went dry, and her insides felt trapped in ice. The coiled green plastic caught the light like an emerald ring. She fought the urge to make a grab for it. “I’m sorry, Earl. You leave me no choice but to get the orderlies.” She spun on her heel and walked out of the room.
She heard Tanya and Dr. Roy offer to stop her.
“Don’t bother,” Earl said. “She’s finished, and knows it.”
The day before Nixon left the White House and Kelly gave her the ultimatum leapt to her mind.
Go to the dean and confess what you’ve done within twenty-four hours, or I’ll do it for you.
At Kelly’s insistence they’d met around noon by the southeast entrance to Central Park – the place across from the Plaza where horse-drawn carriages waited for tourists. Melanie had felt as helpless to save herself then as she did now.
The fear had only worsened as the deadline expired and she waited for the police to knock on her door. Just as the fear would build and eat into her now. Except this time there would be no reprieve.
She walked briskly toward the nursing station, and right on by to the exit.
Thirty minutes later Melanie sat in her penthouse sipping coffee. It had turned out to be a pleasant day after all. The sunlight crept across the white birch floors on schedule, illuminating her trophies one by one. The designer kitchen, the living room ensemble, the four-poster bed.
She watched the edge of its shadow reach the glass-topped table in front of her and slowly pass by the items laid out on it. She adjusted her gaze to the southwest, looking out the windows toward the Statue of Liberty and to the sparkling water beyond. A cruise ship glided by the lady, bound for who knows where. She’d known the excitement of that moment, embarking on a Saturday morning, leaving New York and work behind, anticipating what adventures lay ahead.
Those trips didn’t hold a candle to where she’d be going now.
There would be plenty of time. At least an hour. Probably double that. No one would believe Earl at first.
“The drugs – they’ve made him hallucinate,” everyone would say.
Testing for insulin would also take a while.
He wouldn’t have the cops at her door anytime soon.
And she’d be long gone when they did arrive. But then he’d probably known that, too. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have let her go.
Another sip, and she savored its bittersweet bite, tempered as it was by cream and sugar. Normally she used skim milk and sweetener, but what the hell. Today was special.
She downed the remnants and poured herself a second cup.
What would her patients think when they found out? Her colleagues? The residents? She couldn’t stand the thought of being ousted as a fraud, exposed as something less than the smart, quick, concerned physician she’d craved to be seen as. Now, instead, she’d be made legend, right up there with other doctors who killed, like Cream, Swango, Shipman. They’d have experts on Larry King, Connie Chung, and Barbara Walters dissecting her place in that particular constellation of the murder universe. But she wasn’t like those creeps. She hadn’t set out to kill anyone. She’d tried her hardest to save them.
One thing she felt in her bones. There were others out there making themselves shine as physicians the same way she had. It was too tempting a scam for there not to be.
She poured herself a third cup.
By now the departing ship was but a dot on the horizon.
She began to feel sleepy.
Good.
The first of the several vials that now lay empty on the table had started to kick in. She wanted to be out cold when the other ingredients took effect. Seizures, arrhythmias, and cardiovascular shock – the symptoms wouldn’t be pleasant once they began. And there would be no remedy. She’d chosen the makings of her drug cocktail too well for that. No one, not even a bright boy like Earl Garnet, would ever be able to resuscitate her.
Denouement
That same morning, Saturday, November 24, 9:05 A.M.
Earl Garnet’s Room, Fifteen East, New York City Hospital
Mark looked up from the flowchart Earl had handed to him. “So Melanie intended to kill you and set you up as Kelly’s murderer, all to stop you from finding out what she’d done.”
Earl nodded, but said nothing.
From his grimace and the sheen of perspiration on his face, Mark knew he was in pain. “But Braden, starting with the M and M reports from Kelly’s file, had followed the same paper trail you were on, reached the same conclusion you did, and realized he had his own scapegoat. He spurred Melanie on to kill you even sooner, intending to set her up as Kelly’s murderer, all part of his master plan to wipe out anyone who could expose him.” Mark glanced up from the flowchart and regarded its author. “Is that it?”
