Bad Medicine (11 page)

"Have a seat, have a seat," he offered, that smile even brighter at her discomfort. "I bought them with money from Metro, you know."

"Thanks, no," she said. "They'd probably collapse."

"And risk a lawsuit?" he demanded, wide-eyed. "Don't be silly."

"Mr. Patterson," the receptionist ventured in a breathy whisper.

"Oh, Ms. Burke and I know each other from way back, don't we, Molly?"

"We do, Frank," Molly retorted, her attempts at professionalism evaporating. Damn it, he smelled so good. He always had, just a whiff of Lagerfeld to affect the witness's concentration. "I have a sneaking suspicion that it's my bones you used to build the ladder to climb to this exalted office."

Frank's laugh would have made angels cry. But then, they said, so would Lucifer's. "Overstating the case, Molly. Your settlement was the smallest of the bunch. I used much sturdier bones than yours."

"You might be surprised how sturdy my bones are, Frank."

"Mr. Patterson," the receptionist tried again, still hanging on to the door as if keeping herself upright.

Frank finally acknowledged her. He flashed her the smile. Not a barracuda smile, Molly realized. Admitted, actually. What he had was a pirate smile. The kind Errol Flynn was always leveling on Olivia de Havilland, equal parts charm, delight, and devilment. It was a smile that made Frank's eyes crinkle and his teeth gleam. It was a smile that made everyone around him want to smile back and join in the fun. Even Molly.

The receptionist obviously wasn't any more immune than anyone else. She smiled. Not as big as Molly was sure she would have before she found out why Molly was here. But under the assault of that Patterson charm, she did do some noticeable melting.

"Something else, Brittany?" he asked.

Brittany. Of course. Her name couldn't have been Selma.

"I'd prefer to tell him," Molly told the woman, turning to face her. Not because she needed to impress her, but because she had to compose herself a second before facing Frank again.

Brittany turned on Molly as if Molly had killed Peg Ryan herself. Then she gave a quick nod and fled.

"Don't tell me," Frank said.
"You're
suing
me
."

Molly took a breath to quell her temper and turned back to the business at hand. "Attractive as that offer is, I'm afraid not."

He laughed again. "I can't help it if you had a bad lawyer, Mol. He never should have let me get away with what I did."

"Thank you. I'll treasure that apology as long as I live. But that's not why I'm here."

Molly took a second to consider the fact that she probably should be talking to someone else. Anyone else. Brittany, for God's sake. Frank Patterson set her teeth on edge so fast she'd lose the most vital moment in the interview.

That first reaction to the news. Always the most important. The truest.
Are you surprised that your husband is dead, or relieved or disappointed? Did you know Aunt Martha was planning to down all those sleeping pills?
Given an hour and a lawyer, the truth usually disappeared. Suicides turned into accidents and murder to an alibi. But more often than not, the first contact with a law official betrayed the truth.

"It's about Mary Margaret Ryan," Molly said, gauging his reaction.

His reaction was that he offered her a seat and returned to his own. "Now, there's the lawyer you should have had—since you couldn't have me. Hire Peg to sue that two-bit hospital that wouldn't take care of your defense for you. She'll slice them up so badly they'll wish they were a car parts store."

Molly eased her way into the chair without taking her eyes from Frank Patterson. "That's not why I'm here."

Instinctively, her voice softened into her bad-news-and-disaster tone. Low and soothing and non-threatening.

It caught Frank's attention. "What's wrong? You don't have a problem with Peg. You can't. She's almost as good a lawyer as I am."

Molly reached into her purse again to pull out her proof. "I'm here in an official capacity, Frank, to talk to somebody who worked with Ms. Ryan. I'm afraid she's dead."

For a minute, Frank just sat there. Molly didn't wait. She opened her ID case and pulled out her ID.

"I'm working for the Medical Examiner's Office now," she said.

He looked at the card and still he didn't react. After what he'd done to her, Molly's less than altruistic instinct was to hurt him with the rest. Drop it on him, grind him a little. Just some payback for the stress ulcers and job-hunting.

She couldn't. No matter what, it wasn't a weapon she used.

"What happened?" he asked, his own voice changed. Chastened. A little hoarse, the timbre matching a sudden darkness in his expression. Clenched muscles instead of tears. Stillness instead of abrupt action. A man who knew how to control his reactions. A man who'd had to before.

"She committed suicide," Molly said, and watched the most closely of all.

Frank Patterson robbed her of her reaction by closing his eyes completely.

"You're not surprised," Molly said quietly, her ID retrieved, her hands quiet in her lap, her need to control the interview pushed aside by her instincts. Compassion. Empathy. Fear.

She wanted it to be okay. And then she wanted to be away from it.

"No," he finally said, opening his eyes again. "I guess I'm not. She's been really bad lately."

Molly didn't so much as think about going for her notebook. "Bad how?"

He picked up a Mont Blanc fountain pen with gold trim and marbleized shaft that matched the lobby downstairs. "She just lost her first big case. A real bruiser. And our Peg doesn't take losing well. She trashed her office."

"She's done that before?"

"She was intense. Headed for stardom in the courtroom if she could get herself focused. I always had a sneaking suspicion she was a manic-depressive."

"Why?"

He allowed himself a look now out to the empty air over Illinois, tracking the gleam of a river under full sun. "When she was on the case, she was so up she seemed six inches taller. Vibrant, energetic. Brilliant. She only lost because we represent the big companies and the jury wanted to give the money to the little guy."

"The big companies?"

Frank returned his attention to her and grinned with some deprecation. "Don't you remember who defended that hospital of yours when you got sued, Saint Molly?"

