Likely to Die (44 page)

 We were all silent knowing that it was only a few days short of April fifteenth.

 “Have either of you sorted out why Spector was pushing so hard on Harper’s behalf?” I asked.

 “Not completely. Yet. But you really hit a nerve when you found Gemma’s notes on that. Both of them are mum on it for the moment, but I’m diggin‘ around. We’ll find out. Besides that,” Mercer went on, “it all just kept snowballing. Robert Spector knew that Gemma would quit—just on principle—the minute Coleman Harper was admitted to the neurosurgical program. Spector’s a winner automatically ’cause he’d wind up with Dogen’s job, which is exactly what he wanted.”

 Mike broke in. “I guess we rattled Harper in that last interview when we told him we’d be getting the hospital’s records from ten years back. He knew Minuit didn’t keep them that long. But what he didn’t know was how long Met kept its documents—and whether his archnemesis, Gemma Dogen, had her own set of papers on him. How much you wanna bet that he’s the guy who broke into Metropolitan to see if he could unload their file room of his own records? And that’s why he kept Dogen’s keys after he killed her. He must have slipped up to her apartment on Sunday to clean out whatever she had on him figuring sooner or later someone would find the papers that damned him.”

 “Why’d he let me finish that conversation with Mercer instead of just grabbing me while I was telling him all about the files I had found?”

 “If Harper had jumped you while you were on the phone, no matter how far away Mercer was he just would have called 911 and the cops would have been there before Harper could kill you and get safely out of the building. Probably thought if he got rid of youafter the conversation and made off with the only set of Dogen’s files that still existed, it’d just be Mercer’s word against his with no proof to back it up.”

 “We assume it was Harper in one of his disguises who got past your doorman and slipped that black-and-white note under your door,” Mercer suggested. “He may not have known the whole story on Jean DuPuy, but like Gemma he knew something was fishy about the guy’s background. Too slick, too glib. Don’t forget, they had both practiced in the South. I expect Harper knew something about the real John DuPre that started him thinking.

 “Anyway, he and DuPuy were both so unhappy to be anywhere near this investigation, they were each pointing fingers at the other one. They must have been so damned excited to find that bloodstained old derelict sleeping in the X-ray department that they tripped over each other to reveal him to someone else. And we actually worried about which one found him first.”

 “Do you think it was Harper who tried to run me down with the car?” I asked, thinking back to my near miss with Zac.

 “No question about it,” Mike shot back without hesitation. “He probably just freaked. A couple of days earlier, he personally delivered to us a blood-covered mental patient we all bought as the killer. Then he hears on Friday evening’s news bulletins that you, Alex Cooper, exonerated the old guy. Mercer thinks that when Harper had been sitting at the precinct for hours that first night, he heard Peterson ask for a sector car to drop you off after work and gave them your home address. May have gone there in a fury when he heard the news, never expecting to actually see you. Then he hits the jackpot—out you walk at eleven o’clock. Hey, I bet he was striking out without a plan at that point. Just desperate.”

 Again, we were quiet as the others reveled around us.

 “Know what I can’t stand?” Mike asked. “Forget that these morons don’t want to help out the police when there’s a murder, but somehow they can’t wait to tell any reporter who comes along that they’ve known about the killer or his motives the whole time. Have you seen any of the clippings?”

 “Nobody’s shown me anything. I’m a witness, remember?”

 “You got the ex-wife being quoted in some rag down South,” Mercer said, “claiming Harper felt Gemma Dogen wasthe only reason he couldn’t get into school anywhere else to study neurosurgery. Then there’s one of the doctors he worked with two years ago who said Harper was ‘obsessed’ with Dogen and absolutely fixated on becoming a neurosurgeon—the one thing in life that was denied him. Even believed Dogen was the ongoing source of most of his problems ten years after she screwed him.”

 “Yeah, that’s our shortcoming, Mercer. Cops can’t pay these fools like the tabloids do. Nobody wants to tell me zilch about a suspect. But stick a microphone or a camera in their puss or offer ‘em a hundred bucks for their story and suddenly everyone knows who the killer was all along.”

 “Not the big cheese. I saw Spector’s comment in Monday’sPost. Can’t believe his man did it. ‘Harper has a brilliant mind. He’s done some superb medical studies for me.’ ”

 “Yeah, well maybe Coleman can study the effects of prison on the nervous system for twenty-five years to life. Okay, Blondie, enough of this stuff—we’re all off duty and out of the jurisdiction.

 “C’mon, open up my present first.” Mike reached over to the pile and handed me a package. It was a red leather jewelry box wrapped in a large white bow. I pulled off the ribbon and unfastened the clasp, lifting the lid to reveal a glittering tiara. Nina grabbed it from my hand and sat it squarely on top of my head while Mike assured me that it was a fake and that he’d paid more for the box than for the rhinestones.

 “Listen up, guys,” Mike said. “Joanie and I have arranged a gastronomic birthday tour of the Vineyard—my itinerary, her pocketbook. We start here, of course, at the Outermost Inn, where I recommend you begin the evening with the crab cakes followed by the lobster and then the homemade peppermint ice cream.

 “Tomorrow is breakfast with Primo—coffee and bagels on the porch of the Chilmark Store. Good food, good gossip. Lunch, the amazing Flynn sisters and the world’s best chowder and clams at the Bite. Dinner with Tony and David at The Feast—don’t miss thepasta fra diavolo. ”

 I kicked off my shoes and walked to the edge of the steps that led down to the wide, rolling lawn bordered by Vineyard Sound.

 Mike was touting Sunday breakfast at the Inn, Primo’s pizza for lunch, and a farewell dinner at the Red Cat—the tenderloin with caramelized onion. He truly had explored all the best local options for food.

 Hughie’s brother, James, was quietly singing about fire and rain in the background while Mike continued to entertain the troops. He was telling them that their weekend assignment was to look for the tallest staircase on the island if they really wanted to see me do my Tina Turner imitation.

 I had come to the bottom of the gently sloping hillside where I stood with my feet in the icy water looking off at the not-too-distant spot where it flowed out to meet the Atlantic. I smelled the salt spray of the ocean as I looked over at the flashing signal of the great lighthouse—warning ships away from the rocks of Devil’s Bridge as it had for two hundred years. The sound of the waves lapping against the shore soothed me almost as much as the laughter of the people I loved coming from behind me. I could blow out the candles on my cake at the end of the festivities later tonight and everyone would be urging me to tell them what I yearned for. But as I stood here alone and stared up at the millions of stars that showed themselves from high overhead to the farthest point on the horizon that I could see, I privately made all my wishes for the year ahead.