Harvest Read online

  “I’ve had enough of this one anyway.” Gregor gave Yakov’s arm a jerk, pulling him toward the stairway hatch. “He can’t go back with the others.” He turned to open the hatch.

  Yakov kicked him in the back of the knee.

  Gregor shrieked, releasing his grip.

  Yakov ran. He heard Nadiya’s shouts, heard footsteps pounding after him. Then more footsteps, clanging down the bridge stairway. He darted forward, toward the bow. Too late, he realized he had run straight onto the landing deck.

  There was a loud clank, and the deck lights flared on.

  Yakov was trapped in the very center of their brilliance. Shielding his eyes, he stumbled blindly away from the sounds of pursuit. But they were all around him now, moving in. Grabbing his shirt. He flailed.

  Someone slapped him across the face. The blow sent Yakov sprawling. He tried to crawl away, but his legs were kicked out from under him.

  “That’s enough!” said Nadiya. “You don’t want to kill him!”

  “Little motherfucker,” Gregor grunted.

  Yakov was yanked up by the hair. Gregor shoved him forward across the deck, toward the stairwell hatch. Yakov kept stumbling, only to be dragged back up again by the hair. He couldn’t see where they were going. He knew only that they were going down some steps, moving along a corridor. Gregor was cursing the whole way. He was also limping a little, which gave Yakov some small measure of satisfaction.

  A door swung open and Yakov was tossed over the threshold.

  “You can rot in there for a while,” said Gregor. And he slammed the door shut.

  Yakov heard the latch close. Heard footsteps fade away. He was alone in the darkness.

  He drew his knees to his chest and lay hugging himself. A strange trembling seized his body, and he tried to stop it but couldn’t. He could hear his own teeth chattering, not from the cold, but from some quaking deep in his soul. He closed his eyes and was confronted with the images of what he’d seen tonight. Nadiya crossing the deck, gliding, floating through an unearthly field of light. The helicopter door open and waiting. Now Nadiya bending over, reaching out as she hands something to the pilot.

  A box.

  Yakov drew his legs more tightly to his chest, but the trembling didn’t ease.

  Whimpering, he put his thumb in his mouth and began to suck.

  20

  For Abby, mornings were the worst. She would awaken feeling that first sleepy flush of anticipation for the day ahead. Then suddenly she’d remember: I have nowhere to go. That realization would strike as cruelly as any physical blow. She would lie in bed, listening to Mark getting dressed. She’d hear him moving around in the still-dark bedroom, and she would feel so engulfed by depression she could not say a word to him. They shared a house and a bed, yet they’d scarcely spoken to each other in days. This is how love dies, thought Abby, hearing him walk out the front door. Not with angry words, but with silence.

  When Abby was twelve years old, her father was laid off from his job at the tannery. For weeks afterward, he’d drive away each morning, as though heading for work as usual. Abby never found out where he went, or what he did. Till the day he died, he never told her. All Abby knew was that her father was terrified of staying home and confronting his own failure. So he’d continued the charade, fleeing the house every morning.

  Just as Abby was doing today.

  She left the car at home and walked instead, blocks and blocks, not really caring where she went. Last night the weather had turned cold, and by the time she finally stopped in at a bagel shop, her face was numb. She bought coffee and a sesame seed bagel and slid into one of the booths. She’d taken only two bites when she happened to glance at the man at the next table. He was reading a Boston Herald.

  Abby’s photo was on the front page.

  She felt like crawling out the door. Furtively she glanced around the café, half expecting everyone to be looking at her, but no one was.

  She bolted out of the booth, tossed her bagel in the trash, and walked out. Her appetite was gone. At a newsstand a block away, she purchased a copy of the Herald and huddled shivering in a doorway while she scanned the article.

  Rigors of Surgical Training May Have Led to Tragedy

  By all accounts, Dr. Abigail DiMatteo was an outstanding resident—one of the best at Bayside Medical Center, according to Department Chairman Dr. Colin Wettig. But sometime in the last few months, soon after Dr. DiMatteo entered her second year in the program, things began to go terribly wrong . . .

