The Society (20 page)

“I think I’m going to go,” he said.

“Suit yourself.”

“You know, my partner Susan Hollister said you have had some trouble of your own.”

“Plenty of it.”

“And she said because of that you might have some sympathy with what’s happening to me.”

“I might. That doesn’t mean I can be of any help.”

“Well,” Will said, “exactly what is it that happened to you?”

Micelli eyed him for a moment, then drained his tumbler. It was as if the question was one nobody had ever asked.

“I killed my son,” he said simply.

Will stifled any knee-jerk response.

“Go on,” he said.

“You sure?”

Will nodded.

“Okay. Remember, you asked for it. I was an internist with all the right medical pedigrees, very full of myself,” Micelli said in a near monotone, virtually devoid of the emotion inherent in the terrible account. “My then wife and son and I were in Utah, set to go on a camping trip into some pretty remote country. Ryan had a little fever and a stuffy nose. His mother wanted to cancel the hike. I told her he was nine and she was being overprotective. I even checked him over so she would be reassured. A little red throat was all. So off we went.”

Will could see the shattering end of the story already and wanted to spare both of them any unnecessary anguish.

“Meningitis,” he said.

Impressed, Micelli nodded.

“Two days out with no radio. I raced back for help, but by the time the helicopter reached them, he was gone. Just like that.”

“I’m very sorry. That’s so sad.”

“So was what happened afterward. A few months later I went into what they called a paranoid depression. No history of prior mental illness. Scared the hell out of my wife, my neighbors, and a lot of people at my hospital. I was about the only one around who thought I was normal. Rather than get me help, or ask my wife to get me hospitalized, my hospital panicked and suspended me. After that I was hospitalized and properly diagnosed and treated. The paranoia and crazy behavior went away almost immediately and has stayed away. But by then the Board of Registration had suspended me, as well, until they could investigate why I had been kicked out of my hospital.”

Once again, Will could see what was coming, and again stepped into the account.

“Then,” he said, “because you had your license suspended, the managed-care companies dropped you from their provider panels.”

“Exactly. It was a cookie-cutter response by the board and by them, without so much as an investigation or a hearing. So even though the board eventually reinstated my license, most of the companies held to their decision. Once worth suspending, always worth suspending. There was no way I could practice—at least no way I could practice and get paid for it. Well, no matter now. I make ten times more doing this than I ever did being an internist—and work a fraction of the hours. Too bad, though, because I actually liked doing it, and I was pretty damn good at it, too.”

“I’ll bet you were, Augie,” Will said. “Listen, I’m sorry for all you’ve been through. I really am. But I hope you can take some pride in the way you’ve managed to deal with all that’s happened without going down for the count. I don’t think I could have handled something happening to one of my kids that bravely even if I
didn’t
believe I was responsible.”

Without a word, Micelli made his way to the sideboard and poured a third drink, this one more substantial than the other two.

“So,” he said, taking a gulp, then clumsily wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, “it’s your turn now. Assume I know everything about you that the newspapers and TV can tell me.”

Clearly, Augie Micelli was now under the influence, although not strikingly so. Will debated if there was any percentage in staying. Even if he decided to leave and renew his attempts to connect with a lawyer who fit his requirements of being talented, empathetic, and reasonably affordable, he knew that the trip into Boston had been worth it. Whether he and Augie ever saw each other again or not, he still owed Susan thanks. According to the story Augie had shared, the man was hardly as responsible for his son’s tragic death as he seemed to want to believe. Still, the boy was dead.

Will’s external world was crumbling, that was all too true, but Dan and Jess were healthy, wonderful kids. And even if he hit rock bottom and lost everything else, he would still be their father and they his children. Even if the only purchase he had on the sheer wall up from this nightmare was them, he would still have a firm hold from which he could start the climb. His heart ached for Augie and the terrible emptiness he had to deal with each day, but it no longer ached for himself.

“You know what,” he said finally, “if you know that much about me and my situation, then you really are already in a position to know whether or not you can be of any help to me.”

