Second Opinion (27 page)

CHAPTER 51

'This is never going to work, Dimitri,' Dan said.

'That's what they told Columbus, and look at all the places he's got named after him.'

It was two thirty, and the trio was headed west to Wellesley on Route 9. Less than a mile away from where they were at that moment, at the bottom of an algae-covered pond, was the Volvo that had so nearly become Thea's tomb.

The three of them had left the hospital through the Sperelakis Institute entrance, and had taken Dan's car. To counter the fact that whatever exit they chose would be monitored, Dan called the security office and got permission to take his sudden migraine headache home to bed.

'Sure, go ahead,' the woman covering the office said. 'Seems quiet enough around here anyway.'

Dimitri had shared very little with them, but he did make it clear that Gerald Prevoir had taken Hayley from the hospital with no problem and had turned her over to him. She was deep underground someplace, he reported now, in a cell with enough food and water to last a week or more, and enough air to keep her going as well, provided Dimitri was of a mind to keep her ventilation system running. The timer controlling the electricity would shut off in precisely ten days. She was to be an insurance policy against Thea or Dan turning on him.

'If anything happens to me,' Dimitri had explained, 'Ms. Long is worm food. You know I'm willful enough to do it, don't you, sister?'

'Dimitri, please, you need help and I can get it for you,' she had replied.

'Aw, isn't that sweet. Let me help you, says the woman who is the reason everything has gotten so flummoxed up—the reason a perfectly decent thief like Scott Hartnett had be dispatched, and a perfectly decent killer like Gerald Prevoir had to beg for his life to be taken. Let me help, indeed. Well, dear sister, you shall get your wish. You will be helping me all the way to my new home.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'All in good time, sweet Thea. All in good time.'

Abutting the wooded land that made up the Sperelakis family estate was a dense forest of some hundred acres, willed to the town many years before as a land preserve. Dimitri directed Dan to take the gravel road cutting through the preserve, and then the dirt drive that ended in the small parking area behind the carriage house. During the trip, Dan twice took Thea's hand and brushed it against the pistol he had taken from Gerald Prevoir.

Thea prayed the moment would never come when he might have to use it. For one thing, as long as Hayley's life was at stake, this was Dimitri's game. And of the many things her eccentric brother did well, playing games of all kinds was what he did best. For another, as far as she knew, the first time Dan had even held a gun since his resignation from the force was when he took Prevoir's. She didn't know him well enough to be able to predict the consequences should he ever be forced to fire one again.

'Okay, everybody out,' Dimitri ordered. 'We've got flights to check on, money to move, and packing to do. Up the stairs to the loft. After I'm done, you, dear sister, can get packed. If no one causes me problems, I promise to return you to Bostontown safe and sound in time to rescue the fair lady, who will, by then, have become a true damsel in distress.'

On the surface, Dimitri was his usual singsong, take-nothing-seriously self, but Thea could tell he was tense. He had to be. His plan seemed to involve travel—perhaps even travel out of the country. To the best of her knowledge, he had rarely been outside of the carriage house, let alone the state of Massachusetts.

Meanwhile, there were many frustrating holes in what she had uncovered regarding the massive scam at the Beaumont—many questions she wanted him to answer, starting with the biggest one.

'Dimitri, was Gerald Prevoir the one who ran Dad down?' she asked as they trudged up the stairs to the carriage house loft.

'You two sit down over there in my conversation pit. No touching.

'Was he?' she asked again.

'No answers so long as your boyfriend keeps looking at me as if I were crazy.'

'Are you?' Dan asked.

'Ask my late employee, Mr. Prevoir, how he feels about that subject, or my bankers in Zurich and Grand Cayman.'

'I guess that answers my question,' Dan said, with venom.

'Please, Dan. Enough! There's nothing to be gained by baiting him.'

'Aha,' Dimitri said, making some sort of bank transfer on one of his computers. 'Nothing like a rousing game of good cop, bad cop. Let me tell you guys something. If you're looking for one of those sessions like in the movies where the bad guy has the drop on the good guy, and then tells all because he's really an egomaniac and is desperate for the good guy's acknowledgment of how inventive and resourceful he is, you're just going to have to wait. But in the interest of sibling solidarity, and getting you to stop playing good cop, bad cop, it was your friend from the MRI suite.'

