Tailspin

  She burst into tears. Sherlock patted her shoulder and nodded to Grace Garvey, Senator Abbott’s former secretary, who told her, “I didn’t know he was ill. We spoke about tonight, and I told him how nice it would be, how pleased we all were they were doing this for Senator Abbott. He and Senator Abbott were so very close.” She put her arms around Lindsay.

  Savich said, “His pulse is thready, nearly nonexistent.” He sat back on his heels. He didn’t think Greg Nichols was going to make it.

  A Secret Service agent opened the doors and paramedics rushed in carrying medical bags and a gurney. Savich listened to Sherlock tell them his symptoms as they worked over him. He heard an older man say abruptly, “Would you look at all that blood!”

  They had him on the gurney quickly, white cloths draped over all the bloody clothes.

  Two FBI agents accompanied the group. “Keep me informed,” Savich said, then turned back, saw the vice president looking over the heads of the crowd at him, and nodded.

  Another three minutes and all the senators had turned to face Rachael once again at the podium.

  The vice president nodded to Rachael. “As you all know by now, ladies and gentlemen, someone has fallen ill. I’m told it was Greg Nichols, the former senior staffer for Senator Abbott. He is being seen to, and we certainly hope he will be all right. Ms. Abbott, after all this excitement, do you feel like continuing?”

  She nodded, stepped again to the podium, adjusted the microphone. Greg, what happened?

  FIFTY-FOUR

  She looked out over the group, met Laurel’s cold, malicious eyes, and nearly recoiled. Then Laurel smirked, no other way to describe that small, self-satisfied smile. Her father’s sister—how could that be possible?

  She looked around at the group, cleared her throat, and said, “I’m very sorry my father’s chief of staff, Greg Nichols, has taken ill. I hope he will be all right. I will keep this brief.

  “My father loved our nation’s capital, and it disturbed him that alongside the beautiful granite buildings, the stretches of perfectly maintained parklands, just beside the towering monuments, there is squalor and poverty, their roots dug deep for more years than anyone can remember. It both angered and embarrassed him.

  “Therefore, in his honor, I will be creating and endowing the John James Abbott Foundation, which will address first and foremost our local citizens’ problems. You are our nation’s lawmakers, our movers and shakers. I would appreciate any and all expertise you can throw my way. Together, we can make a difference in his name, I’m sure we can.”

  She picked up her glass of water, raised it high. “I would like to toast Senator John James Abbott, a compassionate man, and an excellent father.” She raised her glass, and the rest of the room quickly followed suit. “To making a difference!”

  There was a moment of silence while people drank, then, slowly, the members of the Senate stood, clapping, their eyes on her, nodding.

  When she returned to the table, Jack said, “I didn’t know what you were going to say, but a foundation—that’s an excellent idea, Rachael.”

  She took his hand and said, in a low voice, “I couldn’t do it. I thought hard about it, Jack. I finally decided you were right. What my father would or would not have done became moot the moment he died. It was his decision and only his, no one else’s. It would be wrong of me to change how history will judge him. I don’t have that right or that responsibility. Only he did.”

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Washington Memorial Hospital

  Monday night

  One of the emergency room doctors, Frederick Bentley, turned tired eyes to the clock on the waiting room wall. His green shirt was still covered with blood. He said, more to himself than to the people standing around him, “Isn’t that strange? It’s ten o’clock, straight up. It always seems to be ten o’clock straight up when the freight train hits. You’d think midnight, the witching hour, would bring that choo-choo, but no. All right, I can tell you Greg Nichols is still alive, but I doubt he will be for long.

  “We poured blood, plasma, and fluids into him to resuscitate him. His PT—that means prothrombin time—measured off the charts, meaning his blood wasn’t clotting, and his hematocrit just wasn’t compatible with life.

  “He has remained unconscious. We’ve intubated him, meaning we put a tube into his trachea through his nose to allow him to be hooked up to a respirator. We’ll be moving him to the ICU in a minute.

