“You should go home, Katzka. You need a hot shower and some chicken soup. That’s my prescription.”
He laughed. It was a surprising sound, one she’d never heard from him before. “Now if I could just find a pharmacy to fill it.” Someone spoke to him. It sounded like another cop, asking about bullet trajectories. Katzka turned to answer the man, then he came back on the line. “I have to go. You sure you’re okay there? You wouldn’t rather stay in a hotel?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Okay.” Again, she heard Katzka sigh. “But I want you to call a locksmith in the morning. Have him install dead bolts on all the doors. Especially if you’re going to be spending a lot of nights home alone.”
“I’ll do that.”
There was a brief silence. He had pressing matters to attend to, yet he seemed reluctant to hang up. At last he said, “I’ll check back with you in the morning.”
“Thanks, Katzka.” She hung up.
Again she paged Mark. Then she lay down on the bed and waited for him to call back. He didn’t.
As the hours passed, she tried to calm her growing fears by tallying up all the possible reasons he wasn’t answering. He could be asleep in one of the hospital call rooms. His beeper could be broken. He could be scrubbed and unavailable in the OR.
Or he could be dead. Like Aaron Levi. Like Kunstler and Hennessy.
She paged him again. And again.
At three A.M., the phone finally rang. In an instant she was wide awake and reaching for the receiver.
“Abby, it’s me.” Mark’s voice crackled on the wire, as though he were calling from across a long distance.
“I’ve been paging you for hours,” she said. “Where are you?”
“I’m in the car, heading to the hospital right now.” He paused. “Abby, we need to talk. Things have . . . changed.”
She said, softly: “Between us, you mean.”
“No. No, this has nothing to do with you. It never did. It has to do with me. You just got sucked into it, Abby. I tried to get them to back off, but now they’ve taken it too far.”
“Who has?”
“The team.”
She was afraid to ask the next question, but she had no choice now. “All of you? You’re all involved?”
“Not anymore.” The connection briefly faded, and she heard what sounded like the whoosh of traffic. His voice regained its volume. “Mohandas and I came to a decision tonight. That’s where I’ve been, at his house. We’ve been talking, comparing notes. Abby, we’re putting our heads on the block. But we decided it’s time to end this. We can’t do it any longer. We’re going to blow this thing wide open, Mohandas and me. And fuck everyone else. Fuck Bayside.” He paused, his voice suddenly breaking. “I’ve been a coward. I’m sorry.”
She closed her eyes. “You knew. All this time you knew.”
“I knew some of it—not all. I had no idea how far Archer was taking it. I didn’t want to know. Then you started asking all those questions. And I couldn’t hide from the truth any longer . . .” He released a deep breath and whispered, “This is going to ruin me, Abby.”
She still had her eyes closed. She could see him in the darkness of his car, one hand on the wheel, the other gripping the cellular phone. Could imagine the misery on his face. And the courage; most of all, the courage.
“I love you,” he whispered.
“Come home, Mark. Please.”
“Not yet. I’m meeting Mohandas at the hospital. We’re going to get those donor records.”
“Do you know where they’re kept?”
“We have an idea. With just two of us, it could take us a while to search all the files. If you helped us out, we might be able to get through them by morning.”
She sat up in bed. “I won’t be getting much sleep tonight anyway. Where are you meeting Mohandas?”
“Medical Records. He has the key.” Mark hesitated. “Are you sure you want to be in on this, Abby?”
“I want to be wherever you are. We’ll do this together. Okay?”
“Okay,” he said softly. “See you soon.”
Five minutes later, Abby walked out the front door and climbed into her car.
The streets of West Cambridge were deserted. She turned onto Memorial Drive, skirting the Charles River as she headed southeast, toward the River Street bridge. It was three-fifteen A.M., but she could not remember feeling so awake. So alive.
At last we’re going to beat them! she thought. And we’re going to do it together. The way we should have done it from the start.
She crossed the bridge and headed onto the ramp for the turnpike. There were few cars traveling at that hour, and she merged easily with sparse eastbound traffic.
Three and a half miles later, the turnpike came to an end. She changed lanes, preparing to turn off onto the Southeast Expressway ramp. As she curved onto it, she suddenly became aware of a pair of headlights bearing down on her.
She accelerated, merging onto the southbound expressway.
The headlights pulled closer, high beams glaring off her rearview mirror. How long had they been behind her? She had no idea. But they were zooming in now like twin bats out of hell.
