“I’ll have a search warrant within an hour.”
“And I’ll have an attorney get a restraining order until a judge can properly sort everything out,” Wales countered.
“Fine,” Jake said, unperturbed.
“Of course, I’ll have to red-tape every office and door in this building and put a cop by each of them to make sure no chart or record leaves that shouldn’t leave. And it will stay that way until some judge sorts everything out for us.”
Wales’s jaw tightened. A vein on his forehead bulged.
“There’s an easier way,” Jake went on.
“You could set aside a room and let a team of detectives go through your computer records and make a list of all patients with Mexican names who have leg prostheses. One of your doctors will have to be available to help us with the medical mumbo jumbo.”
Wales gave the detective a long look, wondering how far he could push
him and whether a call to the mayor’s office would help. Not much was the answer to both questions.
“I want as little disruption as possible.”
“No one will know they’re here.”
“Timothy Bremmer is the man who will assist your officers,” Wales said, the vein on his forehead less obvious now.
“He’s the person who set up our current computer system.”
“Is he a doctor?” Joanna asked quickly.
“A very good one,” Wales said.
“He’s also a wizard at biomechanics.”
Wales spun around and walked away with giant steps. It took Jake and Joanna a few seconds to realize they were supposed to follow him.
Joanna moved in closer to Jake as they hurried along.
“He’s a real cutie, isn’t he?”
Wales led the way through the clinic and into a large workshop. Technicians wearing pale green smocks sat at benches inspecting and repairing prostheses of every imaginable type. There were artificial hands and forearms and complete arms as well as feet and legs and entire lower extremities. Some of the hands were mechanized and moved silently, their fingers making a grasping motion.
As they passed a Plexiglas window, Jake looked in. A robot fitted with prosthetic legs was stomping up and down, testing the plastic’s strength and durability. Jake felt as if he were in some futuristic world.
They went through a wide set of doors and entered a large room filled with heavy machinery that made a soft, whining sound. Off to the side, a man in a white coat leaned over a console and carefully adjusted several dials. The whining noise increased briefly, then almost disappeared.
“Tim,” Wales called out.
“Can I see you for a moment?”
“Sure,” the man said and walked over.
“Boy! That new lamination process is working well. When I double the number of layers, I triple the prostheses’ strength. Amazing.” He nodded, obviously pleased with the results. Then he saw the puzzled look on the visitors’ faces.
“Our prostheses are constructed of laminated strips,” he explained.
“The more strips you laminate together, the greater the strength of the end product.”
“Doesn’t that substantially increase the weight of the prosthesis?” Joanna asked.
“Not if you thin out the strips,” the man answered. “But it’s a good question. Weight is very important to the people who have to use the prosthesis every day of their lives.”
Wales glanced at his watch impatiently.
“Dr. Timothy Bremmer, meet Dr. Joanna Blalock and Detective Lieutenant Sinclair.”
Bremmer nodded to Joanna.
“It’s a pleasure, Dr. Blalock. I keep hearing good things about your work in forensics.”
“Thank you,” Joanna said, thinking she’d seen Bremmer in the hospital before but not remembering where.
Bremmer turned to Jake Sinclair and shook his hand firmly.
“Is there something I can do for you?”
“We need your help in compiling a list.” Jake quickly summarized the details on the piece of plastic heel found at the bomb site.
“We have to use your computer records to obtain the names of all Mexican American patients who were fitted with leg prostheses.”
Bremmer rubbed at his chin. He was a slender man, shorter than Joanna, with a broad forehead and straight blond hair. His boyish face was unlined.
“Just by using their surnames, huh?”
“Right.”
“That’s going to be a lot of work,” Bremmer said thoughtfully.
“How many patients will we have to sort through?” Jake asked.
Bremmer shrugged.
“Somewhere around eight thousand. Maybe more.”
“Too many,” Jake grumbled under his breath, then asked, “Is there any way to shorten the list?”
Bremmer looked over at the machinery, now making a more noticeable whining sound. He studied it for a moment, lost in concentration, then turned back to the others.
“Do you have that piece of heel with you?”
“Here you are,” Joanna said and handed him the broken piece of plastic.
Bremmer carefully studied the plastic heel, holding it up to the light.
“Did you determine how many layers of plastic vere used to make this prosthesis?”
Joanna shook her head.
“Is that important?”
“It could be,” Bremmer said, now running his finger along the jagged edge of plastic.
“When I joined the staff six years ago, we installed this new machinery to manufacture our prostheses. It uses a different lamination process than the old one did. The newer products have more layers.”
Jake asked, “If the plastic heel was made by the new machine, how many
patients are we talking about?” “Around four thousand.”
“That’s better,” Jake said, nodding.
“You’ll still be facing a mountain of work,” Bremmer cautioned.
“Getting the list together will be the easy part. Tracking down four thousand patients will take months, and there’ll be a fair number we never find.”
