by Robin Cook
Although she vaguely remembered Dr. Donaldson saying the vast old institution, save for the small portion occupied by the Wingate, was like a museum, she was unprepared for what she was looking at. It was as if sometime in the nineteen-twenties everybody, professional staff and patients alike, had just walked out leaving everything behind. There were old desks, wooden gurneys, and antique-appearing wheel chairs lining the dark hall. Huge cobweblike strands hung like garlands from Victorian light fixtures. There were even old, framed Currier and Ives prints hanging askew on the walls. The floor was covered with a thick layer of dust and pieces of plaster that had fallen from the shallowly vaulted ceiling.
Superstitiously Deborah covered her mouth and tried to breath shallowly as she paced off the distance from the stairwell. She knew intellectually that any of the tubercular organisms and any of the other miasma that had at one time roamed the halls were long gone, but she still felt vulnerable and uneasy.
Once she had an approximate fix on where the dumbwaiter shaft was, she entered the nearest door. Not unexpectedly, she found herself in a windowless room which had served as a butler’s pantry complete with cupboards full of institutional dishes and flatware. There were even some old warming ovens with their doors ajar. In the semidarkness they looked like huge dead animals with their mouths open.
The dumbwaiter shaft’s doors were where she expected them to be. They were designed to open vertically like a freight elevator, but when Deborah pulled on the frayed canvas strap, it was obvious there was a fail-safe mechanism to keep them locked until the dumbwaiter itself had arrived.
Brushing her hands free of the dust, Deborah retraced her steps back to the stairwell and climbed to the fourth and top floor. She found the situation the same as on the third floor. Returning to the stairwell, she descended to the first floor.
When Deborah emerged from the stairwell, she knew instantly that the eggs did not come from there. The first floor had been renovated even more dramatically than the second floor to house the Wingate Clinic’s clinical operations, and at that time of the morning it was in full swing with a constant flux of doctors, nurses, and patients. Deborah had to step to the side to allow an occupied gurney to go by.
Dodging the crowd, Deborah paced off the distance from the stairwell to where she guessed the dumbwaiter shaft was, behind the corridor wall. Leaving the corridor, she found herself in a patient-treatment area. Where the dumbwaiter shaft’s doors should have been located, she was confronted by a shallow linen closet. It was immediately obvious to her that there was no opening for the dumbwaiter on the first floor.
A simple process of elimination left only the basement as the eggs’ origin. Deborah headed back to the stairwell. To get down there she had to descend three flights instead of the two that had separated each of the upper floors. This suggested to her that the basement would have a higher ceiling, but it turned out not to be the case. There was a mezzanine floor of sorts between the basement and the first floor, composed of a myriad of piping and ductwork.
The basement had the appearance of a dungeon with infrequent bare-bulb lighting. The walls were exposed brick with arched ceilings, and the floor, granite slabs. The unease Deborah had felt up on the third and forth floors was magnified in the gloomy basement. It, too, contained a multitude of mementos of its mental-institution/TB-sanitarium past, but here they were more decrepit as if abandoned in dank, shadowed recesses. Deborah’s immediate feeling was that if there were any of the old infectious agents lingering in the building, this was where they’d live.
Girding herself against the power of her own imagination, Deborah proceeded to pace off the distance from the stairwell as best she could. The floor plan did not have the simple central corridor like all the floors above. It was considerably more mazelike, requiring her to be more creative in judging the distance while proceeding in a zigzag course around massive supporting piers.
As she passed through an archway and skirted a large kitchen with spacious metal countertops, huge ovens, and soapstone sinks, Deborah confronted something she’d not expected: a blank, modern, metallic door with no handle, hinges, or even lock.
Tentatively Deborah reached out in the semidarkness and lightly touched the shiny surface. She guessed it was stainless steel. Curiously, however, it was not cold but rather felt comfortably warm to her touch. She glanced around in the half-light at all the old kitchen equipment, then back to the shiny door. The incongruity was startling. Placing her ear against the door, she could hear the hum of machinery within. She listened for several minutes, hoping to hear voices, but she didn’t. Moving back from the door, she caught sight of a card swipe just like the one outside the server-room door. At that moment she wished she had Wingate’s card.
After a moment of indecision and a brief argument with herself, Deborah reached out and knocked on the door with her knuckle. It resonated solidly as if thick. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted anyone to answer, and no one did. Gaining in confidence, she pushed against the door, but it was immovable. Using the heel of her fist, she hit around the periphery of the door just to see if she could determine where the latch was. She couldn’t.
Shrugging her shoulders in the face of such an impenetrable barrier, Deborah turned and retraced her steps back to the stairwell. It was almost noon, and time to return upstairs to wait for Joanna’s call. Deborah had learned little on her foray, but at least she’d tried. She thought that maybe, if all went well, she could come back in the afternoon with Wingate’s card. The stainless-steel door and what might be behind it had definitely piqued her curiosity.
MAY 10, 2001
12:24 P.M.