'Hartnett?'

'Himself. He was a clumsy, nervous twit, and worse than that, he was greedy.'

'And Dad was figuring out what he was doing.'

'Hartnett should have steered clear of the Lion's patients altogether, but he kept going to the well and choosing them, because that's where lots of the money is. Then your father made the same mistake as his lovely daughter did—saying too much to Hartnett. And out of the barn on his gentleman's farm, the same barn where I keep my van and my Ferrari, I might add, comes the truck. Hartnett was always a hands-off kind of guy.'

Thea was shaking at her brother's coldness. In all the years she had been around him, she had never seen him so lacking in emotion.

'Why would you do this, Dimitri?' she managed to ask. 'Who else is involved?'

'Sit still and stop asking questions, or I'll wind down the timer on Ms. Long's light to fifteen minutes a day. That'd turn her into a bat relying strictly on sonar by the time you return to save her.'

'Dimitri, please. Let me get you some help. Wherever you're going will be very hard for you. Any change is hard for you. Why do you think you're so comfortable here?'

Dimitri completed another prolonged set of instant message exchanges, then stalked over to his bureau and threw, more than placed, clothes into a well-worn suitcase that Thea felt certain belonged to their father. Her feeling intensified that her brother was under explosive strain. He was operating without input or support from anyone, and with the knowledge that there would be no returning from wherever he was headed. Whether he admitted it or was even aware of it, he had to be terrified.

But he was also a grenade with the pin halfway out.

'Okay, lady, I think we can head over to the great house and pack a small bag. Just the basics. Subequatorial. We'll have plenty of money to buy whatever we need when we get to where we're going. Plenty. Cotton, I'll send her back with pictures of my new digs and the names of all the servants, so you can look at that measly duplex of yours in West Roxbury and ask who's really the crazy one. That's right, I know about your place and your kid and your resignation from the force and why. Ask my sweet, compliant children, here, questions'—he gestured to his bank of computers—'get answers. Just be grateful for my sister, because my late employee, Mr. Prevoir, hated that you had been causing him difficulty and compromising his identity, and he was prepared to make things rough for that boy of yours. Very rough.'

Thea saw Dan stiffen, and thought he might go for the gun in his pocket then and there.

'Let's go to the house,' she said, cutting through the tension as best she could. 'I won't take long. There's not very much in there for me to pack anyway.'

'We'll come,' Dimitri said, motioning them down the broad staircase to the heavy front door. 'I know I hold all the cards here, but you, dear sister, head the very short list of the people in the world who are too smart for me to trust.'

Dawn had broken in filmy pink streaks as the three walked across to the main house and up to Thea's room at the head of the stairs.

Dimitri was right, she was thinking. As long as he had Hayley, he held all the chips—well, almost all the chips. He wanted to talk. She sensed it in her gut. There were things he desperately wanted to tell her. It was her job to keep him talking, in any way she could. The pot of gold at the end of that rainbow was a hint of any kind as to where Hayley might be imprisoned. Then and only then might their other chip—the gun concealed in Dan's pocket—be of any use.

While Dan and her brother waited outside her bedroom door, she filled the small suitcase she had carried from the Congo, and then took a final look around. With no idea how unstable Dimitri really was, or what he had in store for her, she knew there was a good chance she would not be seeing the room again.

'Okay,' she said. 'I'm ready. I've got all the shots I need. You all set with shots?'

'Clever,' Dimitri said. 'Very clever. It so happens I have been preparing for this eventuality for years. The Hayley Long wrinkle I added when I heard you and she had become chums. Like I said, I've never trusted that you wouldn't be trouble. Too many brains tucked up in that little head of yours.'

Thea allowed Dan to take her bag, and they stepped outside into what was to be a perfect, cloudless day. Her mind was spinning rapidly through every possibility she could imagine as to where Hayley might be, when Dimitri motioned them to a rustic Adirondack love seat in the wooded backyard, and took a single matched chair across from them.

