Murder Ward td-15

by Warren Murphy

  He lay against Kathy Hahl, spent, quivering, disgusted with himself, and heard her laugh. "Not bad that time, Dan," she said. "I think you lasted about twelve seconds."

  "You slut," he said, pushing back from her. "You evil-minded slut."

  "Oh, come on, Dan. Stop it. Have a drink and you'll feel better. If I remember, that's something you said you were good at."

  "You slut," he said.

  Kathy Hahl stood up and smoothed her garments. "If that's the way you feel," she said. "I'm leaving."

  "I'm not going to touch Williams," Demmet said.

  "I know that," Kathy Hahl said. "So let's just forget it. I'll do it myself." She turned and walked from the room, locking it again behind her.

  Demmet watched her go, then sheepishly pulled up his trousers and buckled his belt. It was only when he sat back down at the desk that he felt the small twinge of pain in his left buttock. He reached under him with his hand and then realized in horror what probably had caused the pain. Disgust with what he had done turned to terror at what he feared Kathy Hahl had just done to him.

  "Where's Doctor Demmet?" Remo asked.

  "I don't know, sir. I'll check." She dialled three digits on her phone, and after a brief conversation hung up and told Remo:

  "He's filling in for Dr. Walker today in radiology. He's in the X-ray office in Room 414."

  "Thank you, nurse."

  Outside Room 414, Remo saw a young red-haired man knocking loudly on the door.

  "What's going on here?" asked Remo.

  "I'm Doctor Royce. I'm working with Dr. Demmet today, I just came back from lunch and he doesn't answer my knocks on the door."

  "Let me see that door," Remo said, moving in front of the intern. Shielded by his body, he drove his fingertips into the door next to the knob. The wood splintered, the metal of the lock broke loose at its pivot point, and the door swung open into the room.

  "Just stuck," Remo said to the intern.

  He stepped inside the room, the young doctor behind him, and looked around for Demmet. There was no sign of anyone there. Remo felt a cold breeze and looked off to the right. A window behind a string of filing cabinets was open. As he looked at it, Remo could see a flash of white fabric blowing in the wind outside the open window. The intern saw it too and ran toward it.

  He peered outside. "Dr. Demmet," he cried. "What are you doing?"

  "It's all right, kid," came a voice that Remo recognized as Demmet's. 'It's all right. You did good work on those plates."

  "Come in from there, sir," the intern yelled.

  "Never again, kid. Never again."

  The intern turned and looked at Remo with a helpless expression on his face. Remo looked around the room. There was another window to the left. He moved up onto the filing cabinets, opened the window and was through it.

  A narrow two-inch stone ledge ran along the side of the building outside the fourth-floor window. Remo moved out onto it. He tensed his legs, forcing the thrust of his body inward against the wall, overcoming the incorrect distribution of weight that put most of his force downward, out, off the ledge, over open space. He looked up as he moved. Twenty feet away was the corner of the building. Demmet was ten feet around the corner to the right. One arm up against the wall, Remo moved crablike, foot past foot, turning the corner of the building, using his hand as a claw, turning the weight of his body in against the wall, moving steadily, for if he stopped his forward motion the force of gravity would hurl him down. He reached the corner of the building, twenty feet away, and used both hands while moving smoothly around the corner. Demmet was in front of him, his heels on the ledge, his arms over his head, holding on to a porcelain electric insulator. Demmet saw him.

  "What do you want?" Demmet said.

  "Let's go inside and I'll tell you about it."

  "Who are you?"

  "Name's Williams," Remo said.

  He kept moving toward Demmet, because to stop moving was to fall.

  "I've heard about you," Demmet said thickly and Remo realized he was drunk. "I don't want to talk to you."

  "Beats standing out here in the cold," Remo said.

  "Cold? What cold?" Demmet asked. He giggled. The convulsions of his laughter shook his body. Remo could see his fingers start to slip from his overhead support. Demmet's hands dropped. He waved his arms for a moment as if trying to retain his balance on the two-inch-wide ledge and then he turned his face toward Remo in a look that was more of sorrow than of fright.

