She rattled off a burst, then raced down the stairs, but the tractor was moving away to her left, and it seemed as if none of the shots had hit. Firing like a commando as she ran, Susan took a line that would cut them off before they made the far side of the house.
“What should we do?” Will called out over the wailing engine.
“Just hold us steady,” Patty answered. “Real steady.”
She gripped the seat with her left hand and lay her right arm down across her left, sighting down the barrel of the pistol.
“Payback time,” she murmured, as she cracked off a single shot.
Through the gloom, thirty yards away, Susan cried out and fell, clutching her thigh and cursing. She was up with incredible quickness, though, hobbling after them, almost dragging her leg. But what chance she had to cut them off was gone.
Will swung the tractor to the left, alongside the house.
“That was an unbelievable shot!”
“It was a terrible shot. I was aiming at her chest. Take me past those cars. If she gets ahold of the keys to any of those, she’ll catch us in no time.” Will stopped beside Watkins’s Lincoln. Patty limped over to it and drove the pitchfork through the tire.
“Why don’t you just shoot it?” Will called down.
“I may need what’s in here.” It took two tries, but she stabbed through the left rear tire of Susan’s nifty Porsche. Then she climbed back onto the step. “Over there, the Jaguar!” she cried.
They were still twenty feet away from the car when Susan appeared at the corner of the house. She was bathed eerily in the light from the windows, her lips pulled back in a snarling, wolflike rictus as she fired.
“Go!” Patty cried.
She fired once at Susan and once at the Jaguar’s tire, missing both times. The third shot produced only an impotent click. With the cracks from Susan’s gun growing fainter, Will steered the tractor around two huge oaks and back onto the gravel driveway. One of the only things he remembered from the drive to Roxbury with Watkins was the right turn he took at the base of the drive.
“Even Boyd Halliday might have difficulty explaining that mess back there,” Will said as he made the right and they rumbled off down a narrow, deserted country road.
He was feeling absolutely buoyant.
“You have this thing wide open?” Patty asked grimly.
“Full speed ahead. Why?”
“I don’t think we can chance being on this much longer. Dammit, I should have taken more time for that shot at the Jaguar’s tire.”
“Nonsense.”
“Just the same, assuming Hollister limps inside, finds the keys to the Jag, and limps back out, she’ll be on top of us before you know it. Then there’s the people she told Watkins to call. They could come driving down this road at any second.”
Will rapidly deflated.
“So what should we do?”
“I’d rather take our chances in the dark in the woods than out here on this noble steed. You want your sneakers back?”
“No way. You’ve earned them. Besides, given where my socks have been, I don’t think I want to risk even touching them.”
“We should get off this thing soon,” she said. “One more minute, two at the most. I’m out of bullets, but I guarantee you that your pretty practice partner has plenty. I’ll get off and move inside the tree line. You drive about a hundred more yards, then ditch the tractor, get into the woods, and work your way back here. I’ll go straight in, twenty or twenty-five yards. That’s where we’ll meet.”
Without questioning, Will did as he was told, nosing the tractor off into the edge of the woods, then gingerly hiking back to where he estimated Patty was waiting. In just a few minutes, he heard her harsh whisper, calling him to the right. He was holding her tightly, concealed in a dense grove of young beech trees, when they heard a car skid to a halt by the tractor. Another minute and it accelerated, headlights slicing through the blackness as it sped past them toward the farm.
“Once again the woman in the pajamas proves her worth,” he whispered, genuinely impressed as he had been so many times this night. “You are the master. Speak, and so it shall be.”
“Well, I say we head diagonally away from the tractor and away from the farm. They’ll be back as soon as they meet up with Hollister. If we can put some distance between us and that road, I think we’ve got a chance. It’s cold out here, but not cold enough to kill us. As long as you can walk, if we just keep putting one foot in front of the other, sooner or later we’ve got to run into some sort of civilization. Massachusetts isn’t that big. Your feet okay?”
“I can manage. How about yours?”
“The right one where I stepped on the glass is starting to kill, but I can handle it. The sneaks are a godsend.”
“And they really look good on you, too.”