  “We’re not yet certain why his blood isn’t clotting, but I’m thinking poison or an overdose. Most commonly it’s coumarin, or something chemically related to it like a superwarfarin, which is used as rat poison. It must have been a massive dose.

  “We took stomach and blood samples, which will show us what was in his system, and maybe how long ago he ingested it. It will take a while for the results, though.

  “To be blunt, I’m surprised he’s still alive. Even if he regains consciousness, he may not be able to talk. I strongly doubt his brain survived the anoxia, the lack of oxygen. Would one of you like to see him?”

  Savich followed Dr. Bentley into a screened-off section of the emergency room.

  “You’re the boss, right?”

  “Yeah, I get all the perks.”

  “Good luck.”

  Nichols lay alone and still, his face white as a plaster saint’s. Dried blood and vomit caked the side of his mouth. His eyes were closed; his lids looked bruised, like someone had punched him. There were two IV lines tethered to his wrists. The obscene wheezing of the respirator was the only sound in the room.

  Savich leaned close. “Mr. Nichols.”

  Savich heard Dr. Bentley suck in a breath behind him when Nichols opened his eyes. Savich saw the death film beginning to creep into them. No, Greg Nichols wasn’t going to live through this.

  “Do you know who poisoned you, Mr. Nichols?”

  Savich was losing him. His eyes were darkening, the film covering them, like a veil. His voice was urgent. “Who, Mr. Nichols?”

  He was struggling for breath to speak but couldn’t.

  His eyes froze. He was gone.

  Nichols was dead and Savich wanted to howl. There were alarms, the heart machine flatlined.

  Two nurses joined Dr. Bentley in the cubicle. Savich stepped out and returned to the small waiting room. There was an older black couple there now, their faces blank with shock, holding each other.

  “Come with me,” Savich said to Jack and Rachael. He took Sherlock’s hand and led them into a long empty hallway, away from the emergency room and the soul-deadening silence of that waiting room.

  “He’s dead. He regained consciousness, but it was only for a moment.”

  “They killed him, Dillon.”

  “Yes, Rachael, I think they did. And they did it dramatically, something I think pleased their vanity.”

  “But why?”

  Savich was quiet for a moment. Sherlock sighed. “I’m sorry, Rachael, but I think Greg Nichols was involved with them. After you and Jack met with him, maybe he spoke to them. Whatever he said must have made them realize he was a weak link, that he’d break, and so they killed him. I’ll bet you we’ll find out from Greg’s staff how they got to him.”

  Savich’s cell sang out “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.” He checked to see who it was, frowned. “Savich here.”

  He was shaking his head as he said, “No, no, that can’t be, it just can’t be. Yes, we’ll be right there. We’re in the ER right now.”

  He closed down, looked blankly at them. “That was Agent Tomlin. We’ve got to go to Dr. MacLean’s room.”

  His voice was flat, but his eyes were dilated with shock. It scared Sherlock to her toes. She shook his arm. “Dillon! What in heaven’s name has happened now? Did someone try for Dr. MacLean again?”

  He looked beyond her and said, “Timothy MacLean is dead, two floors up.”

  FIFTY-SIX

  It was chaos—medical staff walking about, seemingly without purpose, the hallway ja
mmed with hospital security, and above it all the fury of Agent Tomlin’s deep voice, trying to establish some order. He looked up, nearly yelled in relief at the sight of Savich.

  Sherlock grabbed his arm. “What happened, Tom?”

  “It appears Dr. MacLean had a gun. He put it to his temple and pulled the trigger. Chief Hayward’s inside with the medical staff, trying to figure out how this could have happened.” Tomlin swallowed. “Mrs. MacLean had just left when it happened. She came back up again, I don’t know why.”

  Jack said, “Rachael, you stay put. Don’t come in, you hear me?”

  She nodded, looked toward Molly MacLean, who was leaning against the wall opposite the nurses’ station, her hands over her face, weeping.

  “Molly?”

  Molly looked up, saw Rachael through a curtain of tears, recognized her.

