Second Opinion (28 page)

CHAPTER 53

'I hated him more than anyone could ever imagine.'

Aching for him—for all of Petros's children—Thea stared across at her brother, then stood and took several tentative steps toward him. He stopped her with a flick of his gun barrel, then rose and backed away, his arms extended, hands warning her.

'Dimitri—'

'I don't need your pity or your understanding or your sympathy.'

'Dimitri, Petros didn't know the first thing about parenting, let alone parenting children with special needs.'

'The things he said to me. The pain he caused me not by violence, not by hitting me, but by ignoring me. He gave up on me. From the very beginning because I was different, he gave up on me.'

Thea made no attempt to stem her tears.

'Dimitri, all he knew was what he got from his parents. He raised us the way he was raised. That was the best he could do. Think of how bad it would have been for us without Mom.'

'It was bad
with
her, at least for me it was. Listen, people came from all over the world to get a second opinion from your father,' he went on, marginally calmer. 'They named an institute after him. The Petros Sperelakis Fucking Institute of Fucking Diagnostic Medicine. Maybe I didn't have Asperger syndrome like you did, but then again, maybe I did. Your father never made any effort to find out.'

'Dimitri, he's an internist, not a psychiatrist.'

'He was a doctor, just like you are. He could tell when someone wasn't right—when they needed a diagnosis, when they needed help. He knew enough to understand that something exists from a person's neck on up.'

'I'm…I'm sorry, Dimitri.'

'The great Dr. Second Opinion never made any effort to get me diagnosed and treated. And by the time I understood what had happened, it was way, way too late. I hate him more than anyone could ever imagine. It gave me joy every time I did something to disrupt his little empire. The worst thing that ever happened to me was when he started asking questions about why so many patients were being cured so easily. That's why I had to…'

His voice trailed away and he stared down at the gun in his hand.

'Oh, no, Dimitri,' Thea groaned. 'No! You're the one who ran Petros down, not Hartnett.'

'And I was thrilled he ended up the way he did—at least until you came home I was.'

Dimitri's gun hand had begun to shake. His lips were tight and bloodless.

'You didn't hate him,' Thea said. 'You were afraid of him. All of us were.'

'Don't psychoanalyze me! I hated him. He deserved everything he's gotten.'

'Were you the one who tried to kill me, too?'

'No. Hartnett never told me he was going to do that or I would have stopped him—at least I think I would have. Now, let's get going. We have a plane to catch.'

'No! I'm not going.'

'The hell you're not. You mess with me and she's dead, Thea.

Surely you've heard enough to know I'll go through with that. What do I have to lose?'

'So tell me the truth, Dimitri, if you can. You have a deal with someone about Hayley, don't you?'

Dimitri shrugged matter-of-factly.

'There's a fellow named Gregory Rose who's willing to part with a good deal of money—although not to him it isn't—to keep her from causing him trouble anymore. Is that what you mean?'

'You know that's exactly what I mean.'

'Yeah? Then why did you screw that arrangement up, too, by talking her out of continuing her treatment? Too bad. According to her medical record, which I happen to have on file up there'—he gestured to the carriage house—'she has a wicked penicillin allergy, and I was about to arrange for her next chemo treatment to contain enough penicillin to cure every case of strep throat on the East Coast. Whammo! Can you imagine it? The mother of all anaphylactic reactions. Lydia Thibideau's chemo agent would have gotten all the blame, and I would have gotten all the cash.'

'Oh, Dimitri. You never did plan to let her live, did you?'

'You'll just have to trust that I have decided to return the down payment and let her live. Disrupting Petros's world just isn't as much fun anymore. Besides, no one would ever be able to find sweet Ms. Long to validate the kill.'

'I don't trust anything you say. Dimitri, I love you. You're my big brother. But you've done some bad things—some very bad things. You're not well and you need help. Just put the gun down and tell me where Hayley is. Please don't let anything happen to her. She's a very good person. There are people who can help you—meds you can take. Please.'

'I don't need your kind of help. I-I'm upright and leaving the country, and he's a vegetable. Don't tell me I need help. Now, if you want your friend to live, you'll come with me. So long as you cooperate, you have my word that Ms. Long will stay alive and well in her fortress of solitude.'

