pace, content to just keep her in view. When she turned onto Concord, he
speeded up, knowing she was almost home. When she reached Craigie Arms
Apartment Complex, Juan was right behind her. A quick glance up and down
Concord Avenue suggested the timing was perfect. Now it depended on what
was happening inside the building.
Juan paused long enough to be sure the inner door had been opened. With
split-second timing he was in the foyer and had one foot over the
threshold of the inner door. It was then that he spoke.
"Miss. Brennquivist?"
Momentarily startled, Helene looked into Juan's darkly handsome Hispanic
face.
"Ja," she said with her Scandinavian accent, thinking he must be a
fellow tenant.
"I've been dying to meet you. My name is Carlos."
Helene paused fatally, her keys still in her hand. "Do you live here?"
she asked.
~"Sure do," Juan said with practiced ease. "Second floor. How about
you?"
"Third," Helene said. She stepped through the door, Juan directly behind
her.
"Nice to meet you," she added. She debated using the stairs or the
elevator. Juan's presence made her feel uncomfortable.
"I was hoping we could talk," Juan said, coming alongside her. "How
about inviting me up for a drink?"
"I don't wink that ..." Helene saw the gun and gasped.
"Please don't make me angry, miss," Juan said in a soothing voice. "I do
things I regret when I'm angry." He hit the elevator button. The doors
opened.
He motioned for Helene to enter and stepped in behind her. Everything
was working perfectly.
As the elevator clanked and thumped upward, Juan smiled warmly. It was
best to keep everything calm.
Helene was paralyzed by panic. Not knowing what to do, she did nothing.
The man terrified her, yet he seemed reasonable, and he was very well
dressed.
He looked like a successful businessman. Maybe he was associated with
Gene, Inc., and they wanted to search her apartment. She thought briefly
about screaming or trying to run, but then she remembered the gun.
The elevator grated open on the third floor. Juan graciously motioned
for her to proceed. With her keys in her shaking hand, she walked toward
her door and opened it. Juan immediately put his foot over the
threshold, just as he'd done downstairs. After they'd both entered, he
closed the door and locked it, using all three latches. Helene stood
dumbly in the small entrance hall, unable to move.
"Please," Juan said, politely motioning for her to enter the living
room.
To his surprise, a plump blonde was sitting on the sofa. Juan had been
told Helene lived alone. Never mind, he thought. "What is that saying
you people have?" he murmured. "When it rains, it pours. This party is
going to be twice as good as I expected."
He brandished his weapon, motioning for Helene to sit opposite her
roommate. The women exchanged anxious looks. Then Juan yanked the
telephone line from the wall, leaving the three color-coded wires to
dangle nakedly in the air. He went over to Helene's stereo and turned on
the tuner. A classical station came on.
Figuring out the digital controls, he switched to a hard-rock station
and turned up the volume.
"What kind of party is it without some music?" he shouted as he took
some thin rope out of his pocket.
Jason got to the hospital early Monday morning and suffered through
rounds.
No one was doing well. After he got to his office, he began calling
Helene at every spare moment. She never answered. At midmorning he even
ran up to the sixth floor lab only to find it dark and deserted.
Returning to his office, Jason was irritated. He felt that Helene had
been obstructive from the start, and now by not making herself
available, she was compounding the problem. Jason picked up the
telephone, called personnel, and got Helene's home address and phone
number. He called immediately. After the phone rang about ten times, he
slammed the receiver down in frustration. He then called personnel and
asked to speak to the director, Jean Clarkson. When she came on the
line, Jason inquired about Helene Brennquivist: "Has she called in sick?
I've been trying to reach her all morning."
" I , m surprised," Ms. Clarkson said. "We haven't heard from her, and
she's always been dependable. I
don't think she's missed a day in a year and a half."
"But if she were ill," Jason asked, "you would expect her to call?"
"Absolutely."
Jason hung up the phone. His irritation changed to concern. He had a bad
feeling about Helene's absence.
His office door opened and Claudia stuck her head in. "Dr. Danforth's on
line two. Do you-want to talk with her?"
Jason nodded.
"Do you need someone's chart?"
"No, thanks, Jason said as he lifted the phone.
Dr. Danforth's resonant voice came over the line: "I'd say Good Health
had better start screening their patients. I've never seen corpses in
such bad shape. Gerald Farr is as bad as the rest. He didn't have an
organ that appeared less than one hundred years old!"