  “I’m so very sorry,” Rachael said, and pulled her into her arms. Molly’s pain swamped Rachael, drew her into the well of familiar grief she’d lived with since her father’s death. It was the hardest thing a human had to bear, she thought. She’d only known her father such a short period of time, a moment really in the long skein of a normal life, but the pain was constant and still throbbed inside her, like a beating heart. She couldn’t imagine Molly’s pain. She’d lived with her husband for more than twenty-five years. She’d lost someone stitched into the very fabric of her life.

  Jack was walking toward them, and Rachael realized he was struggling to put his own grief away. She admired him greatly in that instant as she watched him get it together and the cop in him took over. He nodded to Rachael. Then he gently touched Molly’s shoulder. “Molly? It’s Jack. I’m so very sorry.” When Rachael’s arms dropped, Molly turned to collapse against him. She wrapped her arms around his back, held on hard, and wept against his neck. He held her, murmuring meaningless words, really, hoped it was comfort, but he doubted it. Nothing could make this mortal wound magically better. He said against her hair, “Molly, let’s go to the waiting room.”

  The waiting room was empty, as he knew it would be. All the excitement was down the hall. It was relatively quiet in there. He closed the door, motioned Rachael to sit as he led Molly to a small sofa. He eased down beside her, continued to hold her, rubbing her back, and spoke quietly to her.

  When she hiccupped, Jack gave her another squeeze and a Kleenex from a box on a side table. Rachael handed her a cup of water from the cooler in the corner. They waited in silence while she collected herself.

  Molly raised her face, looked straight at Jack. “I know you’ve got to know what happened.” She squeezed her eyes closed for a moment and another tear slid down her cheek. She opened her eyes, wiped a hand over her cheeks again. She drew in a big breath, held it. “All right. This afternoon, first thing when I walked into his room, Tim asked me to bring him his gun. He’s kept it for years in the bedside table; thankfully he’s never had to use it. I stared at him, terrified of what he was going to say, but when I asked him why, he looked at me like I was nuts. He said some guy had just tried to murder him and if it hadn’t been for Nurse Louise, what was left of him would be sitting in a lovely silver urn. He said he wanted to be able to protect himself, and if I really cared about him, I would bring him the gun. When I continued to resist, he shrugged, looked away from me, and said maybe it would be better if the guy came back and gave it a second try. After all, he was going to end up a vegetable, why not spare himself the indignity and welcome the guy back, maybe point to a good spot on his head where he should shoot him. It didn’t matter, nothing was going to change for him.

  “I smacked him on the arm, called him an idiot. You never knew, I told him, simply never knew when medical science would come up with a new drug to help him. He listened to me, at least I thought he was listening.

  “Then he looked up at me and said, ‘Bring me a gun, Molly, let me take care of myself. I don’t want to feel helpless.’

  “I finally agreed. I went home and came back about an hour ago. I watched him check out his gun, then he slid it under his pillow and smiled at me. ‘Thank you, kiddo, I feel better now.’ He was quiet for a while. Then he spoke of our family, his parents, our kids, and his patients—many other things, as well, bad things, painful things, but when I left I thought he seemed more centered, more like the old Tim, bright and funny.”

  She viciously wiped away the tears. “Oh, Jack, no one managed to get to him, no one murdered him. He did it himself, and I brought him the gun so he could do it.”

  Her words hung heavily in the room.

  Finally, Jack said, “Molly, we’ll get back to that. You told me he was himself again, the old Tim. Can you think of anything specific that could have been the catalyst for his killing himself?”

  She raised her white face, tears scoring her cheeks. “Yes, I realize now that it was me. I pushed him to it, Jack,” she said. Her eyes blurred and she choked. “I pushed him to do it.”

  Jack said, “Tell me.”

  Jack was aware that Savich and Sherlock had come into the room. They didn’t say anything, stood back against a wall. Molly said, “Tim started talking about his patients, the same three he’d spoken about so freely to Arthur Dolan, his friend and tennis mate, you know, the poor man who was murdered by that maniac up in New Jersey?”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Tim said, ‘Molly, I didn’t even realize what I was saying was wrong. It all tripped happily out of my mouth, all of it, every confidential filthy detail, and I sang it all out, happy as a lark. I broke every ethical code I’ve lived by all my professional life. I accepted my patients’ trust and crushed them with it.

