Having notified hospital security and Kathy of Ted Tanarkle's fatal plunge, David paced about the Hole awaiting the arrival of the usual investigative unit. Earlier, he had suggested to a shaken Foster that he retreat to his office-that he would be contacted shortly.
Now what? Has Victor Spritz neared his goal of eliminating the entire EMS oversight committee: Bugles, Coughlin, and now, Tanarkle? That leaves Alton Foster.
Like in a dream, he heard Belle's questions echoing in the background. And further behind, the panicky voice of the page operator. But David was in an impenetrable zone, seized by an obsession that he was in over his head. In over his head and down in the Hole, a two-bit command post whose dank smell told him he was below ground. And now there was to be an investigation of another fiendish crime, this time sixty feet away. They're getting closer.
He shuddered. It's happening. It's what you wanted, isn't it, baptism under fire? Fire? You mean a goddamned raging inferno. It could make you hard-boiled. So shape up, David, and be hard-boiled!
Kathy came in. She rose on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. He felt placated by the aroma of her presence. "Here we go again," she said.
"Are the same people here?"
"Same people."
"Mind if I listen in," Belle said, "so I know what's going on?"
David stared at her for a moment. "Belle-sorry, Ted Tanarkle's been killed. He either fell or was pushed down the elevator shaft." He pictured the control room and corrected himself: "Pushed."
"Oh, no!" Belle exclaimed. She exhaled loudly. "Where? Which elevator?"
"Around the corner."
David gave Kathy the details of the past half-hour, concluding with what he discovered in the control room. He saw Belle dabbing the corners of her eyes, something he was certain she hadn't done after she learned of the other murders.
"The bastard got into the machine room over there and rigged the controls so that when Ted pushed the button upstairs, the door there opened but the car stayed down here. You know, I just can't imagine an observant guy like him not noticing the floor dial, or even worse, walking into an open space. Either he was distracted or pushed."
"Ugh," Kathy grunted.
"Okay if I don't join you and the team next door?" David said. "Foster's upstairs and I want to clear some things before they settle out."
"We'll go up afterward," Kathy said.
"And then, I'm looking for Spritz. He's turned into a loner-a frigging disappeared loner. If you run into him, call me, will you?"
Kathy nodded. "David." She beckoned him aside. "Nick says we have to step up our involvement. Says we've got a damn serial killer on our hands."
"Big revelation."
"You know what he means. People can be on our butts more than on yours."
David checked to see if Belle was watching before scooping up the unaware detective. "You can be on my butt any time you want," he whispered.
Kathy pulled away. "David! This is serious. Even the hospital unions called. And now, after this, everyone and his uncle will demand the impossible. Like bring in the killer in an hour."
"Sony." And he was, after rationalizing he had permitted himself a moment of therapeutic giddiness. "But, shouldn't that be `his or her uncle or aunt'?" David asked with a straight face.
Kathy peered down her nose and gave him a dismissive gesture.
Although David couldn't resist the quip, he scolded himself for compounding inappropriate and indelicate behavior. Idiot! He was your friend and mentor.
Before leaving, he handed Kathy an envelope containing the adhesive strip from the control room. "Could you give this to Sparky? Calling card. I'll explain later. Thanks."
David paraded the length of the building to the front elevators, rode to the sixth floor and doubled back to Foster's office suite. Now there's police officialdom to contend with. So we bump into each other. But maybe not; it's not as if they haven't been working the cases from the git-go. Okay, then, last one across the finish line's a rotten egg!
Foster's secretary was not there so he assumed she was on a coffee break-it was ten a.m. He barged into the administrator's office and found him standing at his desk, sorting through some letters which he fumbled to the floor. For the first time since Bugles' murder, David realized Foster had switched from sport jackets and slacks to more formal suits. This morning, he was in shirtsleeves and open vest. His coat lay slung on a table between a lamp and several overturned portraits.
"I didn't mean to frighten you, Alton."
"Who's frightened?" Foster said, stooping for the letters. "This institution is merely crumbling around us."
David sat stiffly on a chair before the desk, directly in line with threads of sunlight pouring through a venetian blind.
"Here, let me get that," Foster said.
"No problem," David said, moving the chair. "A few stripes of light on a black day. Black Day at Hollings General."
"Sounds like a murder mystery."
"Then how's Murders at Hollings General?"
"Jesus! Murder! What did we do to deserve this?" Foster said. He sat behind his desk and stared vacantly into space.
