Beyond belief (23 page)

“Play along,” Joe whispered.

They followed her through the sparsely decorated apartment to the dining room, which looked somewhat like a doctor's office. A large massage table was in the middle of the room, next to a table of gleaming chrome instruments unlike anything Joe had ever seen.

“My name is Eve. Which one of you will the doctor be seeing?”

“Him,” Joe said quickly, pointing to Howe.

Howe shot him an annoyed glance.

“Very good.” She handed Howe a flimsy hospital gown. “Take your clothes off and put this on, please.”

“You've got to be kidding,” Howe said to Joe as much as to her.

“You heard the woman.” Joe turned to Eve. “That's why he brought me along, to keep himself from chickening out. This won't hurt, will it?”

“Of course not.”

Joe turned back to Howe. “See? You've got nothing to worry about. I'll hold your clothes for you if you'd like.”

Howe was still glaring at him.

The woman pulled Joe out of the room as she drew a pale green curtain over the entranceway.

“Would you like to wait in the other—”

“He stays here,” Howe said from behind the curtain.

“He's useless without me.” Joe smiled. “Is Dr. Yashin around?”

“He's meditating.”

“Ah.”

“While he changes, perhaps I can get some information from you.” She picked up a clipboard hanging next to the dining room entrance. “He hasn't eaten in the last twelve hours, has he?”

He remembered the chocolate chip bagel Howe had devoured in the car. “No.”

“Have his headaches persisted?”

“If anything, they've gotten worse.”

“Well, I promise that he'll feel better almost immediately after the session today.”

“You hear that?” Joe called out to Howe.

“Yeah.” Howe spoke sourly from behind the curtain.

“There's the matter of payment. Dr. Yashin agreed to accept two hundred dollars now, plus another two hundred Friday.”

“Of course.” Joe opened his wallet, but all he had was sixty. He was about to call out to Howe, when a fistful of twenties was suddenly thrust from behind the curtain.

“Two hundred dollars,” Howe said.

Eve took the money and fastened it to the clipboard. “Dr. Yashin will be out in a moment.” She walked into the back bedroom.

Howe pulled aside the curtain, revealing himself in the shorter-than-short hospital gown and a pair of black dress socks. “Not a word,” he said.

“Shh.” Joe pulled him from the room and guided him toward the kitchen. “The room may be bugged.”

“Bugged?”

“I'm not sure what this guy is all about,” Joe whispered. “He's some kind of healer. He may have listening devices in that room so he can pick up patients’ conversations, then amaze them with what their bodies tell him about their lives.”

“Let's just take the son of a bitch in.”

“Not yet. We can buy ourselves some leverage.”

“But why do I have to go on the table?”

“Your vision may be blocked by a towel or something. I need to be able to watch him.”

“I could have watched him.”

“You wouldn't know what to look for.”

Howe pulled down the hem of the small gown. “Just be careful where you look.”

The bedroom door creaked open. They walked back toward the massage table, where a thin, long-faced man in his late forties was arranging the instruments.

“Dr. Yashin?” Joe said.

“Yes. Good morning.” The man spoke with a trace of a Russian accent. “I would offer to shake hands, but I don't want to contaminate the instruments.”

“Of course.”

Yashin spoke to Howe as if he were a sick child. “How are you feeling, my boy?”

“Worse by the minute.”

“I'll take care of that. Please lie on the table faceup.”

Howe gave Joe a wary glance as he slid onto the table and lay back.

Yashin motioned to a frayed couch in the next room. “You may wait in there.”

Joe cast a glance at the waiting area, which featured a coffee table with stacks of New Age medical magazines and issues of
Fate, Nature Extreme
, and other periodicals. “I'd rather stay in here,” he said.

“It would probably be best if you would just go into the next room and—”

“He's staying,” Howe said. “It's the only way I'm going through with this.”

“As you wish.”

Eve returned to the room, carrying another pair of instruments. They looked like scalpels but with thick chrome handles that spiraled down to dull blades.

“Why are we here?” Joe asked. “Why not in a real office?”

“Society is always slow to accept advances in medicine,” Yashin said in the well-rehearsed manner of a man who had answered the question a hundred times before. “Those of us on the frontier are subjected to harsh scrutiny, and this helps us be a little less conspicuous.”