Jason didn't answer.
"Hello?" Margaret said.
"I'm here," Jason said. Once again he was embarrassed to tell Margaret
that a month ago he'd done a complete physical on Farr and found nothing
wrong despite the man's unhealthy lifestyle.
"I'm surprised he didn't have a stroke several years ago," Margaret
said.
"All his vessels were atheromatous. The carotids were barely open."
"What about Roger Wanamaker's patient?" Jason asked.
"What was the name?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "The man died on Friday of a stroke. Roger
said you were getting the PP 'ase.
"Oh, yes. He also presented almost total degeneration. I thought health
plans were supposed to provide largely preventive medicine. You people
aren't going to make much money if you sign up such sick patients."
Margaret laughed. "Kidding aside, it was another case of multisystem
disease."
"Do you people do routine toxicology?" Jason asked suddenly.
"Sure. Especially nowadays. We test for cocaine, that sort of stuff."
"What about doing more toxicology on Gerald Farr? Would that be
possible?"
"I think we still have blood and urine," Margaret said. "What do you
want us to look for?"
"Just about everything. I'm fishing, but I have no idea what's going on
here."
"I'll be happy to run a battery of tests;' Margaret said, "but Gerald
Farr wasn't poisoned, I can tell you that. He just ran out of time. It
was as if he were thirty years older than his actual age. I know that
doesn't sound very scientific, but it's the truth."
"I'd appreciate the toxicology tests just the same."
"Will do," Margaret said. "And we'll be sending some specimens for your
people to process. I'm sorry it takes us so long to do our
microscopics."
Jason hung up and went back to work, vacillating between self-doubt and
/>
the discomfiting sense that somethingwas going on that was beyond his
comprehension. Every time he got a moment, he dialed Hayes's lab. There
was still no answer. He called Jean Clarkson again, who said that she'd
call if she heard from Miss. Brennquivist and to please stop bothering
her. Then she slammed down the phone. Nostalgically Jason remembered
those days when he got more respect from the hospital staff.
After seeing the last morning patient, Jason sat at his desk nervously
drumming his fingers. All at once a wave of certainty spread through
him, telling him that Helene's absence was not only significant, it was
serious.
In fact, he was convinced that it was so serious that he should inform
the police immediately.
Jason traded his white coat for his suit jacket, and went to his car. He
decided he'd better see Detective Curran in person. After their last
encounter, he didn't think Curran would take him seriously over the
phone.
Jason remembered the way to Curran's office without difficulty. Glancing
into the sparsely furnished room, he saw the detective working over a
form at his metal desk, his large fist gripping his pencil as if it were
a prisoner trying to escape.
"Curran," Jason said, hoping the man would be in a better mood than he'd
been the other night.
Curran glared up. "Oh, no!" he exclaimed, tossing his pencil onto the
uncompleted form. "My favorite doctor!" He made an exaggerated
expression of exasperation, then waved Jason into his office.
Jason pulled a metal-backed chair over to Curran's desk. The detective
eyed him with obvious misgiving.
"There's been a new development," Jason said. "I thought you should
know."
"I thought you were going back to doctoring."
Ignoring the cut, Jason went on. "Helene Brennquivist hasn't been at
work all day."
"Maybe she's sick. Maybe she's tired. Maybe she's been sick and tired of
you and all your questions."
Jason tried to hold on to his temper. "Personnel says she's extremely
reliable. She'd never take a day off without calling. And when I tried
her apartment, there was no answer."
Detective Curran gave Jason a disdainful look. "Have you considered the
possibility that the attractive young lady might have taken a long
weekend with a boyfriend?"
"I don't think so. Since I saw you I've learned she was having an affair
with Hayes."
Curran sat up and for the first time gave Jason his full attention.
"I always felt she was covering for Hayes," Jason continued. "Now I know
why. And I also believe she knows a lot more about his work than she's
saying, and why his places were searched. I think Hayes made a major
breakthroughand someone is after his notes-*
"If there was a breakthrough."
"I'm sure them was," Jason said. "And it adds to my suspicions about
Hayes's death. It was too convenient."
"You're jumping to conclusions."
"Hayes said someone was trying to kill him," Jason said. "I think he
made a major scientific discovery and was murdered because of it."