  "I don't want to grow old," he said. The last word was drawn out long and loud as the air was pulled from his lungs, for Demmet had lost his balance and was falling forward, down toward the parking lot four stories below. He landed on top of a Fleetwood Brougham with a clapping smack. Remo meanwhile kept moving along the wall and then darted in through the window Demmet had opened.

  The intern stood there, shock on his face.

  "Sorry, kid," Remo said. "I tried."

  The intern nodded numbly and walked past Remo, looking out over the file cabinets and peering down at Demmet's body, sprawled motionless on top of the car in the lot.

  The intern swallowed, then looked to his left. For the first time, he noticed the ledge on which Demmet had precariously perched his heels. Only two inches wide. How had that doctor… what was his name, Williams?… been able to move along that to try to get to Demmet?

  He turned back to the room. "How did you…" But the room was empty. Remo had gone.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The story of Remo's miraculous walk along the two-inch ledge outside Robler Clinic's fourth floor would surely have been all over the hospital if the first person the intern had told had not been Kathy Hahl.

  But Ms. Hahl, the hospital's assistant administrator, had carefully explained to the young intern how important it was that Mr. Williams not be mentioned. How he was planning to make a substantial gift to the hospital's research program, a gift that might very well create a large number of special openings for bright young doctors, but that the gift would be lost if there were publicity.

  "After all," she explained, putting her arm around the young man warmly and impressing her breasts against his upper arm, "he really didn't have anything to do with Dr. Demmet's tragic death. I mean, he just tried to save him but couldn't. There's no reason for publicity about that."

  The intern impressed equally by her logic and the free feel, agreed.

  "I think that's the best course of action," she said. "Why don't you come by my office late tomorrow and we'll discuss it some more?" she said, openly inviting.

  Flustered, the young intern agreed and left. When the door closed behind him, Kathy Hahl went back behind her desk to think.

  Whatever he was supposed to be, this Mr. Williams was not. He was certainly not some recluse billionaire trying to hide out in a hospital. He was certainly not trying to find a way to escape IRS trouble.

  He was a government agent. Of that there was no longer any doubt. He had proved that with his stupid heavy-handed hint and his clumsy snooping around the laboratory.

  He was probably dumb, but he was also dangerous. The impossible walk on that un-passable ledge had shown that. Kathy Hahl went to her window, opened it wide and looked at the ledge. Two inches wide. It seemed impossible, or so she had thought when the intern first told her the story. But the young doctor, while nervous, was not hysterical and not in shock. He was simply reporting a fact and Kathy Hahl, who had gone to Demmet's office to make sure that Demmet had not left a note implicating her, was the first person he had spoken to.

  The walk was impossible… and yet he had done it. Williams must be quite a man.

  At the thought, she smiled slightly to herself.

  The operative word was "man." He was a man for all his talent. And she had ways to deal with men.

  Dr. Smith, at CURE's Folcroft headquarters in Rye, New York, had already heard of Demmet's death when he talked to Remo that afternoon.

  "You responsible for that?" he asked.

/>   "No, dammit," Remo said. "He was my chief suspect."

  "So?"

  "So now I don't know. Just before he fell, he said something strange about not wanting to get old. It kind of reminded me of Stace and Mrs. Wilberforce."

  "I received autopsy reports on Stace and Mrs. Wilberforce," Smith said.

  "And?"

  "The reports showed extreme aging. Senility. General breakdown of body tissues and bodily function, usually associated with very advanced age. Yet Stace was fifty-five and Mrs. Wilberforce sixty-two."

  "Any ideas?" Remo asked.

  "None. The computer reports no known chemical agent that can produce that kind of effect."

  "I think there is," Remo said. "There's an experimental lab here and I've seen some old-looking animals in it."

  "Well, stay with it," Smith said.

  "Right. I'm going to sit here and figure it out. No violence."

  "Good. No more Scrantons. Don't hesitate to use Chiun, by the way."

  "Use Chiun? What do you mean?"

  "Well, he seems to be rather good at thinking things through. Use his brain if you need it."

  "Are you implying that I'm not smart enough to figure this out myself?"

