Critical Judgment (1996) (33 page)

Clearly, the best thing she could do for Abby Dolan at this point was to admit that she was overmatched and get out. People were being harmed by Colstar. That was a given. But people all over the world were being harmed by corrupt corporations and governments. Those tragedies weren’t her responsibility, and neither was this one. And, dammit, she had tried. She had stuck her neck out for Lew and the Alliance, and now the blade was about to fall.

The arguments for leaving were perfectly sensible. And yet she remained on the fence. She had been working at the hospital for less than two months, but she had become part of a number of patients’ lives in ways she never had at St. John’s. Feeling as if she had deserted them—deserted herself—would hurt as much as knowing that she had been beaten so badly when she was in the right.

Then there were her deepening feelings for Lew. Her choosing to stay in Patience and fight Henderson, Quinn, and Colstar might be the best thing for their embryonic relationship, or the worst. She had already sacrificed her academic appointment for one man. Was she ready to risk her entire career for another? If she abandoned the cause, though, would Lew ever forgive her?

And, finally, there was Josh. If their situations were reversed, he would make any sacrifice to save her, she was certain of that. She stood a much better chance of
locating him if she wasn’t spending long hours at the hospital.

No, she told herself. This time her head had to prevail over her emotions and her instincts. There was too much to lose by staying in Patience. She would bequeath her data sheets to Lew and be off for San Francisco as soon as possible. With any luck she would be somewhere not too far from Seradyne when Josh made his move.

Feeling relieved at having closed in on a decision, she entered the hospital through the ER, and called the operator to check on Claire Buchanan’s status. The one-time Rockette was out of the ICU and in a single just down the hall from it. Abby found her in a recliner in the bright, airy room, gazing out the picture window at the Colstar cliff. Claire lit up at the sight of her.

“Boy, am I glad to see you again,” she said, her hoarseness now much improved. “The nurses told me you saved my bacon by getting that breathing tube in. I remember you were there, but to tell you the truth, I didn’t know what was going on. That’s why I didn’t thank you before.”

“There were a lot of people helping you. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“I would be if I could get rid of this itching.”

Claire pointed to some patches of the same skin lesions Abby had seen on her in the ER. They still looked like small-blood-vessel inflammation.

“Claire, tell me something if you can. You’ve had two MRIs, right?”

“Yes.”

“Any other X rays?”

“Not really. They did a chest X ray just a little while ago.”

“But before that?”

“None.”

“How about blood tests?”

“Dr. Oleander’s done some, and you did some. I
don’t think I had any before my first MRI, though. That was when I was having that stomach pain.”

Abby stared at the woman in disbelief.

“Are you sure?”

“I may be nothing much more than an old chorus girl, but I have a heck of a memory. He did some blood tests after the first MRI, but none before.”

Now it was Abby who was gazing out the window, past the meadow and the barbed-wire-topped fence. The Colstar cliff and the massive plant atop it looked somber and foreboding in the gray midday light. She closed her eyes. The pattern that had seemed so elusive to her, so nebulous, was coming into focus. Claire Buchanan had provided the lens. Not only were the MRI studies at Patience Regional Hospital ordered and performed in excess, but many of them were done
before
the actual problem that brought the subjects into the hospital. It was almost as if the studies themselves were causing illness. The confirmation of her theory lay in the KarMen record-keeping system of the hospital. But she thought she had enough data of her own in the loose-leaf notebook packed in the wall behind her furnace.

“Claire, it’s been a pleasure meeting you,” she said, now suddenly impatient to get home. “I’m very glad you’re doing so well.”

“Thank you. Tell me, Dr. Dolan, do you think I’ll ever get rid of this rash and itch?”

Abby took the woman’s hand in hers.

“You know, Claire, they teach us from day one in medical school never to make any promises to patients. But I’ll tell you what—I’m going to promise you that before long you’ll have some answers as to what’s wrong. And with any luck those answers will point the way to the right treatment.”

Claire Buchanan stood and hugged her.

“You take care, now, Doctor,” she said. “And don’t forget to leave yourself some time for fun.”