David took out his pad. "Alton, I have some questions." He didn't wait for a response. "When Ted came here, what did he want?"
"He handed me his resignation."
David's head snapped up. "His-his resignation?"
"That's right. I have no idea why. I tried to talk him out of it but he wouldn't listen. He left in kind of a huff."
"Yes, I know," David said, laying a finger across his lips. "I could hear some of the conversation. And then you followed him out?"
"Yes, but not immediately. I waited a second or two, hoping he'd come back."
"I see. And the door. Your back door there. Why was it locked?"
"Locked? But, I left it open for you."
"I tried it, Alton. It was locked."
"Well, I don't know. It must have blown shut. It does that sometimes. I should have made sure it was kept unlocked. I don't think I did, come to think of it. "
David didn't stop writing as he asked the next question. "Now, when you got to the elevator, you said you saw the exit door closing."
"Yes, I'm absolutely certain someone had just gone through it. But I didn't have the presence of mind to look. David, I was so shook by the whole thing. It happened so fast."
"And you didn't see Ted fall, right?"
"Right."
"You're sure?"
Foster's face darkened. "Yes, I'm sure. Are you suggesting …?"
"I'm not suggesting anything," David shot back, aware he'd stepped on words again. But he didn't care.
"I got there and it was too late. What more can I tell you?" Foster said.
"Fine. That's your story and I've got it written here."
"David, for Pete's sake!"
"One last quickie, Alton. Did Ted drop in on you or had he called ahead?"
"He called ahead."
"How far ahead?"
"Oh, maybe half an hour. What's that got to do with anything?"
"Curious, that's all."
David read over his last few lines and got up to leave. "That's it for now. I think you may have to go through the same thing with the police. Don't take it personally but you were the last person to see Ted alive."
Foster tensed his jaw. "Me or the guy who went out the door."
"Yeah, that's true," David said. "Him or you. By the way, have you seen Victor Spritz anywhere?"
"No, and he's not in his office. I already checked. His second banana is running the EMS scene and I'm worried about that, too. He's not very reliable."
"I'm afraid there's more to worry about than EMS ambulance dispatches," David said, closing his notepad. "As important as they are."
In the moments between Foster's office and his secretary's desk, David thought: Screw it, this is hardball. Hard-boiled in hardball. So? Let him take the Hole away from me-if he's not on death row.
The secretary had returned. David said, "The scream I'm sure you heard … "
This time, his words were stepped on. "Dr. Brooks, I hope I never hear anything like that again. Never, for the rest of my life."
"I understand, but can you remember whether the scream came before or after Mr. Foster passed you?"
The secretary pointed to spots in the air before her. "After. Yes, after."
"And, how long had you been at your desk?"
"I usually arrive at about quarter-to-nine."
"From the time you arrived until the tragedy occurred, did you have occasion to see Mr. Foster, other than when he passed you?"
"No."
"Or talk to him on the intercom?"
"No."
"Does he ever leave out the back door without letting you know?"
"Oh, please. More often than not."
David was about to pursue the issue when his cellular phone vibrated. It was Belle.
"Guess who's just been admitted to ICU-came in through the E.R."
"Christ, what now? Who?"
"The Bugles kid."
"Robert? What happened?"
"Somebody knocked him around, apparently. He's in pretty bad shape."
David waved off Foster's secretary who had pointed to the coffee maker. "Is he conscious, do you know?" "The E.R. says just barely."
"I'm going over. Then I'd better join the gang downstairs. I can't believe all this."
He thanked Foster's secretary with a thrust of Friday in her direction and hurried to the Surgical Intensive Care Unit.
He entered the central control station, a long exposed area separated from the corridor by a workbench laden with stacks of manuals and requisition slip trays and strewn with metal-covered patient charts. Behind the bench, a nurse sat before a counter attached to the full length of the monitoring wall. Making notations, she scanned the rows of EKG tracings and vital sign windows, once nodding to a specific panel to indicate to another nurse that its corresponding room needed checking.
David hadn't visited ICU since his full-time days, and he thought that the ambient technology was louder than he remembered-the buzzes, the rings, the snaps; and that the odors were more prickly-the antiseptics, the detergents, the hydrocarbons. Once again, he imagined he smelled ether there but knew ether was no longer used.
He greeted the staff huddled around a portable chart rack as one of four green-clad residents led a case discussion among students in short white jackets whose side pockets bulged with small manuals, tourniquets and lab slips. An older gentleman in grey slacks and green blazer leaned against the wall. David recognized him as an attending surgeon and the session as the obligatory and hallowed "rounds."