“That’s it,” said Earl.
Mark considered the idea. It seemed straightforward enough, but something niggled at him. “Wouldn’t it have been safer for Braden to just stand back – let Melanie carry out her plan to finish you off and make you the fall guy? Kelly’s murder would still be closed, unofficially maybe, but no one would be looking anymore.”
Earl smiled at him. It seemed forced. “Because serving up a proven serial killer as Kelly’s murderer would be a lot more convincing than leaving people shocked and incredulous that I’d done it. Hell, over the years I’ve even heard rumors that some people call me Goody Two-shoes Garnet behind my back.”
In spite of everything, Mark chuckled.
“He needed a definitive scapegoat,” Earl continued, “and he needed it now, the more sensational the better. Otherwise, he couldn’t hope to pawn off what he’d set up for you and Lucy as the freak accident he intended everyone to take it as. The same went for the explosion at Nell’s. Even then some people would still be suspicious, but there’d be no proof of foul play, and the flaming fact of Melanie Collins being in all the headlines, murderess extraordinaire that Charles Braden had helped bring to justice, would blunt whatever a few naysayers might mutter to each other. Hell, if you hadn’t played it smart and resisted going body-hunting last night, he might have gotten away with it.”
Mark’s face went warm.
Instantly Earl’s expression changed. “Sorry, Mark. I never meant to imply Lucy-”
“It’s all right,” Mark said. “If you hadn’t told me to play it smart, I might have gone out there with her. I owe you my life for that, and whatever chance Lucy has.” But if he hadn’t let what Earl said stir up his own suspicions about her, Lucy might not have gone at all. Instead, she’d probably sensed those doubts, and felt the need to prove herself trustworthy to him. Mark’s instincts knew this about her as surely as she now lay on total life support twelve floors below with a coma score of three, equal to Bessie McDonald’s.
“Get back to Lucy, Mark,” Earl said. “Above all, don’t lose hope. The recoveries from hypothermia these days can be nothing short of miraculous.”
He tried not to show that he knew Earl had half-lied to him. Mark had already gone on MedLine, as soon as he’d gotten Lucy settled in ICU, and checked the literature, confirming what he’d already known. Success stories about hypothermia were based on single best cases. The over-all statistics were grim, especially for adults. He nodded, and turned to leave.
“And talk to her, Mark,” Earl called after him. “Leave tinkering with her biochemistry to others. Every minute you’re at her side, talk to her.”
That made him pause. “What good will that do?”
“She’ll hear you. I’m certain of it. Talk to her and help bring her back.”
As he hurriedly returned to ICU he thought, sometimes even bossy people who treated him like an intern could give good advice.
Ten days later, Tuesday,
December 4, 10:00 A.M.
Seminar Room, Fifteen East,
New York City Hospital
Mark glanced at the faces of everyone in the room from where he sat at the head of the long table. Nearly all the people whom he’d invited had arrived.
But he quickly turned his attention back to Lucy, who sat at his side. She’d been given permission to get out of bed for the proceedings, though still in a hospital gown and tethered to an IV pole. “Just in case,” her doctors had said in the ominous shorthand physicians use with each other.
“Don’t look so glum, Mark,” she told him. “You and I both know the score. I’m fine.”
Yes. He knew the score. She had already beaten incredibly long odds. She’d been in a coma for three days. From what she remembered before going in the water, Mark estimated her submersion time had been ten minutes. When Dan and the air ambulance arrived, he had been in the well giving her mouth-to-mouth ten minutes more, though at the time it felt much longer. Even now her myocardium could overreact to the electrical impulses of its own conduction system and fly into overdrive. PAT, atrial fibrillation, ventricular tachycardia – everything Earl had had to watch out for – could now be hers, including the possibility of cardiac arrest.
“I’ve made it over the hard part, right?” she cheerfully insisted, reaching over and patting his hand as if he were the patient.
“Absolutely,” he said, forcing himself to give a delighted smile. Still, her condition worried him.
