Tail Spin
Page 28

Her father had sent her the same photo. Sherlock grinned. “It took forever to get all the black smoke off. And the smell. It’s still like a faint perfume.”
Savich gave Agent Tomlin a terrifying smile before taking Sherlock’s hand and leading her into Dr. MacLean’s room.
Dr. MacLean moaned. They moved to stand on either side of his bed, staring down at gray eyes darkened with confusion.
“Dr. MacLean?” Sherlock waited until the gray eyes focused on her face. “I’m Agent Sherlock and this is Agent Savich. We’re FBI. We work with Jack Crowne. Don’t worry about a thing. You’re safe. You’re protected. We won’t let anyone hurt you.”
The gray eyes, a bit blurred, blinked at them. “You’re friends of Jackson’s? I want him to marry my daughter, you know, but my wife thinks he’s too old for her. She’s a fresh-man at Columbia this fall.”
“He might make a better uncle,” Savich said. “Remember, that’s about the same number of years that separated Prince Charles and Diana. Look what came of that.”
“Maybe so. Oh my, I never had such great drugs, even back in college. I feel like flying right off this rock-hard excuse for a bed and out that window, maybe buzz the White House. Is the weather nice?”
“Yes, bright sunshine, and it might hit eighty-five today.”
“I have a real good friend who’s a pharmacist and a killer at bridge. After I buzz over his house in Chevy Chase, hopefully ruin the bridge hand he’s playing, I think I’ll fly clear to the West Coast. I don’t want to go back to Lexington—my family are a bunch of nags and doomsayers. And my wife Molly—I tried to make her listen to reason, but she’s got her own rules for reason and won’t listen to mine. Molly kept pushing me until we were on a plane back to Lexington. And then I had to come back here again—but wait now. What kind of sense does that make? Oh, I remember. There was a plane wreck—Jackson was piloting. Is he all right?”
Savich saw his sudden alarm and said, “Jack is fine now, just headaches from the concussion and some pain from a gash in his leg.”
“Good, good, he’s okay then. I’ll tell you, even with these excellent pain meds, I still feel like I’m hurting all over.”
“Understandable. You got thrown around quite a bit. There was a bomb on board the Cessna, but Jack managed to bring it down in a narrow valley. He pulled you out before the plane exploded. You are hurt all over, sir.”
Sherlock said, “Dr. MacLean, we need to ask you some questions, to try to get a better handle on all of this.”
MacLean closed his eyes, appeared to go to sleep, but he didn’t. He said, eyes still closed, “Jackson had questions, too. He wanted me to tell him the names of my patients who live locally, as the majority do since my practice is here, so the FBI could interview them. I couldn’t do that, of course. My patients must have their privacy. They don’t deserve to be singled out, to have others find out they’re seeing me, and speculate why. I didn’t—”
“Dr. MacLean,” Savich said, interrupting him smoothly, “the fact is, with this disease—do you remember that you have frontal lobe dementia?”
He nodded. “How do you like that for a crappy roll of the dice? The disease starts in the front lobes, then continues all the way back, wrecks everything in its path. I’ll end up like an Alzheimer’s patient, lying in the fetal position, waiting to die, all alone in my own brain, the most terrifying thing I can imagine.”
That was the truth, Savich thought, and wondered how he’d deal with something as devastating as that if it hit him. He said, “I wouldn’t like it at all. You know this disease causes you to say things that are inappropriate?”
“I’m a doctor, Agent Savich. I’m not stupid. I know all of this. I did a lot of reading about it after I was diagnosed at Duke.”
Savich continued. “Sometimes you remember what you’ve said and other times you don’t.”
“Sorry, what did you say?”
“Sometimes you—”
“That was an attempt at a bad joke, Agent Savich,” Dr. MacLean said, grinning up at him. “But please understand, no matter what was wrong with me, I would have sworn on the grave of my grandpa that nothing could make me say anything to anyone about my patients. It’s my goal to help them, not harm them.” He paused and sighed. “But I know I have. Jackson told me.”
“You’ve already spoken about three of your patients to a friend and layperson, in public. It would appear that one of your patients found out about it, and you scared him or her so badly that he or she has made three attempts on your life. Two attempted hit-and-runs, here and in Lexington, and then the bomb on your plane on your flight back to Washington. If it weren’t for Jack’s piloting skills, you’d be dead, as would he.”
“It’s so bloody difficult to believe I could do something like that.”
“I imagine it is,” Sherlock said. “We need you to tell us about the patients you spoke about to your tennis partner, Arthur Dolan. Perhaps we’ll eventually need the names of all your patients, but it’s likely the person who wants you dead is one of the three, particularly since Arthur Dolan was killed shortly thereafter up in New Jersey.”
His haggard face suddenly looked austere. “That’s ridiculous. I never said anything to Arthur about my patients. He died in an auto accident, always did drive too fast. Molly was screaming murder, but I told her to take a Valium, everyone said it was an accident.” He suddenly seemed to calm, and said, his voice light, “Do you know, Arthur had a great backhand, but he was slow. I usually won our matches. Still, I’ll miss playing with him. It was such good exercise. He’d come down here one week, I’d go north the next. He was also a golfer, better at it than at tennis. Arthur and I only talked about sports, he didn’t know anything else.
“Now, as for that car nearly hitting me in Lexington, I know it was a drunk driver. The cops agreed.” He sighed. “Poor Arthur. At least for him, it was fast and clean and over with.”
“And the first attempted hit-and-run here in Washington, sir?” Sherlock asked.
“It was the Plank area, lots of drugs there. Maybe it was someone whacked out on heroin. The guy split. I would, too, after being such a jerk.”