"How's the Bugles boy?" he whispered to the head nurse.
"Just came in from Imaging, Dr. Brooks. They said his MRI's okay. He's a little groggy but knows where he is. He's down in 520. Madeleine Curry's with him. She's `on float' and we grabbed her."
"Thanks, Annie. Good to see you again."
David proceeded quietly down an endless corridor, past rooms with curtains open or half-drawn or fully drawn; past patients artificially ventilated; patients invaded by drainage tubing; patients immobilized for fractured extremities, their legs and arms yielding to weights and pulleys and strange angles; cocooned skulls; moans and groans and sobs.
Room 520 was the next to last. David paused at the doorway.
"Hi, Madeleine, fancy meeting you here," he said softly. "The last I heard, you were a fixture on Men's Surge." She was blonde, full-figured, too sultry for her profession, and known for her scorching eye contacts.
"David! What have you been doing with yourself? Oh, wait, I take that back. It's house calls and that other love of yours, right?" She arose slowly from a chair, carefully closed the patient's chart and sashayed toward the door. One would have expected Madeleine, a little bird of a woman, to have been given to quicker movements. She raised up and David kissed her forehead, and, for a moment, her perfumed fragrance brought him back to the sizzle of the old days.
"Only the other love-and I assume you mean detective work," David stressed.
"What else would I … oh, I see, and then there's Kathy. Well that's a given, isn't it?" Her one-shouldered shrug connoted indifference tinged with contempt.
David squelched a frown, yet believed there was no subtext to the question. He left it unanswered.
Another of David's old flames, Madeleine had been one of his youngest and had made no bones about her displeasure at being cut off once Kathy reentered the picture. He still believed her sassiness enhanced her sex appeal but he felt now, more than before, that both were anathema to a hospital setting, particularly an intensive care unit. Besides, there were more pressing matters at hand, so he allowed the corners of his lips to turn up in a conciliatory smile.
David approached Robert who lay propped in bed between a sitting and supine position. His eyes were closed, the left a beefy lump, its lashes partly inverted. Dried blood caked his forehead and nostrils, and a padded bandage covered his left temple and ear.
"Robert, it's me, Dr. Brooks." David reached down to enclose Robert's crossed hands in one of his own, leaving it there.
Robert's right eye struggled open as the left side of his face creased and contorted upward.
"Don't try to open the other eye," David said. "You're going to be all right but you've got to rest it off."
Robert inched his head in David's direction and, prying his lips apart, mumbled, "Hello, Dr. Brooks."
"Who did this to you, Robert?"
Robert's eye appeared to blink uncontrollably. "My brother." He coughed and swallowed hard. "He got … mad. He, he … got … mad."
"Why?"
"I let you in … dad's place." Robert's eye clamped shut and tears seeped over his cheeks. Madeleine plucked a Kleenex from the box on the nightstand and dried the tears.
"That's enough," David said, gently squeezing Robert's hands. "You rest, now." As an afterthought, he added in a lower voice, "Too bad you weren't better trained to defend yourself." He immediately regretted the statement, or at least making it at the wrong time. But he wasn't sure Robert even heard it.
David backed up a few steps before turning to leave. Although it had crossed his mind, he judged it best not to inquire about Madeleine's personal life for fear of resurrecting talk of their schism years before.
On the way to the elevator shaft in the basement, he puzzled over the attack and its ramifications. Questions came at him like ticker tape. What does Bernie know? Foster's medical training? The shipments? Whatever from wherever. Istanbul? Is Bernie in on it? And, didn't Robert say his brother was in Tokyo? What's going on there?
David found the usual crew milling around the elevator and control room area. Sparky flitted about taking photographs. The hospital's security force of a half-dozen was there, and uniformed officers stood mute and soldierly at each end of the hall. A sheet covered Tanarkle's corpse.
Kathy and Nick emerged from the control room and David motioned them aside.
"Foster's all yours," he said, "and did you hear about Robert Bugles' beating?"
"When did it happen?" Nick asked in a matter-of-fact tone, drowning out Kathy's gasp.
"This morning. I just saw him in ICU. He's got some superficial contusions and abrasions. They'll probably keep him overnight as a precaution, but he should be all right." David thought Nick looked somber.
"Who did it?" Kathy asked. "Were you able to talk to him?"
