Side Effects (1984)

by Palmer, Michael

  He was, for the moment at least, out of the killer’s line of fire, stumbling in the direction away from the main hospital and toward the boiler room and laundry. Despite the pain in his leg and back, he was determined that nothing short of a killing shot was going to bring him down. With Paquette and Zimmermann dead, the black notebook, whatever it was, might well represent Kate’s only chance.

  The gunman, crouching low and poised to fire, slid around the corner of the Omnicenter tunnel just as Jared reached the spur to the laundry. Jared sensed the man about to shoot, but there was no explosion, no noise. Or was there? As he pushed on into the darkened laundry, he could swear he had heard a sound of some sort. Then he understood. The killer had fired. MacFarlane’s revolver was out of bullets, tapped dry. Now, even wounded, he had a chance.

  The room he had entered was filled with dozens of rolling industrial hampers, some empty, some piled high with linen. Beyond the crowded hamper lot, Jared could just discern the outlines of rows of huge steam pressers. He gave momentary consideration to diving into one of the hampers, but rejected the notion, partly because of the helpless, passive situation in which he would be and partly because his pursuer had already turned into the tunnel and was making his way, though cautiously, toward the laundry.

  Ignoring the pain in his back, Jared dropped to all fours and inched his way between two rows of hampers toward the enormous, cluttered hall housing the laundry itself. Pressers, washers, dryers, shelves and stacks of linens, more hampers—if he could make it, there would be dozens of places to hide … If he could make it.

  There were twenty feet separating the last of the canvas hampers from the first of the steam pressers. Twenty open feet. He had to cross them unnoticed. Kneeling in the darkness, he listened. There was not a sound—not a breath, not the shuffle of a footstep, nothing. Where in hell was the man? Was the chance of catching a glimpse of him worth the risk of looking? The aching in his back was in crescendo, dulling his concentration and his judgment. Again he listened. Again there was nothing. Slowly, he brought his head up and turned.

  The killer, moving with the control and feline calm of a professional, was less than five feet away, preparing to hammer him with the butt of MacFarlane’s heavy revolver. Jared spun away, but still absorbed a glancing blow just above his left ear. Stunned, he stumbled backward, pulling first one, then another hamper between him and the man, who paused to pick up the notebook and set it on the corner of a hamper before matter-of-factly advancing on him again.

  “It’s no use, pal,” he said, shoving the hampers aside as quickly as Jared could pull them in his way, “but go ahead and make it interesting if you want.”

  Jared, needing the hampers as much for support as for protection, knew the man was right. Wounded and without a weapon, Jared had no chance against him.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  Nunes smiled and shrugged. “Just a man doing a job,” he said.

  “You work for Redding Pharmaceuticals, don’t you.”

  “I think this little dance of ours has gone on long enough, pal. Don’t you?”

  In that instant, Jared thought about Kate and all she had been through; he thought about Paquette and the aging watchman, MacFarlane. If he was going to die, then, dammit, it wouldn’t be while backing away. With no more plan in mind than that, he grabbed another hamper, feigned pulling it in front of him, and instead drove it forward as hard as he could, catching the surprised gunman just below the waist. Nunes lurched backward, colliding with another hamper and very nearly going down.

  Jared moved as quickly as he could, but the advantage he had gained with surprise was lost in the breathtaking pain of trying to push off his left foot. The killer, his expression one of placid amusement, parried the lunge with one hand, and with the other, brought the barrel of the revolver slicing across Jared’s head, opening a gash just above his temple. Jared staggered backward a step, then came on again, this time leading with a kick which connected, though not powerfully, with the man’s groin.

  Again Nunes lashed out with the gun, landing a solid blow to Jared’s forearm and then another to the back of his neck. Jared dropped to one knee. As he did, Nunes stepped behind him and locked one arm expertly beneath his chin.

  “Sorry, pal,” he said, tightening his grip.

  Jared flailed with his arms and shoulders and tried to stand, but the man’s leverage was far too good. The pressure against his larynx was excruciating. His chest throbbed with the futile effort of trying to breathe. Blood pounded in his head and the killer’s grunting breaths grew louder in his ear. Then the sound began to fade. Jared knew he was dying. Every ounce of his strength vanished, and he felt the warmth of his bladder letting go. I’m sorry, Kate. I’m sorry. The words tumbled over and over in his mind. I’m sorry.

  Through closed eyes, he sensed, more than saw, a bright, blue-white light. From far, far away, he heard a muffled explosion. Then another.

  Suddenly the pressure against his neck diminished. The killer’s forearm shook uncontrollably and then slid away. Jared fell to one side, but looked up in time to see the man totter and then, in grotesque slow motion, topple over into a hamper.

  Jared struggled to sort out what was happening. The first thing he saw clearly was that the overhead lights had been turned on; the second thing was the stubbled, slightly jowled face of Martin Finn.

  “I was halfway back to the station when I decided there was no way you would have chanced popping me like you did unless the situation was really desperate,” Finn said. “How bad are you hurt?”

