“Which means it’s probably not a PERV.”
“Right. You’d think with such a massive hemorrhage we’d find the body swimming in virus. It’s not. We checked five different tissue types.” I looked at Brooke and shook my head. Vallo continued. “I got PCR data on kidney, liver, and lymph nodes, and that’s negative. Still waiting on brain and endothelium.”
“Thanks, Ben.”
“Thanks is for the easily placated. A new driver, however—a Callaway Big Bertha Titanium, the new design—now, that shows gratitude.”
“It’ll be on your doorstep tomorrow.”
“Right,” he said sourly, and hung up.
Brooke merged onto the highway. “So, no PERV.”
“No.”
“But you’re still thinking about the pigs, aren’t you?”
“Pigs, sure. And other swine.”
We arrived at the hospital around ten after four, still early enough to catch someone in the personnel office who could give us access, late enough that most of the worker bees there would have cleared out for the weekend. I still hadn’t made flight arrangements back to Atlanta. Oh, well.
At the office, we showed our IDs to a woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Martle and who looked like she was ready to burst from the gates to her weekend. She sighed, asked how long we would be. I promised her we’d be no more than fifteen minutes, which, of course, was a lie. No use setting her off at the beginning of the search.
Security protocols wouldn’t let us go through the computer records alone, so the dour Mrs. Martle sat at the keyboard with Brooke and me looking over her shoulder.
“Can you search by first name?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Casey.” I spelled it for her.
The search went through. No hits. Fifteen minutes indeed.
We searched through about five different spellings of Casey, which, if you think about it, is kind of impressive. Still nothing.
I asked Brooke, “Do you remember the date on the tape?”
Mrs. Martle cocked her head, interested now.
“April, two years ago.” We put in for all janitorial, housekeeping, and other low-level staff who had worked at the hospital during that year. Six hundred names.
“Can we print these out?” I asked.
Mrs. Martle made a big show of looking at her watch. “I need to call my supervisor to see if that’s okay. I’ll have to ask for overtime.”
Well, you do that, Mrs. Martle.
She disappeared for a few minutes, then returned with some sheets of paper and a grimace. “You’ll need to sign these,” she informed us.
The papers were chock-full of legalese: about privacy, about prosecution if the contents were disclosed, blah, blah. I was happy I just had to sign the damned things and not to write them. I signed a copy and kept the other for myself; Brooke did the same.
“This will take about a half hour,” Mrs. Martle said. She hit Print, and somewhere in the back of the office a machine began to whir.
Mrs. Martle was true to her word, and Brooke and I were out of the office about thirty minutes later. I wondered how much overtime that would add up to for the missus.
In truth, we probably should have headed straight to the hospital cafeteria and started combing through the records; if we found something, it would have been easier to go downstairs to where the Chimeragen patients were and pump the nurse there for any information. But I didn’t want to spend any more time in the hospital that day, or any day, in fact. The whole place felt sinister.
Add to that that you couldn’t use cell phones in the hospital and that I really needed to think about calling for a flight. We decided on a coffee shop near the campus.
In the car, I called the airline. They did indeed have a red-eye that evening to Atlanta. I hung up without making the reservation.
“You’re not going?” Brooke said.
“Not tonight. I’ll call Tim and tell him that in good conscience, I couldn’t fly to Atlanta and be comatose tomorrow. The American taxpayer wouldn’t be getting an alert EIS officer. The American taxpayer will thank him, and he’ll thank me.”
“You’re doing the right thing, Nate.”
“Make sure you put that in my personnel file,” I grumbled.
CHAPTER 74
The two of us sat at the University Coffee House, each with a stack of paper two inches high in front of us. What we were looking for wasn’t entirely clear. Our one toehold—the name Casey—didn’t seem to exist here. Neither did Douglas Buchanan. My brilliant idea, that Casey or Douglas or whatever the hell his name is worked at that particular hospital and was our rapist, turned out not to be so brilliant after all. It didn’t make much sense that Casey—if he was the rapist—would be protected by anyone. Not to be elitist or anything, but Casey wasn’t an important player in the scheme of things. Still, we had “to leave no stone unturned,” as Brooke so eloquently put it.
So, armed with two large cups of coffee, Dr. Michaels and I were going through the pages, looking for anything that might jump out at us: terminations, disciplinary actions, and so on. It was going to take hours, and twenty minutes into it, I found myself thinking about not taking the plane that evening, and about the hell I was going to pay with Tim Lancaster. I found myself getting tired of all this, of really wanting to take Alaine Chen’s advice and “stop this.” I mean, really, what was in it for me? Say I did crack open this case and find out that Otto Falk was a rapist and that Ian Carrington had covered up for him. Say I did find out where the nasty bugs in Baltimore came from. I’d have a lot of people pissed off at me, and I’d have to fill out a shitload of paperwork. And if Harriet Tobel’s death was related to this? The police would be ticked that I’d interfered in their affairs. Like everybody said, she was old and had a bad heart.
Only in fairy tales are the renegades rewarded. Even so, idiot that I am, I pressed on.
One hour rolled by, then another. I began to wonder why Brooke was doing it. Instead of musing on it too long, I asked her. I needed a break anyway.