“Are you licensed?”

Yashin waved at a diploma on the wall. It was in Russian. “Of course. I studied at the Odessa Homeopathic Institute.”

“That's where you got your doctorate?”

“No. I received my doctorate at the university in St. Petersburg.” He turned from Joe. “Now, if you please, we must begin.”

“Of course.”

Yashin ran his hands over Howe's skull, feeling every contour. Twice he paused and made clicking sounds with his tongue.

“Am I all right?” Howe asked.

“There's a buildup here of humors. I'm surprised you can even function. You came here just in time.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Take them out, of course.” He held up his hand. “Number twenty scalpel, please.”

Howe's eyes widened.

Eve handed Yashin a thick-handled scalpel. Joe watched carefully as he applied it to Howe's forehead.

“Just relax, young man.” Yashin swiped across the forehead, leaving behind a thin line of blood.

“Bailey …” Howe whispered urgently.

Joe gave his arm a reassuring pat.

Yashin swiped his scalpel again, and this time small pieces of organic matter appeared in the streaks of blood. “Excellent,” he said. “The humors are coming right out.”

Eve picked up the fleshy matter and placed it into a beaker. Yashin put down the scalpel and squeezed Howe's forehead, producing even more bloody, pulpy matter.

“Very toxic,” he said. “You should feel better soon.”

Howe appeared to be dazed.

“Will there be scarring?” Joe asked.

“No scarring. His body will heal itself completely by the time he gets up from the table. You'd never know he had surgery.”

Joe whipped out his badge. “Atlanta police. Put down the scalpel.”

Eve quickly lifted the beaker to her lips.

Howe bolted upright and grabbed her wrist. “Those are
my
humors you're trying to swallow.”

Eve cut loose with a string of obscenities, some in English, some in Russian. She spit in Howe's face.

“That's not the best way to earn goodwill,” Joe said as he snapped a pair of handcuffs on Yashin.

“What is this? What's going on here?” Yashin's accent was suddenly thicker.

“You're under arrest for fraud and practicing medicine without a license.”

Yashin motioned toward his diploma and started to object, but Joe cut him off.

“A
local
license.” Joe used a hand towel to pick up the scalpel. “I haven't seen one of these before. The blood and pulpy matter is stored in the handle. When you run it across your patient's skin, you squeeze the handle and the blood and guts run down the underside of the blade and appear to be coming out of an incision.”

Howe reached for his jacket, pulled out his cuffs from the pocket and fastened them onto Eve's wrists. “How were you so sure this weirdo wasn't going to cut me?”

“I saw a tiny drop of blood forming at the end of the scalpel even before he got near you with it. Plus the blade looked too dull to penetrate the skin. I told
you I knew what to look for.” Joe lifted the beaker and held it up at eye level. “This is pig's blood, isn't it?”

“I want a lawyer.”

Joe shook his head. “I wouldn't if I were you.”

“You are not me.”

“No, but if I were, I'd know that there's only one thing I could do to stay out of jail tonight, and it doesn't involve calling a lawyer.”

Joe and Howe ran Yashin and Eve in to the station and put them in two different interview rooms. They left Eve alone while they concentrated on Yashin.

“Tell us about Gaby Rawlings,” Joe said.

“I don't know who you're talking about.” Yashin folded his hands in front of him.

“You operated on her without a license. She died. That opens you up for manslaughter at least. Maybe even murder.”

“Murder?”

Howe sat across from Yashin. “You killed her. Is there another way we should look at this? If so, you'd better start talking.”

Yashin held his head in his hands and muttered something in Russian.

“Come again?” Howe said.

“I didn't kill her!”

“But you did operate on her.”

Yashin paused, then answered carefully. “If I did see this woman, I did not harm her.”

“She was a sixteen-year-old girl,” Joe said, leaning into his face. “What the hell happened?”

“I cannot help you.”

“You'd better start,” Joe said. “And you'd also better tell us how Robert Nelson was involved.”

“Dr. Nelson?”

“Yes. Did you meet him before or after you met the Rawlings family?”

Yashin ran his hand over his jaw. “Before,” he finally answered.

