Page 185

“Another confidentiality about to be violated,” Amy said. “When they brought her in here, I thought, God forgive me, that she was the typical Main Line Princess who had a fight with her boyfriend, and whose parents wanted nothing but the best, damn the cost, for their lovesick princess. I had really sick people to try to help, and declined to attend her.”

“I don’t quite follow that, honey.”

From her face, Peter saw that this was not the time to address A. A. Payne, M.D., using a term of endearment.

“When her grandfather heard about that, he showed up in Dad’s office and begged him to beg me to see her. He did—he called me, he didn’t beg—and out of either a desire to do Dad a favor, or out of morbid curiosity, I agreed to see her.”

“I’ll be damned!” Peter said. “Do you think that call came from Savarese?”

“I think that’s possible, don’t you?”

“What do you want from me, Amy?”

“In the be

st of all possible worlds, I would be able to go tell Cynthia that the bastard who did this to her has been arrested and will never bother her again. She has recurring nightmares, in which I really think she relives the horror of this over and over again. And the brain, protecting itself, keeps trying to push the memory into a remote corner. And the result of that could damned well be schizophrenia.”

“I can’t really offer much hope on that score. Presumably she hasn’t given you a description of the ‘traumatic circumstances,’ much less a description of the cop?”

“No. But—and here we go again, violating physician-patient confidentiality—her blood workup showed traces of morphine, or its derivatives.”

“She’s an addict?”

“How do you define that? Was Penny Detweiler an addict? Two days before she put that needle in her arm, I did her blood, it came back clean, and I was able to tell myself she was past the worst of her addiction. Possibly Cynthia is psychologically addicted. Sniff a couple of lines and it doesn’t seem to matter that Grandpa is a gangster and that all your friends are likely to find that out tomorrow. Or today. And your life will be ruined.”

“You like this girl, don’t you?”

“Yeah, and I’m not supposed to. I’m supposed to be professionally detached.”

“You think the ‘already traumatic circumstances’ had something to do with drugs?”

Amy shrugged.

“That would seem to make sense, wouldn’t it?”

“Who took the message?”

“The supervisory nurse and the resident. You want to talk to them?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you might want to. I asked them to stick around.”

“I’d like your permission to talk to Denny about this, Amy.”

“Thank you for asking my permission,” she said. “I was afraid you’d feel you have to go to him, with or without my permission.”

“Denny can be trusted, honey,” he said. “I don’t know if we can find the animal who did this, but we’ll damned well try.”

She shrugged resignedly. “Now that I’ve told you, I feel better. Not comfortable, but better.”

“Is there a boyfriend? A girlfriend?”

“There is—maybe was—a boyfriend. I don’t know his name. And he hasn’t been to see her. Or even called.”

“That’s interesting. Maybe if I can find him, and that shouldn’t be hard, I can get something out of him.”

“All I want you to do, Peter, is remember that I have a very sick girl on my hands to whom irreparable damage can be done if—”