“Because this is important.”
“Why?”
She looked up from her pages. “Because someone who couldn’t even fight back was raped, Nathaniel. Because Gladys Thomas, who only wanted to be with her boyfriend, is dead. Because, like you said, a bunch of mentally disabled people are sick and dying in Baltimore and because we owe it to them to find out why. We’re doctors, Nathaniel. This is what we do.”
“But why? Why the hell didn’t I go into plastic surgery? Work three days a week and drive a Porsche.” She laughed. “I’m serious, Brooke.”
“You didn’t do it because it’s not you. You’re . . . you’re better than that.”
“Well, I’m sick of being better than that.”
“No you’re not. You’re just tired and unsettled and a little scared.”
“Ninety-nine percent of the planet doesn’t care about this shit, and they’re a hell of a lot happier than I am.”
“You signed up for this.”
“Not this.” I pushed the stack of papers; some fluttered to the floor. That got her attention.
“Damn it, Nathaniel, what’s going on?”
“What’s going on is that I’m sick and tired of fighting the good fight. I want to get out of all this, have a little practice, a wife, a couple of kids. I want to mow my lawn on Saturdays and not worry about rapes and retards in Baltimore. The world is a bad place, Brooke. And it’s going to be a bad place whether we figure out what the hell is going on or not. All I want is to relax a little, get my little piece, kick back, and watch the place burn.”
“That’s the shittiest attitude I’ve ever heard. Especially from you. You were the one pushing this so hard. Why?”
“That was before, Brooke. Going through all these fucking papers, I’ve seen the light.”
We glared at each other. “You know what? You’re like those CIA guys in the movies, the ones who see bad in everyone because they deal with the bad guys.
They chose that life, and they forget there’s a big world out there with a lot of good in it. They get swallowed up by their own tiny fraction of it.”
I quoted: “‘When you look long into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.’” I saw the confusion on her face. “Nietzsche.”
“Deep, Nate, really deep. We need to go out more often. It’s so much fun. You’re a barrelful of laughs.”
“You’re the one who talked to Rosalinda Lopez, poor, scared Rosalinda Lopez. You saw Gladys. You hang out with AIDS and TB all day. All goodness and light, right?”
“There are some bad people in the world. And bad diseases. It doesn’t mean the world’s a bad place. It doesn’t mean your old professor, who had a heart condition, did anything other than die in her sleep. You want darkness? Think about how terrible it is to have a heart attack and die alone. That’s darkness.” She looked down at her pile of papers, shuffled them. “You know what happens to those CIA guys? The ones who defended the free world against the bad guys for so long they forgot about anything else?”
“No. What happens to them, Brooke?”
“They become the bad guys.”
“‘When you look long into the abyss—’”
“Oh, shut up.”
“I think you need to work on your worldview. Too influenced by the media.”
“And I think you need to work on your worldview, because it’s fucked.”
“Very eloquent, Doctor.”
She pushed back from the table. “So, you want to give up? You want to go grab some sushi right now, call it a day, then head back to Atlanta tomorrow? I’ll drive you to the airport.”
I made a big show of looking at my watch. “Whoa. Let’s go, then. Can’t be too early nowadays. All that security.”
She didn’t find that funny. Seeing how enraged she was, neither did I, actually.
I began to restack my pages. “Let’s finish this up.”
I’m sure a thousand things ran through her head at that moment: what to say, whether to stand up and leave, whether to take my pages from me and say she’d do it all herself. But Brooke, ever full of nifty surprises, looked back down at her pages and began to read.
Over the next hour, I felt the burn in my head subside a little. I decided I would get on a plane to Atlanta the next day. First, though, I’d go to the police, tell them everything I knew. If they wanted to deal with a rape at this hospital, they could. If not . . . well, then, someone got off the hook. And it definitely wasn’t the woman in room number three.
“Ah,” Brooke said. “There’s a Falk in the ranks of orderlies.”
I kept on reading my files.
She continued. “He quit about a month after the rape.”
“There’re probably a lot of Falks in the world.” She hovered over the file for a while. I made it through three more while she fixated. “You’re stalling out,” I said. “Keep reading.”
“He worked at the hospital for four years before he left.”
“Why did he leave?”
“Doesn’t say.” She turned the page over, then back to the front. “He’s thirty-two now.”
“Hmmm. Around my age. Maybe we’re brothers. Maybe Otto Falk is our father.” She kept on reading, not acknowledging me, so I had to guess she was really interested in this one. Most likely, she was interested because everything else was so goddamned uninteresting. “What’s his first name?”
“Kincaid.”
“Nice name. But it’s not Casey.”
She continued staring at the page. Well, I thought, one of us has to make progress. I went back to my files. After a few more minutes, I heard Brooke take a quick breath. “I knew it,” she said, excited. “I knew this one was weird. Look.”
She pushed the page across the table. It looked like all the others I’d seen over the last few hours: name at top, Social Security number, position, et cetera.
I read: “Kincaid Falk. 4566 Folkworth Way.”
“Look at the name again.”
“Kincaid Falk,” I said.
“The whole name.”
