Chapter 6 - The Doctor Who Never Missed a Dose
Dr. Marcus Vale had treated Camila for seven years.
He had also treated Thomas Russo during the final year of his life.
Vincent returned from Lake George before sunrise and found Vale asleep in a chair outside Camila’s bedroom.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Then Vincent placed Thomas’s cassette recorder on the table between them.
Vale woke fully when he saw it.
“You found the boathouse.”
Nora’s stomach tightened.
“You knew it existed.”
Vale removed his glasses.
“Yes.”
Vincent’s voice was almost gentle.
“That is the wrong answer.”
Vale stood.
“Let me explain.”
“You have thirty seconds.”
Nora stepped between them enough to make Vincent notice her without blocking him.
“Let him speak.”
Vale confessed that Thomas had come to him ten years earlier after becoming violently ill at Lake George. Blood tests showed traces of a cardiac medication Thomas had never been prescribed.
“Poison?” Nora asked.
“Not in the dramatic sense. A drug interaction. Enough to destabilize his heart.”
“Did you tell police?”
Vale looked ashamed.
“No.”
Vincent took one step forward.
“Why?”
“Thomas ordered me not to. He believed the hospital system was compromised. He wanted time to collect evidence.”
“And then he died.”
“Yes.”
“You signed the death certificate.”
Vale closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
Vincent grabbed the front of his shirt.
Nora touched Vincent’s wrist.
“Not like this.”
For one terrifying second, he did not move.
Then he released Vale.
The doctor stumbled backward.
“Why are you still treating Camila?” Nora demanded.
“Because Thomas asked me to protect her.”
“You didn’t protect her from the blue pills.”
“I didn’t know about them.”
“That’s convenient.”
Vale accepted the accusation.
“I trusted the nursing service. That was negligence.”
Vincent said, “Who ordered the drug given to Thomas?”
“I never knew.”
“But Thomas thought you knew more.”
Vale looked toward Camila’s closed door.
“I knew Samuel survived.”
Nora stopped breathing.
Vale had treated Samuel two days after Thomas became ill. Samuel had been beaten badly and brought to a private clinic under a false name.
“He refused police. Said one officer had already sold his location.”
“Where did he go?”
“I arranged transport north.”
“To where?”
“I don’t know. A federal contact took over.”
Nora laughed bitterly.
“Everybody helped my father disappear except his daughter.”
Vale’s face softened.
“He begged me to tell you one thing if I ever met you.”
“What?”
“That leaving you was the worst thing he ever survived.”
Nora turned away.
She did not want to cry in front of these men.
An hour later, Paulie discovered how Beatrice had escaped the estate. The access code belonged to Rosa Medina, one of Camila’s longtime housekeepers.
Rosa was found in the laundry room, terrified.
“She took my phone,” Rosa said. “She threatened my grandson.”
Nobody accused her after that.
The threat led to another location: Nora’s apartment in Queens.
By the time they arrived, the door had been forced open.
Drawers emptied.
Mattress cut.
Kitchen cabinets torn apart.
Nora stood in the middle of the destruction.
Vincent watched her face.
“What were they looking for?”
“I don’t know.”
Then she saw the empty shelf above the refrigerator.
“My mother’s recipe box.”
Vincent frowned.
“Recipes?”
“No.”
Nora crossed the room and pulled a loose baseboard from beneath the sink.
Behind it was a white envelope.
“My mother hid things in stupid places.”
Inside was a safe-deposit key and a note written by Nora’s mother.
If Samuel ever comes back, tell him I kept my promise until I couldn’t anymore.
Nora stared at the sentence.
“What promise?” Vincent asked.
She turned the note over.
On the back was the address of a bank in Albany.
And beneath it, one name.
BEATRICE GALLOW.
Before leaving Queens, Nora packed what remained of her apartment into two grocery bags. The destruction looked worse in daylight. A framed photograph of her mother had been cracked, but the picture itself survived.
Vincent picked it up.
“She looks like you.”
“She would hate hearing that.”
“Why?”
“She spent my teenage years telling me I got my stubbornness from Samuel.”
“Maybe she liked his stubbornness once.”
Nora looked at him. “You’re getting dangerously sentimental.”
“I blame the east wing.”
She took the photograph from him and wrapped it in a dish towel.
At the door, she stopped. “I don’t want one of your houses.”
“I didn’t offer one.”
“You were about to.”
Vincent sighed. “There is a secure apartment above one of my legal offices.”
“No marble?”
“Ugly carpet.”
“Better.”
“I can charge you rent if it preserves your dignity.”
“It would.”
“How much?”
“Whatever the market rate is.”
He stared at her. “You negotiate everything.”
“I learned in your kitchen.”
For the first time since the break-in, Nora felt some part of her life return to her control.
The bank manager remembered Nora’s mother. She had visited twice a year, always alone, always with the same canvas purse and the same nervous habit of checking the lobby before leaving.
“She never opened the box in front of anyone,” he said. “She would sit in the private booth for an hour, sometimes longer.”
Nora pictured her mother carrying a secret through ordinary errands, buying milk on the way home while letters from Samuel sat inches from her heart. The image made anger harder and grief more complicated.
“Did she ever come with Beatrice Gallow?” Vincent asked.
The manager shook his head. “No. But once, a woman matching that description waited outside in a car.”
May you like
Nora looked at the note again. Her mother had not merely known Beatrice’s name. She had feared her enough to preserve it for the future.
Before dawn, Nora wrote the names from the list into her own notebook. Not the initials. The full names. She wanted at least one record where the victims were treated as people rather than entries. Vincent watched her do it and, without comment, began reading the names aloud so she could check the spelling.
