Harvest (32 page)

"A few days ago, Dr. DiMatteo, you told me you were being followed by a purple van."

"Maroon," she whispered. "It was a maroon van. I saw it again, today."

"Did you get a licence number?"

"It was never close enough."

"Let me see if I understand this correctly. Someone administers a morphine overdose to your patient, Mrs Allen. Then he - or she - plants a vial of morphine in your locker. And now you're being followed around town by a van. And you think these incidents were all engineered by Victor Voss?"

"That's what I thought. But maybe it's someone else."

Katzka sat back and regarded her. His look of weariness had spread to his shoulders, which were now slumped forward. "Tell us about the transplants again."

"I've already told you everything."

"I'm not entirely clear how it's connected to this case."

She took a deep breath. She'd gone over this already with Lundquist, had told him the whole story of Josh O"Day and the suspicious circumstances of Nina Voss's transplant. Judging by Lundquist's uninterested response, it had been a waste of time. Now she was expected to repeat the story, and it would be a waste of more time. Defeated, she closed her eyes. "I'd like a drink of water."

Lundquist left the room. While he was gone, neither she nor Katzka said a word. She just sat with her eyes closed, wishing it were all over. But it would never be over. She would be in this room for eternity, answering the same questions forever. Maybe she should have called an attorney after all. Maybe she should just walk out. Katzka had told her she was not under arrest. Not yet.

Lundquist returned with a paper cup of water. She drank it down in a few gulps and set the empty cup on the table.

"What about the heart transplants, Doctor?" prodded Katzka. She sighed. "I think that's how Aaron got his three million dollars. By finding donor hearts for rich recipients who don't want to wait their turn on the list."

"The list?"

She nodded. "In this country alone, we have over five thousand people who need heart transplants. A lot of them are going to die, because there's a shortage of donor hearts. Donors have to be young and in previously good health - which means the vast majority of donors are trauma victims with brain death. And there aren't enough of those to go around."

"So who decides which patient gets a heart?"

"There's a computerized registry. Our regional system is run by New England Organ Bank. They're absolutely democratic. You're prioritized according to your condition. Not your wealth. Which means if you're way down the list, you have a long wait. Now let's say you're rich, and you're worried you'll die before they find you a heart. Obviously, you'll be tempted to go outside the system to get an organ."

"Can it be done?"

"It would have to involve a shadow matchmaking service. A way to keep potential donors out of the system and funnel their hearts directly to wealthy patients. Or there's even a worse possibility." "Which is?"

"They're generating new donors."

"You mean killing people?" said Lundquist. "Then where are all the dead bodies? The missing persons reports?"

'! didn't say that's what's happening. I'm just telling you how it could be done." She paused. '! think Aaron Levi was part of it. That might explain his three million dollars."

Katzka's expression had scarcely changed. His impassivity was beginning to irritate her.

She said, more animated now: "Don't you see? It makes sense to me now, why those lawsuits against me were dropped. They probably hoped I'd stop asking questions. But I didn't stop. I just kept asking more and more. And now they have to discredit me, because I can blow the whistle on them. I could ruin everything."

"So why don't they just kill you?" It was Lundquist asking the question in a plainly sceptical tone of voice.

She paused. "I don't know. Maybe they don't think I know enough yet. Or they're afraid of how it'd look. So soon after Aaron's death." "This is very creative," said Lundquist, and he laughed.

Katzka lifted his hand in a terse gesture to Lundquist to shut up. "Dr. DiMatteo," he said, "I'll be honest with you. This is not coming across as a likely scenario."

"It's the only one I can think of."

"Can ! offer one?" said Lundquist. "One that makes perfect sense?" He stepped towards the table, his gaze onAbby. "Your patient Mary Allen was suffering. Maybe she asked you to help her over the edge. Maybe you thought it was the humane thing to do. And it was humane. Something any caring physician would consider doing. So you slipped her an extra dose of morphine. Problem is, one of the nurses saw you do it. And she sends an anonymous note to Mary Allen's niece. Suddenly you're in trouble, and all because you were trying to be humane. Now you're looking at charges of homicide. Prison time. It's all getting pretty scary, isn't it? So you cobble together a conspiracy theory. One that can't be proved - or disproved. Doesn't that make more sense, Doctor? It makes more sense to me."