Fortress of solitude.

The words resonated in Thea's mind. Superman had referred to his secret arctic ice palace by that name, but there was something else…
Something else.

'Shit!' Dimitri exclaimed at the instant Thea connected with the significance of the phrase.

'I know, Dan!' she cried out. 'I know where she is!'

Muttering more obscenities, Dimitri grabbed her by the hair and pulled her toward the carriage house.

At the same instant, through the corner of her eye, Thea saw Dan dive from the love seat and roll toward the gun he had tossed aside.

She went absolutely limp and dropped to the ground, but Dimitri grasped the collar of her blouse and continued dragging her toward the door.

'Don't hurt him, Dan!' she screamed. 'Please don't hurt him!'

Dimitri kept his grip on her and turned long enough to fire off two shots at Dan. Both missed badly, sending up jets of dirt and pine needles.

When Dan reached his gun, Dimitri had shoved Thea into the carriage house and closed the massive door with his foot.

'Dimitri, please,' Thea begged. 'It's senseless now. I know where Hayley is. I remember about the fortress of solitude. Please let me help you.'

'Up!' Dimitri snarled, dragging her up the stairs.

'No!'

Halfway up to his loft Thea pulled free of his grip and rolled over against the ornate balustrade. Dimitri looked down at her, and for a moment she felt certain he was going to shoot her point-blank. He was wild-eyed—confused and absolutely frantic. This was not a puzzle he could reason out. This was not a malfunctioning computer, or a predictable video game. The variables in this scenario were changing too fast, and Thea knew that his lack of flexibility was being strained past the breaking point as he struggled to keep up.

'Dimitri, stop!' she cried as he reached the top of the staircase.

At that instant, the massive front door burst open, and Dan dove in and rolled, coming to rest in a prone shooting position, his gun pointing up the staircase.

Dimitri fired twice, splintering the floor a foot from Dan's face.

Dan scrambled behind the door. He was now shielded and his line of fire was well clear of Thea.

'Put down the gun, Dimitri,' Dan called out. 'Let us get you some help.'

'You should have just stayed with me, Thea,' Dimitri said, tears streaming down both cheeks. 'You should have just come to Brazil with me and helped me get settled in a new place. I would have told you. I would have told you where she was.'

It was the first time Thea had ever seen him cry. She pulled herself to her feet and reached a hand out to him. Below her, Dan had moved to the base of the stairs. He had no cover, and his gun was fixed on Dimitri's chest, but still he didn't fire.

'Dimitri, it's over,' Thea said softly. 'It's over.'

'You're right about that,' he managed. 'You could have helped me, Thea. It wouldn't have been so hard. You could have gone with me and helped me get set up. New places can be scary, you know.'

With that he whirled and sprinted to his right, into his sleeping area. A moment later, before Thea could reach the top of the stairs, there was a single gunshot.

She cried out and ran to him. Dimitri was on his back, his head turned to one side, the pistol still in his mouth. The back of his skull had blown open. On the pillow beneath him was an expanding disc of blood. His eyes were peacefully closed. Beside him, resting beneath his hand, was a ragged, filthy stuffed animal—a lion no more than eight inches high, with most of its mane and the tuft at the end of its tail still largely intact. From her earliest memories, Thea had associated the animal—Rex, she clearly remembered—with her brother, but she had no memory of seeing it with him since he began living in the carriage house, maybe twenty years ago.

A lion.

Thea knelt beside him and gently moved the gun aside.

'Oh, Dimitri,' she said, making no attempt to wipe her own tears, 'oh, baby, I am so sorry.'

Dan moved behind her and set his hands on her shoulders.

'He missed me on purpose, Thea,' he said. 'He was a terrific marksman. You saw the shot he made in the hospital. He could have put me away with every shot he made. He wanted me to kill him. He wanted me to end it.'

'But you didn't.'

'I could have, but I could see in his eyes that he wasn't going to shoot me. I knew it in my heart. That look wasn't there in Patrick Suggs's eyes, Thea. I know now I would have seen it if it was.'