She sped up.
So did the other car. Suddenly it swooped left into the next lane. It pulled up beside her until they were almost neck and neck.
She glanced sideways. Saw the other car’s window roll down. Glimpsed the silhouette of a man in the right passenger seat.
In panic, she floored the accelerator.
Too late she spotted the car stalled ahead of her. She slammed on the brakes. Her car spun and caromed off the concrete barrier. Suddenly the world tilted sideways. Then everything was tumbling over and over. She saw darkness and light. Darkness, light.
Darkness.
* * *
“. . . repeat, this is Mobile Unit Forty-one. Our ETA is three minutes. Copy?”
“Copy, Forty-one. How’re the vitals?”
“Systolic holding at ninety-five. Pulse one ten. We’ve got normal saline going in one peripheral line. Hey, looks like she’s starting to move.”
“Keep her immobilized.”
“We’ve got her in a collar and a spinal board.”
“Okay, we’re ready and waiting for you.”
“See you in a minute, Bayside . . .”
. . . Light.
And pain. Short, sharp explosions of it in her head.
She tried to scream, but no sound came out. She tried to turn away from that piercing light, but her neck seemed trapped in a chokehold. She thought if she could just escape that light and burrow back into darkness, the pain would go away. With all her strength she twisted, straining to break free of the paralysis that had seized her limbs.
“Abby. Abby, hold still!” a voice commanded. “I have to look in your eyes.”
She twisted the other way, felt restraints chafing her wrists, her ankles. And she realized that it was not paralysis that prevented her movement. She was tied down, all four limbs strapped to the gurney.
“Abby, it’s Dr. Wettig. Look at me. Look at the light. Come on, open your eyes. Open.”
She opened her eyes, forced herself to keep them open, even though the beam of his penlight felt like a blade piercing straight through her skull.
“Follow the light. Come on. That’s good, Abby. Okay, both pupils are reactive. EOMs are normal.” The penlight, mercifully, shut off. “I still want that CT.”
Abby could make out shapes now. She could see the shadow of Dr. Wettig’s head against the diffuse brightness of the overhead lights. There were other heads moving around on the periphery of her vision, and a white privacy curtain billowing like a cloud off in the distance. Pain pricked her left arm; she gave a jerk.
“Easy, Abby.” It was a woman’s voice, soft, soothing. “I have to draw some blood. Hold very still. I have a lot of tubes to collect.”
Now a third voice: “Dr. Wettig, X ray’s ready for her.”
“In a minute
,” said Wettig. “I want a bigger-bore IV in. Sixteen gauge. Come on, people.”
Abby felt another stab, this time in her right arm. The pain drove straight through her confusion and brought her mind into startling focus. She knew exactly where she was. She couldn’t recall how she’d arrived, but she knew this was Bayside Emergency Room, and that something terrible must have happened.
“Mark,” she said, and tried to sit up. “Where’s Mark?”
“Don’t move! We’ll lose this IV!”
A hand closed over her elbow, pinning her arm to the gurney. The grasp was too firm to be gentle. They were all hurting her, stabbing her with their needles, holding her down like some captive animal.
“Mark!” she cried.
“Abby, listen to me.” It was Wettig again, his voice low and impatient. “We’re trying to reach Mark. I’m sure he’ll be here soon. Right now, you have to cooperate or we can’t help you. Do you understand? Abby, do you understand?”
She stared up at his face and she went very still. So many times before, as a resident, she had felt intimidated by his flat blue eyes. Now, strapped down and helpless under that gaze, she felt more than intimidated. She felt truly, deeply frightened. She glanced around the room, seeking a friendly face, but everyone was too busy attending to IVs and blood tubes and vital signs.
She heard the curtain whisk open, felt a lurch as the gurney began to move. Now the ceiling was rushing past in a flashing succession of lights, and she knew they were taking her deeper into the hospital. Into the heart of the enemy. She didn’t even try to struggle; the restraints were impossible to fight. Think, she thought. I have to think.
They turned the corner, into X ray. Now another face, a man’s, appeared over her gurney. The CT technician. Friend or enemy? She couldn’t tell anymore. They moved her onto the table and buckled straps across her chest and hips.
“Hold very still,” the tech commanded, “or we’ll have to do this all over again.”
