And to think... Well, I was so desperate to save Dr. Vargas... Anderson, too, but I didn’t touch Anderson where he lay at the foot of the stairs, just Vargas. I was a doctor; I knew that his neck was broken. I still... I wanted to save him.”
“Understandable,” Keenan said. “Well, we’re very grateful for any help you can give us.”
“Of course. I’ll get you names. Do I email you?”
Keenan handed him a card. “That would be great. But this was a two-hour trip in traffic. Could you just scribble down anything you can think of? We’ll be out in the car.”
Lawrence looked aggravated for a moment, then shrugged. “Sure. I’ll get you what I can think of now. You don’t have to sit in the car.”
“We’ll be on the porch. Enjoy the beauty out here,” Keenan said.
Henry Lawrence stood with a shrug. “Sure. I guess you don’t get a lot of grass and trees back up there in the old District of Columbia.”
“Some,” Keenan said pleasantly. “We’re in Georgetown—it’s nice. But nothing like this.”
Lawrence strode to the front door and opened it for them. I’ll do my best,” he said.
Keenan and Stacey walked out.
“Had to try the swing,” he told her.
“It’s very pretty. Of course we must try it.”
They sat together on the swing, not quite touching.
“It is beautiful here,” she said. She pointed across the road. There was a small cemetery there, filled with old and broken gravestones and funerary art, angels with chipped wings, obelisks at odd angles, and other pieces of memorial art. It was overgrown and fenced in; no longer active, Keenan thought, and somehow both historic and charming where it sat beneath the darkening sky.
The house was surrounded on both sides by trees; to one side, there was a little copse with pretty benches. Large pots with flowering plants were set next to the benches.
“Pretty, pretty place,” Keenan murmured.
“Yes, Dr. Lawrence has created a very nice home for himself.”
“So, what do you think?”
“I don’t know what to think at all, really,” she said. “Every step of a person’s life has an influence on them. I guess Vargas was like a superhero to Dr. Lawrence. I know the whole situation back with the McCarron case had an influence on me.”
“Right. You became an agent, ready to fight for truth and justice.”
She cast him a grin.
“Stacey, you took it all and turned it into something good. I’m serious,” he told her.
“Well, since I’ve just begun, I’m hoping! But Dr. Lawrence didn’t turn his back on medicine—he’s still a good doctor. He wouldn’t be working at the hospital if he wasn’t.”
“But he did know all about transplants.”
“Well, they can’t be doing the transplants legally,” Stacey said. “You don’t think that a man who gave an oath to save human lives can be doing this?”
“Stacey, a medical doctor must be doing this. That’s the only way for a transplant to work—and it’s sketchy at that. An experienced doctor has to be doing this.”
“I don’t know—I don’t know!” she said. “He was so bereft over Dr. Vargas! How could he have turned that into...killing people to maybe or maybe not save others?”
“The human condition is that sometimes sickness, evil or whatever sinks in. I’m not saying this man is guilty of anything. I’m just saying we can’t rule him out yet.”
“A lot of people came to that trial. I know it’s still a stretch that it can be related.”
“You weren’t at the trial, but you watched every minute of it. Your father was a key in the prosecution’s case against McCarron. Yes, a stretch, but it does seem that it’s all related. McCarron’s trial, Billie—and illegal transplants now.”
She nodded. “I guess I’m playing devil’s advocate. I do keep feeling that, somehow, it is connected. But it’s hard to see Vargas as...as the madman in my dreams!”
“Let’s see this list he’s giving us,” Keenan said.
“Right,” she murmured. But she had stopped listening to him. She was frowning intensely.
“Stacey?”
She looked at him.
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“I could swear...there was a whisper.”
He sat still, listening. Dr. Lawrence inside, talking to his housekeeper? No, all he heard was the wind.
“What did you hear?” he asked her.
She shook her head, as if confused, and then stood, walking down the path toward the street just a few feet.
He followed her. Closed his eyes. Was it the power of suggestion? Or did he really hear it? First, it sounded like one voice. Soft, pathetic.
“Please...don’t go.”
Stacey looked at him. “Yes?”
The sound got louder.
Now, it was almost a