Abby took the staircase to the basement and left the
hospital through the service door. The notebook, and the conclusions buried within the data, were the legacy she would leave for Lew and the Alliance. A significant number of the NIWWs had had an MRI that preceded their major complaints. There was some sort of scam going on at PRH, she reasoned—some sort of kickback deal with the radiologists, the hospital, or both. But no one appreciated that many of the patients involved in the scam had been exposed to cadmium. And, together, the magnetic field and the intense ultrasound were somehow interacting with the cadmium to produce symptoms.

Abby mulled over the explanation as she drove home. It was weak, she acknowledged—as tenuous as wet tissue paper. It was a square peg she was trying to hammer into a round hole. But it
was
a theory with some data to back it up. And that was more than the Alliance had been able to accomplish in their three years of trying. There was no reason for her to feel she had failed.

She pulled into her driveway with no recollection of having gotten into the car or driven home. It was a familiar phenomenon Abby had long ago labeled auto-hypnosis—one of the most consistent signs of extreme exhaustion. For nearly twenty-nine hours now, from the moment the phone in her bedroom had rung with Joe Henderson’s call, she had been awake and on the move. Studying the data in her notebook could wait, she decided. She could not function without a few hours of sleep.

She entered the house through the back door and went immediately to the answering machine, desperately hoping for some news of Josh. There were two messages. A woman from Patience Auto Glass had called to see if there had been any problem with their service. Then there was a no-message hang-up. Abby rewound the tape just a bit and listened again. Whoever it was had waited through her greeting message and a good ten
seconds into the recording before hanging up. She turned up the volume and listened a third time. It was a stretch, but she swore she could hear breathing.
Josh!

“Say something,” she muttered. “Come on, say something.”

She took off her slacks and blouse—the outfit she had worn for her ill-fated appointment with Henderson—and put on a light cotton nightshirt. Then she opened the front door to check on two days’ worth of mail. The metal mailbox was screwed to the house, just beside the front door. She opened the top of the box and was about to reach in when the wooden doorjamb next to her face burst apart, showering her with splintered wood. An instant later, there was a soft crack from somewhere up the hill far to her right. Before she could even react, there was a metallic snap from the mailbox, and the side blew off. Abby cried out and instinctively ducked and backed away. Then she saw the bullet holes above her in the wood. She flattened out on the stoop and pulled the screen door open with her fingertips. As she did, another bullet tore through the screen and snapped a hole in the partially open front door. Except for the single faint crack, she hadn’t even heard any of the shots.

Her body was on red alert now, her heart hammering against the inside of her chest, her lungs unwilling to accept air. She had completely misjudged Kelly Franklin. The woman had sold her out to Quinn as soon as she had hung up. Damage control was now being initiated.

I think he’s not as hard as he wants everyone to believe
. Isn’t that what Franklin had said about her pal, Quinn?
Well, screw you, lady
, Abby thought.
Screw you
.

Desperately, she scrambled back into the house on her hands and knees and kicked the door closed with her feet. Then, gasping for breath, she snaked on her belly to the bedroom phone. Behind her the picture window in the living room shattered inward, showering the sofa and braided rug with glass. Cringing from the noise, she
dived between the bed and the wall. She was reaching across the quilt to call 911 when the phone rang. She hesitated, then snatched up the receiver.

The voice, almost certainly a man’s, was raspy and muffled.

“Get out!” it said. “Get out now!”

Bathed in an icy sweat, she put down the receiver, then snatched it up again and called the police. The officer who answered knew immediately who she was and where she lived.

“We’ll send someone over soon, ma’am,” he said as if she had just called to report a stray dog in the neighborhood.

Make it someone other than the man who just shot at me
, she wanted to reply.

