Page 24 of So Lethal

“Find out about what?” Faith asked.

“The complaint. The whole thing about the board suspending my certification.”

Faith leaned forward, boring into him with her eyes. “That’s not what you were going to say.”

His left eye twitched, but he didn’t say anything else. Faith helped him out. “Lauren Poitier. That name ring a bell?”

He sighed and dropped his head, then lifted it and began to fidget. “She signed the waiver.”

“Boy, you’d be an awful poker player,” Michael remarked. “Fidgeting, avoiding eye contact, shaky voice, the whole nine yards.”

“She signed the waiver!” Dr. Crane snapped. “What the hell do you want me to do, all right? I mean, for God’s sake. I’m not God. I’m trying to do some good in the world, and I have to follow all of these bullshit rules to even start, and then anytime the smallest thing goes wrong, I get looked at like a pariah! But I’m still out here, still trying to help people. Then you guys show up, and all of a sudden I’m a murderer again.”

“The smallest thing, huh? The death of Lauren Poitier is a small thing?”

Dr. Crane fell silent and stared in between the two of them. “It’s a tragedy, obviously, but it happens. It’s impossible to control every variable. And hey, have I mentioned recently that it was a trial? You know, like a test?”

“Your empathy for your dead patient is admirable,” Faith said drily.

“Oh, for…” He sighed and fidgeted some more. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I am. I didn’t want anyone to die. There’s evidence to show that neurons can be retrained, especially in young brains. I really thought that I could train Lauren’s brain to hear again. Not just hers, but everyone suffering from hearing loss.

“Think about it. Think about how important hearing is to you. Think about what life would be like without it. It’s horrible. It’s like having a leg cut off. So much of the human experience is foreign to you. I try to help those people achieve normalcy again.”

Michael scoffed. “Oh yeah. You’re a compassionate person. An angel, some might say.”

Dr. Crane rolled his eyes again. “I tried. I tried really hard. I thought that a targeted pulse of infrasound followed by a targeted pulse of ultrasound repeated hundreds of times would sensitize the auditory nerve so it could hear even without the structure of the inner ear. The preliminary research was promising. I thought…” His voice trailed off. “Hell, I don’t know. I did my best. I really didn’t try to kill anyone.”

Faith let him stew for a moment. He was slumped forward, his eyes downcast. It was difficult to tell if this was due to remorse, exhaustion, fear, or some combination thereof.

But one thing she couldn’t get past was the fact that he’d run instead of talking to them. “So how do Monica Smith and James Porter fit into this?”

“They don’t!” he insisted. “This was what I was worried about. I knew you’d make the connection between Lauren and these guys and think you had me dead to rights.”

“So you stay and talk to us,” Michael retorted. “You work with us and demonstrate your innocence.”

“I thought it was the other way around,” Dr. Crane said, glaring at Michael.

“We’re not going to debate semantics right now,” Faith said. “Start talking.”

He lifted his hands and let them drop. “I don’t know what you want me to say. The trial with Monica Smith and James Porter was a chemical treatment designed to eliminate scar tissue and repair the eardrums. A lot of deaf people are born deaf because of damage to the inner ear during fetal development. Like I told you earlier, it worked for some people but not for all. Monica and James were two of the not all. But like I also told you, it didn’t work for a lot of people. That’s not something you kill people for.”

Faith nodded. Then she reached into her bag and pulled out the sound pistol Dr. Crane used to disable Faith. “Can you tell me about this?”

Dr. Crane sighed. “It’s a sound pistol.”

“Why were you carrying one when we arrested you?”

“Self-defense.”

“From dogs?”

“Looks like it came in handy,” Dr. Crane retorted.

Turk bared his teeth, and the doctor paled a shade.

“Oh, sure,” Faith said. “You picked up assault on a peace officer. Add that to aggravated battery on a peace officer for hitting Special Agent Prince with a flashlight, fleeing and eluding, resisting arrest, and maybe a trespassing charge for boarding the Amtrak train without permission.”

“Okay, fine. That doesn’t mean I killed anyone.”

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