"Hold on!" Curtan shouted, banging his fist on his desk. "The medical
examiner determined that Dr. Alvin Hayes died of natural causes."
"An aneurysm, to be exact. But he was still being followed."
"He thought he was," Curran corrected, his voice rising in anger.
"I think he was too," Jason said with equal vehemence. "That would
explain why someone ransacked his apartment and his-"
"We know why his apartment was tossed," Curtan interrupted. "Only we
found the drugs and the money first!"
"Hayes may have used cocaine." Jason was shouting now. "But he wasn't a
dealer! And I think those drugs were planted, and-" He started to
mention his conversation with Carol, then stopped. He wasn't ready to
tell Curtan that he had persisted in seeing the dancer. "In any case,"
he said mom quietly, "I think the reason the lab was torn apart was that
someone was searching for his lab books."
"What was that about a lab?" Curran's heavy-
lidded eyes opened wide and his face turned a mottled red.
Jason swallowed.
"Dammit!" Curran yelled. "You mean to tell me Hayes's lab was tossed and
it wasn't reported? What do you people think you're doing?"
"The clinic was concerned about negative press," Jason said, forced to
defend the decision he did not condone.
"When did this happen?"
"Friday night."
"What was taken?"
"Several data books and some bacterial cultures. But none of the
valuable equipment. And it wasn't a robbery." Jason watched Curran's
hound-dog face for some sign his concern for Helene was vindicated.
"Any damage, vandalism?" was all he said.
"Well, they turned the place upside down 'and dumped everything on the
floor. So the lab was a mess. But the only deliberate destruction
involved those, uh, animals."
"Good," Curtan said. "Those monsters should have been destroyed. They
made me sick. How were they killed?"
"Probably poisoned. Our pathology department is checking that out."
Detective Curtan ran his thick fingers through his once-red hair. "You
know something?" he asked rhetoxically. "With the amount of cooperation
I've gotten from you eggheads, I'm god damned glad 1
turned this case over to Vice. They can have it. Maybe you'd like to go
down the hall and rant and rage at them. Maybe they'll get a charge out
of the fact that your mad scientist was humping his lab assistant as
well as the exotic dancer-* "Hayes and the dancer were no longer
lovers."
"Oh, really?" Cur-ran asked with a short, hollow laugh that ended in a
belch. "Why don't you go over to the Vice department and leave me alone,
doctor. I have a lot of genuine homicides to ponder."
Curran picked up his pencil and went back to his forms. Enraged, Jason
returned to the ground floor and surrendered his visitor's pass. Then he
went out to his car. Driving along Stortow Drive, with the Charles River
lazily spread out on the right, Jason finally began to calm down. He was
still convinced something had happened to Helene, but he decided that if
the police weren't concerned, there was little he could do.
He pulled into the GHP parking lot and went back to his office. Claudia
and Sally hadn't returned from their lunch break yet. A few patients
were already waiting. Jason changed back to his white coat and called to
check on Madaline Krammer's cardiac consult. Harry Sarnoff had agreed
with Jason's appraisal, and Madaline was having -an angiogram.
As soon as Sally returned, Jason went to work seeing his scheduled
patients. He was on his third afternoon patient when Claudia ducked into
the exam room.
"You have a visitor," she announced.
d4who? p Jason asked, tearing off a prescription.
"Our fearless leader. And she's foaming at the mouth. I thought I should
warn you."
Jason handed the prescription to the patient, tossed his stethoscope
around his neck, and walked down the corridor to his office. Sh
irley was
standing by the window. The moment she heard Jason she turned to face
him. She was without question furious.
"I certainly hope you have a good explanation, Dr. Howard," she said. "I
just got a call from the police. They're on their way here to get a
formal statement on why I didn't report the break-in of Hayes's lab.
They said they heard about it from you-and they're threatening
obstruction of justice."
"I'm sorry, " said Jason. "It was an accident. I was at the police
station.
I didn't mean to mention it ..."
"And just what the hell were you doing down at the station?"
"I wanted to see Curran," Jason said guiltily.
ed, fty?"
"There was some information I thought he should have."
"About the break-in?"
"No," Jason said, letting his hands fall to his sides. "Helene
Brennquivist hasn't shown up today. I found out that she and Hayes were
having an affair, and I guess I jumped to' conclusions. The break-in
Cook,Robin - Mortal Fear.txt Page 16