Without remorse - Tom Clancy [61]
'I checked the name again -1 knew I heard it before. He did a job for Allen. Remember last year, the Gooding case?'
The senior man looked up from his notes. 'Oh, yeah! He's the guy who found the gun?'
'Right, and he ended up training our divers.'
'It still doesn't explain what the hell he was doing over there,' the cop pointed out.
'True,' his partner admitted. 'But it makes it hard to believe he's a player.'
The senior officer shook his head. 'There was a girl with him. She's missing.'
'Kidnapping, too? What do we have on her?'
'Just a name. Pamela Madden. Twenty, recovering doper, missing. We have Mr Kelly, his car, his gun, and that's it. No shells from the shotgun. No witnesses at all. A missing girl, probably, but a description that could fit ten thousand local girls. Robbery-kidnapping.' All in all, not that atypical a case. They often started off knowing damned little. In any case, the two uniformed officers had mainly determined that the detectives would take this one over almost immediately.
'She wasn't from around here. She had an accent, Texas, somewhere out there.'
'What else?' the senior officer asked. 'Come on, doc, anything you know, okay?'
Sam grimaced. 'She had been the victim of sexual abuse. She might have been a hooker. My wife said - hell, I saw it, evidence of scars on her back. She'd been whipped, some permanent scarring from welts, that sort of thing. We didn't press, but she might have been a prostitute.'
'Mr Kelly has strange habits and acquaintances, doesn't he?' the officer observed while making notes.
'From what you just said, he helps cops, too, doesn't he?' Professor Rosen was getting angry. 'Anything else? I have rounds to make.'
'Doctor, what we have here is a definite attempted murder, probably as part of a robbery, and maybe a kidnapping also. Those are serious crimes. I have procedures to follow, just like you do. When will Kelly be up for a real interview?'
'Tomorrow, probably, but he's going to be very rocky for a couple of days.'
'Is ten in the morning okay, sir?'
'Yes.'
The cops rose. 'Somebody will be back then, sir.'
Rosen watched them leave. This, strangely enough, had been his first real experience with a major criminal investigation. His work more often dealt with traffic and industrial accidents. He found himself unable to believe that Kelly could be a criminal, yet that had seemed to be the thrust of their questions, wasn't it? That's when Dr Pretlow came in.
'We finished the blood work on Kelly,' She handed the data over. 'Gonorrhea. He should be more careful. I recommend penicillin. Any known allergies?'
'No.' Rosen closed his eyes and swore. What the hell else would happen today?
'Not that big a deal, sir. It looks like a very early case. When he's feeling better I'll have Social Services talk to him about -'
'No, you won't,' Rosen said in a low growl.
'But-'
'But the girl he got it from is probably dead, and we will not force him to remember her that way.' It was the first time Sam had admitted the probable facts to himself, and that made it all the worse, declaring her dead. He had little to base it on, but his instincts told him it must be so.
'Doctor, the law requires -'
It was just too much. Rosen was on the point of exploding. 'That's a good man in there. I watched him fall in love with a girl who's probably been murdered, and his last memory of her will not be that she gave him venereal disease. Is that clear, doctor? As far as the patient is concerned, the medication is for a post-op infection. Mark the chart accordingly.'
'No, doctor, I will not do that.'
Professor Rosen made the proper notations. 'Done.' He looked up. 'Doctor Pretlow, you have the makings of an excellent technical surgeon. Try to remember that the patients upon whom we perform our procedures are human beings, with feelings, will you? If you do so, I think you will find that the job is somewhat easier in the long run. It will also