Tail Spin

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 jammed 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?”