Jillian rose and walked over to the single, narrow window. The panoramic view of Virginia and the Potomac from the seventh floor was breathtaking. She followed a sailboat skimming across diamond ripples. When Belle was a child, the two of them loved to go out together on their family’s Sunfish. Then, suddenly, they were orphans, and now, Belle herself was gone. Jillian felt completely adrift. When—if—they found Belle’s killer, would it really put an end to the profound emptiness she battled each day? The possibility gave her hope and, at the moment, that hope was all she could really ask for.
Fighting the fullness in her throat, Jillian returned to the table.
“I agree it’s worth looking into,” she said.
“Okay. I spent a little time on the Internet. The Singh medi-spa is a joint venture between Paresh Singh and your employer, Shelby Stone Memorial Hospital. Remember that badge on the security guard?”
“I do. One of the brochures in the medi-spa lobby said it’s been that way since before I started working here ten years ago.”
“So, since you’re an employee of Shelby Stone Memorial, you should be able to access the electronic medical records for the spa, assuming the two facilities share the data. We can start by looking at medi-spa patients from four years ago and work our way back from there.”
“We have a computer near the nurses’ station. Let me see what I can do.”
Jillian exited the lounge and followed the circular corridor to the nurses’ station, where they had recently installed a computer kiosk. She parked herself in front of the kiosk, which was really just a laptop computer locked inside a black metal case, providing employees access to various applications including shift and medication schedules, room assignments, and of course, electronic medical records. The psych floor was one of the first to get trained on the new EMR system, affectionately known among the nurses as the Even More Redundancy application.
Jillian logged in to her account, but accessing records other than those of her own patients was clearly an ethical breach. She launched the EMR application and clicked on the pull-down menu for “Facility Name.” As Nick had suspected, there was an entry for the Singh Medical Spa and Cosmetic Surgery Center, in addition to other facilities connected to Shelby Stone Memorial. When she tried to access those records, however, Jillian got a PERMISSION DENIED pop-up dialog box, followed by a loud and somewhat startling error beep. Logging off quickly, and smiling sheepishly as if she had made an inadvertent mistake, Jillian returned to the nurses’ lounge.
“I can’t get access.”
“So much for Plan A,” Nick said.
“But wait, there actually is a Plan B. Let’s go down and check on Ray. Then I can scrounge maybe twenty minutes if the floor is still quiet. We can take a trip down to the records room and see if we can get those files the old-fashioned way.”
“There still is an old-fashioned way?”
“Last I heard.”
Within the hour, the neurosurgery resident told them, Ray Goodings would be in the OR having a drainage procedure. Then the hard work would begin—finding a way to get him off booze and into recovery.
“Turns out shipping him to the psych ward in error may have saved him,” Jillian said.
“Maybe this experience will scare him into sobriety, providing he even remembers it.”
“Every time an alcoholic stops drinking, there’s a possibility that this will be it, and he’ll never have to stop again.”
“I like the way you think, nurse.”
Taking the patient elevator down to subbasement level two, the pair emerged into a windowless, dank, and eerily quiet hallway.
“Makes Manny Ferris’s bedroom seem like a suite at the Four Seasons,” Jillian muttered. “This area used to be the very center of the hospital. I have to come down here less and less as the changeover to EMRs progresses, but I really hate it when I do. I think the records room—what’s left of it—is the last door on the right.”
They proceeded along the dimly lit corridor with their eyes adjusting to the gloom as they went.
“Who on earth works down here?” Nick asked.
“I’ve only met him a couple times. The Mole, they call him,” Jillian said, “but his real name is Mollender. Saul Mollender, I think. I heard that when the whole EMR unit was created and moved to the top two floors of the Corwin Building, he just stayed.”
“A dinosaur.”
At the corridor’s end was a classroom-style door with a frosted-glass windowpane, upon which, painted in peeling letters, were the words RECORD ROOM. Jillian opened the door without bothering to knock. It was a cavernous space, made somewhat claustrophobic by a drop ceiling and row upon row of stacked cardboard storage cartons and tall metal shelving units, a number of which were still packed with color-coded patient records. The only other furniture in the room was a slate-colored fiberboard desk, positioned directly in front of the entrance.
Saul Mollender sat in his chair behind the desk. There was a large stack of records piled neatly on top of the otherwise uncluttered surface. No photos, no pictures on the wall, no calendar. The topmost patient record folder was flipped open and Mollender, cadaverously thin, with graying hair and wire-rimmed glasses, appeared to be entering data from it into his computer.
“Can I help you?” he asked, not bothering to look up from his work. His voice was nasally and his tone unfriendly.
“Yes,” Jillian said. “I’m sorry to trouble you, but—”
Mollender cut her off. “No, you’re not really sorry. You’re here, aren’t you? If you were really sorry, you would have acted on that fact and left me alone.”
For a moment, Jillian was speechless.
“Well, yes, but what I mean to say is that I’m trying to access some records, but the system won’t allow me.”
“Name?”
“Of the patient?”
At this Mollender groaned and closed the file he was examining. As he looked up at Jillian, he took off his oval spectacles, the lenses nearly as large as his owl-like eyes.