  Abby had to stop reading; her breaths were coming too hard and fast. It took her a few moments to calm down enough to finish the article. When she finally did, she felt truly sick.

  The reporter had included everything. The lawsuits. Mary Allen’s death. The shouting match with Brenda. None of it was deniable. All the elements, taken together, painted the picture of an unstable, even dangerous personality. It fed right into the public’s secret horror of being at the mercy of a deranged physician.

  I can’t believe it’s me they’re writing about.

  Even if she managed to retain her medical license, even if she finished a residency, an article like this would follow her forever. So would the doubts. No patient in his right mind would go under the knife of a psychopath.

  She didn’t know how long she walked around with that newspaper clutched in her hand. When she finally came to a halt, she was standing on the Harvard University Common, and her ears were aching from the cold. She realized it was already well past lunchtime. She’d been walking around all morning, and now half the day was gone. She didn’t know where to go next. Everyone else on the Common—students with backpacks, shaggy professors in tweeds—seemed to have a destination. But not her.

  She looked down again, at the newspaper. The photograph they’d used of her was from the residency directory, a shot taken when she was an intern. She’d smiled straight at the camera, her face fresh and eager, the look of a young woman ready and willing to work for her dream.

  She threw the newspaper into the nearest trash receptacle and walked home, thinking: Fight back. I have to fight back.

  But she and Vivian had run out of leads. Yesterday, Vivian had flown to Burlington. When she’d called Abby last night, it had been with bad news: Tim Nicholls’s practice had closed down, and no one knew where he was. Dead end. Also, Wilcox Memorial had no records of any harvests on those four dates. Another dead end. Finally, Vivian had checked with the local police and had found no records of missing persons or unidentified bodies with their hearts cut out. Final dead end.

  They’ve covered their tracks. We’ll never beat them.

  As soon as she stepped in the front door, she saw the answering machine was blinking. It was a message from Vivian to call back. She’d left a Burlington number. Abby dialed the number, but got no answer, so she hung up.

  Next she called NEOB, but as usual, they wouldn’t put her through to Helen Lewis. No one, it seemed, wanted to hear the latest theories of the psychopathic Dr. DiMatteo. She didn’t know who else to call. She ran through the list of all the people she knew at Bayside. Dr. Wettig. Mark. Mohandas and Zwick. Susan Casado. Jeremiah Parr. She didn’t trust any of them. Any of them.

  She’d just picked up the phone to try calling Vivian again when she happened to glance out the window. Parked at the far end of the street was a maroon van.

  You bastard. This time you’re mine!

  She ran to the hall closet and pulled out the binoculars. Focusing from the window, she could just make out the license plate.

  I got you, she thought in triumph. I got you.

  She grabbed the phone and dialed Katzka. It struck her then, as she was waiting for him to come on the line, how strange it was that he should be the one she’d call. Maybe it was an automatic response. You need help, you call a cop. And he was the only cop she knew.

  “Detective Katzka,” he said in his usual flat and business-like voice.

  “The van is back!” she blurted.

>   “Excuse me?”

  “This is Abby DiMatteo. The van that was following me— it’s parked right outside my house. The license number’s five-three-nine, TDV. Massachusetts plate.”

  There was a pause as he wrote it down. “You live on Brewster Street, right?”

  “Yes. Please send someone right away. I don’t know what he’s going to do.”

  “Just sit tight and keep the doors locked. Got that?”

  “Okay.” She let out a nervous breath. “Okay.”

  She knew the doors were already locked, but she rechecked them anyway. Everything was secure. She returned to the living room and sat near the curtain, every so often glancing outside to make sure the van was still there. She wanted it to stay right where it was. She wanted to see the driver’s reaction when the cops arrived.