"Yeah, and he said it was his brother, Bernie. We should bring him in. He was supposed to be in Tokyo but apparently he's around."
"He's always supposed to be in Tokyo," Nick said.
The comment convinced David that Nick was more involved in the murder investigations than had been let on.
"And while we're at it," David said, "anyone know where Spritz is? He's got to be questioned, too." He didn't want to stare at Nick, instead alternating his gaze between him and Kathy, disguising his greater interest in the reaction of the Chief Detective.
Nick hurriedly left to talk to one of the security guards.
David turned to Kathy. "Something eating him?" he asked.
"It's not you, David, if that's what you're thinking. He's just feeling the pinch. Four murders here in one week. City Hall's on his back. Don't forget he's new to these parts and he's responsible."
"I guess you're right." David put his hands on his hips and looked up and down the hall, and up above the elevator shaft to a point he estimated would coincide with the clock outside. "Four murders here in one week" rung in his ears.
"I hate to sound bossy, Kath, but we've really got to locate those two guys."
She was about to speak when he stepped on her words, adding, "You said I'd have logistic support."
"And you will," Kathy said in a placatory manner. She took a step closer. "Darling," she said, "I know you're feeling the pinch, too, but it'll work out. We'll all keep doing what we've got to do. We've checked Spritz's home and his office, and we talked to his backup and the page operators. No one's seen hide nor hair of him. So we put out an APB."
"And Bernie?" David said, "you have his address in
Manhattan, right? Could we send one of your men down?"
"It's already been decided to do better than that."
"Meaning?"
"Nick wants to stake it out himself."
David knew his face turned to stone and his smile smarted as he responded, "Good, and maybe an APB on Bernie, too."
"You got it," Kathy said.
It took a moment for the stiffness to reach the back of David's neck. "Well," he said, "carry on. Let's contact each other if there's anything to report. Belle wants me at the Hole." It was an excuse to leave.
The Hole was just around the corner and David dragged out getting there to debate the questions that had peaked. Son-of-a-bitch! So, he's stepping things up? That's fine-two can play. Time for his decision scar. First off: Spritz. He's an employee here, right? Where's his file? Most likely in Foster's office. Unannounced is best, remember? No brainer, then. Break into his office later … whoa, how indelicate! Visit his office after hours. If nothing's there-simple-go right to Spritz's home. It worked at Bugles' place, right? In spades.
For a moment, he considered the alternative of simply asking Foster about Spritz's background but decided he didn't want to tip his hand because he hadn't ruled out any scenario, including collusion.
The minute David walked in, Belle held out the phone. "It's for you," she said. Her words sounded sticky. She pressed the phone against her hip and waved her pencil for him to come to the desk. She wrote on a scratch pad, "That same voice!"
"Yes, Dr. Brooks here," he said firmly as he took Belle's chair.
In falsetto, the voice said, "Time for us to get together."
"Say that again," David said.
"I think it's time for us to get together."
"Who is this?"
"That's not important right now. What is important is the news I have for you." Is he reading from a script?
David looked at his watch and scribbled the time on a piece of paper. "What news?"
"Uh-uh. In person."
"You're kidding."
"I mean business, Dr. Brooks."
"Is this about a medical problem?"
"Come now, Dr. Brooks. Don't act stupid. It's about the biggest medical problem the hospital's ever had, and you know it."
David's mind shifted into high gear. "Okay then, Mr.-Mr. Voice. I'll wait for you here at the hospital. I have a little room in the basement near … "
"Recycling Center at six tonight. Come alone."
David heard the click, yet said, "Wait." He hung up the receiver for a split second and then contacted the page operator.
"Helen," he said, "it's me. That call that just came through-did you recognize the voice?"
"Her? No, never heard it before."
"Did she ask for me, or did she give you my extension number?"
"Two-twenty-two: your extension. Everything okay?"
"Yeah, fine. Thanks." David tossed the receiver toward its cradle but missed. He picked it up and replaced it deliberately as he collected his thoughts.
"That bastard is no `she,' he said to Belle. "That's Victor Spritz, sure as I'm sitting here. Oh, sorry-here's your chair back."
"No, thanks, I'm too nervous to sit." She locked two fingers into her other hand.
He got up and swung around to the front edge of the desk. Half-sitting there, his eyes were still square to Belle's. "What do you think?"
She looked bewildered. "Sounded like a fake female … yes … definitely a fake female … God, that's spooky. But what makes you think it's Spritz."