  “ ‘Look at what happened to Jean David—Pierre loved his son, Molly, both he and Estelle adored Jean David. He was their only child, they would have freely given their lives for him, and here I actually enjoyed telling Arthur—with that bartender listening in—what Jean David had done.

  “ ‘And now Jean David has drowned, and Pierre is wild with pain and grief and hatred for me. If Pierre is the one who’s been trying to kill me, then I hope he succeeds. I pushed him to it.

  “ ‘I am responsible for this tragedy, Molly, no one else.’

  “He stopped talking, just stared off at nothing in particular, like he was alone, like he no longer cared about anything.”

  Molly looked down at her twisting hands and clasped them tightly together. Jack laid his hand over hers. She continued after a moment. “I told Tim he was not the one who chose to betray his country. He only shook his head, and his voice was so—accepting. He said to me, ‘Yes, Molly, that’s true, but not to the point. This disease, it’s only going to get worse, you know that as well as I do, but I’ll probably escape the worst of it because I’ll be oblivious to what is real, to what it feels like to be real, to be connected. I won’t know my kids, I won’t know you and that you’re my wife of forever, and all my love, all my experiences, the pains, the joys—even the meaning of it will be gone for me.

  “ ‘I can’t bear knowing I’ll go through that, Molly, now that I can still see clearly. I can’t bear knowing I won’t have any balance in my mind, that I won’t even recognize that what spills out of my mouth might destroy someone.’

  “I recognized the look on his face. He said, ‘Do you know, I told one of the doctors here about your affair with Arthur all those years ago? I didn’t remember saying anything about that, but the doctor told me what I’d said.

  “ ‘I thank God that He’s left me some moments of lucidity so I can remember all the hurt I’ve already caused, and decide what I want to do about it.’ ”

  Molly choked on a laugh, said to Jack, “Fact is, I did sleep with Arthur a couple of times, years ago. I didn’t even think Tim knew about it. I never told him. Funny thing was, both Arthur and I realized it was dumb, realized the truth of it was that all three of us were friends, very good friends, and had been for more than twenty years.

  “But Tim saw his speaking of it as the final betrayal, spilling out secrets
about our own personal life to strangers.

  “All I could do was think about that gun under his pillow. I asked him what he wanted to do and I was terrified of his answer. But he gave me one of his old Tim smiles, said he was going to think, really think about where all this was leading and the consequences of it. He was going to think until the ability escaped him, probably in the next thirty minutes, he said, who knew but God?

  “Before I left him a few minutes ago, one of the nurses brought him a pint of pistachio ice cream, his favorite. He grinned at me as he spooned it down. He looked calm. He told me he loved me, then smiled and offered me a bite of ice cream. I took a very small bite, but he teased me and told me I could even have one more small bite. We laughed, and I squeezed his arm and told him we were going to be together for a long time, it didn’t matter what came down the road and he’d best accept that. And he said, yes, he liked the sound of that.”

  Molly raised her face to Jack. “He kissed me, Jack, the sweetest kiss you can imagine. I can still taste the pistachio ice cream on his lips.” She fell silent for a moment, looking down at her twisting hands.

  Then she nodded toward Savich and Sherlock, smiled at Rachael, and said, “I got all the way downstairs when I remembered I’d forgotten to tell him it was Kelly’s birthday tomorrow. I wanted to tell him what we were giving her. Perhaps he’d remember when she came to visit him.

  “I heard the shouts when I stepped off the elevator.” She stopped, stared at a Monet water lily print on the wall. “I knew, Jack, I knew instantly what he’d done, what I’d enabled him to do.” She lowered her face into her hands and wept. The room was quiet, the only sound Molly’s ugly, raw tears. She raised her face. “Do you know I signed the birthday card from both of us, as always? It’s a funny card—it says she needs a new bedmate, her teddy bear is all used up.”

  Jack touched his fingers to her face. He wanted to tell her maybe it was better this way, but his heart couldn’t accept that.