'So, we have a bit of business to attend to,' he said, slipping out the pistol with which he had killed Gerald Prevoir. 'You, Mr. Cotton, have something in your right pants pocket that it is no longer convenient to me for you to have. Take out that gun you have so lovingly been toting, and toss it over there at the base of that tree.'

CHAPTER 52

'What time do we have to leave?' Thea asked.

'We have a little while.'

She was sensing once again that her brother wanted to talk.

Dimitri, his pistol resting in his lap, rubbed at his eyes.

Sitting next to Dan, across from Dimitri, she wondered when he had last had any real sleep. It might have been fatigue, or what she had said to him about his being vulnerable to the stress of leaving home, but it seemed as if some of his trademark flippancy—some of his bravado—had dissipated. As ordered, Dan had tossed his gun against the base of a massive oak tree about ten feet away, but still Dimitri seemed tense.

'You know,' Dan said, 'except for your man Prevoir you haven't directly killed anyone as far as I know, and Prevoir was severely damaged goods. Besides, it could just as easily have been one of us shooting in self-defense. I have friends on the force. And—'

'Enough! The one inexcusable sin you can commit around here is to talk to me as if I were some kind of dolt. On my very worst day, my brain could wrap itself around yours and wring it dry. You know, Thea, it's none of my business, but I really think you could do a lot better than this guy, here.'

'Actually, I think he's pretty terrific.' She squeezed Dan's hand and gave her brother time for a rebuttal, but he simply sat in the chair that was their father's favorite, nudging at an acorn with his foot and looking amazingly like the man. 'How did this happen, Dimitri?' she asked finally. 'How did you get involved with Hartnett in this scheme?'

There was clearly less arrogance in Dimitri's tone when he replied. In fact, he sounded more direct, more human, than she could remember—except for his remark to Dan about needing to tell his son he loved him before putting limits on the boy's use of certain computer games. It was as if he had something to say, and wanted to ensure he was taken seriously.

'Actually, I wasn't involved with Hartnett,' he began. 'Hartnett was involved with me. When they were developing Thor, that's the Beaumont's system of electronic medical records, Hartnett knew me and put me on a retainer as a troubleshooter. And believe me, there was plenty of trouble. Before long several of the IT people had told him that the whole program would have crashed had it not been for me. He increased my hours and took me around to see some of the private doctors in action. What an education that was.'

'I think I can see what's coming,' Thea said.

'What I saw, watching doctor after doctor sitting glued to their computer screens and making almost no eye-to-eye contact with their patients, gave me an idea.'

'Go on, please. In addition to making little eye contact with their patients, the doctors only communicated with one another through their computers, right?'

'Consultations, pathology reports, surgical notes, lab results. Because of the pressure put on them by the managed care and insurance companies, nobody had the time to communicate person-to-person with anyone. Not exactly your old horse-and-buggy house calls.'

'And with your skill, everything that's written in a computer data base is—'

'Like a palette of paints to an artiste, or raw chicken to a gourmet chef. You got it.'

'Hartnett provided the medicine, you provided the IT.'

'Actually, sister, not to belittle your profession, but it really ain't that hard. I read Harrison's internal medicine text and did some other studying. Most of medicine is pretty routine.'

'I'll agree with you there. Of course, it does help to have, like, a hundred and eighty IQ.'

'Aw, you flatter me. Hear that, Cotton? A hundred and eighty. What's your number?'

'No idea. I always thought it was as high as it needed to be. I know my football jersey number, though, eighty-nine. You ever play football, Dimitri?'

'Don't goad me. I warned you once about doing that. Twice is my limit. The third time, I blow. Ask your friend Thea, there, what happens when I blow.'

'Leave him alone, Dan. I was always scared to death of him when he lost his temper. Then again, there were a lot of people who were pretty scared when I lost mine, too. Dimitri, Prevoir told us about the other patients—ones that you got paid to—'

'You know, I thought when I got to the head of the stairs back there in the hospital, that was what he was talking about, but I wasn't close enough to hear. Bad Gerald. I suppose you believe him.'

'I do, yes. Are there reasons I shouldn't?'

