Page 64 of Chosen Path
Molly cracked up.
“Okay, it’s time to get down to business,” Hope said as Bodhi and Officer Booth both drew closer to peer over her shoulders.
Hope had drawn a timeline that began with the year Rolf Larson had started practicing in Scandia Bluff and ended with Corrine’s death. She stepped back and frowned down at her creation. “Hang on, let me start at the beginning. Not the chronological beginning, but where I started today.”
“However you want to do it,” Officer Booth agreed.
“Doctor Blanchet called really early this morning. I almost missed his call because I’d just hung up from a call with my jerk of a sister and I was upset.”
“Are you okay now?”
Hope waved the question away with her hand. “I’ll get over it. I’m not sure what I thought I’d accomplish by confronting her anyway.”
“About the autopsy?” Bodhi asked.
“Yeah. Anyway, back to Doctor Blanchet. Yes, he’d treated Derek, but Derek left Maine shortly after his uncle died. He moved to Canada. Last the doctor knew, he was in Montreal.”
“If he was still taking insulin, doesn’t Doctor Blanchet have an address from when he transferred the prescription?” Molly asked.
“I’m getting to that. But the short answer is no. Apparently insulin is free in Montreal if you’re under twenty-five, which Derek is. So he gets his care and orders his insulin through whatever program he’s in up in Montreal—assuming he’s still there.”
“So the insulin that Corrine received in the mail wasn’t Derek’s,” Bodhi mused. He was surprised; it had seemed, to him at least, the most logical explanation.
“Oh, no. It was. I called the mail-order pharmacy after I hung up with Doctor Blanchet. A very helpful woman named Kelly told me that Derek’s prescription had been transferred from Doctor Larson to Doctor Blanchet. Then, three years ago, Doctor Blanchet stopped refilling it.”
“Because Derek moved to Montreal,” Molly said.
“Right. But here’s the thing, back in October, the refill orders started again and the mailing address was changed back to Corrine’s house.”
“I don’t understand,” Officer Booth said.
“Neither did I. Especially because the prescribing doctor switched back to Doc Larson.”
“Wait, in October?” Molly asked.
“Yep. October twenty-eighth.”
“A meaningful silence fell over the room. It was meaningful to everyone but Bodhi, at least. He searched the three tense faces. “What am I missing?”
“Doc died on October twenty-fifth,” Molly explained.
“So it would be quite a feat if he wrote a prescription for anything on the twenty-eighth,” Bodhi mused.
“A miracle, even,” Hope said.
“It took me ten days to get organized and get up here. I took over the clinic on November third,” Molly said. “So anybody in town probably could have waltzed in and ripped a sheet from his prescription pad.”
“Not just anybody.” Officer Booth narrowed her eyes. “We were concerned about the drugs being left unattended until you arrived, Doctor Hart. So, the department had the locks changed.”
“That’s right,” Molly recalled. “When I got to town I had to stop by the hardware store to get the new set of keys.”
“Greg Rockman changed the locks?” Bodhi asked.
“Mmm-hmm,” Booth confirmed.
“So,someonerenewed Derek’s prescription and had it shipped to Corrine’s address for the past six months. That’s eighteen vials of insulin. Where are they?” Bodhi asked.
“If we assume one is in her arm, and two went into Nik’s, that leaves fifteen unaccounted for. Perth turned her place upside down. There was no more insulin. No syringes, nothing. So, she must have been accepting the packages and handing them over to someone else,” Booth said.
