Monstrosity

by Edward Lee

  “Yeah, that’s what it looks like to me. But why would someone do that?”

  “Who does the inventory?”

  “I do.”

  “How often?”

  “Any time I sign out a prescription, I log it into the computer, and the computer says everything’s here.”

  “Does somebody come in every now and then to double-check the stock, or check expiration dates?”

  “No. That’s all done in the computer too. And me, Harry, and security are the only people with the key. I’m really sorry to have brought you out here for nothing.”

  “It’s no trouble, Dellin,” she told him, but her own frustrations were starting to scratch at her. The professional wall she knew she must maintain just kept cracking in places. It had been since the day she met him. God! At one point, her nails were digging into her thigh in an effort to avert her eyes. She just couldn’t help stealing glances at him through the cracks in that wall.

  It relieved her when the awkward silence broke. “Wait, there’s one more thing I can check. Didn’t think of it till now.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The people-counter.”

  “Huh?”

  She pointed to the tiny unit on the wall. “The motion-detector. They’re part of the security system, and they’re all over the building.”

  Dellin seemed fuddled. “I didn’t even know we had motion-detectors.”

  She locked the room back up, led him back to the security office. It amused her, though, how little he knew about the clinic’s system. “They’re not alarmed, either, don’t need to be since all exterior entrance points are. We call it a people-counter because it lets us know if the building’s still occupied when we’re getting ready to lock up.”

  “It’s a good thing you know what you’re doing, ’cos I sure as hell don’t.”

  “Come on, I’ll show you. I’ll prove to you that no one was in that room.”

  Back in her office, Clare opened the proper program. “This’ll only take a minute.”

  “Okay. I’m going to get some bottled water. You want anything?”

  “Sure, an iced-coffee if you don’t mind.”

  “Be right back.”

  The motion-detectors merely registered human-sized movement, not so much as a security function but just a precaution. If an elderly patient became disoriented and got lost, the motion sensors would find him immediately. It was the best way to ensure that all of the medical and maintenance staff had left when it was time to close up. Clare typed in a time-margin and yesterday’s date. Maybe when he sees the evidence that no one entered the vault, he’ll realize he was just being paranoid.

  But by the time Dellin re-entered with their drinks, Clare was staring astonished at the computer screen.

  “I stand corrected,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Next she clicked on the building map. In the small square that represented the pharmaceutical depository, a red dot blinked. “This is really strange, Dellin.”

  “I’m not following you. What’s the red dot?”

  “The breach. Someone was in that room, last night, just after one a.m. For exactly seven minutes and eleven seconds.”

  “But I thought the exterior sensors indicated that no one—”

  “Right. No one entered the building from any exterior window or door.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense…”

  Clare was already up and out. When she opened the vault door again, the first thing she did was look down. “Is it my imagination, or was that carpet not here when you first showed me this room the other day?”

  Dellin stared down, acknowledgment blooming. “I— You’re right! There’s never been a carpet in here.”

  Clare pulled the carpet back. A very makeshift repair job had been discharged. A large chunk of the floor had been pried upward and cracked out. Then someone had come along, hammered it back into place, and covered it over with this carpet.

  “Unbelievable,” Dellin said.

  Clare let out a long breath. “Makes perfect sense to me, Dellin,” she said in all sarcasm. “Somebody broke into the clinic through the floor, right into the dope vault—and left without taking a thing.”

  “And then somebody else covered it up,” Dellin said. “Somebody on the inside.”

  (II)

  Further investigation of the motion-detection program showed that that part of the system had been turned off immediately after the breach. More cover up. And Dellin was right; it all had to have been done by someone on the inside, someone deliberately making an effort to hide that fact from security. This is just fan-friggin’-tastic, Clare thought.

  Dellin stood just behind her at the computer console. “As the security chief,” he began in a depressed tone, “I suppose I know what you’re thinking. You’ve already ruled out Joyce and Rick because they were at the bar with you when this happened. But who left the bar not an hour before the breach?”

  Clare smiled in spite of the frustration. “All right, Dellin, I’ll be honest. For about one second, I considered that it might be you. But then I thought about all the other factors and realized how ridiculous that would be. Why would you break in to your own clinic—through the floor—and not steal anything? And why would you cover that up after the fact? And how could you possibly disable specific sections of the alarm program when it’s more than obvious that you know less about this system than I know about open-heart surgery?”

  He laughed to himself, and when he put his hand on her shoulder, Clare felt a deep flash of something totally unrealistic—a flash of desire, as if the touch were intimate. But it’s not intimate, she told herself just as quickly. The touch was incidental—she only wished it were more. Even more aggravating was the clash of perceptions that arose—her secret longing for this man impacting headlong into so many obstacles. Her feelings were keeping her from being objective, the ultimate sign of unprofessionalism. “So, Dellin, you were in the Army, right? The chemical corp or something?”

  “I was in the Army, yes.” His tone was already sounding like a confession. “Not the chemical corp, though. I was a research technician for the Biological Weapons Section at Fort Dietrich. And I guess the reason you asked is because you already know that I was criminally charged. It was Adam who told you that, right?”