As rapidly as they could manage, they pushed deeper and deeper into the forest. At one point early on they both heard voices, but those quickly died away. Soon, there was only silence, intense darkness, and the damp chill of night. After an hour, they sank down at the base of a tree and held each other.
“Should we keep going, or try to wait until morning?” Will asked.
“I don’t mind resting for a bit, but I think we should push on. Halliday has a big meeting in the morning. He spoke about it when he thought I was in a coma. A number of companies are going to sign themselves into a merger with Excelsius. The way corporate lawyers operate, these sorts of business dealings are much easier to stop before they happen than they are to untangle afterward. If we can’t stop it, Halliday may not only get away with murder, but he’ll get away richer than ever.”
“I see what you mean. We really have no proof of anything. We may not even be able to find our way back to the farmhouse.”
“I think with a chopper we’ll be able to, but I’d be surprised if Hollister and Sanderson and the rest didn’t have the place cleaned up by then.”
She sighed.
“What? What?”
“I have a feeling it’s going to come down to our word against Halliday’s. Without those X-rays we don’t have much in the way of hard evidence. I suspect the fake slides have already been taken care of, and the pathologist who cooperated with Hollister and Newcomber dealt with one way or another. So at the moment, there’s nothing tangible to connect Excelsius and Halliday to the killings, or even to the breast-cancer scam.”
“We’ll come up with something,” Will said. “That bastard isn’t going to get away with what he’s done, even if he wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger. Come on. If you’re up for it, let’s keep going.”
Will helped Patty to her feet, then kissed her softly.
“You’re right,” she said. “One way or another we’ll get him. Just the same, I hate that we don’t have one hard piece of evidence. . . . Will? Will, are you all right? What did I say?”
Will was smiling down at her in an I-know-something-you-don’t-know way. He had just brushed his hand across his pants pocket and remembered, for the first time since Roxbury, what he had thrust in there. He slid his hand into the pocket and slowly withdrew the creased, damp, sweat-stained letter Charles Newcomber had sent him in the envelope of mammograms. He had no doubt that it contained the link between Halliday and the cancer scam.
“Merry Christmas, Sergeant,” he said.
Bullock and Carruth, widely referred to as B&C, had been the brightest star in the Boston legal firmament for 150 years. Ed Wittenburg, in his twenty-fifth year with B&C, was the senior partner in charge of acquisitions and mergers. Now, he looked across the fortieth-floor conference room, past the massive floor-to-ceiling windows with their grand view of the harbor islands, and silently asked Halliday when the show was going to get under way.
Janet Daninger was worried. She had come over to Excelsius Health along with Halliday and Gold after Halliday had been wooed away from Bowling Green Textiles to become the new CEO. Marshall Gold had been his executive assistant at Bowling Green, just as he was now. It was absolutely out of character for Gold to keep his friend waiting—especially for a meeting as significant as this one, which represented the pinnacle of Boyd Halliday’s career to this point. Janet smiled inwardly at the objections from those who initially opposed his appointment as CEO by pointing out that successfully repositioning a textile manufacturer did not necessarily translate into dealing with the highly competitive and volatile managed-care industry. How wrong they had proven to be.
“Try once more, Janet,” Halliday said. “I think we’ve got to get going. It’s just that Marshall did so much to ensure that this day came to pass, it seems only fitting that he should be here.”
He turned to the twenty men and women seated a comfortable distance apart from one another around the massive mahogany table. In front of each of them was an elegant name plate with their name and the name of the company they would be bringing into the Excelsius family. Premier Care, Unity Comprehensive Health, Steadfast Health, Coastal Community Care. In front of each of the attendees was an inch of documents, flagged where signatures would be needed. Beside those documents was a glossy brochure, trumpeting the new corporation: Excelsius National Health.
“When ENH stock comes out,” Halliday had told Janet with a wink, “I recommend you have those in your family buy a share or two.”
Now he fidgeted for another minute, until he sensed the increasing restlessness of those in the room, then he cleared his throat and stepped to the table. Over more than a decade together, he and Marshall Gold had functioned as a unit, with virtually no philosophical or professional differences. Marshall’s missing a meeting as monumental as this one would be a first.