“Your name.”
“Jillian. Jillian Coates, R.N. Seventh floor.”
Mollender put his glasses back on and keyed her name into his computer.
“What records?”
“The patient?”
Again, Mollender groaned.
“Do you see this stack of paper?” he said. He tapped his index finger repeatedly on the file of folders. His tone seemed even more annoyed than before.
“Yes.”
“Well, these aren’t going to key themselves into our system, despite what the optical character recognition software people seem to think. So, I don’t really have time for your lack of clarity, Ms. Coates. Facility. What facility’s records are you trying to access?”
“Oh, right. The records are from the Singh Medical Spa and Cosmetic Surgery Center. It’s jointly owned by—”
Mollender cut her off again. “I know what it is. But you can’t see them.”
“Yes, I know I can’t see them, that’s why I’m here.”
“No, by ‘can’t see them’ I mean not authorized to see them. Do not have the proper permission—that kind of can’t see them.”
“But aren’t the records in our system?”
“Well of course they are,” he said, as though she had just asked if air was necessary to breathe. “They’re in our system assuming they’re not more than ten years old, and my dwindling staff and I haven’t keyed them in manually yet. Manual data entry, if you didn’t already know, is very error prone. Which is why DISTRACTIONS ARE DEADLY, or did you not read the sign.” He pointed behind them, where a handwritten sign taped to the door read precisely that: distractions are deadly. “But despite our archaic methods of record management, we have what is known as a firewall. Ever heard of it?”
“Computer security,” Nick said.
“Who’s the boy genius?” Mollender quipped.
“Dr. Nick Garrity,” Jillian said, no longer bothering to disguise her growing irritation. “So what
can I do to get access to the files?”
“Well, you could go get a job there. I hear they’re hiring.”
“Cute,” Jillian countered. “Now I understand all those employee-of-the-month awards on that empty wall over there.”
She found herself purposely leaning over Mollender’s desk, getting into his personal space. The man really was pathetic. She had never hit a person before, but the Mole was inspiring such thoughts.
“What else can we do?” Nick asked.
“It’s a firewall, sir,” Mollender reiterated. “That means no access unless authorized. So unless in your spare time you or Ms. Nurse here are hobbyist computer hackers, you’re S.O.L.”
“S.O.L.?” Jillian asked.
“And I thought you medical types were acronym happy. That means shit out of luck.”
“You’ve been very helpful, Mr. Mollender,” Nick said.
Jillian shot Nick a confused look. Leaning in close, Nick whispered a single word into Jillian’s ear.
“Reggie,” he said.
CHAPTER 28
The follow-up appointment for Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson Collins was on a Friday, three days after their initial tour. They picked up the S-Class Mercedes at the rental agency at the last possible minute, and Nick took on the payment. At four hundred dollars per day, plus tax, he could not allow Junie to rent the car again. But he did admit to Jillian that he was going to miss driving it. Beneath a somber sky, he guided the machine to a butter-smooth stop on the brick driveway in front of the Singh Medical Spa and Cosmetic Surgery Center.
“I’m terrified, Nick. I’m not sure I can pull this off.”
Nick himself was so distracted and anxious about what was to ensue at the medi-spa that at first he did not even respond.
“Hello? Are you with me, Nick?”
“I’m here,” Nick said, gently patting her knee. “I was just going over the plan in my head. We’ll do great. I promise.”
Nick put the car in park, but kept the engine idling.
“Check the bag again,” he said.
“I did that just before we left.”
“We only have one crack at this, Jill. Check it again. I mean, please check it again. Dammit, I’m sorry. I am really crazed that we’re doing this. I have no idea what will happen to us if we get caught, but I suspect whatever it is will involve the suspension of our licenses to practice. We can back out now if you want.”
Jillian thought about it.
“I would give up everything to find Belle’s killer. If we’re right about the Singh Center somehow being connected to her death, what choice do I really have?”
Nick simply nodded. He felt the same way about Umberto. The debt he owed the man could never truly be repaid. There were times since the nightmare of the explosion when he found himself wishing that Umberto hadn’t raced back that morning to save his life. But over the years since his involvement with Junie and Helping Hands and EMDR, those instances had all but vanished. And now there was Jillian. Everything that was good in his life, everything that lay ahead for him, he could link to his friendship with the Dominican. If something sinister had happened to Umberto that could be connected to Paresh Singh, then getting to the bottom of it was worth any risk.
Jillian must have sensed Nick’s growing concern because she took hold of his hand and looked deep into his eyes.
“We’ll be okay, Doc. Besides, I loaded up on Pepto before we left and then did something I almost never do. I took a beta-blocker to combat all this adrenaline and keep my heart from exploding out of my chest.”
Their anxiety was understandable, but their plan had a decent chance of working, despite Junie’s objections to it for being overly risky. The entire scheme hinged on getting Jillian alone with the computer in Paresh Singh’s office. For better or worse, almost everything depended on Nick being able to sell a bogus injury, severe enough to frighten Daintry Calnan and have her make her boss come to his aid.