I read across the line. “Falk, Kincaid Charles.” I glanced up and saw Brooke staring at me. She wasn’t smiling, exactly, but I could tell she was excited.
“Read it again.”
“Come on. What’s up?”
“Read it. Normally: first, middle, last name.”
“Kincaid Charles Falk.”
“Again.”
“Brooke . . .” I read it again out loud. “Kincaid Charles Falk.” She mouthed it along with me. “This is stupid. Tell me what you saw.” She didn’t, so to get her off my back, I said it again. “Kincaid Charles Falk.”
And then, out of nowhere, it hit me. Like the proverbial ton of bricks, it hit me.
“Kincaid Charles Falk. K. C. Falk. KC.”
CHAPTER 75
I sat for a moment, processing this new bit of information. Brooke must have been processing, too, since she didn’t speak or meet my eyes.
I swallowed some of my coffee. It was bitter, cold.
Brooke spoke slowly. “He worked there.”
“We can assume that,” I said. “It could be coincidence, though.”
“He worked there. According to you, he was a sexual predator. And it looks like he might be related to the man who headed the whole damn thing. If the rapist was being protected, Nathaniel . . .” She wasn’t finishing her thoughts. She didn’t need to.
I began to dig into my pocket for my wallet.
Brooke said, “How could they let this happen? How many times did it happen? That poor woman . . .”
I opened my wallet on the table and began pulling out all the crap that had accumulated there over the past few months. Cards, slips of paper, pink dry-cleaning receipts, were spread in a pile in front of me. I grabbed one of the cards, took my phone, and dialed.
I got voice mail, then dialed the other number listed on the card. “Emily Walker.”
“Detective Walker,” I said, “it’s Nate McCormick from CDC.”
She took a second, during which, I assumed, she was trying to place me. Then she said, “I’m off duty, Doctor. This number is for emergencies only. Please call—”
“I need a small favor. It’s kind of an emergency.”
“‘Kind of an emergency’?”
“It’s an emergency.”
“Then call 911.”
Why, I asked myself, is everyone such a pain in the ass? “I need to check on a missing person. It would have been about a year and a half ago.”
“Call the police department. They can look it up for you.”
“And how likely is it that I will get it done quickly on a Friday night?”
There was a pause; I thought I heard a child chattering in the background. Detective Walker said, “Mommy will be off the phone in a minute.” She spoke into the phone, heavily and wearily. “Okay, Dr. McCormick. What’s the name?”
“Kincaid Charles Falk. He would have disappeared—”
“—in the past year and a half. I heard you the first time. I’ll get back to you later this evening.” What is it about detectives? John Myers and Emily Walker must have gone to the same hard-ass detective finishing school.
“Thanks a million,” I said. “I owe you.”
“Oh, don’t worry, Doctor. Next time my daughter is sick, you’ll be getting a three a.m. phone call from me.”
“Which I’ll take. With pleasure.”
“Right.” I thought she hung up on me, when she said, “Does this have anything to do with Gladys Thomas’s death?”
“I don’t know,” I said, which meant yes.
“Okay, Doc. I’ll let you off the hook here. But you keep me informed of anything you find out. It kills me to say it, but you may have been right. I’m not sure it was suicide. That girl is really bothering me, you know.”
Yes, I thought, I do know. I hit End on the cell.
“You think he disappeared?” Brooke asked.
“Yes.”
&n
bsp; “Why disappeared?”
“Because he took on a new identity back in Baltimore. Disappear as KC Falk, reappear as Douglas Buchanan.” A few beats passed. “And then someone murdered him. I don’t know. Maybe we won’t find anything. Worth a try, though.”
I finished off the acrid coffee.
Brooke looked at her watch, then said, “We need to take care of the dogs. Then you find Alaine Chen.”
CHAPTER 76
While we rode south on the highway, the 101, my phone rang.
“Dr. McCormick, this is Detective Walker.”
“That was fast,” I said. She ignored the comment.
“I called the San Jose PD, and they did find something. A missing-persons report was filed early last year on a Kincaid Charles Falk.” I looked at Brooke and gave her the thumbs-up.
“Who filed the report?”
“Let’s see. I have the fax here.” I could hear pages flipping. “Um, Otto Falk was the name.”
“Father?”
“Yes.”
“You have a home address for Kincaid?” I rummaged around the car seat for a pen and a piece of paper. Walker gave me an address in San Jose.
“Things falling into place for you, Doc?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, you tell me ASAP when they do. I’m going to ride you on this one. You owe me.”
“I know.”
“And you’re still going to get that three a.m. call.” She laughed and hung up the phone.
I looked at Brooke, who was looking at me. I said to her, “We’re on to something.”
“We?” She laughed. “You’ve changed, Dr. McCormick.” She edged the car up to ninety. “You back on the side of the good guys?”
I smiled and shook my head. “We’ll see, won’t we?”
The ride didn’t take that long, despite it being a Friday evening. Most folks, I guessed, were in that place between Friday work and Friday play, which meant more people primping and fewer people driving. Also, Brooke kept our speed at well over eighty for the entire ride. I looked for a roll bar in the car, didn’t see one, and resigned myself to a bloody demise on the highway.
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