'Well, probably not. Hartnett and I were each taking a finder's fee off the donations that people like Jack Kalishar made to the hospital, but as I said, Hartnett was greedy. Okay, okay, I'm greedy, too. When I presented my little variation on a theme to him, he jumped at it, so we hired Prevoir to be our middleman.'

At her brother's admission, Thea felt a deep sadness wash over her. During their time growing up in this home, there was a distance between the twins and her that widened as the years passed. In school they had popularity just for being attractive and being twins. That they were bright and able only heightened their celebrity and increased their annoyance with their odd little sister. They were successful, but they were uninteresting. They were skilled, yet totally self-centered. They always won, but they were terrible winners.

Dimitri was different.

All his life that she could remember, he had been zany and unpredictable, obstinate and incorrigible. But he was also approachable and funny, self-deprecating and egomaniacal. And despite the nearly twelve-year difference in their ages, he taught her things and shared secrets with her at almost every level of her life.

'Why would you do that, Dimitri?' she asked, knowing the answer, perhaps, even more clearly than did the man himself. 'How could you?'

'Boredom,' Dimitri replied lightly. 'It's like the age-old question: Why does a dog lick his genitals? Answer: because he can. It was a challenge to research our subjects and to choose enemies who might be willing to part with a large sum of money in exchange for jealousy, or revenge, or more power, or pure greed, or… or because they could. If I had lasted in that community college longer than the month or so I did, I would have made a hell of a psychologist. I'm proud to say that almost one hundred percent of those I researched and ultimately approached said yes to making a deal with us. Two million, three, five—we operated on a sliding scale.'

'How did you manage to switch the MRIs around?'

'I didn't say our little operation didn't take some work and some patience. We mostly got our patients from the executive health program at the Beaumont. They think they're doing their clients a favor with their detailed history and all those tests. The one they're doing a favor for is me. Information. In my world, it's all about information.

Then it was just a matter of monitoring their physician's electronic medical records and making the switch when I saw a useful test result coming. Anything that pops up on a doctor's screen is gospel. It's like, look at that cute little computer. Would it ever lie to me?'

'But what about Hayley?' Thea felt pleased at seamlessly working the woman into their exchange. The more they talked about her, the more chance there was that Dimitri might slip. 'She had her test done in Atlanta.'

'She could have had it done in South Africa or Bora Bora. The Internet is the Internet. Dr. Stephen Bibby, Rhoads Terrace Professional Building, Atlanta. I hacked his system—it was a piece of cake, incidentally—and monitored every test he ordered on Lady Long, waiting for one that fit with what we had in the library. It actually took most of a year before I learned that an abdominal MRI was ordered and moved to intercept it. Forty-eight-year-old woman, one hundred thirty to one hundred sixty pounds, no prior surgery, no fractures. Finding a match in my rather extensive library of films wasn't that hard. MRIs are like looking at an anatomy text. I've actually become quite good at reading them.'

'So you showed me. The woman you chose to replace Hayley had calcifications in some of her abdominal lymph nodes, though, that Hayley didn't have.'

'Nice pickup. I won't miss those next time.'

'I can't believe no one caught on to this.'

'We see what we wish to see, dear sister. Lydia Thibideau is spread way too thin building her pancreatic-cancer empire. She sees the cancer and ho hum, enrolls the patient in one of her studies, and then pads back to her stately office to apply for another research grant.'

Thea shook her head in utter amazement. This wasn't her quirky, outrageous, unfocused brother speaking. This was a violin virtuoso, a batter capable of hitting a home run almost every time at bat. This was a man who could have changed the world. If only…

'You are the master, Dimitri,' Dan said. 'I am genuinely impressed.'

There was no hint of cynicism in his voice.

'Thanks,' Dimitri replied. 'I'm pretty impressed, myself.'

'Dimitri,' Thea said, 'boredom may have been a factor in what you did, but I think I know now what was really driving you, and I don't think you're being completely honest about what your real intention was.'

For nearly a minute the only sounds were the songs of morning birds in the dense New England woods.

'I hated him,' Dimitri said suddenly.