EARLIER IN THE DAY, JOANNA
had developed more respect for data-entry-level office workers. Now she had significantly more respect for thieves. She couldn’t imagine doing anything like what she was currently doing for a living. Deborah had talked her into returning to the server room with a compelling argument and plan that seemed to have worked. Joanna had been in the server room now for almost twenty-two minutes and no one had bothered her. Her biggest enemy had been herself.
The immobilizing panic she’d felt on the first visit had come back with a vengeance the moment she’d come through the outer server-room door and had let up only enough to allow her to function, although not all that efficiently. The worst part of the whole episode had been the agonizing wait for the brute-force cracking software to come up with a password to unlock the server keyboard. While it ran, Joanna had been reduced to a pathetic, quivering mass of anxiety beset with intermittent jolts of fear from constantly hearing noises that were either innocuous or completely fabricated by her overwrought brain. She was actually surprised at herself. It had been her misconception that she would been a cool person under the kind of stress she was experiencing.
Once she’d gotten into the system, her terror had been ameliorated a degree just from the mere fact of doing something rather than just watching. The main trouble had then become her tremor. It had made operating the mouse and the keyboard difficult.
As she had progressed, Joanna had silently thanked Randy Porter. The man had made her job significantly easier by not hiding what she was searching for too deeply within subfolders. From the very first window Joanna had brought up, she found a server drive named Data D that sounded promising. Opening that drive presented her with an array of folders conveniently named. One of them was called Donor. Right-clicking on the folder and selecting Properties, she saw that access was extremely limited. In fact, besides Randy as the network administrator, only Paul Saunders and Sheila Donaldson were authorized entry.
Confident she’d found the correct file, Joanna went through the process of adding herself as a user. That required merely typing in her user account designation plus her office domain. Just as she was about to click the Add button she heard a door open somewhere in the distance that caused her heart to leap in her chest and a new batch of perspiration pop out on her forehead.
For several seco
nds Joanna was unable to move or even breath as she strained to hear the telltale sounds of footsteps in the server-room corridor. But she didn’t. Still she expected someone was behind her. Slowly she turned. A modicum of relief coursed through her veins when she saw an empty server-room doorway. Standing up and taking a few steps back, she looked down the server-room corridor to the outer door. It was closed.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” Joanna moaned. Quickly she returned to the keyboard and, with a trembling hand, clicked to add herself to the donor file access list.
As rapidly as she was able Joanna went back through the windows she’d progressively opened to return the server monitor to its desk top and ultimately to its password demand. She snatched up her purse and was about to flee when she remembered the cracking software still in the CD drive. Shaking worse than ever now that she was within seconds of success, she managed to get the CD out and in her bag. Finally she was able to leave.
She closed the server-room door and then ran the few steps to the outer door. Unfortunately there was no way to anticipate if it was a good time to emerge into the main corridor or not. It all depended on who happened to be out there. She just had to take a chance and hope for the best. In one motion she opened the door and stepped out, pulling the door closed behind her. Trying not to panic, she avoided looking up and down the corridor but rather went immediately to the water fountain. It wasn’t that she was thirsty although her mouth was certainly dry. She just wanted something to do rather than look like a thief making her escape.
Joanna straightened up. It had been encouraging while drinking not to have heard any voices, and now that she looked it seemed she’d selected a particularly opportune moment to emerge. It was one of the few times Joanna had seen the corridor completely deserted.
Eager to see if she had been successful and also to take a quick look inside the folder even if Deborah was not with her, Joanna hurried back to her cubicle in administration. Since it was the middle of the lunch hour, the administration area was all but deserted, which was fine with Joanna. She dashed into her cubicle, tossed her purse on the desk, and sat down. She unlocked her workstation. With dexterity somewhat improved above what she’d had to deal with in the server room, Joanna quickly mapped a network drive to the donor folder. As she clicked for the command to take effect, she held her breath.
“Yes!” Joanna hissed loudly through clenched teeth. She was into the folder’s directory. She felt like cheering, but held herself back, and it was a good thing.
“Yes, what?” a voice asked. It was halfway between a demand and a question. “What’s going on?”
Feeling an iota of the same terror of discovery she’d experienced in the server room, Joanna raised her eyes and looked up and to the right. As she’d feared she would when she’d first heard the voice, she found herself gazing up into Gale Overlook’s pinched face.
“What’d you do, win the lottery?” Gale asked. She had a way of speaking that made anything she said seem derogatory.
Joanna swallowed. She had another cruel instantaneous realization. Although she considered herself reasonably witty and as capable of repartee as any of her friends, feeling anxious and guilty, which she did at that moment, caused her mind to go blank. Instead of words, a kind of stuttering emerged from her mouth.
“What’d ya have on your screen?” Gale asked, becoming even more interested in the light of Joanna’s apparent distress. Gale bobbed her head around trying to see the screen through the reflected glare.
Although Joanna was momentarily speechless, she did have the presence of mind to close the computer window, bringing her screen back to its desktop.
“Were you on the Net?” Gale asked accusingly.
“Yes,” Joanna said, finally finding her voice. “I was checking some stocks to see what they’re doing.”
“Christine’s not going to like that,” Gale said. “She frowns on people going on the Net for personal reasons during working hours.”
“Thank you for telling me,” Joanna said. She stood, smiled stiffly, grabbed her purse, and left.