“How did you meet him?”

“First I need some assurances from you.”

Howe slapped the tabletop. “You're not getting any. How did you meet Nelson?”

Yashin sighed. “He came to see me. He wished to see me work. Around the same time, Mrs. Rawlings contacted me. Her daughter was very ill, and she wanted me to help her. Dr. Nelson and I went to their house, and I operated on her.”

“You scammed her.”

“No. What I do is convince the mind that the body has been healed. If the mind believes that, good health will follow.”

“Like it did with Gaby Rawlings?”

“That was unfortunate. I spent the entire night with her. Several times her father wanted to take her to the hospital. Dr. Nelson persuaded him to wait.”

Joe felt ill. “And the whole time you were waving your scalpel over her, doing your stupid sleight-of-hand tricks? Couldn't you see she was in trouble?”

“Of course. But she was so young…. I was sure it would pass. And I suppose I wanted to convince Dr. Nelson of my abilities. He kept saying that he thought she was getting better. We had no idea what was really happening.”

“Until she died?”

“Before that. In the morning I knew there was something terribly wrong. I told them there was no more I could do, and that they should get her to a hospital. Even then Dr. Nelson resisted the idea.”

“Nice guy,” Howe said.

“Her parents took her to the emergency room, but it was too late. A few days later Mr. Rawlings threatened both me and Dr. Nelson. Somehow he knew how I worked. He knew about the scalpels, everything.”

“How did he know?” Howe asked.

“I don't know. He even knew about my past. I worked under another name in Belgium a few years ago, and he knew about that too. He said he'd have me and Dr. Nelson arrested and brought up on charges. It scared us both.”

“So Nelson paid off Mr. and Mrs. Rawlings.”

“Yes. It was the only way. Dr. Nelson was afraid the publicity would destroy his program. He gave them a large grant in exchange for their silence.”

“When the university caught on, how did he repay the money?”

Yashin wrinkled his brow. “I'm sorry?”

“Nelson had to repay the money out of his own pocket. Did you help him with that?”

“No. I don't know anything about this.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. We ceased all communication with each other. He said he was going to destroy all his records having anything to do with me or the Rawlings family. I never heard from him again.”

Joe felt sick. “How can you still do this? After
watching that girl's life slip away while you scammed her and her family …”

“I help a lot of people. I unlock the healing powers of the mind. It may look like a trick to you, but to those who believe, it gives them hope. Oftentimes, that hope is the one thing that makes the difference between life and death.”

“Is that what you tell yourself?” Howe said.

“I know it to be true.”

“We're going to let you go for now,” Joe said. “But this isn't over. And whatever happens, this part of your life is finished. If I ever hear you're still in business, I guarantee that we're going to revisit these manslaughter charges. Do you understand?”

“Yes. Completely.”

“One last question. Do you really have a doctorate?”

“Yes,” he said, shifting uncomfortably. “In art history.”

Joe and Howe tracked down Ted Rawlings at a Cartersville nursery school, where he and his crew were steam-cleaning the carpets.

“We did nothing wrong,” Rawlings insisted, checking to make sure he was out of earshot of his crew. “We trusted those two men.”

“Dr. Nelson and Dr. Yashin?” Joe asked.

“Yeah. The Russian guy was so sure he could help Gaby. He charged us a lot less than it would've cost to take her to the hospital. I swear to God, I didn't know he was a cheat. I never would've let him near Gaby if I'd known.”

“Do you think Dr. Nelson knew?”

“No. He was egging the Russian guy on. It really seemed important to Nelson that they prove the guy's stuff was real. The Russian wanted to quit, but Nelson told him to keep trying.” Rawlings's lips tightened. “That son of a bitch.”

“How did you find out that Dr. Yashin was using trickery?” Joe said.

“I watched him.”

“There's got to be more to it than that,” Howe said. “You suddenly knew all about his past in Belgium. How did you find out?”

Rawlings took a rag out of his back pocket and nervously wiped his brow. “A fella told me.”

“Who?” Joe asked.

“I don't know. He came to see me a few days after Gaby passed on. He told me what he knew about Dr. Yashin, and I told him what had happened to Gaby. He thought my wife and I should get something for our pain and suffering.”