As the scanner slid over her head, she felt a sudden rush of claustrophobia. She remembered how other patients had described CT scans: like having your head jammed into a pencil sharpener. Abby closed her eyes. Machinery clicked and whirred around her head. She tried to think, to remember the accident
She remembered getting into her car. Driving onto the turnpike. Then her memory tape had a gap. Retrograde amnesia; the accident itself was a complete blank. But the events leading up to it were slowly coming back into focus.
By the time the scan was completed, she’d managed to piece together enough memory fragments to understand what she had to do next. If she wanted to stay alive.
She was quietly cooperative as the CT technician transferred her back onto the gurney—so cooperative, in fact, that he left off the wrist restraints and buckled on only the chest strap. Then he wheeled her into the X ray anteroom.
“The ER’s coming to get you,” he said. “If you need me, just call. I’m right in the next room.”
Through the open doorway she could hear him talking on the telephone.
“Yeah, this is CT. We’re all done here. Dr. Blaise is looking over the scan now. You want to come get her?”
Abby reached up and quietly unbuckled the chest strap. As she sat up, she felt the room begin to whirl. She pressed her hands to her temples and everything seemed to settle back into focus.
The IV.
She ripped the tape off her arm, wincing at the sting, and pulled out the catheter. Saline dribbled out of the tubing, onto the floor. She ignored the saline, concentrating instead on stopping the flow of blood from her vein. A sixteen-gauge puncture is a big hole. Though she taped over it tightly, it continued to ooze. She couldn’t worry about that now. They were coming to get her.
She climbed off the gurney, her bare feet landing in a pool of saline. In the next room, the tech was cleaning up the CT table. She could hear the rattle of tissue paper, the clang of a trash can.
She took a lab coat off the door hook and pulled it on over her hospital gown. Just that effort seemed to drain her. She was struggling to think, to see through a white haze of pain as she moved to the door. Her legs felt sluggish, as though she were wading through quicksand. She pushed into the hallway. It was empty.
Still slogging through quicksand, she moved up the corridor, reaching out every so often to steady herself against the wall. She turned a corner. At the far end of the hallway was an emergency exit. She struggled toward it, thinking: If I can just reach that door, I’ll be safe.
Somewhere behind her, from what seemed like a great distance, she heard voices. The sound of hurrying footsteps.
She lunged against the emergency exit bar and pushed out, into the night. Alarm bells started ringing. At once she began to run, fleeing in panic into the darkness. She stumbled off the curb into the parking lot. Broken glass and gravel cut into her bare feet. She had no plan of escape, no destination in mind; she knew only that she had to get away from Bayside.
There were voices behind her. A shout.
Glancing back, she saw three security guards run out the ER entrance.
She ducked behind a car—too late. They had spotted her.
She lurched to her feet and began to run again. Her legs still didn’t work right. She was stumbling as she dodged between parked cars.
Her pursuers’ footsteps pounded closer, moving in from two directions at once.
She turned left, between two parked cars.
They surrounded her. One guard grabbed her left arm, another her right. She kicked, punched. Tried to bite them.
But now there were three of them, and they were dragging her back to the Emergency Room. Back to Dr. Wettig.
“They’ll kill me!” she screamed. “Let me go! They’re going to kill me!”
“No one’s going to hurt you, lady.”
“You don’t understand. You don’t understand!”
The ER doors whisked open. She was swept inside, into the light, and lifted onto a gurney. Strapped down, even as she kicked and thrashed.
Dr. Wettig’s face appeared, white and taut above hers. “Five milligrams Haldol IM,” he snapped.
“No!” shrieked Abby. “No!”
“Come on, I want it given stat.”
A nurse materialized, syringe in hand. She uncapped the needle.
Abby lurched, trying to buck free of the restraints.
“Hold her down,” said Wettig. “Goddamn it, can we get her immobilized here?”
Hands clamped over her wrists. She was twisted sideways, her right buttock bared.
“Please,” begged Abby, looking up at the nurse. “Don’t let him hurt me. Don’t let him.”
She felt the icy lick of alcohol, then the prick of the needle plunging into her buttock.
“Please,” she whispered. But she knew it was already too late.
“It will be all right,” said the nurse. And she smiled at Abby. “Everything will be all right.”
23
“No skid marks on the pier,” said Detective Carrier. “The windshield’s shattered. And the driver’s got what looked to me like a bullet hole 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 the air in the tires, 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 license 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 two A.M. he’d gone home to 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 okay?”
“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 eighty-nine. 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.”