“I can tell you right now that I can’t. This just isn’t the sort of thing I do.”

“I can see that. Listen, here are copies of some letters I brought for you to review. I’ll leave them with you anyway, just in case you can think of someone who might want to work with me. One of the letters is from a law firm that is representing my former patient. Because of a clause in my group’s malpractice policy, I don’t have any coverage for what’s happened. Fortunately, even though they’ll get everything I have if I’m found at fault, it won’t be much. All the information you need to reach me is on that sheet I filled out.”

“I’m sorry I can’t be of any help to you,” Micelli said.

“I’m sorry about your son,” Will replied.

For twenty minutes after the door closed, Augie Micelli sat, staring unseeing out the window, feet on his desk, rising once only to replenish the scotch and ice in his glass. Losing Ryan would always be the worst thing that had ever happened to him—far beyond the subsequent financial losses and breakup of his marriage. But this was the first time he could remember speaking with anyone about the pain of losing his practice. Unlike what he was doing now, practicing medicine had never been about the money.

He opened his desk drawer and set a silver-framed photo from it on his desk—one of Ryan smiling down from the limb of a massive, ancient oak.

He drained his glass. Drinking like this had been really stupid. He had made a deal with himself not to do it around clients anymore, and now he had broken that agreement. He swallowed what remained in his glass.

What in the hell difference does it make? In fact, what difference does anything make? Guilty or not, Will Grant has gotten himself into this mess. He can damn well get himself out. If he needs to, he can just go to law school or become a grocer or do landscaping or . . . or . . .

Micelli stood suddenly and hurled his tumbler into the fireplace. The shattering glass had Gladys in his office in seconds.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, fine. Sorry about the glass. I’ll clean it up myself. Meanwhile, could you please get me Gil Murray in the Middlesex County DA’s office? Tell him it’s about the Will Grant case.”

CHAPTER
15

“I miss you, Daddy.”

“I miss you, too, sport. We’ll see each other next week. Meanwhile, just keep oiling that new glove and then, with the ball in the pocket, tie it up like I showed you with one of those heavy rubber bands we bought.”

“O-okay.”

“Danny, it’s okay to cry if you want to, but please know that I’m all right and everything’s going to be fine. It’s just going to take a little time. The things that have been said and written about me aren’t true, and before long everyone will know that. Okay?”

“Okay. Sean’s mother won’t let him come over here to play anymore.”

“I’m so sorry. That must make you very sad.”

“Only a little. Sean’s a jerk most of the time, and he wasn’t my best friend anyway.”

“Just the same, it’s got to be hard for you.”

“We know you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“And that’s all that matters to me. Now, I’ll see you both next week, and before too long everything will be back to normal. Got that?”

“Got it.”

“You’re a brick.”

“You’re a wall.”

“You’re iron.”

“You’re steel.”

“Your . . . nose is running.”

“Da-ad.”

Will said good-bye and set the receiver down slowly.

“You bastards,” he muttered, at once sickened and furious at the pain that the twins were experiencing. “You fucking bastards.”

Augie Micelli’s story had been a heavy dose of perspective for him, but the reality of his situation was still overwhelming and, it seemed at the moment, virtually hopeless. Whoever had set out to destroy him had done a masterful job. He was a rag doll, hung out to dry and swinging helplessly in the breeze. Even worse, aside from a few friends like Benois Beane, he was alone in the certainty of his innocence. There was no grass-roots crusade mounting, no letter-writing campaign, no pass-it-on e-mails. Even his partners and a number of his friends seemed to have stepped back and taken a wait-and-see position.

You can only do what you can do
, he reminded himself for the thousandth time.
You can only do what you can do.

He was sifting aimlessly through the mound of mail on the coffee table when the phone began ringing. The caller ID read simply
ERROR
. Will hesitated. Then, both curious and prepared to hang up, he picked up the handset.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Will Grant,” the electronically distorted voice said. “Your life has certainly been quite eventful since we last spoke.”

