Preston didn’t give a damn about the way he looked. Especially right now. “Did you ever ask him about it?” he repeated.
“Of course.” She moved back so the waitress could deliver her juice. “Toward the end, when we were fighting a lot, I threw it up to him all the time. He always denied it.”
“That doesn’t make him innocent.”
“It doesn’t make him guilty, either.”
Preston stroked his chin. There had to be some way to get to the truth. “Could there be any physical proof?”
“I told you he didn’t do it.”
“What about Billy?”
“What about him? Every doctor loses a patient occasionally.”
Preston had heard the same words before. “And Melanie?”
“She lived, remember?”
“You don’t find it uncanny that Vince knew to hospitalize Melanie when almost every other doctor would’ve diagnosed her as having the flu?”
“He said he knew she had something worse.”
“How?”
“I don’t know!”
“I was thinking there might be some office records,” he said. “Some notes on Dallas’s medical chart, or Melanie’s or Billy’s for that matter, to indicate what might have happened.”
“No. Anyway, we got rid of practically everything when we moved from California. The few records Vince kept are stored in his garage. But if he did what you think, I can’t imagine he’d keep proof of it.”
“Damn it!” Preston dropped his head in his hands. At this point, he didn’t care if she got up and left. They had nothing.
But she didn’t leave. A few seconds later, he felt her hand on his arm. “Preston?”
“What?”
“I know how much Dallas meant to you.”
When he said nothing, she sighed. “Vince came home crying the night Billy died.”
Preston studied her, wondering where she was going with this. “He felt bad for Billy’s family?”
“No, he was scared.”
Preston caught his breath. “What?”
“He was afraid someone would blame him. That’s all he talked about. ‘What if they think I did it, Joanie? Every doctor loses a patient once in a while, right? Children die of meningitis all the time. They’re not going to come knocking on my door, are they?’”
Preston remembered his conversation with Vince on the golf course. How’d he die?…It was nothing I did. But Preston hadn’t intimated that it was. “If he didn’t do anything wrong, why the guilty conscience?”
She raised both shoulders in another shrug. “I don’t know. I dismissed it. I guess I was in denial. Maybe that’s why I got so angry when you came over that day and accused him of causing Dallas’s death. Because I was afraid it was true. I’d seen how Vince had acted with Melanie and Billy, knew the attention he required. And I knew how much he admired you, how much he wanted you to think the world of him.”
“I did think the world of him,” Preston muttered. That was part of what made him so angry. He’d let the wolf in at the door.
She shook her head sadly. “Vince needs constant reinforcement.”
The coffee soured in Preston’s stomach. One man’s vanity had cost him so much. “How did he behave the day Dallas died?”
“Not scared, like before. Disturbed. Anxious. After you accused him, he locked himself in his study and drank for hours. He wouldn’t talk about Dallas or you after that. I think he wanted to shove the whole incident behind him, like he’d already done with Billy. Only this time the tragedy involved our best friends and wasn’t so easy to forget.”
“So you moved.”
“Moving was my idea. I thought it might help him recover from what had happened. Leaving Pennsylvania had certainly been a good thing. But our lives haven’t been the same since California.”
“Why?”
“Vince was always selfish, but he got worse. His ego needed constant support, and not just from me. From everyone.”
Preston suddenly understood why his comment that Vince might do it again had struck home with her. She knew he lived for the limelight; suspected—feared—how far he might go to get it.
“Do you have any idea how he might’ve gone about making these kids sick?” Preston asked. He needed details, something besides doubt and conjecture, something that might make the police finally listen.
“No, but it wouldn’t be hard. He’s said so himself. Not long after we were married, he came home from being on-call at the hospital and told me he couldn’t believe how easy it’d be for a doctor to murder someone.”
Joanie’s words were chilling. Especially because Vince had made a similar remark to him once. I could commit murder and get away with it. That’s how much trust a doctor holds.
“Can you find out some specifics?” he asked. “Help me establish a chain of events? Anything?”
“I told you, there’re no records left.”
“Then you’ll have to talk to Vince.”
“And say what? He barely speaks to me anymore.”
“Tell him you’ve been thinking about what happened to Dallas, that you’re beginning to wonder if I might be right. You could even mention that you’re thinking about going to the police, just to get a reaction.”
She shook her head. “No way. I’ll get a reaction, all right. He’ll completely lose it.”
“That’s why you won’t do it in person. We’ll do it over the phone.”
“We?” she repeated.
Preston stood up and tossed a ten-dollar bill on the table for his coffee and Joanie’s juice. “I’ll be listening in.”
MANUEL WATCHED the stores of downtown Cedar Rapids drift slowly past his window as he drove his rented Town Car down J Avenue North. He was tired and rumpled from the flight into O’Hare, and eager to get a motel room. But at least the drive from Chicago had only taken three hours.
Hector had traveled with him and was riding in the passenger seat. “We’re definitely gonna stand out here, man.”
“Why’s that?” Manuel asked.
“This place is filled with white people.”
“You’re white.”
“Not this white.”
“Welcome to the midwest.”
“I don’t like it here.”
“We won’t be staying long.”