She set the receiver down, and then, overwhelmed by the adrenaline of fear and anger, she cried. Fifteen minutes later, when two police cars pulled up in front of the house, she had washed her face, put on a Stanford Med sweatshirt and a pair of jeans, and brewed a cup of tea. Through the shattered plate-glass window she saw Sergeant Sullivan emerge from the front cruiser, laughing and chatting with a man wearing jeans and an Oakland Raiders windbreaker. Without bothering to announce their arrival, they began inspecting the carnage around the front stoop. The other cruiser, Abby noted, had “Captain” painted just above the blue accent stripe on the right fender. The officer who stepped out—Captain Gould, Abby remembered Sullivan calling him—was in uniform, complete with cap. He looked to be six four or five and had on mirrored sunglasses and cowboy boots.

From bad to worse
, was all Abby could think.

As Gould approached up the front walk, he noticed her watching and gave her a half salute. She nodded and motioned him in. He paused briefly to speak with the two men inspecting the bullet holes, then entered without knocking. Abby predicted with exact accuracy the first words out of his mouth.

“Dr. Dolan, I’m Captain Gould. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Well, now you’re hearing that someone tried to kill me.

Gould slipped off his sunglasses with Clint Eastwood deliberateness and dropped them into a case on his belt.

“Who?”

Abby debated what her answer should be, then finally shrugged and said, “I think it was Lyle Quinn.”

The policeman laughed out loud.

“Pardon me, Captain,” Abby said, “but I don’t think this situation is particularly funny.”

She knew that her temper, under marginal control in the best of circumstances, was already smoldering from profound fatigue and anger. The last thing she needed to do now was to blow up at the captain of the Patience police force.

“Pardon
me
, Doctor,” he replied, “but there are two things I think you should know. First of all, Lyle Quinn and his wife are at St. Margaret’s Church right now helping my wife, among a dozen or so others, prepare for tonight’s auction and dance.”

Abby felt embarrassment burn in her cheeks, along with irritation at this latest example of Patience cronyism.

“What’s the other thing?” she asked stonily.

“Well, excuse me if this seems insensitive, Dr. Dolan, but Sergeant Sullivan and Detective Jacques out there tell me that the shots that hit your house were most likely fired from a ledge on the side of that hill over there.” He pointed toward the spot. “I make that three hundred yards, maybe a little more. Lyle was a decorated officer in the Rangers. With the sort of high-powered rifle and sniper scope available at any army/navy store, he could have put a hole in the O in Stanford if he had wanted to.” He gestured at the lettering on her sweatshirt. “Same goes for most of the hunters in this community, which is to say most of the men. Believe me, Doctor, the
fact that you’re alive means that nobody was trying to kill you.”

“Right after the shots were fired, a man called me. He muffled his voice with a handkerchief or something, but his message was clear enough.”

“And it was?”

“ ‘Get out.’ That’s all he said. ‘Get out now.’ ”

“See, I told you whoever was up on that ledge was just trying to make a point.”

“Get out, Captain,” Abby said sweetly.

“What?”

“That was the message to me. Now it’s
my
message to
you
. I was shot at, Captain, not picketed. I’m simply not in the mood for your smug sarcasm right now. So, please, leave me alone. I’m tired, I have a headache, I want to get some sleep, and it’s clear that this farce of an investigation is going to lead nowhere.”

Gould hesitated for a few seconds, then shrugged and said, “Suit yourself.”

He took a step toward the door before turning back to her.

“Dr. Dolan, I don’t approve of that caller’s methods, but I believe you should pay attention to what he said. There’s a lot about this town that you just don’t understand. We depend on each other a great deal here. You stamp on someone’s toe on the east side of the valley, and someone on the west side is sure to say, ‘Ouch!’ ”

“Nicely put. Thanks for your advice. I’ll watch where I step.”

Gould glared at her and looked for a moment as if he was going to say something else. Then he simply marched down the walk to his cruiser and drove away. A few minutes later, without so much as a word to her, Sergeant Sullivan and the detective left as well.

Abby found a handyman listed in the local paper who was willing to bring a sheet of plywood right over and nail it across the window. When she had finished cleaning up the glass in the living room, she considered
trying to doze off in a chair until the repairman arrived, but she was too wired from her ordeal and too furious at just about everyone who had anything to do with Patience, California.