  “Yes,” she said, guilty now.

  “He’s never liked me, and I don’t know how he got a hold of that information.”

  “It’s none of my business, Dellin. I just felt obliged to ask.”

  “But it is your business, because you think it may have a connection to some of the problems that’ve been occurring here. I wanted to tell you anyway, so you understood. I’d feel terrible if you thought I was some sort of criminal.”

  The awkwardness was growing thicker. Clare stared at the computer screen, pretending to be doing something.

  “I authorized the disposal of an inert by-product from a synthesis experiment,” he went on. “Some people there believed that the material was a hazardous, classified weapons component.”

  “What happened next?” she knew she had to ask.

  His hand squeezed her shoulder—again, just an incidental contact, but to Clare it proved an arousing distraction.

  Then he explained the rest: “I had my day in court, proved that the material in question had been mistakenly labeled at hazardous, and then JAG dropped all charges. I’ll bet Adam didn’t tell you that part, did he?”

  Clare turned in her chair, hard-pressed to restrain her delight. “Dellin, really, I never suspected you of any wrong doing, it’s just my job to assess all the facts,” but without realizing it, she put her hand over his for a moment.

  He didn’t pull it away. “Adam’s disapproval of me is too nonsensical to even bother explaining. Same exact thing happened when Grace Fletcher was here.”

  He didn’t continue, which secretly addled her. What’s he mean by that? Adam had the hots for Grace but was jealous of Dellin�
�s better looks? The question was intriguing—and completely inappropriate. The soap opera stuff had no place in the middle of this dilemma. I’ve got to get to the bottom of this security foul-up, she reminded herself. Somebody busted into this building and I’ve got to find out who and why.

  Her hand slid off the tops of his fingers as she tried to regain a professional posture. She couldn’t guess as to the “why” just yet. But the “who?”

  “Dellin, I hate to say this but right now, your boss isn’t looking too good.”

  “I know,” he admitted with surprising ease. His hand slid off her shoulder now. “Come on to my office with me. I better call him, get him out here.”

  Clare followed him back and now she was standing behind him as he opened the phone-number log on his own computer.

  “I hate to sound so negative but I can’t help it,” she told him. “Harry’s the boss, the director of the entire clinic, but I’ve never even seen him, and Rick and Joyce have barely seen him themselves. It strikes me as really weird.”

  “It is weird,” Dellin said. “And in all honesty, a lot of weird things have been happening around here lately. The only way to get to the bottom of this is to get him out here. I’m sure that he’ll be able to explain it all, but until he does…I’m as suspicious as you are.”

  Dellin dialed a number, then whispered “Damn!” under his breath. “It’s his answering machine—Harry, this is Dellin. Someone broke into the clinic last night. Put up your golf clubs and get out here.” He hung up, then sputtered his own frustrations.

  Clare was looking down, behind him. The top of his shirt was unbuttoned several notches, and the angle at which she stood made it nearly impossible for her to not notice the tanned skin and well-toned chest. When she forced her gaze away, she noticed that his computer was also equipped to access the alarm and security indexes. “Excuse me a second,” she said and leaned over. “Here’s another thing I forgot to do.”

  “What?”

  She grabbed his mouse and clicked on the icon for the security files, then reopened the motion-detector program as she had in her own office. “When I first checked the program, I only checked the map section that covers the main hall and the pharmacy vault.” She typed in the same time-spread, and clicked the WHOLE MAP option.

  “What the—” Dellin began.

  “Yeah,” Clare said to him. Red tracking dots set off by the motion detectors ran trails all over the back part of the building. “You definitely better get Harry out here. Maybe he can tell us who he’s got running around in B-Wing at one in the morning.”

  (III)

  “Thanks for coming out on your day off,” Dellin was saying. “You’ll both be paid double-time. As you can see, we’ve got a problem.”

  Joyce and Rick stood in the small room with them, both in their uniforms and both looking a bit confused. And what they all stood around was the large hole in the floor.

  “Someone broke into the building last night, through here,” Clare said, pointing to the hole. “It was the only way to circumvent the alarm.”

  “But nothing was stolen?” Joyce asked.

  “No.”

  Rick eyed the shelves. “That’s a lot of dope to leave sitting around. They busted into this room, then turned right back around and left without snitching anything? Why?”

  “Possibly,” Dellin began, “because this wasn’t the part of the building they were trying to break into.”

  Clare again: “The only thing worth more than the pharmaceuticals in this room is the Interthiolate supply.”

  “But that’s all stored in B-Wing,” Joyce said.

  “Yes, and the motion-detectors picked up activity there, too,” Clare continued, “only a few minutes after the breach occurred here. In other words, they broke in here, saw they were in the wrong place, then broke into B-Wing. Through the floor.”

  “As you both know, only the clinic director had the pass code to open the B-Wing door,” Dellin added. “I don’t even have access to B-Wing.”

  Rick frowned. “This is four shades of fucked up.” He looked right at Dellin. “And it’s an inside job.”

  “That,” Dellin said with reluctance, “would appear to be the case.”