Earl himself, a few seats away, looked gaunt, his cheeks and eyes sunken from the ordeal of his infection. Cleared to go home later today, he’d be leaving fifteen pounds lighter, but with kidneys, pancreas, and brain intact. Janet leaned close to him, her hand resting protectively on his arm. A suitcase stood at the leg of his chair.
Opposite Janet, Dan Evans reclined comfortably, a slight smile on his face. It had been there for the last week and a half. He’d been the center of attention for every paper, news reporter, and talk show in Saratoga Springs, and one headline in the New York Herald read: Country sheriff and small-town coroner crack murder that stumped the NYPD for twenty-seven years. Mark had gladly let him make all the public appearances and deal with the media, Lucy being his sole concern.
A woman occupied the seat to Dan’s right. She had come forward in response to all the media coverage. In her late twenties, she wore a stylish gray business suit and had black hair drawn back into a single long braid. From time to time she’d laugh at something Dan said and touch his arm. Dan’s smile would widen, the way it usually did when someone appreciated one of his jokes. Mark had never met her before, but instantly recognized her voice when Dan introduced her.
Beside her sat Tanya Wozcek, dressed in jeans, opposite Dr. Roy, in whites as always.
Hunched over by himself a few places away, Detective William Everett, pasty-faced and sullen, played with a paper clip.
There were two no-shows – Walter and Samantha McShane.
Mark had expected as much since this wouldn’t be all about Samantha.
The one whose presence surprised everyone – Chaz Braden – occupied the far end of the table. Mark hadn’t faced the man since they’d hauled him off his father in the coffee shop. But he looked different somehow. The circles under his eyes sagged less heavily, but the change seemed more substantial than that. He possessed a steadiness in his gaze and a stillness in the way he sat that Mark didn’t remember seeing before.
Time to get under way. He snapped on the portable tape recorder he’d brought with him and placed it on the table. “Thank you for coming everyone. I remind you that what is discussed here must remain confidential, and it will be entered as part of my final report on the murder of Kelly McShane. I’ve already talked to you individually and gone over what each of you knows. I’ve also collaborated with my colleagues, Sheriff Dan Evans and Dr. Earl Garnet, to piece together the findings. What we ended up with is a story of murder and how trying to find out old secrets uncovered a trove of current ones. This meeting will give all of you a chance to correct any omissions or errors. I caution that for some, the testimony will be painful.”
He paused and glanced around at his audience, paying particular attention to Chaz. No signs of anger. So far so good. “Dr. Garnet will begin.”
Earl leaned forward, clasped his hands on the table, and looked around him with the easy assurance of a man used to addressing large groups.
“As most of you have seen in the media, I met with Kelly on the eve of her disappearance. While she had already confided in me her intent to end her marriage and drop out of sight, she kept the specifics of her plans private, other than mentioning she had some matters to take care of first. Such secrecy you may find strange, but she didn’t want me or any of her friends to search for her, in case we unwittingly gave away her hiding place.”
Prior to the meeting, Earl had indicated a willingness, albeit reluctantly, to explain his relationship to Kelly for the record, “So as to avoid any claims later that I’ve been less than forthright. Otherwise, some idiot’s liable to say I compromised the credibility of the whole inquiry by covering up my own role in what happened.”
“Don’t feel obliged to bring it up unless someone else does,” Mark had advised. “But anybody who can read a newspaper has already guessed the truth.”
Nevertheless, Earl paused, giving his audience every chance to question him, his gaze tactfully fixed on Janet, presumably to avoid the appearance of trying to stare down whoever might feel inclined to request that he tell all.
Janet gave him a smile of encouragement, as if whatever he had to say would be all right with her.
Chaz seemed to be holding his breath.
No takers.
“So despite her furtiveness, what do we know about Kelly’s actions on the last day of her life?” Earl continued. “Direct testimony gave us some leads, we deduced a great deal more from the evidence we gathered, and speculation will have to fill in the gaps.” He glanced toward Chaz. “One of those ‘matters’ she mentioned, we subsequently learned, involved a confrontation with her husband, Dr. Charles Braden IV, when she announced her intention to leave him. The encounter occurred in the street outside his office.”