Joanna walked swiftly. Anger at herself for acting so suspiciously and irritation at Gale Overlook for being such a meddler had the beneficial effect of focusing her rampant anxieties. As she headed toward the dining room, she actually began to feel better. By the time she got to the fire door leading into the tower portion of the building, she had recovered enough even to feel mildly hungry.
Hesitating on the dining room’s threshold, Joanna scanned the room for Deborah. It was significantly more crowded than the day before, when Helen Masterson had brought her and Deborah. Joanna’s eyes stumbled onto Spencer Wingate. Quickly she moved them away. She was not in the mood to make eye contact with the man. She saw Paul Saunders and Sheila Donaldson at another table and looked away equally quickly. Then she saw Deborah sitting at a table for two with Randy Porter. They appeared deep in conversation.
Joanna made her way over to Deborah, attempting to keep her face away from Sheila Donaldson as much as possible. It wasn’t until Joanna was standing at the table side before Deborah was aware of her and looked up.
“Hello, Prudence, dear!” Deborah said lightly. “You remember Randy Porter, I’m sure.”
Randy smiled shyly and shook hands but didn’t stand. Joanna wasn’t surprised. She’d long since become accustomed to the fact that a lot of men raised above the Mason-Dixon Line had little schooling in the social graces.
“Randy and I have been having an interesting discussion,” Deborah said. “I didn’t know the world of computer games was so intriguing. It seems we’ve been missing something, big time. Am I right, Randy?”
“Absolutely,” Randy said. He leaned back with a self-satisfied smile.
“Well, listen, Randy,” Deborah said. “I tell you what! I’ll come by your workstation later and you can show me Unreal Tournament. How does that sound?”
“Sounds good to me,” Randy said. He was rocking forward and backward slightly as if constantly agreeing with himself.
“I’m glad to have had this opportunity to talk with you, Randy,” Deborah added. “It was fun.” She nodded and grinned, hoping Randy would take the hint. But he didn’t.
“I have a couple extra joysticks in my car,” Randy said. “I can have you ladies set up to play in no time at all.”
“I’m sure we’d appreciate that,” Deborah said, losing patience. “But right now Prudence and I have some things we’d like to talk about.”
“Hey, that’s okay by me,” Randy said. But he didn’t budge.
“We’d like a little privacy,” Deborah added.
“Oh!” Randy said. He looked back and forth between the two women as if confused, but then finally got the message. He then fumbled with his napkin before standing. “I’ll see you guys around.”
“Right!” Deborah said.
Randy left and Joanna took his seat.
“He’s not well trained in his social cues,” Joanna commented.
Deborah gave a short, mocking laugh. “And you probably believe you had the worst part of the deal going in the server room.”
“Was it that bad?”
“He’s a total computer nerd,” Deborah complained. “He couldn’t talk about anything else. Absolutely nothing! But that’s water over the dam.” She cleared her throat, leaned forward, and in an excited but lowered voice, asked: “Well, what happened? Did you do it or what?”
Joanna leaned forward as well. Their faces were only inches apart. “It’s done.”
“Fantastic! Congratulations! So what did you learn?”
“Nothing yet,” Joanna said. “Other than I checked from my workstation, and what I did in the server room worked. I was into the proper folder. I even saw your name in the directory.”
“So why didn’t you learn anything?”
“Because my nosy neighbor interrupted me,” Joanna said. “She’s like a jack-in-the-box whenever I say or do anything out of the ordinary. I thought she’d be
at lunch when I got back there, but unfortunately I was wrong.”
One of the Nicaraguan waitresses came over and Joanna ordered a soup and salad. The food choice was Deborah’s suggestion. She said it would be the fastest.
“I can’t wait for us to get back to your workstation,” Deborah said once the waitress had left. “I’m really psyched about all this. And strangely enough, at this point I’m as interested in finding out about the research around here as I am about our eggs.”
“That’s going to be a problem,” Joanna said. “First of all we have to worry about my nosy neighbor. I think it might be best if we wait until she leaves her cubicle before we go back into the donor folder.”
“Then let’s do it over in the lab,” Deborah said. “There’re a lot of available workstations that will be private enough. We won’t have to worry about someone looking over our shoulders.”
“We can’t use a workstation in the lab,” Joanna said. “The access I created is via the office domain only.”
“Good grief!” Deborah remarked. “Why does this all have to be so complicated? But, all right! So we use yours. But I think we should just ignore your neighbor. Hell, I can stand between her and the screen. As soon as you’ve eaten, let’s go and do it.”
“There’s another problem,” Joanna said. “The only access I created is into the donor folder. There were other folders in the same drive, such as Research Protocols and Research Results, but I didn’t give myself access to them.”
“Why the hell not?” Deborah questioned. She furrowed her brows.
“Because I was too afraid to take any more time,” Joanna said.
“Oh! For chrissake!” Deborah complained. “I don’t believe this! You were right there with the files staring you in the face. How could you pass it up?” Deborah shook her head in irritated amazement.
“You don’t understand how nervous I was,” Joanna said. “I’m lucky I was able to do anything in that room.”