Molly sat up a little straighter. She hadn't remembered. She hadn't had any contact with the hospital lawyers past the moment they'd effectively said, "Do we know you?" Her own lawyer had been provided by her insurance company.

Frank was already nodding, arms spread. "How do you think I leapfrogged up to the twenty-first floor? Old man Marsdale himself was so impressed with how I handed the heads of his law firm to my client on a platter, he offered me a job. It has been a very successful relationship."

Molly thought she was going to be sick. In the temple of the devil itself. She'd been gang-raped in that court, and the gang was all here.

"And Ms. Ryan?" she asked anyway, struggling to keep her focus, furious that she hadn't walked out of the office before she'd had the chance to find this out.

"She's... was... fairly new. Bright kid, good schooling. Great future in product liability defense. She'd already been put onto the Argon Pharmaceutical, Veldux Corporation, and HealthSys Manufacturing retainer teams."

"There were cases?"

"There are always cases. We do a lot of preventative maintenance for the companies involved. They appreciate the savings."

"And the case she was just on?"

"It's public record. She was on the team defending Veldux in a case involving allegedly bad incubators."

"Allegedly."

That smile again. Brash and bright, a little boy playing a game. "What's a little judgment among friends?"

"My thoughts exactly. You worked with her on what?"

He rearranged the call-back notes on his desk. "Veldux. This was her first court appearance, and I was helping her prepare. We got along well. Kindred spirits, you might say."

"How long since the case was decided?"

"About ten days. She's been having more and more trouble since then. I was hoping she'd pull out of it. But then when she didn't come in this morning..."

A frown passed across his face like a cloud skimming clear water. Evidently Frank Patterson wasn't the kind to brood too long.

"Is there anything else she might have talked to you about? Relationships, anything like that?"

Frank's smile was wry and knowing. "We talked precedents and briefs and redirects. Peg isn't the type to confide."

Molly nodded, considering. "Had she been drinking?"

He looked up at her, a little surprised, a little chagrined. "Probably. How's her family?"

"Not well."

He nodded, straightened, as if pulling himself into order. "Good."

Molly admitted surprise. "Good?"

This grin was even more fleeting then the frown. More knowing. "I need something to do. I'll go see them."

The last thing Molly wanted to see from Frank Patterson was altruism. "They're nice people, Frank."

"Are you saying I'm not?"

"Just... they didn't see what you did in the last few weeks. Okay?"

He nodded, his expression only gently mocking now. "Even the wolves who raised me respect grief, Saint Molly."

"Stop calling me that, Frank."

"Why? That's how I think of you."

"It's not how I am."

That got her one last smile, the brightest, most self-effacing smile Frank Patterson had in the repertory. "But you are. You're the most beautiful martyr I've ever burned at the stake."

* * *

"So the lawyer count is up to four, huh?"

Molly didn't bother to look away from the baby she was holding to acknowledge Sasha standing in the door. "Yep."

Six months old, he weighed six pounds. A pound more than he had at birth. He looked like an ad for Christian Children Services, and he'd come from St. Louis. Molly rocked him and smiled. The IV taped to his forehead re-supplied fluids he hadn't been getting, and Molly's gloves and gown protected her from the lice and scabies he carried. He was too worn out to smile back. He just watched her, his eyes huge and patient, his mouth clamped around a pacifier. Molly hummed to him, something old and Irish, and he seemed to like it.

"You know what that makes, don't you?"

Molly looked up then. "What?"

Sasha's smile was as bright as Frank Patterson's. "A good beginning. You comin' outa here soon?"

Molly turned back to the baby and smiled a different smile. Dawayne Peters responded by slowing his sucking for a fraction of a second. "Oh, in a minute. It's my lunch hour."

"Your lunch fifteen minutes. All hell's breakin' loose out there."

"Let me take him up to his room and I'll be out."

For a second, she thought Sasha had left. Then she heard a sigh behind her. "You can't adopt them all," Sasha said.

Molly still hadn't lost her smile. She never did when she got to play with babies, no matter what was wrong with them. "I don't want to adopt any of them," she said, knowing quite well that she was lying through her perfectly straightened teeth. "I just want to play."

"Uh-huh. And I want the world run by HMOs. Listen to your Auntie Sasha. Buy a cat."

"Cats don't smile."

"They also don't make you mope around work for three weeks every time you have to realize that their abusive parents are getting them back. You had two perfectly good chances to have your own. Why didn't you?"

"I did," Molly told her, still facing the quizzical eyes of the tiny life in her lap. "It didn't take."

There was a silence from the doorway. Sasha wouldn't apologize. Molly wouldn't expect her to. It was the reason she'd told her the truth. Well, some of it. No one needed to hear about those four hospital visits, each more desperate than the last when Molly fought the inevitable with prayers and screaming and denial. No one needed to know how brightly it had all begun and how miserably it had all ended. With a whimper, as it were. In her case, a laparoscopy.

"Some women who've been exposed to Agent Orange shouldn't try to have kids," Molly said as if she were instructing the tiny life she held in her hands. "They should just play with other people's."

"I'm sorry," Sasha said, and stunned Molly to her toes.

Molly turned on her. "You hate kids. Why should you be sorry?"

Sasha didn't let anything show in those frosty blue eyes of hers. "Because you don't. You've got five more minutes, and then I'll give you the chance to feel better about your state by giving you the next patient."

* * *

Sasha was as good as her word. By the time Molly made it back downstairs to pick up the patients she'd had before her lunch break, she'd also inherited fourteen-year-old Elvin "Bone T." Marshall, brought to the ER by his mother when she'd found him battered and bruised in his bedroom. Bone T's mother was furious, frightened, and hovering. Bone T was embarrassed to his toes. He was also defiant.