Chaz didn’t so much as flinch an eyebrow at the disclosure. He’d been the source of this information, including it in his statement to the police. Everett then passed it along to Mark as a professional courtesy.
“By our investigation of phone records for that day we were also able to determine she’d made a call to Charles Braden III at his maternity center in Saratoga. Presumably at the time he convinced her to come and meet with him in the evening. She did, and, we think, confronted him about the irregularities in his statistics for the facility, specifically the impossibly low number of newborns with congenital defects.”
There’d been no statement out of Charles since his arrest other than asserting his right to remain silent. The only information Everett had been able to provide about him – “The son of a bitch sure looks good in an orange jumpsuit.”
“We also think it’s safe to assume that Kelly did not leave New York without confronting Melanie Collins…”
Earl went on to recount the saga of the digoxin toxicity cases.
Confront your fears, went the pop jargon, Mark thought, half-listening to the familiar account. Yet here a woman who’d run from confrontation all her life finally stood her ground, and got killed for it.
“… Knowing Kelly, however, my own opinion is that she probably intended to give Melanie the chance to do the right thing by turning herself in, and hadn’t told anyone the full extent of her suspicions. If she had confided in somebody, it most likely would have been to Dr. Cam Roper, Mark’s father and her mentor. But if he’d known the whole story, wouldn’t he have acted on it after Kelly disappeared? Instead, I think she may have only asked his opinion on the files, without naming the culprit, but promising to take care of the problem before her departure. When no headlines to that effect appeared, I think Cam Roper tried to check it out himself, following the same paper trail I did and going after the original charts. Except he never got a chance to finish…”
Mark had gone very still at the mention of his dad. Ironically, he’d talked to Lucy a lot about him as he kept a vigil at her side, not sure if she could hear but driven to try and reach her. And as he talked, he eventually admitted what he hadn’t been able to face before. That in seeking justice for Kelly, he might also be tracking his father’s killer.
“… However, Melanie Collins’s suicide means we will never know for certain what happened between her and Kelly on that day.” Earl looked over at Dan. “Sheriff Evans will now outline the reason Kelly, and possibly Dr. Cam Roper, were killed.”
Dan reflexively looked toward the end of the table where Chaz remained motionless, face calm, eyes steady.
Mark couldn’t tell for sure, but Chaz seemed to give Dan a nod to proceed.
Dan nevertheless took a few seconds to scan some notes that he had in front of him. “I’ve spent the last week taking statements from the bankers, family solicitors, and tax accountants who have managed the Braden fortune for years. It seems they would rather testify under oath than be considered in cahoots with Braden Senior. I also took statements from families whose babies he delivered in his Saratoga maternity center. And have contacted at least twenty orphanages. It soon became abundantly clear that Charles Braden III did what he did for money, pure and simple.” He stopped and took a sip from a bottle of water he’d brought with him.
Mark could tell he was nervous.
“In the midfifties, stock market reversals and heavy inheritance taxes on Charles Braden’s various properties put him in a precarious financial position. I won’t go into the details of how he reversed this situation, but in short, he exchanged healthy babies for deformed ones at twenty-thousand dollars a child, for a total of three and a half million, tax free, over twenty years. In most cases only the fathers knew, and the only crime committed by them had been to forge the mothers’ names placing the babies for adoption. So far I’ve managed to turn up records of 171 children with congenital defects that Braden placed in orphanages throughout the state during that period, and I still have several more institutions to check.” He paused, and slid Mark a glance this time. “There were no smotherings. I think he created that rumor himself, to make any accusations against him seem over the top and therefore unbelievable. But as Dr. Roper will now explain, there were bodies.”
Mark jumped right in. “Some of these infants were bound to die in transport. Not many, but more than the mortality rate for healthy newborns at the time. While it would be possible to explain live deformed infants to state authorities with incomplete documents, dead ones were another matter. Those, I believe, he did bury on the grounds of the home, probably no more than three or four. Sheriff Evans found a few locals who remember him finally finishing off the lawn after shutting the place down, replacing a few truckloads of topsoil and bringing in a complete order of sod, something he never managed to do while the place was in business.”