"The cadence. And he knows my extension. But mostly the cadence."
"And he's coming here?"
"No, he said tonight at the Recycling Center."
"There? You going?" Belle gave her own answer. "David, don't. It sounds too dangerous."
"It sounds like a sucker request, Belle, but here's how I figure it. Let's assume he's the killer. Now, he's either sending me on a wild goose chase to take me away from something or someone, or …."
"Like who?"
David ran his hand down behind his ear. "Like Kathy. He knows I'm with her most evenings. Now she'd be exposed."
"To what?"
"I hate to imagine. But, the other possibility-and this from my psychology brain-is that he'll be around there somewhere, to see if I show up."
"He'll take a shot at you, David."
"I don't think so. He's no fool. What's to keep me from bringing backup-I mean circles and circles of backup. If he takes a shot and even misses …."
"Or doesn't," Belle said without missing a beat.
David raised his index finger and paused as if he had lost his train of thought.
"What I mean is-whether he missed me or not, they'd be all over him in a flash. While he's waiting, if he spots backup, what could he do? He has no leverage. There's no one kidnapped he could kill. So, my guess is he'll be well-hidden, out of shooting range, maybe with binoculars to see if I show."
"I don't get it. Why go through all that trouble?"
"As I said, psychology. Sort of a control thing. And speaking of that, sooner or later I was going to see El Shrinko Sam Corliss to check out some hunches about our killer. Now I can include this. Call and see if he can fit me in after lunch today."
"Call in advance? That's not like you."
"No, but those sofa jobs run an hour or more. I'm not about to wait around."
Belle finally sat and began twisting a paper clip. "David," she said, "why go just because he asked you to? You're asking for trouble and what's there to gain?"
"I know, I know. But look at it this way: does he expect me to back off?"
"Who cares?"
"It's important to psychopaths and don't tell me we're not dealing with one here. So, in going, I'm getting into his mind, sending back my own message."
"Which is?"
"That I mean business, too."
Before leaving for the cafeteria, David called Kathy intending to inform her of the phone call. She stated she was going to her mother's for dinner-straight from work. He convinced her to await his arrival there, hopefully at about six-thirty. "I haven't seen your mother in some time." He ended up not mentioning the phone call after all-and his likely visit to the outskirts of town.
Belle had arranged a midafternoon appointment with Dr. Samuel Corliss, Chairman of the hospital's Center for Behavioral Health.
David entered his office in Rosen Hall at precisely three. The small waiting room contained three soft chairs placed equidistant to one another around a triangular table. He avoided them, choosing instead to inspect posters of Paris highlights on each wall, moving quietly so as not to disturb an elderly woman sleeping in one of the chairs. There was no one in the reception area behind a window in one wall until Dr. Corliss, himself, appeared and slid open the glass panel.
"Why, hello!" he said, extending his hand over the counter and shaking David's as if he had returned from a war.
"Hi, Sam, how's it going? Keeping the phobias in check?"
Dr. Corliss laughed. "Come on in, David, come on in," he said.
"But what about …?" David nodded toward the woman.
"Violet? She'll be fine. Always comes an hour too early. I let her keep the compulsion."
Inside, the office was as simple as the waiting room and not much larger: basic leather couch, two recliners, maple desk and high-back chair. Its ivory sidewalls were sprinkled with diplomas, certificates and photographs of class reunions. Paintings of Sigmund Freud and Karl Menninger dominated the wall behind the desk, framing Dr. Corliss as he sat. David sunk in a recliner before the desk, but he kept it upright, feet on the floor, knees higher than his hips.
The psychiatrist looked the part: white beard, pince-nez, frumpy ashen suit that coordinated well with the fluff around his ears. Wrinkles terraced his forehead. A star key medallion dangled from his neck and David, conjecturing it was used as a metronome in hypnosis, determined he would cry foul if he saw it move.
He was still conscious of men's heights: what's going on? Did Foster only hire department chiefs as tall as he is?
"Sam, I'm not sure what Belle said but I'm not here for myself-although the way things are going, the day might come."
"All she did was set up the appointment."
"I'll get right to the point, then. We've had four killings here now …"
"Four? No. Let's see-Bugles and there's what's his-name, Everett Coughlin, from Yonderville across town." He waved contemptuously.
"And Ted Tanarkle."
"Ted? Oh, no! When?"
"This morning. You hadn't heard?"
"No. Poor Ted. What a grand guy."