  "Something like that," Smith said agreeably.

  "Well, for your information, Smitty, your so-called Korean genius is out right now looking in this hospital for Marcus Welby. How about that?"

  "Chiun will probably find him. Use him."

  "Right." Remo hung up. It was annoying, having decided to use brains after being chewed out for using muscle, to have Upstairs imply that you weren't any good for using anything but muscle. It was the $25,000 that had put Smith in a snit. Smith guarded CURE's money as if it were his own and Remo's demand for $25,000 to impress the hospital staff and to guarantee his freedom and his privacy had stuck in Smith's throat like an unpeeled grapefruit.

  "Bitch, bitch, bitch," Remo said to himself as he lay back on the bed. The door pushed open and he looked toward it, expecting to see Chiun, but the tall bosomy redhead he had seen at Mrs. Wilberforce's bedside walked in instead.

  "Mr. Williams," she said, "remember me? I'm Kathy Hahl, the assistant administrator."

  "Sure," said Remo.. "Nice place you've got here."

  "Thank you, we like it. I just stopped into see if there's anything you'd like." She moved closer to Remo's couch and looked down at him, eyes flashing.

  "Not unless you have a doctor on your staff named Marcus Welby. Or a spare singer named Barbra Streisand." To her blank look, he said, "No? Then I guess I don't need anything."

  "I had something more concrete in mind."

  "Such as."

  "Such as a tour of the hospital. I understand you've been looking it over yourself."

  "Yes, a little."

  "I heard of your attempt to save Dr. Demmet today. It was very brave."

  "Not really," Remo said. "Anybody would have done the same thing."

  She leaned forward over his couch, her breasts jutting out almost over him. "You're a very strange man," she said. "I don't mind telling you that when I heard you were coming I thought you'd be a crotchety old man. I never expected you."

  "An improvement?" asked Remo, eyeing her breasts because she seemed to want him to and he didn't want to disappoint her. Besides, they were very nice breasts.

  "A decided improvement. So would you really like to see our research facilities? We're into some exciting work."

  Remo smiled and rose from the couch, brushing against her as he got up. He slipped on his gumsoled shoes and Kathy Hahl looked down at his feet. "Are those your only shoes?"

  He nodded. "Why?"

  "They cause static electricity. And there are too many flammables up there. The staff would go ape if they saw you there with those on. Tell you what. Wait here and I'll get some safe shoes for you."

  Remo fell back onto the couch. "I'll wait."

  "It'll be worth the wait," she said, leaving the room.

  He watched her trim buttocks swish away. At times like that, he really understood how shameful it was that Chiun had robbed him of the pleasure of sex. Sex was just another discipline, another skill to be learned. Remo had learned it, and now he had trouble staying awake. He probably could fall asleep during the act if it weren't for the noises of passion generally made by his partners. Looking at Kathy Hahl, he decided it was a double shame now because in a different time, place and setting, he would have liked to meet Ms. Hahl.

  Remo was remembering long-ago pleasures when two men walked into his room pushing a wheelchair. It was the black-haired Freddy, and the blond-haired Al, whom he had met in the lab that morning. If they recognized him without his doctor's gown and black sunglasses, they gave no indication.

  "Mr. Williams?" the dark-haired one asked.

  Behind him, Remo saw the blond man lock the door to the room.

  "Yeah."

  "We couldn't find any shoes in your size, so Ms. Hahl said to bring you up in the wheelchair."

  Remo got to his feet and strolled toward the chair, trying not to laugh aloud at the clumsy trap. How stupid did they thick he was?

  "How come you couldn't find any shoes in my size when you didn't know what my size was?"

  "Errrr. Actually, we didn't have no shoes at all anymore. So hop in here and we'll take you up."

  "Sure thing," said Remo, cheerily, wondering what they were up to.

  He plopped into the wheelchair. "Hey, I never rode in one of these things before. Can I turn the wheels?"

  "As much as you want," said the dark-haired man, moving around behind him. "He sure can, can't he, Al?"

  The blond man at the door chuckled. "Sure. Anything he wants."