He cast his stare the length of the table at Chaz. “So why did Charles Braden III kill in 1974? Even if his baby racket were found out, he wouldn’t have been guilty of murder at that point. And if manslaughter charges were laid against him for the few infants who perished, I doubt any court would have convicted him since those newborns might not have survived anyway. But he most certainly would have been ruined, professionally and financially, and probably gone to jail – income tax evasion figuring prominently in the charges. For that reason, he murdered Kelly, and, most likely, my father.”
The room had fallen silent.
Chaz didn’t avert his gaze, but looked desolate, as if his mind were in some private wasteland.
Mark, feeling a sudden urge to move, pushed out of his chair and started to pace. “After closing both the maternity center and the home, Charles Braden III confined himself to legitimate medicine and research, carving out a distinguished career over several decades. He also prospered in the business world. The Manhattan corporate elite who were beholden to him for healthy offspring rewarded him with appointments to their boards of directors and offered him stock options, further increasing his wealth and prestige.
“Charles realized, however, that he was still vulnerable, that his baby swapping and tax evasion could still catch up with him through something as simple as incidental blood work prior to a surgical procedure on any of the substituted children. Some of the fathers Braden conspired with have come forward and given us valuable testimony about the measures he took to prevent that from happening. Like the family accountants Sheriff Evans mentioned before, these men didn’t know they’d been in league with a murderer and were just as eager to distance themselves from him by coming clean. ‘Charles warned me that should the daughter he’d given us ever require an operation and undergo blood typing, an alert doctor with access to the rest of our family’s medical files might spot that she couldn’t be progeny of me or my wife,’ one of these men told me. ‘So he instructed me that should any serious health issue arise requiring a possible transfusion, I should let him recommend a specialist who had never cared for me or the rest of my family.’ I heard this story over and over.
“Obviously, the issue could be managed easily while these individuals were young and, odds were, healthy enough that they wouldn’t fall sick with a serious illness anyway. Once they grew old enough to leave the nest, those who moved away were no longer a problem, their medical files now far from those of siblings and parents.
“For the ones who stayed in Manhattan, Braden, under the guise of providing the best care, referred them only to doctors who had contracts with labs that were part of the Braden business empire. Why? Another of these dads explained, ‘As early as the late eighties, when DNA testing first began to have forensic and commercial applications, Charles anticipated that sooner or later genetic screening for abnormal genes might become a routine part of medicine. When that happened, he wanted to be in a position to flag and intercept any test results that reported my son wasn’t our biological offspring.’ Others told a variation of the same story, all of them painting a picture of Charles Braden being smug in the certainty that he’d taken account of all eventualities.
“So for twenty-seven years he believed that he had successfully covered up his crimes and gotten away with murder. I can only speculate as to his thoughts at the time we discovered Kelly’s body. As you may have guessed, Charles himself isn’t telling us anything. But his initial actions suggested a willingness to let the current investigation run its course. Probably he expected it would come to a dead end, exactly as it had twenty-seven years ago. My poking around evoked little more on his part than a few subtle attempts to misdirect suspicion toward Kelly’s mother, Samantha McShane, and organizing a break-in at my house – his henchmen gave statements that he’d demanded they place the tap on my phone and get copies of my father’s file on Kelly.
“Even when Charles saw those papers, including a letter from Kelly that implied she’d been having an affair, his plan of action appeared limited to finding a fall guy on whom he could pin the murder. According to those same henchmen, their only instructions at the time involved monitoring my calls and keeping an eye on me in the hope I’d discover the identity of Kelly’s lover. Again, a careful, shrewd approach, calling for subterfuge rather than violence. And as soon as he rooted out the secret behind the mortality-morbidity reports, he had an even better scapegoat at hand in Melanie Collins. So why would a man supposedly intent on a nuanced, sophisticated strategy to conceal the truth once more resort to the clumsy art of murder?”