  Fifteen minutes later, a familiar green Volvo drove by and pulled over at the curb, right across the street from the van. She hadn’t expected Katzka himself to show up, but there he was, stepping out of his car. At her first glimpse of him, she felt an overwhelming sense of relief. He’ll know what to do, she thought. Katzka was clever enough to deal with anything.

  He crossed the street and slowly approached the van.

  Abby pressed closer to the window, her heart suddenly pounding. She wondered if Katzka’s pulse was racing as fast as hers was. He moved with almost casual grace toward the driver’s door. Only as he shifted, turning slightly toward Abby, did she notice that he’d drawn his gun. She hadn’t even seen him reach for it.

  She was almost afraid to watch now. Afraid for him.

  He edged forward and glanced in the window. Apparently he saw nothing suspicious. He circled around to the rear of the van and peered through the back window. Then he reholstered his gun and looked up and down the street.

  At a nearby house, the front door suddenly swung open and a man in gray overalls stormed down the porch steps, yelling and waving. Katzka responded with his trademark unflappability and produced his badge. The other man took a look at it and handed it back. Then he took out his wallet and showed his ID.

  For a while the two men stood talking, gesturing every so often toward the van and the house. At last the man in the overalls went back inside.

  Katzka walked toward Abby’s.

  She let him in the front door. “What happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Who’s the driver? Why’s he been following me?”

  “He says he has no idea what you’re talking about.”

  She followed him into the living room. “I’m not blind! I’ve seen that van here before. On this street.”

  “The driver says he’s never been here before.”

  “Who is the driver, anyway?”

  Katzka pulled out his notebook. “John Doherty, age thirty-six, Massachusetts resident. Licensed plumber. He says this is the first call he’s ever made to Brewster Street. The van is registered to Back Bay Plumbing. And it’s full of tools.” He closed his notebook and slid it into his coat pocket. Then he regarded her with his usual detachment.

  “I was so sure,” she murmured. “I was so sure it was the same one.”

  “You still insist there was a van?”

  “Yes, godammit!” she snapped. “There was a van!”

  He reacted to her outburst with a slightly raised eyebrow. She forced herself to take a deep breath. A burst of temper was the last thing this man would respond to. He was all logic, all reason. Mr. Spock with a badge.

  She said, more calmly now, “I am not imagining things. And I’m not making them up.”

  “If you think you see the van again, get the license number.”

  “If I think I see it?”

  “I’ll call Back Bay Plumbing, to confirm Doherty’s information. But I really do believe he’s just a plumber.” Katzka glanced toward her living room. The phone was ringing. “Aren’t you going to answer it?”

  “Please don’t leave. Not yet. I have a few things to tell you.”

  He had already reached for the doorknob. Now he paused, watching as she picked up the phone.

  “Hello?” she said.

  A woman’s voice responded softly, “Dr. DiMatteo?”

  Instantly Abby’s gaze shot to Katzka’s. He seemed to understand, just from her glance, that this call was important. “Mrs. Voss?” said Abby.

  “I’ve learned something,” said Nina. “I don’t know what it means. If it means anything at all.”

  Katzka moved to Abby’s side. He had done it so quickly, so quietly, she’d barely registered his approach. He bent his head toward the receiver to listen in.

  “What did you find out?” said Abby.

  “I made some calls. To the bank, and to our accountant. On September twenty-third, Victor transferred funds to a company called the Amity Corporation. In Boston.”

  “You’re sure about that date?”

  “Yes.”

  September twenty-third, thought Abby. One day before Nina Voss’s transplant.

  “What do you know about Amity?” asked Abby.

  “Nothing. Victor’s never mentioned the name. With a transaction this large, he’d normally discuss it . . .” There was a silence. Abby heard voices in the background, then the sounds of frantic shuffling. Nina’s voice came back on. Tenser. Softer. “I have to get off the phone.”

  “You said it was a large transaction. How large?”

  For a moment there was no reply. Abby thought perhaps Nina had already hung up. Then she heard the whispered answer.

  “Five million,” said Nina. “He transferred five million dollars.”

  Nina hung up the telephone. She heard Victor’s footsteps, but she did not look up as he came into the bedroom.