You’d better have a damn good reason.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry for the slight delay. I was waiting for Marshall Gold, my executive assistant, whom I believe most of you know. He’s tying up some loose ends relative to this meeting, and I’m sure he’ll be here shortly.” He took a deep, proud breath. “And so, without further ado, it’s time for us to make history. By the time we adjourn this meeting, each of us will be an important part of one of the largest, most influential health-care delivery companies in the nation, indeed, in the world—Excelsius National Health. The two-thousand-dollar custom-made diamond and gold Diablo de Cartier fountain pen on top of each stack of documents will be your souvenir of this day, but another pleasant and constant reminder of it will also be your bank accounts.”
The laughter from around the room was generous.
“Now, then, if you will each take your pen and refer to item one, we—”
The elegant double doors at the far end of the conference room swung open.
Welcome, Marshall
, Halliday almost exclaimed. Instead, he watched in stunned silence as Will Grant and Patty Moriarity stepped shoulder-to-shoulder into the room. They were showered and dressed in clean, casual clothes, but nothing could hide the fearsome bruising covering their faces. Will’s left eye was completely swollen shut, and his hands were bandaged. Patty’s eyes were enveloped in violet, with gentian streaks running down her cheeks and over her jaw. Both were limping.
Moments after they entered the room, a third person followed—a tall, distinguished man, marching ramrod straight, wearing the uniform of a colonel in the state police. Tommy Moriarity remained there, unmoving, as Patty and Will split apart and slowly rounded the massive table, giving each of the people seated there a slow close-up of the battering they had taken. When they reached Halliday, Patty handed him a folded piece of paper . . . then another.
“Boyd Halliday,” she said, “this is a warrant for your arrest.”
“On what charges?”
“The DA is just getting started on those, but the one you have in your hand is for fraud and accessory to murder. I can promise you that there will be others. The fraud part is outlined in that letter from a certain radiologist at the Excelsius Cancer Center.”
“Would you like us to add copies of these documents to those already in front of your business associates?” Will asked.
Boyd Halliday raised himself up and stared stonily out the window.
“That won’t be necessary. Ed, will you come here, please, and make certain these people don’t violate any of my rights.”
No one around the table moved as Ed Wittenburg held whispered conversations first with Patty, then Halliday. Finally, he stepped aside as Patty handcuffed Halliday’s wrists behind him and led him from the room, joined at the doorway by her father.
Will, bracing himself on the back of a chair, turned and faced the others.
“I hope most if not all of you are completely in the dark about what is happening here,” he said. “In time, much will become clear to you. For now, all I can say is: The stakes in the struggle between organized medicine and managed care have just gone up considerably. None of us should be taking care of the health problems of others until our patients’ or clients’ concerns come before our own. I challenge each of you to go back to your companies and figure out just how to put those words into practice. Oh, and meanwhile, feel free to keep your souvenir pens.”
EPILOGUE
Chicago
Ten months later
Winter sun glistened off the surface of Lake Michigan and the new, powdery snow that blanketed much of the city. Physicians, more than 25,000 of them, streamed across neatly shoveled walks and into McCormack Place South on the vast convention campus. The healers, including several thousand chiropractors and hundreds of optometrists and podiatrists, represented every specialty and medical organization, as well as every state. Organized by the Hippocrates Society, the gathering was unprecedented in its spirit of cooperation and its mission, which was to carve out the framework of a single-pay, national health-insurance plan and to back up its demand for implementation by Congress with the threat of a slowdown or even a general strike.
“It’s going to happen,” Will said. “Can you believe it, it’s gonna happen.”
“Thanks to you.”
Patty tightened her grip on his arm and led him over to a spot where they could look out across the lake.
The magnitude and cruelty of Excelsius Health’s perfidy had galvanized physicians in ways that had previously been unimaginable. Almost overnight, chapters of the Hippocrates Society sprang up in cities across the country, and membership swelled. The AMA threw the force of its 260,000 members behind the search for a solution to the crisis. A widely publicized and completely televised congressional hearing uncovered unacceptable business practices on the part of a number of health-care provider companies. Patients and physicians at the hearing were joined on the witness stand by employees of a number of those companies, suddenly anxious to share shortcuts they had encountered that adversely affected patient health. Subsequent to that, a significant number of congressional seats had gone to candidates advocating immediate action on revamping the health-care delivery system toward federal control.