“Don’t they come back for periodic follow-up visits?” Joanna asked.
“Most do,” Bremmer answered.
“But some, like Mexicans who may be here illegally, come once and never show up again. I guess they return to Mexico.”
Jake sighed heavily. One step forward, he thought, then two steps back.
“We’d appreciate your finding out whether this plastic heel was made by your newer machinery.”
“No problem,” Bremmer said, holding the piece up to the light again.
“I’ll have the answer for you tomorrow.”
Jake studied the plastic’s shiny surface, now noticing its neutral color.
“Are all prostheses painted that cream color?”
“Just about,” Bremmer said.
“Although we had one patient who insisted his leg be painted purple.”
Bremmer and Wales grinned briefly at each other, sharing a private joke.
The whirring sound from the machines suddenly intensified, then gears shifted and the noise began to fade.
“The prosthesis is going through the finishing stage,” Bremmer told them.
“Then we put the padding and holding straps on by hand.”
Something kept gnawing at Joanna, something that was obvious yet being overlooked. What was it? A light on the console blinked red, then turned green.
“And that tells us that the measurements of the finished prosthesis are identical to those programmed in by the computer,” Bremmer went on.
“Each prosthesis is, of course, custom-tailored to the individual patient.”
“These measurements are critically important,” Wales added authoritatively.
“If you’re off a few millimeters here or there, you can end up with a poorly functioning prosthesis.”
Joanna’s eyes brightened. Somebody with expertise had to take those measurements. Somebody had to ex
amine those patients before a prosthesis could be made.
“Who does the actual measurements?”
“I do,” Bremmer said matter-of-factly. “I get the dimensions of the stump and the contralateral limb, then feed the numbers into a computer. The computer shows what a model should be like and, if everything is in order, it gives our machines the exact specifications for the new limb. Everything is fully automated.”
“So you see every patient?” Joanna asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you take pictures of the patients with their new prostheses?”
“That wouldn’t be of any help,” Bremmer said, shaking his head.
“Still photographs would be useless. We take videos. That way we can see the prosthetic limbs in motion and determine how well they function.”
“What are the male patients with leg prostheses wearing when the videos are being shot?” Joanna asked.
“Bathing suits or walking shorts.”
“So we could see their arms well?”
“I would think so,” Bremmer said, wondering why she was so interested in the arms of a patient with a leg prosthesis.
“But, of course, with a leg prosthesis, our camera would focus in on the lower extremity.”
“So one may or may not see multiple views of the patient’s arms?”
“That’s correct.”
“Where are these videos stored?”
“In our new building,” Bremmer replied.
Jake asked, “Have you got a video viewing room there?”
Bremmer nodded, grinning.
“Lieutenant, our new institute is one of the most advanced in the world. Not just in America,” he emphasized, “but in the entire world. Our new viewing room has four screens that simultaneously show the patient from four different angles.”
“Nice,” Jake said, as he envisioned excellent views of the upper arm where the tattoo was located.
“Better than nice,” Bremmer said.
“The new institute will be the envy of the medical world.” He glanced over at josiah Wales.
“For once, the federal government did something right.”
“With a lot of help from the Wales family,” Wales added.
“Absolutely right,” Bremmer agreed.
“And the end result is a sparkling gem that everybody wants to be associated with. The dignitaries are already lined up to attend the grand opening on April nineteenth. Congressmen, senators, the
governor. Even the President.” Jake squinted an eye, wondering why a new institute would attract the nation’s leaders.
“What’s the big attraction?”
“Votes,” Wales growled.
“They figure that between the Vietnam veterans and the disabled there must be a couple of million votes.”
“But it’s quite an honor having the President here,” Joanna said, thinking about the Medal of Freedom the President would present to her. She decided to make only a brief statement at the ceremony, thanking the President and asking him and the others not to forget those who died aboard the Global Explorer II.
“Quite an honor,” she said again.
Wales shrugged.
“I didn’t vote for him.”
“Me neither,” Bremmer chimed in.
I did, Jake wanted to say, but he held his tongue.
“Can we start the search first thing in the morning?”
“Fine,” Bremmer said.
“Have your team meet me here at eight o’clock. It’ll help if they have expertise in computers.”
“Oh, they will,” Jake said, smiling thinly.
“You can bank on that.”
“Eight sharp, then.”
Joanna and Jake walked out into a light drizzle. The sky was darkening with the promise of more rain to come.
“Finding out about the video was a nice touch,” Jake said.
“What made you think of that?”
“It was luck,” Joanna admitted.
“I was thinking more of photographs, which are usually taken to show how well a prosthesis fits.”
“Well, thinking of the photographs led to the videos.”
“I guess.”
“And if by chance one of those videos shows a Mexican American with a rose tattoo on his arm—well, we’ve got our man.”
“It’s a long shot.”
“Not really,” Jake said.
