I’m finished.
My legs give out beneath me, and I fall to my knees, burying my face in my hands. What the hell am I going to do? I am royally screwed. There is no coming back from this. My life is over.
“Kaufman,” Kovak snaps at me. “No time for prayers. Get back on your feet.”
I manage to raise my eyes from my hands to look up at him. Unlike me, Kovak doesn’t look the slightest bit shaken by the dead man on the floor of the clinic. He has squared his jaw, and he’s ready to get to business.
He’s acting like this has happened to him before.
“Abe,” he says in a voice that is gentler than before but still firm. “You need to pull yourself together—now. If somebody discovers a dead body in this clinic, we are both in a world of trouble.”
He’s right.
“But…” I shake my head. “What do we do?”
“First of all,” he says, “get off the floor.”
Obediently, I scramble to my feet. There’s blood all over my scrub pants and my hands. There’s blood everywhere.
“Good,” Kovak says. “Now we need to get rid of the body.”
“What?”
“Look,” he says impatiently, “this guy was a lowlife—nothing but trouble. That’s why I cut him off. Nobody will ever miss him. And the ones who do will be glad he’s gone. But if the police find him here, both of us are screwed. So we need to get him out of here. We need to make sure nothing connects us to his murder.”
I stumble backward, my bloodstained hands in the air. “I’m not helping you get rid of a dead body.”
“Fine. Do you want to call the police and spend the next ten to fifteen years in jail?”
“It was self-defense! He was coming at me!”
Kovak smirks. “And what do you think is going to happen when they dig deeper and find out what goes on at this clinic?”
“I… that has nothing to do with me.”
“Yeah? Well, good luck trying to prove that with the court-appointed attorney.”
He’s right. I look so guilty right now. I’m the one who shot the guy, and I was working at a clinic that sells drugs to students. Not just that, but I told Patrice about it, so it’s obvious that I knew what was going on. There is no way I will get out of this with my reputation unscathed.
I can kiss being a doctor goodbye. I can kissHeathergoodbye.
“I can’t do this without you,” Kovak says quietly. “I can’t even lift him without your help.”
That much is clear. This guy would be hard for me to handle on my own, and Kovak is a lot smaller than I am. It’s going to take two of us to get rid of him.
Am I actually considering this? Am I contemplatingdisposing of a dead body?
“What…” I swallow a lump in my throat. “What do we do with him?”
A slow smile spreads across Kovak’s face. “Don’t worry. I’ve handled situations like this before. I know just the place.”
23
We spendthe rest of the night getting rid of the dead body.
By morning, Hooper is at the bottom of the lake about two hours away from here. We have cleaned all the blood off the floor of the waiting room, although if the police showed up, I’m sure they would be able to find traces of it. Probably big globs of it if they look hard enough. But Kovak says that when they do find Hooper’s body, it’s unlikely they will ever connect him with the clinic.
I just have to hope that he’s right.
