No Immunity

mountains that looked like you could walk into it and disappear. Too good for an examination room, her friends had said. “You don’t need distraction in your living room, she’d shot back. “The exam room is where people need escape from the terror.”
    “First, do no harm.” The primary tenet of the Hippocratic Oath. She hadn’t meant harm. One rash decision a week of crises, how could anyone—
    But they would blame her. The guys with half-empty waiting rooms, the ones who called her a smarmy snake when they figured she could barely hear them, they’d elbow each other out of the way to cast the first stone. She couldn’t let them, couldn’t let anyone know.
    She jerked her attention away from the painting, took a breath, and was almost in her waiting room when she heard the first knock.

CHAPTER 16

    “ Why is Sheriff Fox so desperate to see me?” Kiernan demanded as Deputy Potter pulled onto the highway.
    Potter didn’t answer.
    “Where are you taking me?”
    No response. Potter sat behind the steering wheel, hands at ten and two, eyes straight ahead. She couldn’t tell whether his stiff posture was from fear, or just habit. She guessed him to be about twenty-one. The car was relatively new, but already the backseat smelled of stale sweat and the vinyl beneath the grating was streaked from being kicked.
    “Look, when I agreed to this meeting, I assumed it would be here in Las Vegas, close enough for me to get back to the airport in time for my flight. If not, my agreement’s off. Take me back to the airport. Now!”
    Potter’s hands didn’t move; the car moved straight ahead. Finally he muttered, “Can’t talk about it.”
    “Don’t talk,” Kiernan pleaded. “Let me out. This is kidnapping!”
    Potter shrugged.
    “Did Jeff Tremaine call the sheriff? What about the health department, are they in Gattozzi already?”
    No comment from the front.
    “Just tell me where we’re going. It’s not like you’re letting the cat out of the bag; I’ll find out when we get there anyway.” She was aiming to make her tone conversational, but even she could tell she was failing. If he hadn’t been protected by the grating between the seats, she would have thrust her hands around his neck and squeezed. It had been a long, frustrating day, and choking Deputy Potter would have made her feel better. Control yourself, O’Shaughnessy! Potter could be worked. And Sheriff Fox knew he could be worked, otherwise why give him this order of total silence?
    As the patrol car passed beyond the flashy casinos of the Strip, she crossed out the question of destination. Potter was indeed taking her back to Gattozzi or at least to the county seat, which, as she recalled, was only about twenty miles closer.
    Potter can be worked. A charming chatterer might lead him to a number of openings during the three-hour drive, but Kiernan knew better than to put herself in that category. One thing she’d learned in med school was that she had no bedside manner. And no interest in developing one-If she couldn’t deal with patients with legitimate concerns, no way was she going to coddle Deputy Potter all the way to Gattozzi.
    “Those birds under the power line, they’re dead, right?”
    Potter grunted. Taking the sheriff’s injunction seriously.
    “How come?”
    “Poison and such.”
    “Poison from the covering, right? But what’s the ‘such’?“
    Potter pointed out the window at a nonlinear scattering of corpses and feathers. “Buckshot.”
    “Little fun while they can’t fly, huh?”
    Sarcasm flowed from her voice. Potter’s shoulders tensed. The man wanted to retort, but he kept his mouth shut.
    “What happens when some local sharpshooter aims an inch too low and turns the lights off in half the county?” A sound escaped before Potter slammed his teeth together. His neck and shoulders quivered, and Kiernan wondered how good a story he was keeping to himself.
    She sighed. He had the radio so low, she could hear only static and the occasional mumble of sheriff talk, and see his jaw moving as he mouthed silent asides. Not a man comfortable in the great void of silence. Fine. The halls of no words, she knew well. If silence had been a craft, the O’Shaughnessys would have been purveyors to the Queen. The April after her sister’s death she started counting back. Neither of her parents had spoken for eleven days. Potter, she thought, you are way out of your league. She leaned back, propped her feet against the