He glanced toward the woman sitting beside Dan. “Talk of killing, Braden’s thugs told us, came only after Charles listened in on the last phone conversation I had with Victor Feldt.” For those who didn’t know, Mark quickly outlined the events leading up to Victor’s firing and followed them through to the fateful call. “Victor couldn’t unravel all the corporate layers that we now know were Charles Braden’s doing to keep his role as CEO from becoming public knowledge. And what Victor thought he’d found – hiring and firing irregularities at companies where the executive health plans subjected employees to genetic screening – had nothing directly to do with Braden. It was Victor’s interest in the few dozen New York physicians who used the lab for their private patients that meant trouble for him. For here Victor drew perilously close to the very pieces of evidence that Braden knew would reach back over twenty-seven years and point at his baby-swapping business.
“So when Victor later left me a message, stating that he’d hacked into the computer where the results sent to those New York doctors were stored and found something peculiar, well…”
He had to stop and compose himself. “Tragically, I didn’t realize the danger he’d put himself in until it was too late. But thanks to a very special friend and colleague of Victor’s, who came forward with the files he’d entrusted to her, I finally pulled everything together.”
Dan’s dark-haired companion flushed deeply.
Mark opened a briefcase at his feet and pulled out three folders. From each he took out several lab reports that included graphs with numbered vertical spikes of varying heights along a horizontal line. “For those of you who are interested, these are the results Victor found.” He stood and spread them over the table.
Roy and a few others picked them up, studying them with puzzled expressions.
“You’re looking at genetic screening on three pairs of sisters, all with a positive family history for breast cancer. To a trained eye, differences in the DNA reveal that none of them are biological siblings – Braden’s prediction that the coming age of genomic medicine would mean a whole new level of headache for him made manifest. And over time, as more of the individuals he’d substituted underwent screening for one reason or another, there’d be increasing disclosures of nonsiblings, all involving so-called offspring whom Charles had supposedly delivered. Obviously, he couldn’t allow that to happen.”
“Were these other doctors in cahoots with his cover-up?” Roy asked, laying aside the graph he’d been studying.
“No, they were unwitting dupes.”
“Didn’t they miss the reports Braden intercepted?”
“Oh, they got a report. Braden’s flagging these results was part of a program where the computer would then generate simple typewritten responses stating whether the genes that had been tested for were present or not, then eliminate the graphs. We checked the other labs he owned and found similar systems in place. The doctors weren’t aware they’d missed anything. Most only want the final answer of a test anyway – less paper.”
“Why did they all use his labs in the first place?”
“As one of them said to me, ‘We didn’t know they were owned by Braden. Representatives approached us offering first-rate, competent service at a special price, then delivered – an offer too good to refuse.’ ”
Mark waited for more questions. No one had any. He glanced once more toward the end of the table. Chaz retained the quiet equilibrium Mark had noticed at the start of the meeting. Maybe witnessing a public dissection of his father’s crimes would help him get out from under the weight of the old man’s legacy. In fact, maybe it had already started to happen, and that’s what seemed different about him.
Mark knew that he should now state for the record the events leading to Victor’s death: That Charles Braden III, having learned Victor gave Lucy O’Connor a tour of the genetic-screening facility, must have seen her as a special threat. That Charles knew she already suspected he had something to hide about the home for unwed mothers because of all the records he’d so conveniently lost in a fire there. That finding her nosing around the laboratory, he probably jumped to conclusions. Assumed that she’d somehow found out about the screening results. Mistakenly concluded that she knew they would unmask his secret and had set out to get her hands on them.
So Charles cut off her access to the place by having Victor fired.
Then Victor found the reports, and paid with his life.
But looking at Lucy’s frail face, Mark hadn’t the heart to make her hear those words.
Wednesday, December 5, 4:00 P.M.
Hampton Junction
Mark turned left at the end of his driveway and settled into an easy stride. He hadn’t had a decent run since Lucy went into hospital. The air in Manhattan saw to that.
