“The good news?” he asked.
“No sign of local spread,” Lil said. “You worked fast and Stem probably got it all. But you’ll have to check.”
That was good. He’d set up a consult with Sykes tonight, see what came next. Lymphangiogram probably, and that meant Ellen would have to go to Albany.
Even if it was negative, Sykes would recommend chemotherapy and Ellen was in for a few long, miserable months. She’d miss spring after all.
He heard Latovsky move closer and sweat ran up his arm from the phone.
“I’ll get there as soon as I can, Lil,” he said.
“Don’t rush. No one’s going to tell her for you. Sorry, Adam, I hate shit like this.”
“Me too.” Poor Ellen. He had to tell her so she’d understand that it was serious, but hopeful.
“See ya,” Lil said.
They hung up and he turned and almost barged into Latovsky. Adam backed up and hit the side of the staircase. He was trapped between it and the massive cop and more sweat ran down his face. Latovsky would notice, but everyone was sweating, including Latovsky.
“Fuller,” Latovsky said slowly. “Any relation to Donald Fuller of Sawyerville?”
“He’s my father. I’m Adam Fuller.”
“Dave Latovsky.” They shook; Latovsky’s huge hand was cold and damp from the glass.
“Small world,” Latovsky said. “I went to Sawyerville on Sunday to see your father but he wasn’t home. I left a note for him to call me, but so far...” Latovsky shrugged.
Adam managed a smile that felt pretty steady. “He’s not the best-organized man, to put it mildly, but he’ll get around to it... ah, actually he won’t, though. He asked me to find out what it was all about, seeing as I’m in Glen vale and he hates making long-distance calls.”
“That right?” Latovsky’s eyes bored into his.
“Yes. What did you want to see him about?”
Latovsky seemed to find Adam’s eyes fascinating, and more sweat trickled down Adam’s face.
“About a summer house your family rented on Raven Lake in nineteen sixty,” Latovsky said.
Raven Lake.
“Oh? What about it?”
“It figures in a case I’m working on.”
Woman-in-the-Woods.
“I see. Well, I guess you’ll have to talk to him after all. I was only a kid then, don’t remember anything about it.”
“I see.”
“Uh... that was the hospital. A patient of mine is much sicker than I thought... or led her to think... and I have to go to her.”
“A patient—you a patient of Bunner’s, by any chance?”
“Not anymore,” Adam said, then realized how cold that sounded and tried to look sad.
“But you were?” Latovsky asked.
“Yes.”
“Emotional problems?”
Snide fucking question, Adam thought, and snapped. “I didn’t go to a hundied-buck-an-hour shrink for a skin rash, Mr. Latovsky.”
“It’s Lieutenant Latovsky.”
“Oh. Well, as I said...”
“Yes, your patient.” But Latovsky still blocked the way; his eyes drilled into Adam’s, then flickered as if he finally remembered where he’d seen Adam before, and he stepped back.
Through a window, Latovsky watched Fuller back his Ford out, then down the drive. Latovsky pulled out his notebook, wrote down the tag number, then watched Fuller make a screeching U-turn and speed away to the patient... or away from Latovsky. He looked out at the full driveway and empty street and thought, Dead, cold, empty eyes... doll’s eyes.
Unless he was drunk, and he wasn’t, he had just seen them in Adam Fuller’s face.
Adam let himself into the house and went right to the grate. He tried to pry it up with his bare fingers, but couldn’t, and had to get the screwdriver out of the tool drawer in the kitchen. He slipped it under the rim and saw blood on the handle where he’d torn his skin trying to do it barehanded; haste makes waste, his mother would say. The handle was slippery and he had to go back for paper towels to hold it with. He got the grate up, reached into the vent, which was cool since it was too warm for the heat to come on, and grabbed the scalpel. He took time to wipe the handle of the screwdriver and put it away, then more time to cushion the blade of the scalpel with more paper towels so it wouldn’t slice a hole in his pocket, and he finally left the house.
This was the moment when he was most vulnerable, because if Latovsky and a cruiser full of cops screamed into the street with a warrant, they’d find the scalpel that had killed five women, and, in the glove compartment, the Python he’d used on Bunner.
But that was pretty paranoid; no way on earth Latovsky could have gotten a warrant in the twenty minutes that had elapsed since Adam left Bunner’s, no matter what he suspected.
He wanted to run to the car anyway, but made himself walk sedately in case one of his neighbors looked out their window and wondered why the nice young doctor at number 48 was in such a rush.
He got into the car, his jacket swinging from the weight of the scalpel, and drove away.
The street was empty.
“Fuller,” Latovsky said, “Adam Fuller.”
“Yeah, I got to it.” Cohen took a deep swig out of his glass. He was already half fried, the glass was full again, and it looked like he was getting seriously drunk. Latovsky wouldn’t mind joining him.
“I got to the M’s” Cohen said. “What about Fuller?”
“You tell me.”
The dining room had cooled as the crowd thinned and Bunny’s last party ended. The thought choked Latovsky and he had to turn away from Cohen.
“Yeah,” Cohen said softly, “it just comes out of nowhere and bites you in the ass, doesn’t it?”
“Fuller,” Latovsky said hoarsely.
“Okay, Adam Paul Fuller. I have a photographic memory you know.” Cohen giggled drunkenly. “Actually I don’t, no one does. But I remember him because his problem’s interesting even if it is pretty common.”
“What problem.”
“A little background first. Adam Paul Fuller, M.D., Dartmouth—on a full scholarship by the way. Gotta be smart to do that, Dave; then intern at Boston General, internal medicine residency and certification, also Boston General. Came to Glenvale two years ago because we’re small but choice, believe it or not, a respected teaching hospital in hillbilly heaven.”
“C’mon, Al. Stay with it.”
“Yeah. He’s well thought of, if not particularly well liked—but not disliked either. He’s unmarried, has no steady girlfriends. He’ll rise in the ranks, maybe head the department someday if he hangs around, which he probably won’t since the good ones don’t... except for the likes of me and Bunny. Only me now, Bunny’s not hanging around anymore.”
Cohen coughed hard and took a huge swallow.
“He sounds okay,” Latovsky said.
“Does, doesn’t he?”
“Then why’d he see Bunny?”
“Because he wasn’t okay. Because his life sucked. Because they teach you to win in med school, and you never do because everyone dies. And some die when they shouldn’t, and some of them are your patients and it cuts your heart out. Hard to swallow helplessness in our Mr. Fixit world, and Fuller couldn’t swallow it so he did what lots of young doctors do—he shut down.”
“I don’t get you.”
“He stopped feeling. It’s not uncommon and it’s a good defense for a while. But then the day comes when you want to love a woman... a kid... a dog. To feel something, and you’ve forgotten how and are half afraid to remember because there’re all those poor, sad, sick folks waiting to make a monkey out of you by dying, so you stay cold, empty, disaffected, and impotent—”