I did not know for a fact but believed Lori was one of the women who came forward afterward to ask questions. I saw the hazy image of an attractive blonde in a lab coat. The only feature I remembered clearly was her eyes, dark green and tentative, as she asked me if I really thought it was possible for a woman to manage a family and a career as demanding as medicine. This stood out because I momentarily faltered. I managed one but certainly not the other.
Obsessively I’d replayed that scene, going over and over it in my mind, as if the face would come into focus if I conjured it up enough. Was it she or wasn’t it? I would never be able to walk the halls of VMC again without looking for that blond physician. I did not think I would find her. I think she was Lori briefly appearing before me like a ghost from a future horror that would relegate her to nothing but a past.
“Interesting,” Fortosis remarked in his thoughtful way. “Why do you suppose it’s important that you met her then or at any other time?”
I stared at the smoke drifting up from my cigarette. “I’m not sure, except that it makes her death more real.”
“If you could go back to that day, would you?”
“Yes.”
“What would you do?”
“I would somehow warn her,” I said. “I would somehow undo what he did.”
“What her killer did?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think about him?”
“I don’t want to think about him. I just want to do everything I can to make sure he is caught.”
“And punished?”
“There’s no punishment equal to the crime. No punishment would be enough.”
“If he’s put to death, won’t that be punishment enough, Kay?”
“He can die only once.”
“You want him to suffer, then.” His eyes wouldn’t let me go.
“Yes,” I said.
“How? Pain?”
“Fear,” I said. “I want him to feel the fear they felt when they knew they were going to die.”
I wasn’t aware of how long I’d talked but the inside of the room was darker when I finally stopped.
“I suppose it’s getting beneath my skin in a way other cases haven’t,” I admitted.
“It’s like dreams.” He leaned back in the chair and lightly tapped his fingertips together. “People often say they don’t dream, when it’s more accurate to say that they don’t remember their dreams. It gets under our skin, Kay. All of it does. We just manage to cage in most of the emotions so they don’t devour us.”
“Obviously, I’m not managing that too well these days, Spiro.”
“Why?”
I suspected he knew very well but he wanted me to say it. “Maybe because Lori Petersen was a physician. I relate to her. Maybe I’m projecting. I was her age once.”
“In a sense, you were her once.”
“In a sense.”
“And what happened to her—it could have been you?”
“I don’t know if I’ve pushed it that far.”
“I think you have.” He smiled a little “I think you’ve been pushing a lot of things pretty far. What else?”
Amburgey. What did Fortosis actually say to him?
“There are a lot of peripheral pressures.”
“Such as?”
“Politics.” I brought it up.
“Oh, yes.” He was still tapping his fingertips together. “There’s always that.”
“The leaks to the press. Amburgey’s concerned they might be coming from my office.” I hesitated, looking for any sign that he was already privy to this.
His impassive face told me nothing.
“According to him, it’s your theory the news stories are making the killer’s homicidal urge peak more quickly, and therefore the leaks could be indirectly responsible for Lori’s death. And now Henna Yarborough’s death, too. I’ll be hearing that next, I’m sure.”
“Is it possible the leaks are coming from your office?”
“Someone—an outsider—broke into our computer data base. That makes it possible. Better put, it places me in a somewhat indefensible position.”
“Unless you find out who’s responsible,” he matter-of-factly stated.
“I don’t see a way in the world to do that.” I pressed him, “You talked to Amburgey.”
He met my eyes. “I did. But I think he’s overemphasized what I said, Kay. I would never go so far as to claim information allegedly leaked from your office is responsible for the last two homicides. The two women would be alive, in other words, were it not for the news accounts. I can’t say that. I didn’t say that.”