"Sam, you've been tied up reading too many of your journals. You've got to cut back. Nothing changes in Psychiatry anyway." David corrected himself inwardly: except maybe you, Sam. You seem different.
"Ted Tanarkle?" Corliss appeared transported to the past. He repeated the name, shook his head like a stunned prizefighter clearing away cobwebs and said, "No, actually it's not my journals. It's my caseload. I've been cooped up here since seven this morning and even missed lunch. I'll let you in on something, David." Dr. Corliss pointed to a stack of patient records on. a side table, looked both ways and measured his words: "People are getting crazier-and there are more of them."
David snorted. "Well, we have a case in point here. There's a real loony tunes running around this hospital."
"How did it happen? With Ted, I mean."
"He was on the sixth floor and, moments later, was found lying on top of the car at the bottom of the back elevator shaft. Someone rigged the mechanism."
"Down the shaft? Oh, my! It couldn't have been an accident?"
"Conceivably, but think about it, Sam-the mechanism was rigged. Plus the killer left a message." David revealed the contents of the smeared paper on his windshield the week before and of the tape in the control room. "Now," he added, leaning forward, "and this is why I'm here. What's your read on the kind of person doing this? Hardly your run-of-the-mill miscreant, right?" Hell, David thought, why not "shrink-speak"?
"Hardly. Take the way Charlie Bugles was slaughtered." The psychiatrist spoke deliberately. "Now you tell me about this elevator shaft thing-that took a lot of precision, I would guess. Why didn't our Mr. X just use a gun? He must have had a mental lapse in shooting Coughlin, and that's characteristic of this personality type-inconsistency. Next, we add the notes. That's also characteristic: `Look world, look what I'm about to do,' or `Look what I've done.' He not only kills, but gets a kick out of announcing it in advance or applauding himself afterward. The murder is not sufficient, even if there's real motive. He's compelled to add an unreal touch of the dramatic-an exclamation point, if you will."
David slid to the edge of the recliner. "He knows exactly what he's doing, then?"
"Yes, indeed. In my opinion, these aren't simply random killings. The guy's got motive and diffuse hostility. It's not well-organized like a specific gripe against a specific person or thing. It's diffuse. It's rage. And that's the worst combination: a person with a diffuse hostility who's presented with a motive he can't handle in predictable ways. He feels persecuted and goes bonkers."
David realized he was receiving insights from a man who drew on many years of experience in the behavioral field, insights that coincided with his own tenuous ideas. That's the way it was for him lately: uncertain, everything a battle in his own mind. David needed reinforcement. But also structure. He was getting both from Dr. Corliss.
"Sam, can I ask you about a specific person?"
"You mean some famous cases? The Boston Strangler? Son of Sam? Jack, the Ripper? None of them fits this profile, incidentally."
"No. I mean Victor Spritz."
"Victor Spritz? He's a suspect?"
"I'd have to answer yes, but I'm not sure. You know him as well as I do. What can you say?" David leaned closer. "Better still, has he ever consulted you?"
Dr. Corliss stood and walked to a filing cabinet, draping a thick wrist over its top. "Everything in here is confidential, David. It would be a breach of medical ethics and my conscience, too, to reveal if a person is or is not a patient of mine, whether we discuss the case or not. You see, merely saying so-and-so was a patient gives him a label. A psychiatric label. And I happen to believe that an extension of that ethical canon-if we can call it that-is that it's unconscionable even to say someone has never consulted me. So the way we get around it is-if you're asking whether Spritz has ever seen me professionally, I can say there's no record of him in here." He patted the file cabinet.
"Sam, you're beautiful! Okay, let me ask, then could he fit the mold you described?"
"Without a doubt " The psychiatrist fingered his medallion as David checked for movement. "I've seen Spritz at his worst and, frankly, he scares me. He's either easily triggered into rage reactions or he's got T.E.D."
"T.E.D.?"
"Transient Explosive Disorder. Either way, he should be on medication. I'd love to see his EEG."
Dr. Corliss returned to his chair and, drumming his fingers on the desk, said, "But do you know what? There are plenty of others tottering on that same edge-working right here in this hospital."
"Care to name a few?"
"Now, now. Ethics. Remember-ethics."
For the most part, David had received the information he sought. And as he departed from the psychiatrist's office, he realized what it was that appeared changed in the wizened psychiatrist. He no longer acted like a disgruntled loser as he had the year before in the election for Chief of Staff at Hollings General.