Will wondered if Patty was on top of this. She hadn’t given him any instructions in terms of whether or not he needed to keep the killer on the line for any specific length of time, like the cops in the movies always tried to do. In fact, she hadn’t even told him whether the tap on his line was done at his phone, at the line outside, or at the phone company.
Stay calm but sound upset
, he told himself.
Calm but upset.

“I don’t want you to call me anymore,” he pleaded. “Give yourself up and I’ll see to it you get the best therapist around. You’re sick. You need help.”

“
I
need help? Goodness, but those are strong words from a man who has done what the papers and TV say you’ve done. Face-first into a patient’s incision. That sort of publicity isn’t good for our cause, Dr. Grant. Not good at all. We have no place in this crusade for drug addicts.”

“I’m not one of you, and I’m not a drug addict.”

“Oh, but you are. These managed-care companies are your enemy just as they are ours. I read where you are claiming to have been set up.”

“I was.”

“Well, if not one of the managed-care companies you exposed at Faneuil Hall, then who? Was it Halliday? Because if it was, he could and should be moved up the list, say to tonight.”

“Stop it! Please, you’ve got to stop this insanity!”

“Funny, that’s precisely what we begged our mother’s so-called caregivers. You’ve got to stop her insanity, we told them.”

A mental-health patient! This is all about a mental-health patient
. Will flashed on the many instances he had encountered over the years of managed-care companies refusing detox or even counseling for alcoholics and cutting short hospitalizations for psychiatric cases, even though there was concern that the patient was or might be suicidal. Of all the patients the industry had shortchanged since its rise to power, those with mental illness headed the list.

“Did your mother kill herself?” he asked. “Is that what’s behind all this?”

“When you have proven yourself reliable, Dr. Grant, we will increase your level of responsibility and knowledge. In the meantime, if you have any information as to who might have set you up, or you need to contact us for any reason, any reason at all, simply place a personal ad in the
Herald
containing the phrase
In war there are casualties
. We will contact you. Meanwhile, I suggest that you stay safely indoors tonight. The piper’s on the loose and he must be paid. Good day, Dr. Grant.”

“Wait! . . .”

The tension had become almost unbearable around the state police in general and among the Middlesex detectives in particular. It had been over a week since the managed-care killer had been heard from—a week that coincided with Will Grant’s bizarre drug overdose in the OR. Spurred on by what he and Jack Court considered Patty’s reckless and potentially disastrous solo visit to the apartment of their only suspect, Brasco was keeping the pressure on her with a constant barrage of callous remarks and a string of time-consuming ticky-tack assignments related to their case, the latest of which was reinterviewing the security people in the Fredrickston Medical Arts Building. Meanwhile, there had been no letup in the day-to-day business of robberies, assaults, drug deals, and various other demonstrations of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man and to society. The result, from the CO down to the rawest rookie, was stress.

The afternoon was heavily overcast and more humid than any early spring day had the right to be. It was ten after three when Patty swung the Camaro into her spot and made her way through the sparsely patronized mall to her office. There was yet another meeting scheduled with Court to review the lack of progress on their biggest, most visible case. In order to appease Brasco, Patty had not only interviewed those security people on duty the night before and the day of the killer’s intrusion into Will’s office, but she had tracked down all the personnel who had covered the company for the past month. Not surprisingly, she had come away with nothing except the hassling she was about to get for being late to Court’s meeting.

She punched in her code on the security pad, waved to veteran Brian Tomasetti, who was building a pyramid of magnetic balls on the top of a Dunkin’ Donuts carton, and hurried past Brasco’s empty cubicle. She paused at the door to her own space long enough to toss her jacket onto the back of her chair, and was just about to race off when she saw the light flashing on her voice mail. Even before she keyed in her password, she knew it was trouble. Three messages. The first was prefaced by Gil Kinchley at the phone company—the man who had turned the court order she had obtained into a wiretap.