"But that's not what happened."

"What did happen?"

"I told you. I've told you everything--'

"Did you kill Mary Allen?"

"No." She leaned forward, her hands clenched in fists on the table. "I did not kill my patient."

Lundquist looked at Katzka. "She's not a very good liar, is she?" he said, and he walked out of the room.

For a moment neither Abby nor Katzka spoke. Then she asked, softly. "Am I under arrest now?"

"No. You can leave." He rose to his feet.

So did she. They stood looking at each other as though neither one of them had quite decided that the interview was over. "Why am I being released?" she asked. "Pending further investigation."

"Do you think I'm guilty?"

He hesitated. She knew it was not a question he should answer, yet he seemed to be struggling for some measure of honesty in his reply. In the end, he chose to avoid the question entirely.

"Dr. Hodell's been waiting for you," he said. "You'll find him at the front desk." He turned to open the door. "I'll be talking to you again, Dr. DiMatteo," he said, and left the room.

She walked down the hall and into the waiting area.

Mark was standing there. "Abby?" he said softly.

She let him take her into his arms, but her body registered his touch with a strange sense of numbness. Detachment. As if she herself were floating above them both, observing from a distance two strangers embracing, kissing.

And from across that same distance, she heard him say: "Let's go home."

Through the security partition, Bernard Katzka watched the couple walk towards the door, observing how closely Hodell held the woman. It was not something a cop saw every day. Affection. Love. More often it was couples wrangling away, bruised faces, cut lips, fingers pointed in accusation. Or it was pure lust. Lust he saw all the time. It was out in full view, as blatant as the whores walking the streets of Boston's combat zone. Katzka himself was not immune to it, to that occasional need for a woman's body.

But love was something he had not felt in a long time. And at that moment, he envied Mark Hodell.

"Hey, Slug!" someone called. "Call on Line three."

Katzka reached for the telephone. "Detective Katzka," he said. "This is the ME's office. Hold for Dr. Rowbotham, please."

As Katzka waited, his gaze shifted back towards the waiting area, and he saw that Abby DiMatteo and Hodell were gone. The couple with everything, he thought. Looks. Money. High-powered careers. Would a woman in her enviable position risk it all, just to ease the pain of a dying patient?

Rowbotham came on the line. "Slug?"

"Yeah. What's up?"

"A surprise."

"Good or bad?"

"Let's just call it unexpected. I have the tissue GC-MS results back on Dr. Levi."

GC-MS, or gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, was a method used by the crime lab for identification of drugs and toxins. "I thought you already ruled out everything," said Katzka.

"We ruled out the usual drugs. Narcotics, barbs. But that was using immunoassay and thin layer chromatography. This is a doctor we're talking about, so I figured we couldn't go with just the usual screen. I also checked for fentanyl, phencyclidine, some of the volatiles. I came up with a positive in the muscle tissue.

Succinylcholine."

"What's that?"

"It's a neuromuscular blocking agent. Competes with the body's neurotransmitter, acetylcholine. The effect is sort of like Dtubocurarine."

"Curare?"

"Right, but succinylcholine has a different chemical mechanism. It's used in the OR all the time. To immobilize muscles for surgery. Allow easier ventilation."

"Are you saying he was paralysed?"

"Completely helpless. The worst part of it is, he would've been conscious, but unable to struggle." Rowbotham paused. "It's a terrible way to die, Slug."

"How is the drug administered?"

"Injection."

"We didn't see any needle marks on the body."

"It could have been in the scalp. Hidden in the hair. It's just a pinprick we're talking about. We could easily have missed it with all the post-mortem skin changes."

Katzka thought it over for a moment. And he remembered something Abby DiMatteo had told him only a few days ago, something he hadn't completely followed up on.

He said, "Could you look up two old autopsy reports for me? One would be from about six years ago. A jumper off the Tobin Bridge. The name was Lawrence Kunstler."