“There were four terrorists in that house. That means that the chances are one in four that the guy with the tattoo had an artificial leg.”
“That’s not the long shot,” Joanna told him.
“The long shot is finding a video of a leg amputee that happens to show a side view of an arm that happens to have a rose tattoo on it. And you may have to go through as many as eight thousand videos to look for
that tattoo.” “Are you saying our chances of finding that tattoo are one in eight thousand?”
“Something like that,” Joanna said.
“Unless you get very, very lucky.”
“Shir!” Jake grumbled.
They hurried along, the rain now falling harder. Monday, March 29, 10:40 a.m.
Look at this,” Lori said, moving her chair aside.
Joanna leaned in and studied the slide under the microscope. It showed clusters of malignant bone cells.
“It’s a clear-cut osteogenic sarcoma. So what?”
“This section of bone comes from a blown-apart leg found at the bomb site,” Lori said, busily chewing on a piece of gum.
“Which means two of the four terrorists had malignancies.”
Joanna quickly restudied the slide. There was no question about the diagnosis.
The osteoid cells appeared wild and bizarre, indicating a high degree of malignancy.
“Do you think this guy had symptoms from his bone tumor?”
Lori shrugged.
“You can’t tell from a slide.”
“But you might from an X ray.”
“I’ve got X rays and photographs of the gross specimen,” Lori said.
“But they don’t give any clues as to whether he was symptomatic.”
“Let’s take a look.”
They walked over to a row of view boxes on the far wall of the lab. Using a magnifying glass, Joanna examined the enlarged photographs of the specimen. It appeared to be a chunk of thigh with a splintered femur protruding at a sharp angle. The tissue around the bone was burned and shredded. Next she went to the X rays. They showed a quarter-size invasive tumor of the femoral shaft.
“He felt pain,” Joanna said, pointing to a destroyed area of the femur.
“The tumor eroded right through the cortical bone and into the soft tissues. He had plenty of pain.”
“So now we’ve got two terrorists dying of cancer, and both probably knew they had it,” Lori said.
“They had to be suicide bombers. There’s no other explanation.”
“Maybe,” Joanna said dubiously.
“But why commit suicide when you know you’re going to die in a matter of months?”
“Maybe the pain was so bad they couldn’t stand it,” Lori suggested.
“You know, they killed themselves to stop the pain.”
“People don’t use C-four to commit suicide.” Joanna studied the X rays once more, wondering about the relationship between the two terrorists. They had to be connected, but she couldn’t find the thread. Even their malignancies were different. One was an adenocarcinoma metastatic to the liver, the other a vicious osteogenic sarcoma. There didn’t seem to be any common denominator.
Joanna’s eyes suddenly narrowed. She turned to Lori.
“Did you do blood types on the two specimens that showed malignancy?”
Lori opened a laboratory data book and flipped through it.
“We couldn’t get a blood type on the liver. It was partially fried.”
Joanna sighed wearily.
“Damn it.”
“What’s so important about the blood types on these
specimens?”
“We’re assuming that there are two patients with malignancies and there may be only one,” Joanna explained.
“Sometimes one patient will have multiple malignancies. It’s not common, but it happens. And if we have only one patient with a cancer, it’s less likely to have any significance here.”
“Well, the blood types aren’t going to help us here.”
“But DNA typing will,” Joanna said at once.
“Let me know the results the moment they come back.”
“You of course realize that it’s almost certain we’re dealing with two individuals who have two different cancers.”
“I know,” Joanna said.
“But let’s prove it so we don’t waste time chasing a false lead.”
“Strange business,” Lori said and turned to another page.
“You want to talk about the dismembered hand?”
“Only if you’ve got good news.”
“I don’t,” Lori told her.
“Our friend Maxie Birnbaum isn’t making any progress finding Jose Hernandez. Nobody knows where he is. But Maxie says he knows a friend of a friend of Jose’s who might have some information.”
“Which means he’s stumped.”
“Yeah,” Lori said.
“But he keeps plowing ahead.”
“Just like the rest of us.”
“We’ve got a little more information on the C-four found in the hand,”
Lori went on. “It’s made of two separate explosives, each with a name a mile long. It contained no traceable material, of course.”
“Of course,” Joanna said sourly. A few years before Congress had tried to pass a bill that would have required all explosives manufacturers to include a traceable substance in their products. This would have allowed investigators to trace any explosive made in America to its point of origin. The powerful gun lobby made certain the proposal was voted down.
“Our outside lab says the combination of ingredients in our C-four is somewhat unusual, so they’re going to send a sample to the aTF. Explosives Lab for further study.”
“How long before we get those results back?”
“They put a rush order on it, so we should hear in a few days.”
“Good.”
Lori closed her data book.
“Well, now I can get back to the other thousand things I have to do.”
“If you’ve got a minute,” Joanna said, “there’s something we have to talk about.”
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