"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 postmortem 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."