  Remo sat back in the chair, put his arms on the arm rests, and closed his eyes. "Home, James," he said.

  "You're home," the man behind him said. "Wise guy."

  Remo had been careless. He hadn't paid attention and now he felt a needle jam into the muscles of his shoulder. Dammit, he thought. It might be poison. What a stupid thing to do. Suddenly his head began to hurt.

  "Biggest dose yet," said the blond man at the door.

  Remo's head was splitting. He tried to rise, but felt something brush against his face, something made of cloth. Then he felt his hands being raised. His arms were jammed into sleeves. He felt his arms being drawn around his body and they seemed to be locked into place. It was a… a something… what was it? A straitjacket. They had put him into a straitjacket.

  The two men hoisted him to his feet. If only his head would stop hurting. "What is that stuff?" he said thickly.

  "You're not old enough to know about that," one of the men said. "Yet," he added with a chuckle.

  Remo felt himself thrown roughly onto the sofa and then heard the rubber-tired wheelchair squeak as it was moved from the room. He heard the door lock shut behind the two men. His head felt as if it had ballooned to twice its normal size. The pain behind his eyes was racking. His mouth was dry and he felt a chill shudder his body.

  He had to get out. The locked door would stop anyone from looking in on him. He was lying on his stomach, his arms crisscrossed in front of his body, pinned down by his own weight.

  He strained to roll over onto his back. Each movement brought a new hammer of pain to his head. The hurt was spreading now from behind his eyes into the center of his skull, into the brain.

  What had they dosed him with? The aging drug. But what could he do about it?

  Exhausted, he was on his back. He lay there momentarily, hoping to regain his strength, but he could feel his strength draining away as if it were water flowing out an open faucet.

  He could not wait. He tried to ignore the pain, to reach deep into his essence for new strength, but the pain was overpowering. Remo sighed and made one last effort to draw on whatever reserves he might still have. He managed to turn his right hand over, so that the fingers were facing upward, away from his body, toward the ceiling. Against his curled fingertips he felt the rough coarse threa
ds of the straitjacket. No room to move. No way to do it. No. Keep trying. He pulled his right hand back, pressing it hard againt his left hip, buying a half-inch of room inside the sleeve of the jacket. With all the force he could rouse, he drove his fingertips upward against the material of the jacket.

  He did it again. And again. Each time his fingertips hit against cloth, it felt as if his skull were being hammered. The fingertips stabbed, his head screamed out. His head was being ripped open. He could hear it being torn.

  No. It was the fabric. It was giving under the insistent hammering of his fingertips. Then he felt it collapse and the three middle fingers of his right hand were through the cloth. He curled his fingertips around the cloth, trying to grab as much as he could, as tightly as he could. He slowly contracted the bicep of his right arm. His arm began to raise, bending at the elbow. The fabric ripped. He exerted more pressure and finally his arm came free, tearing upward through the heavy twill fabric.

  Exhausted, in agony, Remo rested. The headache was worse now. His entire head felt pumped full of air. No time to waste resting. He jammed his free right hand into the fabric near his right hip, twisted his fingertips and wrenched. The jacket ripped loose with a loud squawk. His left arm could move now. He could move. Now he would get up, unlock the door and call for help. He started to rise to a sitting position, propped up by his hands placed behind him.

  The movement made the pain too great to bear. Remo dropped back, then he felt a powerful sleep wrapping itself around him… he hoped the sleep would be deep enough to make him forget the pain in his head and convinced himself that a little rest was all he needed to make himself a new man, as his head dropped limply to one side and he plummeted into unconsciousness.

  "It's done," the dark-haired man said to Kathy Hahl. "Where is he?"

  "We locked him in his room," Al, the blond man, said. "He's not going anywhere. Not with that dose. That's ten times whatever's been used before."

  Kathy Hahl smiled. "It'll be interesting. Go back in about twenty minutes and see what's happening to him. But be careful. I'm going back to my office."

  The two men grinned at each other, looked at her retreating figure, long, leggy and lush, then grinned at each other again, anticipating the very special kind of reward that Kathy Hahl was best at providing.