Power Play

Savich smiled back at her. “Yes, we are,” and he and Sherlock showed her their creds, introduced themselves.

“And I’m Linda Rafferty, Marvin’s—Dr. Kurtz’s—nurse. Come in, come in. Poor man, he’s lying down, a concussion, clearly, but he refused to go to the hospital last night. Doctors heal themselves, right? He’s a little better this morning, thank goodness. Please, follow me.”

The master bedroom was painted a soft light brown, and not much larger than the king-size bed, with only a flat-screen TV on the wall across from it. Dr. Marvin Kurtz looked surprisingly well reclining on top of the big bed, wearing a stylish maroon bathrobe and matching slippers. He was looking over a pair of academic-looking glasses perched on his nose, watching ESPN. His only concession to his injury seemed to be the impressive white bandage wrapped around his head. He didn’t move to greet them, but he did smile at them, and then he smiled at his nurse.

Aha, Sherlock thought, so Linda is why your wife booted you out. She shook Dr. Kurtz’s hand. “You were very lucky, sir. We won’t stay long. I imagine you’ve got a pretty bad headache.”

“It’s not as bad now, thanks to some sleep and then pain meds.” He shook Savich’s hand. “I’ll tell you, Agents, if my mother hadn’t broken her hip I’d never have had that emergency alert bracelet in the house. What are the odds I’d use it myself? I’ve decided I’m going to have it bronzed. Linda, please turn off the television so we can talk.”

Linda gave him another smile and turned off the TV.

They took him through every moment of the previous evening, starting with the knock on his door announcing he had a package to sign for and he saw the gun pointed at his chest by a man whose clothes were stiff with dried blood.

He said, “He knew I was a surgeon and could help him. He told me if I didn’t he would kill me and treat himself if he had to. So I did the best I could with what was here. Like many surgeons I know, I keep an emergency surgical kit at home.

“He was in a lot of pain and looked quite ill, but he’d managed to stop the bleeding from his gunshot wound by applying a pressure dressing, as good a job as a medic could have done in the field. He was at the end of his rope, though, and smart enough to realize he could die if he didn’t get medical help.

“I’ll tell you, while I worked on him, I kept hoping he’d pass out, but as I told Agent Carver, he looked like ex–hardline military, a Green Beret or a Ranger or something. He was fit and tough, and he dragged his left leg, probably from a war wound. Everything I did seemed quite natural to him, like he’d seen it before. Of course, he didn’t want me to give him anything intravenous that could knock him out. He had me only use lidocaine, and he took a couple of Vicodin, but he could still function, still hold it together. He was lucky the bullet didn’t penetrate his abdominal wall; it only tore though some muscle.

“As I was treating his wound, picking out small foreign bodies, disinfecting and closing it, I kept thinking I could let the scalpel slip, maybe even stab him in the heart before he could bring up that gun and shoot me. But I couldn’t do it, couldn’t take his life, even though I knew in my gut there was a chance he was going to kill me.

“But you know what it’s like, you keep hoping, keep doing what you’re doing, praying the guy will have a sliver of decency, show a bit of gratitude that you saved his life. I gave him the meds and antibiotics he needed, and helped him into one of my shirts.

“Then he smiled at me and I knew that was it. Decision time. You know what he did? He said thank you, and as I helped walk him to the front door, he turned and hit me on the head hard, struck me down.

“When I came around I’ll tell you I was so happy to be alive I didn’t care I was tied up in the living room closet. I don’t think I even realized I had blood running down my face. I was that relieved. Then I thought of the medic alert bracelet in my pocket I’d bought for my mother that very day, and wanted to sing the Hallelujah Chorus.” He beamed at them.

“It’s all my fault,” Nurse Linda Rafferty said from the doorway. “I told Marvin, I mean Dr. Kurtz, that a man called me, asked if he could come in, that he’d had an accident, and I told him that Dr. Kurtz had been called to the hospital and he was off-call after that. I know he looked up Marvin’s—Dr. Kurtz’s—home address and that’s how he found him. I’m so sorry, if only I’d kept my mouth shut.”

“Linda,” Dr. Kurtz said, “it’s over now, and I don’t think I’ve had an adventure like this one in years.” He paused. “Well, never, actually.”