Keenan said.
“Oh, well, I agree!” Lawrence said. “I’m just explaining to you how there is a market for opportunities that are under the table and beyond the lists.”
“Was there anyone back then who made you suspicious?”
“McCarron. He wanted to shape the entire way the hospitals handled things. He was bitter. His cousin fell down the list because he’d been drinking. McCarron pointed to all the movie stars during those years who drank like fish, some of whom mysteriously acquired new livers. McCarron was a monster of his own kind. I don’t think he minded getting his hands dirty, but he thought he was above everyone else, or at least that other people were of lesser value.” He paused and shrugged. “Someone killing street people and hookers? If McCarron was alive now, I’d say, right there, there’s your killer. But McCarron is dead. I was there—right there—at his execution.”
“McCarron is dead,” Stacey said. “But I was hoping you might remember something from the trial that might point to someone else taking over his empire. Or, even forgetting the trial, you might know something about someone who was interested in transplants when you were working or since. Any hints of someone not entirely aboveboard.”
He shook his head. “Medicine moves on. Everything is better now than it was just a few short years ago. Transplant is still a specialty, and a sad specialty. When you give a healthy heart to someone dying of heart disease, you know that someone else died. Often young people. Cut down in accidents. Dying far too young...” He shrugged. “It’s not that I haven’t lost patients since I moved in a different direction. Medicine is magic in a way, but not all-powerful magic, and sometimes there’s just no way to cheat death. But I don’t think about the fact that someone else died. Unless it was a donated kidney. That can be beautiful. Watching someone who received a kidney from the loved one who donated it... Wow! That’s a feeling. And partial liver transplants—to imagine that a liver will regenerate, if not scarred—is amazing as well. There are no partial heart transplants, yet, not that I know about. Lungs...yes, left, right. But despite all that, most of the time, someone has died. Now, I just fight for life. For the lives of my patients.” He looked at Stacey again. “I’m not meaning to be rude, but what made you think that anything from so long ago might be relevant?”
“Billie Bingham was at the McCarron trial,” Stacey said. “She was the killer’s last victim.”
Lawrence frowned and then shrugged. “The courtroom was always filled. The judge wanted all the proceedings to be open. McCarron was guilty of so many crimes. Drug running, money laundering—and the murders that came along with it. I saw programs on his talks with FBI interviewers when he was trying to get a stay of execution. He killed, or ordered to be killed, so many people. It’s not surprising that anyone was there in the courtroom, really.”
“She was there. And she’s now among the dead,” Stacey told him. “Do you know of anyone else at the time who was following Dr. Vargas’s work—or perhaps someone who was angry with Anderson, perhaps believing he pushed them into filling out donor cards—and then watched someone die who wasn’t high enough on a list or didn’t qualify for a transplant?”
“There’s hundreds—probably thousands—of people out there who are angry because someone couldn’t receive a transplant. Another reason that, with Dr. Vargas gone, I just wanted out,” Dr. Lawrence said. “And I don’t know anything about the donor lists. I don’t want to know anything about the lists. Give me a ruptured appendix any day.” He shrugged. “I can get you some names of other doctors who were interested in Dr. Vargas’s work and expertise at the time. If that will help.”
“Anyone back then who didn’t get the transplant they needed?” Keenan asked. “A case that stood out?”
“They’d be dead now,” Lawrence said dryly.
“Sorry,” Keenan said. “I meant, could there be anyone who needed a transplant and wasn’t high enough on a list—but is alive now.”
He shrugged. “Not that I know about. Anyway, I will help you the best I can. McCarron was a monster. It’s a good thing he’s dead. He killed, though, because someone failed him or...”
His voice trailed. For a moment, he looked as if he felt he had spoken too much.
“Well, his brother needed a transplant. Didn’t get it. That’s what his motivation, according to the prosecution.