He continued in a voice loud enough for everyone around to hear."..
If you cannot afford a lawyer and you want one, a lawyer will be provided for you by the Commonwealth without cost to you. you understand what I have told you? Okay, move aside, folks. Please move aside."
The crush of bewildered early-evening visitors parted like the Red Sea to allow the policeman and his prisoner to pass. Eric recognized several of the nurses and residents who were watching.
"Find Dr. Silver for me, please," he called. out as Wheeler hurried him past.
"You've got no friends around this place," Wheeler said. "Least of all Dr. Silver. Earlier today he had the hospital attorneys file a restraining order to keep you out. Face it, you're finished." He tightened his grip on Eric's arm and continued loudly: "… You may also waive the Not to counsel, and your right to remain-"
"God damn it, I'm not going with you!" Eric screamed as they entered the busy main lobby.
Instantly, the huge reception area was silent. A hundred or so people stopped miwng about and froze, as one. A security guard, who was standing off to one side, spoke quickly into his radio and began moving toward the two men. Eric stumbled forward and fell to his knees, shouting words of protest. Wheeler grasped the handcuffs and pulled him to his feet by jerking his arms straight up behind his back.
Eric hollered out in pain, twisted his body to one side, and fell heavily to the tiled floor. Bystanders tripped over one another, trying to move away. The guard reached them just as two more security men raced into the lobby.
"Can we help?" he asked Wheeler.
The captain flashed his shield.
"I've just arrested this man for the murder of Dr. Haven Darden," he said. "His body is up in his lab."
Several in the crowd gasped. A woman cried out.
"We know Dr. Najarian," the guard said. "He was alone with one of our nurses when she died this morning. There's a restraining order out against him.
We've been on the lookout for him all day."
"Please," Eric begged, still on his side on the floor. "You've got to help me. I didn't kill anyone. He did. He did!"
The two other security men arrived and spoke briefly with their colleague- One of them immediately sprinted off for Darden's office.
The remaining pair helped Wheeler pull Eric to his feet. At that moment Joe Silver and two residents arrived.
"I'm this man's chief of service," he said. "What on earth is going on now?". He looked stonily at Eric as he spoke.
"Captain Wheeler, BPD," the officer explained calmly. "I've just arrested this man for the murder of Dr. Haven Darden by some sort of lethal injection.
Haven is a personal friend of mine. He called me a short while ago and told me Najarian here had phoned and threatened him. I hurried over to escort him home, but when I got there, I was too late. I found this man with an empty syringe in his hand, standing over Haven's body."
"Damn you, Najarian," Joe Silver said.
"I didn't do anything," Eric pleaded. "It was this man. He's crazy.
He's working with Dr. Darden. Craig Serell was involved with them too.
They're responsible for everything. For Norma, for Loretta Leon-everything.
"Eric, just shut up and get the hell out of here, Silver said.
"Come along now," Wheeler ordered. "And do it quietly."
"I didn't kill anyone! They did! Why doesn't anyone believe me?"
"I believe you," Haven Darden said loudly.
The crowd fell away, revealing the medical chief standing calmly beside the security guard.
"Now you must believe me that I had nothing to do with this Caduceus, or any other plot."
Joe Silver, totally bewildered, stared at the man.
"What in hell is going on?" he managed.
"As soon as you called sul-cinylcholine an anesthetic, Eric," Darden went on, "I knew it was water.
Captain Wheeler is a criminal. Dr. Najarian meant only to frighten me.
This man tried to murder me, and confessed to murdering someone named Laura.
Sir, you are an animal."
Before anyone could react, Lester Wheeler drew his pistol and fired.
Darden grabbed at his left shoulder as he reeled backwards and dropped to the floor.
People screamed, falling over one another as they scrambled to find cover. Wheeler managed to get off another shot, this more wild, before the security guards were on him. Groaning loudly with every step, he dragged the three guards toward the main entrance like a fullback hauling tacklers toward a touchdown.
Two muscular young men raced from the crowd and helped wrestle him down.
Suddenly, it-from within the melee, Wheeler's gun sounded again.
Immediately the struggling stopped. The guards moved back. The policeman, on his knees, toppled over in slow motion and lay wide-eyed and motionless. Blood was rapidly soaking into his shirt from a dollar-sized hole in his chest.
"Call a code Ninety-nine!" Joe Silver screamed at the receptionists.
"Someone get to the E.R. and bring back two stretchers."
He raced over to where Haven Darden lay while the residents hurried to tend to Wheeler.
"The keys to these handcuffs," Eric said, scrambling to where the policeman lay. "They're in his shirt pocket." The residents were already stripping Wheeler's clothes away. The wound, Eric could see, was almost certainly mortal, even with immediate surgical help.
One of the guards retrieved the keys and freed Eric's hands. A stretcher arrived, and Wheeler's lifeless body was transferred to it and rushed to the E.R.
For a few frozen seconds Eric stood alone, trying desperately to sort out what had happened, what had been said. Laura and Scott both dead.
Was Wheeler telling the truth about that? And Dardeh-how could he not be Caduceus?
Numbly, he crossed to where Haven Darden lay.
Joe Silver had already ripped the man's shirt away, exposing a wound that entered and exited through his shoulder. Darden, though in obvious pain, remained completely conscious and surprisingly calm.
"You thought very quickly, Eric," he said. "I always admired that in you."
"I… I'm sorry I had to do what I did," Eric said.
"I was desperate."
"And do you now believe that I am not part of this Caduceus plot?"
"I don't know what to believe."
A stretcher arrived, and Eric and Joe Silver gently lifted the medical chief onto it.
"Perhaps," Darden said, "it would help if I told you that I know who your mysterious Anna Delacroix is. Dr. Silver, if you could, I'd like a minute alone with Eric."
Joe Silver looked about uncomfortably.
"Perhaps I'd better stay," he said. "I need to hear this too."
The battle to save the life of Lester Wheeler was shortlived. Eric stood by the doorway of the trauma room, watching the monitor and the furious efforts of the thoracic surgical team, and hoping against hope for the miracle that might save the one person who could tell him Laura's fate.
In a room just down the hall, Joe Silver was attending to the father of Rebecca Darden, known to Silver as Ariel Dumonde and to Eric as Anna Delacroix. Haven Darden would, in all likelihood, be Silver's last case at White Memorial. As soon as he was certain the medical chief was stable, Silver had promised Eric he would drive to the private psychiatric facility where Reed Marshall was being treated and offer Marshall what help he could. He would also strongly recommend that the hospital keep him on the emergency staff in some capacity.
Then, in the morning, he would submit his resignation to the hospital administrators, explaining to them how he had been seduced by a beautiful woman, and later blackmailed by her.into changing his vote on the search committee. He knew nothing of the reason he had been ready to delay the vote, but with his own career, marriage, and children at stake, he had made a choice he would now have to live with for the rest of his own life.