  “So there’s a hole in the floor over in B-Wing too?” Joyce asked.

  “We can’t know for sure until we check,” Clare replied. “But there’s no other way any one could’ve gotten in there without leaving an entrance-time on the computer.”

  Joyce still didn’t seem clear on what was going on. “So we’re all going to stand around here like a bunch of dopes and wait for Harry to arrive? Rick’s right, this is an inside job, and, well—”

  “I’ll say it if you won’t,” Rick cut in. “Harry’s the only guy who could be behind this. He’s ripping his own place off, and making it look like another party did it.”

  Dellin raised a finger. “Maybe. But let’s wait until all the facts are in before we make a conclusion like that.”

  Rick raised a brow.

  Clare addressed the other two guards. “What I need you two to do right now is check the immediate grounds, say within a quarter-mile radius of the building, starting with the building itself. Just a good old-fashioned grid search. Whoever did break in here got beneath the clinic through one of the ventilation screens in the footing. Start at those points and work out. Look for tire tracks, footprints, anything like that.”

  Rick frowned again. “What about B-Wing? That’s the priority, isn’t it? We’ve got to get over there and see if the Interthiolate has been ripped off.”

  “We can’t open the door until Harry gets here,” Dellin said.

  Rick seemed close to losing his temper. “I hate to tell you this, Dellin, but Harry’s probably not coming at all. He’s probably on a plane halfway to Europe right now, gonna sell samples and the formula to the highest bidder. Don’t you think there might be a few pharmaceutical companies out there who might be interested in the most important cancer break-though in the last ten years?”

  “I hear what you’re saying, Rick,” Dellin said, “but I think I know Harry a little better than that. I really don’t think the problem here is that extreme. A better guess would be that an outside party broke in here last night and maybe Harry tried to cover it up so the sponsor and the insurance companies don’t find out. I don’t know. But let’s at least give him the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Dellin’s right,” Clare said. “Let’s do this the right way—search the crime scene for all possible evidence. Getting over to B-Wing right now isn’t feasible. Someone would have to go down into that hole and crawl under the building until they found the breach over there.”

  “Yeah?” Rick said. “That doesn’t exactly sound like brain surgery to me. I’ll crawl under the damn floor and get over there.”

  “No, Rick,” Clare ordered. “It’s too hot.”

  “You’re joking, right? Are we all little kiddies afraid of the heat?” he scoffed. “Get me a flashlight and I’m there.”

  “It’s probably 140 degrees under there, Rick,” Dellin warned. “Low oxygen, high humidity. I’m not questioning your courage, but even the toughest guy wouldn’t last long down there. You’d lose consciousness after five or ten minutes and be dead from heat-stroke in five more. Your electrolyte balance would fall apart and your heart would stop.”

  Joyce was pushing Rick toward the door. “Come on, tough guy. Let’s go do what we’re told. How’s that for an idea?”

  Clare smiled after them as they left, but Dellin wasn’t smiling at all.

  “Maybe Rick’s right,” he said. “Maybe Harry’s long gone, and I’m just a naive fool.”

  “If that’s true, we’ll all be looking foolish, Dellin, not just you. All we can do now is wait. If Harry’s a no-show, then we can all go to the unemployment line together.” Clare tried to maintain some spirit. “But you know what I’m going to do right now? I’m going to go have a little chat with the person I suspect even more than Harry.”
>
  “Who’s that?”

  “Adam.”

  (IV)

  “I guess we should split up, cover more ground,” Joyce suggested.

  “Good idea.” Rick followed her around to one side of the building, until they arrived at one of the footing screens. “You start at this one, I’ll start at the screen on the other side.” Then he smiled to himself. “But remember to keep an eye out for those big-ass cockroaches. Those things’ll probably bite the shit out of ya.”

  Joyce stopped, looked back at him worriedly. “Well, on second thought, maybe—”

  “We shouldn’t split up? I thought you’d see it my way.”

  “Smart-ass.”

  When Joyce bent over to examine the ground leading away from the screen, Rick ran his hand over her buttocks.

  She jumped. “Stop it!”

  Next he hugged her. “Come on, they’re inside. How about a little afternoon delight?”

  She jerked away from him. “Jesus, Rick! You’re like a billy goat—all you want to do is eat and screw.”

  Rick opened his palms. “What are you talking about? I’m not the least bit hungry.”

  “Quit dicking around. We’ve got a job to do.”

  Rick looked around without much conviction. “We’re not going to find anything out here, come on.”

  “We’re going by the book, like Clare said.”

  “Fine, but I still don’t think that’ll do any good. And Clare’s not exactly being very realistic, is she?”

  Joyce smirked at him. “What’s that supposed to mean? What’s Sherlock trying to imply now?”

  Rick leaned against a palm tree, lit a cigarette. “Come on, Joyce. Clare’s cool but she’s got such a jones for Dellin she’s not seeing straight.”

  Joyce let out a frustrated sigh, snitched the cigarette from him, took a long drag, then exhaled in exasperation. “You’re the one who said it was an inside job!”