Dusk hung over the hills, the sun already behind them, and the late-afternoon light had a blue quality to it, typical for the end of day during the weeks leading up to winter’s longest night. In the distance toward town he saw tiny clusters of reds, greens, and amber where people had already hung their outside decorations. He smiled, having just dug out of the basement tree lights and ornaments that he hadn’t bothered with since Aunt Margaret died. The boxes lay stacked in the living room, ready for the weekend. That’s when Lucy would be discharged from hospital, an early release into his care.
His house would soon be a busy place. Lucy’s parents and brothers were coming for the holidays. It had been impossible to reach any of them until she’d recovered enough to provide e-mail addresses. They’d literally been scattered all over the globe, and all were ready to run to her side the instant he reached them, but Lucy insisted they hold off until the holidays, “Now that the worst is over.”
Mark turned west onto the uphill portion of his route. Traces of wood-smoke wafted through the twilight.
Lucy and he had discussed other plans as well. Again he smiled. As things stood, she would join him in Hampton Junction when her residency ended in June.
“Wonderful,” Janet Graceton had said when, as they made their good-byes after the meeting yesterday.
Earl had asked, “So what are you two going to do?” and Lucy told him. He couldn’t have looked happier for them, or congratulated them more enthusiastically.
Janet had chuckled. “Two doctors living under one roof? Believe me, it’s a hoot making that work.” She gave Lucy a hug. “If you need any advice, call me.”
He increased his speed, making his calves burn.
This morning he’d visited Nell in Saratoga General, the first time he’d seen her since that terrible night.
She’d been off the respirator for over a week, and her skin, though it had blistered here and there, confirming his initial impression of first- and second-degree burns, bore none of the deeper, third-degree damage that he’d hoped she would be spared. Most important, she escaped the need for painful skin grafts entirely.
Even with the upper side of her body still swathed in protective dressings, she’d managed to look indignant when he showed up, giving a haughty sniff. “Look at me. I’m done up like some a damned mummy.”
“Not for long, Nell. The nurses tell me you’ll be out of here in another week and a half – off to stay with your daughter in Florida.”
“Christmas in Florida! There’s no snow!” she’d huffed, and tried to stay annoyed, but couldn’t hide an upward flicker at the unbandaged corner of her mouth.
“I guess you’ve read and seen on TV all that happened.”
“Some.”
“Tell me, Nell, when you said you had come up with some other tidbits and a name related to Kelly’s murder, was that just a come-on to get me out to your place?”
Her icy silence had told him he’d hit the truth.
“You want to hear the inside stuff the media didn’t get?” he’d asked, trying to warm things up between them again.
The flicker at the side of her mouth had shot north for a second, and her eyes showed interest, but she just as quickly continued to look cross. “Don’t think tempting me with that sort of thing makes us even. I’m still mad at you.”
“For saving your life?”
“For putting that tube into me.”
“Same thing.”
She glared at him. “You think you’re so smart.”
“Well, if you don’t want me to tell you the good stuff, or about what’s happening with Lucy and me-”
“What about Lucy and you?”
He’d told her. All about Lucy. Including where she’d been born.
She’d studied him in silence almost a full minute when he finished.
“And you say the mother registered under a false name, but had a red file?”
“That’s right. And the year would be 1969, the date, March 7.”
She’d studied him some more.
“You think I might be able to figure out who it is?”
He’d nodded.
From the way her gaze had suddenly intensified, he could tell the wheels were already turning. “Perhaps it would help if you saw her. There might be a physical resemblance,” he added.
That had evoked a completely unchecked smile of delight.
He passed the place in the highway where he’d rammed Braden’s killers. Minutes later he put the gate to the home behind him. The landmarks had made him tense up inside.
Up ahead stretched open road, steeper, but unencumbered with any bad memories. He picked up the pace and felt himself relax. He got into the familiar rhythm of his body adapting to the change in grade and let it carry him along.
Time would expunge the hold that place had on him. Just as other memories would no longer encumber him. He felt certain of that.
Mark started to sprint, and soon found himself thinking of the wonderful things that lay in store rather than the past. His feet seemed to glide over the gray pavement, and a full moon peeked up over the horizon. Running straight at it, he headed for the summit, grinning all the way.