Chapter 8: On His Arm

Conall took the glass from my hand.

He held it to the light.

His face didn't change at all, and that frightened me more than if it had.

"Somebody with a badge," he said. "Working a night shift for somebody else."

"You've seen one of these before."

"I've been on the wrong end of one."

He set the glass down on the counter beside his gun.

"Three years ago you took a bullet out of me, Doctor. Did you ever see the lab report on it?"

I thought back.

That night was a blur of blood and noise and my hand inside his chest.

I remembered dropping something in a metal basin.

I didn't remember anything after.

"No," I said.

"Neither did my lawyer. Neither did the police. It never arrived anywhere."

The boy groaned on the table.

My charge nurse got up to check him.

"We're done for tonight," Conall said. "You're bleeding through your clothes and you think I can't see it."

I looked down.

There was a dark spot on my jeans.

"I'll drive you home," he said.

"My nurse is driving me home."

"Then I'll follow you home."

He did.

His car stayed behind us all the way to Dorchester and sat outside my parents' house until my bedroom light went off.

Eight days later Davis held a fundraiser on the waterfront.

It was in a glass pavilion on a pier, with the harbor black on three sides and heaters glowing on the deck.

A thousand dollars a plate.

His campaign banner hung over the bar: FINISH THE JOB.

Everyone in Boston knew what it meant.

His grandfather had put Conall's father in prison.

Davis meant to put the son there too.

Conall and I arrived at nine, late enough for everyone to be holding a drink.

He'd bought two plates under the name of a dry cleaner in Quincy.

He wore a black suit and no tie.

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