"Spell it for me. OK, got it. And the next name?"

"Dr. Hennessy. I'm not sure about his first name. That one was three years ago. Accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. The whole family died as well."

"I think I remember that one. There was a baby."

"That's the one. I'll see if I can't get exhumation orders rolling." "What are you looking for, Slug?"

'! don't know. Something that might've been missed before. Something we might pick up now."

"In a corpse that's been dead six years?" Rowbotham's laugh was plainly sceptical. "You must be turning into an optimist."

"More flowers, Mrs Voss. They were just delivered. Do you want them in here? Or shall I put them in the pailour?"

"Bring them in here, please." Sitting in a chair by her favourite window, Nina watched the maid carry the vase into the bedroom and set it down on a night table. Now she was fussing with the arrangement, moving stems around, and the fragrance of sage and phlox wafted towards Nina.

"Put them here, next to me."

"Of course, Ma'am." The maid moved the vase to the small tea table beside Nina's chair. She had to make room for it by taking away another vase of Oriental lilies. "They're not your usual flowers, are they?" the maid said, and her tone of voice was not entirely approving as she regarded the usurping vase.

"No." Nina smiled at the unruly arrangement. Already her gardener's eye had picked out and identified each splash of colour. Russian sage and pink phlox. Purple coneflowers and yellow heliopsis. And daisies. Lots and lots of daisies. Such common, undistinguished flowers. How did one find daisies so late in the season?

She brushed her hand across the blossoms and inhaled the scents of late summer, the remembered fragrance of the garden she had been too ill to tend. Now summer was gone, and their house in Newport was closed for the winter. How she disliked this time of year! The fading of the garden. The return to Boston, to this house with its gold-leafed ceilings and carved doorways and bathrooms of Carrara marble. She found all the dark wood oppressive. Their summer home was blessed with light and warm breezes and the smell of the sea. But this house made her think of winter. She picked out a daisy and breathed in its pungent scent.

"Wouldn't you rather have the lilies next to you?" the maid asked. "They smell so lovely."

"They were giving me a headache. Who are these flowers from?"

The maid pulled off the tiny envelope taped to the vase and opened the flap. '"To Mrs Voss. A speedy recovery. Joy." That's all it says."

Nina frowned. "I don't know anyone named Joy."

"Maybe it'll come to you. Would you like to go back to bed now? MrVoss says you should rest."

"I've had enough of lying in bed."

"But MrVoss says--'

"I'll go to bed later. I'd like to sit here for a while. By myself."

The maid hesitated. Then, with a nod, she reluctantly left the room.

At last, thought Nina. At last I'm alone.

For the past week, ever since she'd left the hospital, she had been surrounded by people. Private duty nurses and doctors and maids. And Victor. Most of all, Victor, hovering at her bedside. Reading aloud all her get-well cards, screening all her phone calls.

Protecting her, insulating her. Imprisoning her in this house. All because he loved her. Perhaps he loved her too much. Wearily she leaned back in the chair and found herself staring at the portrait hanging on the opposite wall. It was her portrait, painted soon after their marriage. Victor had commissioned it, had even chosen which gown she should wear, a long mauve silk patterned faintly with roses. In the painting she was standing under a vine-covered arbour, a single white rose clutched in one hand, her other hand dangling awkwardly at her side. Her smile was shy, uncertain, as though she were thinking to herself: I am only standing in for someone else.

Now, as she studied that portrait of her younger self, she realized how little she'd changed since that day she'd posed as a young bride in the garden. The years had altered her physically, of course. She'd lost her robust good health. In so many ways, though, she was unchanged. Still shy, still awkward. Still the woman Victor Voss had claimed as his possession.

She heard his footsteps and looked up as he came into the bedroom.

"Louisa told me you were still up," he said. "You should be taking your nap."

"I'm fine, Victor."

"You don't look strong enough yet."

"It's been three and a half weeks. DrArcher says his other patients are already walking on treadmills by now."

"You're not like any other patient. I think you should take a nap."

She met his gaze. Firmly she said: "I'm going to sit here, Victor. I want to look out the window."