  “Who were you talking to?” he asked.

  “Cynthia. I called to thank her for the flowers.”

  “Which flowers were those again?”

  “The orchids.”

  He glanced at the vase on the dresser. “Oh, yes. Very nice.”

  “Cynthia says they’re going to Greece next spring. I guess they’re tired of the Caribbean.” How easily she lied to him. When had it started? When had they stopped speaking the truth to each other?

  He sat down beside her on the bed. She felt him studying her. “When you’re all better,” he said, “maybe we’ll go back to Greece. Maybe we’ll even go with Cynthia and Robert. Wouldn’t you like that?”

  She nodded and looked down at the bedspread. At her hands, the fingers bony and wasting away. But I am never getting better. We both know that.

  She slid her legs out from under the covers. “I have to use the bathroom,” she said.

  “Shall I help you?”

  “No. I’m fine.” Rising to her feet, she felt a brief spell of light-headedness. Lately she’d been having the spells often, whenever she stood up or exerted herself in even the slightest way. She said nothing about it to Victor, but just waited for the feeling to pass. Then she continued slowly into the bathroom.

  She heard him pick up the telephone.

  Only when she’d shut the bathroom door did she suddenly realize her mistake. The last number she’d called was still in the phone’s memory system. All Victor had to do was press Redial, and he would know she’d lied to him. It was just the sort of thing Victor would do. He’d learn she hadn’t called Cynthia. He’d find out, somehow he’d find out, that it was Abby DiMatteo she’d called.

  Nina stood with her back pressed to the bathroom door, listening. She heard him hang up the phone again. Heard him say, “Nina?”

  Another wave of light-headedness hit her. She dropped her head, fighting the darkness that was beginning to cloud her vision. Her legs seemed to melt away beneath her. She felt herself sliding downward.

  He rattled the door. “Nina, I need to speak to you.”

  “Victor,” she whispered, but knew he couldn’t hear her. No one could hear her.

  She lay on the bathroom floor, too weak to move, too weak to call out to him.

&nbs
p; She felt her heart flutter like a butterfly’s wings in her chest.

  “This has to be the wrong place,” said Abby.

  She and Katzka were parked on a run-down street in Roxbury. It was a neighborhood of barred storefronts and businesses on the verge of collapse. The only apparently thriving enterprise was a bodybuilding gym a few doors down. Through the gym’s open windows, they could hear the clank of weights and occasional masculine laughter. Adjacent to the gym was an unoccupied building with a FOR LEASE sign. And next to that was the Amity building, a four-story brownstone. Over the entrance hung the sign:

  Amity Medical Supplies Sales and Service

  Behind the barred front windows was a tired-looking display of company products: Crutches and canes. Oxygen tanks. Foam mattress pads to prevent bedsores. Bedside commodes. A mannequin wearing a nurse’s uniform and cap straight out of the sixties.

  Abby gazed across the street at the shabby display window and said, “This can’t be the right Amity.”

  “It’s the only listing in the phone book,” said Katzka.

  “Why would he transfer five million dollars to this business?”

  “It could be just one branch of a larger corporation. Maybe he saw an investment opportunity.”

  She shook her head. “The timing’s all wrong. Put yourself in Victor Voss’s place. His wife is dying. He’s desperate to get her the operation she needs. He’s not going to be thinking about his investments.”

  “It depends how much he cares about his wife.”

  “He cares a lot.”

  “How do you know?”

  She looked at him. “I know.”

  He regarded her in that quiet way of his. How strange, she thought, that his gaze no longer made her feel uncomfortable.

  He opened his door. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Look around. Ask a few questions.”

  “I’ll go in with you.”

  “No, you stay in the car.” He started to step out, but she pulled him back.

  “Look,” she said. “I’m the one with everything to lose. I’ve already lost my job. I’m losing my license. And now people are calling me a murderer or a psychotic or both. It’s my life they’ve fucked up. This could be my one chance to fight back.”