Thea stood and buried her face against his chest.

'She's right below us, Dan,' she said. 'Right down there. I couldn't have been more than six or seven when Dimitri told me about a tunnel he was digging in the basement of the carriage house with a secret door. He said no one knew about it, and no one would ever find it, and that it was going to go way underground to a room he would call his fortress of solitude, just like Superman. He kept the basement locked. I never saw the door or the tunnel or the room, and he never mentioned it again. But the moment he said the words just now, we both knew I remembered.'

'Well, let's go get her,' Dan said. 'I suspect she'll know how to deal with the man who took out a contract on her, and I also think she'll be happy to learn that her cancer is cured.'

EPILOGUE

At
10 A.M.
on the first day of summer, Thea eased her three-year-old Volvo sedan to a stop in front of the elegant Point of Pines chronic care facility. She left her bouquet of wildflowers on the seat and entered the spacious, comfortable foyer. For her wedding, she was wearing a surprise gift from Dan—a bright red and brown African kente skirt and a white peasant blouse, both bought in an import store in Cambridge. Dan, headed with his son, Josh, toward the ocean-side park where the small ceremony would take place, had looked beyond handsome in his white morning coat and trousers, with a heavy necklace of Mauritanian amber beads replacing a tie.

Petros was essentially as he had been for the ten months since awakening from the hit-and-run. He had gotten back movement in his right eye, and strengthened the movement in his left, but in all other respects, he remained totally locked-in. Private nurses and regular physical therapy had kept him in as good physical shape as possible, but Thea had now reluctantly joined her brother and sister in believing there would be little in the way of further recovery.

They had not told Petros about Dimitri's responsibility for the hit-and-run accident, or his subsequent tragic end, and as far as they knew, the Lion still believed his oldest child was alive.

THEA GREETED
her father with a kiss on the forehead, while making the now customary survey of his status and the settings on his ventilator. His pulse felt marginally less forceful than it had been three days ago, although his heart rate was up from sixty to seventy-six. She used the nurse's stethoscope and thought she heard some slight evidence of fluid in his lungs—early pneumonia versus increasing heart failure. She would stop back later in the evening to check things over again. Returning the stethoscope, she sent the nurse out of the room. Then she moved to a spot in Petros's line of sight.

'Dad, today's the wedding. Two blinks if you understand… Good. I'm very excited. We're getting married at World's End in Hingham, on a little hill overlooking the ocean. Remember when you took us for walks there? That's why we chose the place. There'll be about twenty or twenty-five friends and family there, that's all. Then, next Saturday, my friend Hayley—the one I told you about whose life you helped save—is sending us away for a week on her boat. It has a captain and crew, including a chef. I wonder if he'll be willing to make me macaroni and cheese.

'So, I just wanted to stop by to tell you how happy I am to have found Dan, and to thank you for everything you've done for me over the years. I know with Mom passing when she did, it hasn't been so easy for you. Two blinks if you got all that… Good. Oh, I almost forgot. This blue scarf I'm wearing was hers. That's my something blue. And this ring belonged to Dan's mother. That's my something old, and this African dress from Dan is something new… Well, it's time. Keep checking the clock up there. At precisely two o'clock you'll know your kid is married.
S'agapo, Mpampa.
I love you, Dad.'

Thea kissed her father, then returned to the Volvo. On the passenger seat, beside her corsage of wildflowers, was a white velvet purse.

Inside the purse was her something borrowed—a small tattered stuffed lion with the mane and tail tip almost intact.

At 3
P.M.
that afternoon, in Room 110 of the Point of Pines, the chest pain Petros Sperelakis had been experiencing on and off all day intensified beneath his breastbone and began radiating up into his jaw and down his left arm. He had been experiencing the crushing sensation on and off all day, since an hour before Thea's arrival. Now, it had gone from a five out of ten in severity to an eight, maybe a nine.

It didn't matter.

I'm ready,
he thought.
My child says she loves me, and I know she does. She's a good doctor. No, a great doctor.
S'agapo,
Alethea. I love you. Your father loves you.

For several seconds, the pain intensified to a ten. Then, suddenly, there was none.