Reggie estimated they would need Jillian to be alone in Singh’s office for five minutes. Nick’s acting job would be a delicate one. Daintry had to be upset enough to call Singh down to the lobby, but not so frightened that she dialed 911. Nick had no desire to be calling Don Reese begging for another favor. If things came to that, all hope of penetrating Paresh Singh’s computer would be lost.
Jillian unzipped her bag and peeked inside. She sifted through the contents, mostly cosmetics, before extracting the small, two-gig USB key Reggie had given her earlier.
“It’s here,” she announced. “What’s on this thing again?”
Nick tried to recall Reggie’s exact words, but when he was unable to do so he opted to read them. From his jacket pocket, he pulled out the folded piece of paper containing the instructions the teen had printed out.
“It’s called a rootkit,” Nick said. “It’s used to disguise the fact that a computer system has been compromised. Remember, all you have to do is plug that USB key into the USB port you locate somewhere on the computer and double click the program icon on the screen to launch it.”
“Sounds simple enough. Put the key in the port and double click the icon.”
“Best laid plans,” Nick muttered to himself.
Unfortunately, he spoke loud enough for Jillian to hear and she shot him a distressed, panicky look.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. We’ll be fine,” Nick said, though his words failed to reassure himself.
Nick reread Reggie’s detailed instructions one last time. For Jillian’s benefit, as well as his own, he tried to summarize the technical aspects of the plan.
“I guess what’s on here will install some sort of backdoor access, allowing Reggie to create, as he wrote here, a VPN—a virtual private network tunnel—into the system through a proxy server.”
“I don’t know anything about VPNs and proxy servers. You really trust him with this, Nick? I mean, most kids his age spend their free time shooting hoops, not hacking computer systems.”
“Actually, he does that, too. Pretty well, to tell you the truth. But I trust him. If he says it will work, all we have to do is our part. Okay, then, we’re ready. Let’s sync our watches.”
It was imperative that Jillian know exactly when Nick planned on initiating his diversion. She had to be ready to move the instant Paresh left her alone in his office. Being even a minute off schedule could result in failure . . . or worse.
“You just sell it,” Jillian said. “If I get my chance, I’ll do my part. That’s a promise.”
“I’ve had this injury for years and my knee still really does lock from time to time. I’ll sell it, no problem. Are you ready, Mrs. Collins?”
“Ready, Mr. Collins.”
Nick eased the Benz around to the spacious, partially filled parking lot at the rear of the building.
“To luck,” Nick said, touching her lips with his, but not forcefully enough to disrupt her perfectly applied makeup.
Delicious.
He exited the Mercedes and walked around to her door.
“You look beautiful,” he said as she stepped out of the car.
Jillian’s ruby lips flashed a movie star smile worthy of any red carpet, but Nick could feel the tension in her grasp and see it in her eyes.
The rear of the Singh building was nearly identical to the front. Their figures reflected handsomely in the eleven-foot windows that ran the width of the structure. The security desk was to the right, just on the other side of the glass, but there was no sign of the militialike guard—a definite break, provided the man stayed away.
They felt the sudden drop in temperature from the air-conditioning as they stepped into the resplendent marble foyer.
Daintry, austere behind her marble desk, rose to greet them. “Welcome back, Mr. and Mrs. Collins,” she said, taking first Jillian’s hand, then Nick’s.
Her grip, like everything else about her, seemed rehearsed and controlled.
“Thank you for fitting us in the way you have,” Nick replied, remind
ing himself not to lose sight for a moment of the fact that the woman had things to hide.
As was the case with their previous visit to the spa, it surprised and slightly embarrassed him that acting rich and arrogant wasn’t totally unpleasant.
“Dr. Singh is upstairs in his office. He shouldn’t be long.”
“No security man today?”
“Garth? No, he’s here, but at the moment he’s off making rounds.”
“I’m impressed that you take security so seriously.”
Careful, Nick warned himself. You may look the part and even act the part for short spurts, but this woman is used to the real deal. Mess with her and she’ll sniff you out as a fraud in a heartbeat.
Nick took Jillian by the waist and guided her over to a towering work of art that filled half of the rear wall.
“Ready to roll?” he whispered.
She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I confess I’m glad I won’t be here to watch.”
“You’ve still got the tough job. But there is one encouraging sign.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“My knee is actually starting to ache.”
CHAPTER 29
Nick and Jillian spent the first ten minutes of their second visit to the medi-spa fidgeting in the sitting area to the right of the receptionist’s desk.
“I do apologize for the delay,” Daintry said, seeming genuinely concerned. “I’ll ring the doctor and see if he’ll be much longer. I know that he is very eager to meet you both. I’m sure he’ll be here soon.”
As if on cue, Nick heard the chime of one of the elevators as it arrived at the lobby level. The polished brass doors glided open and out stepped Paresh Singh. The surgeon, slightly built with a thin mustache and wire-rimmed spectacles, was singularly unimposing, except for his eyes, which were piercing and dark, and his smallish hands, expertly manicured and featuring a number of rings that were probably worth more than Nick claimed on last year’s tax return. He was no more than five-foot-seven, and although his jet-black hair was razor cut, and his suit finely tailored, Nick found it a stretch to believe that the man was world renowned and the master of this glass-and-steel palace.
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