“Hard to imagine. So what do you think of Spector?”

“Well, he laid his cards out on the table. I thought he was pretty straightforward, and I suppose that cuts both ways.”

We rehashed his comments as we drove uptown to New York Hospital. The guard at the main entrance on York Avenue directed us to Dr. Babson’s office at the rear of the fourth floor.

A petite woman of about fifty, with shoulder-length brown hair and soft hazel eyes, opened her own door when I knocked.

“I’m Gig Babson. It’s Katherine, really. Please come in.”

Having presumed Gig to be a man, I was pleasantly surprised, and even more delighted at the prospect of getting a woman’s perspective on Gemma. I glanced at the diplomas on the wall- Vassar College ‘69 and Harvard Medical School ’73-while Mercer introduced each of us to the doctor.

Babson went through the background of her relationship with Dogen. “We only met three years ago, working on something together, actually. We were part of the trauma team handling the Baby Vanessa case. Perhaps you remember it?”

Of course we did. The story had touched everyone in New York. A private jet had crash-landed at La Guardia Airport, killing all eight adults aboard. Four-year-old Vanessa had been thrown from the wreckage and survived without a burn but remained in a coma for sixteen weeks. Relatives had wanted to take her off life support, despairing of any meaningful recovery of brain function.

But a team of neurosurgeons-none whose names I could recall-had performed medical miracles. The child came out of the coma and within months regained all her mental faculties and was released from the hospital. The photograph of the smiling child, standing on the steps of Mid-Manhattan in front of the medical team that had given her a new life, was an image most of us would always be able to call to mind.

“Gemma was brilliant at her work. It was she who saved Vanessa’s life. She discovered the bruising on the frontal cortex that had caused a massive clot. When the rest of us hesitated about the risks of the surgery, Gemma got in there and removed the hemorrhage-steady, daring, and absolutely flawless in her work. That child would have been a vegetable without Gemma’s involvement.”

“Give us the other side, if you will, doctor. Why,” I asked, “why would anyone want to hurt her?”

“Do you really think Gemma was chosen as a target? I mean, not just some thief or homeless person stumbling upon her during the night? That’s just so hard to believe.

“You know we all thought she was crazy to stay in her office at night, the hours she did. It’s not that we ever dreamed she’d be unsafein the hospital, but I certainly worried about her comings and goings. There was no changing her, though. She didn’t need very much sleep. It was part of her routine to be at that office in the middle of the night, not getting home ‘til three in the morning. A couple of hours’ rest, then up for a predawn jog. If you knew Gemma, you’d know when to find her at Minuit.”

“What did you know about her plans to leave New York?”

“Only that she was making them. Nothing firm, but she’d had it at Mid-Manhattan.”

“Not enough trauma work?”

Babson looked at me with a questioning expression on her face. “In New York? Are you kidding?”

“Well, Dr. Spector says that she-”

“Forget whathe says. There’s only one person she confided in about that topic. That’s Geoffrey Dogen, her ex-husband. She wouldn’t even tell me the details.”

“Why is that?”

“Didn’t want me in the middle of it. Tried to protect me from the political infighting with the administration. I’m a few years younger than Gemma and she didn’t want my career derailed like she felt hers was becoming.”

We all looked puzzled. What was the infighting about if it wasn’t the issue that Spector had described?

“Why the derailment?”

“You know she was a whistle-blower, don’t you? I assume Bill Dietrich has told you about that.”

“Actually,” I said with more candor than Chapman or Wallace would have displayed at that point, “no one has mentioned any kind of whistle-blowing to us. We all assumed that this crime was the random act of a stranger, Dr. Babson. Do you know who’d been harassing Gemma?”

“Harassed? She’d never said anything about that to me. But if she did resign, it was going to be with a major statement to the medical community. That much I can assure you. No going quietly into the good night.”

“Well, what was the whistle-blowing about?”

“Not sure, exactly. Some kind of ethical dilemma for her. It had something to do with Minuit, with the medical school, rather than the main hospital. She wanted to hold everyone to the standards she set for herself. That’s an extraordinary burden-some might say unreasonable.

“There was a med student from the West Coast who applied for a neurosurgical residency with Gemma. Someone alerted her to the fact that he had lied on his application-phonied up his résumé or something like that. She booted him from the program even though a couple of her colleagues wanted him in. That kind of thing always ate at her.

“They were all trying to shut her up over there whenever something like that occurred. None of them wanted her airing their dirty linen in public. Scares away patients and so on. But once she got up on her high horse, it was impossible to get her off.”

The shrill noise of a beeper pierced the room. All four of us clutched at our waistbands, then looked at each other and laughed.

“What did we do before these things were invented?” Babson asked. It was hers that had signaled and she picked up the phone to see why she had been paged.

“Can we finish this up for now?” she asked. “I’ve got to get down to the emergency room. Second Avenue bus just went out of control and jumped the sidewalk. They’re bringing some of the pedestrians who were hit over here and want me to stand by in case I’m needed.”

“I’d like to talk with you again, Dr. Babson, after we’ve seen Bill Dietrich.”

“Of course. Just give me a call whenever I can be useful.”

Babson was leading us to the door. “Can you tell us anything about her involvement with Dietrich? Personally, I mean?” I asked on our way out.

“I’m just glad she ended it. I never trusted him, really. Just something sleazy about him, not vicious. But she was lonely, I think, and flattered by his attention. He pursued her quite avidly for a while. She didn’t talk about him much anymore. And they always seemed to be on opposite sides in her recent battles. He’s a real user. I can’t imagine what she ever saw in him, so I didn’t encourage her to bring up his name.”

I rang for the elevator as Babson pushed open the exit door to walk down the back stairs to the ER. Mercer had one more question. “Ever go to a ball game with Dr. Dogen?”

“Excuse me?”

“Was she a sports fan? Baseball? Football?”

“Gemma was a superb athlete. She loved physical challenges. Running, kayaking, skiing. Kind of thing I don’t really make time for, though. I’ve never been to a ball game with her, no. And I don’t remember Gemma ever talking about one. The only reason I ever go is for the sake of the hot dogs at Yankee Stadium, once a year. I couldn’t tell you a thing about that part of her life. Sorry.”

Babson was off down the staircase before the elevator doors opened to take us to the lobby. It was after five when we walked out of the hospital.

“Where to?”

“What would you think of a nice, home-cooked meal for a change?” Mercer asked.

“I’m out, guys.”

“No, no. Let’s pick up something from the supermarket. Mike and I’ll cook it. All you have to do is load the dishes in the dishwasher.”

“Deal.”

We were only a few blocks from my apartment. I waited in the car while they went into the grocery store and came out ten minutes later with shopping bags full of food.