  Jared coughed twice and wasn’t sure he was able to speak until he heard his own voice. “I’ve been shot twice,” he rasped, “once just above my butt and once in my thigh. My legs are all cut up from broken glass. That lunatic beat the shit out of me with his gun.”

  “The emergency people are on their way,” Finn said, kneeling down. “It may be a few minutes. As you might guess, there’s a lot of commotion going on around here right now. Is Zimmermann dead?”

  Jared nodded. Then he remembered MacFarlane. “Finn,” he said urgently, “there’s a man, MacFarlane, a night watchman. He was—”

  “You mean him?” The detective motioned to his left.

  Walter MacFarlane, one eye swollen shut and the side of his face a mass of dried and oozing blood, stood braced against a hamper.

  “Thank God,” Jared whispered.

  “We would never have known what direction to go in without him,” Finn explained.

  At that moment a team of nurses and residents arrived with two stretchers. They helped MacFarlane onto one and then gingerly hoisted Jared onto the other.

  “As soon as these people get you fixed up, Counselor, you’re going to have a little explaining to do. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I know. I’ll tell you as much as I can. And Finn … I appreciate your coming back.”

  “I think I might owe you an apology, but I’ll save it until someone explains to me what the fuck has been going on around here.”

  “Okay,” one of the residents announced. “We’re all set.”

  “Wait. Please,” Jared said. “Finn, there’s a notebook around here somewhere. A black, looseleaf notebook.”

  The detective searched for a few moments and then brought it over. “Yours?” he asked.

  “Actually, no.” Jared tucked the notebook beneath his arm. Then he smiled. “It belongs to my wife.”

  16

  Saturday 22 December

  “Mr. Samuels, I’m here to take you up to your room. Mr. Samuels?”

  Jared’s eyes opened from a dreamless sleep. He was on a litter, staring at the chipped, flaking ceiling of the emergency ward where a team of surgical residents had worked on his wounds. His last clear memory was of one of the doctors, a baby-faced woman with rheumy eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses, announcing that she was about to give him a “little something” so that his wounds could be explored, cleaned, and repaired.

  “I’m Cary
Dunleavy, one of the nurses from Berenson Six,” the man’s voice said from somewhere at the head of the litter.

  Jared tried to crane his neck toward the nurse, but was prevented by a thick felt cervical collar and a broad leather restraining belt across his chest. He ached in a dozen different places, and he sensed that he was seeing little or nothing through his left eye.

  Dunleavy took several seconds to appreciate his patient’s predicament. Then he muttered an apology and moved to a spot by Jared’s right hand. “Welcome to the land of the living,” he said. His voice was kind, but his eyes were sunken and tired. “You’ve been out for quite a while. Apparently they overestimated how much analgesia to give you.”

  Jared brought his left hand up and gingerly touched the area about his left eye.

  “It’s swollen shut,” the nurse announced. “You look like you’ve been kicked by a mule.”

  Jared felt his senses begin to focus, and he struggled to reconstruct the hazy events following the explosion in the Omnicenter. His first clear image was of William Zimmermann spinning wildly about, his clothes ablaze, the skin on one side of his face hideously scorched. That one was for you, Katey, he thought savagely. An I’m-sorry-for-not-believing-you present from your husband. “What time is it?” he asked.

  “Almost four.”

  “In the morning?”

  The nurse nodded. “According to the report I got from the ER nurses, you’ve been out for about three hours since they finished working on you. We’ve been too busy on the floor for anyone to come and get you until now. Sorry.”

  “I need to get out of here,” Jared said, fumbling at the restraining strap with his left hand. His right hand, with an intravenous line taped in place, was secured to the railing of the litter.

  “Hey, partner,” the nurse said, setting a hand on his shoulder. “Easy does it.”

  “I’ve got to see my wife. I’ve—” Suddenly, he remembered the notebook. “My things. Where are my things?”

  “We’ve got ’em, Mr. Samuels. They’re put away safe awaiting the moment when we read a legitimate order from your doctor discharging you. Rounds are usually at seven. Until then, if you go, you go in a Johnny.”

  Jared glared at the man. I’m a lawyer, he wanted to shout. I can sue you and this whole hospital for violating my civil rights, and win. Instead, he assessed his situation. In just three hours or so his physicians would make rounds and he could explain to them his need to leave. Three hours. Almost certainly, Kate would be sleeping through them anyhow, under the effects of her anesthesia. He sank back on the litter. “You win,” he said.

  The nurse said silent thanks with a skyward look and started maneuvering the litter out of the small examining room.

  “Just one thing,” Jared said.

  The man stopped short and again walked around to make eye contact. “I’ll listen, but no promises.” His tired voice was less good-natured than he intended.

  “I had a notebook. A black, looseleaf notebook. It should be in with my things. Get me that, and I promise to be a model patient.”

  Cary Dunleavy hesitated, but then withdrew the notebook from the patient’s belongings bag, which was stashed on the litter beneath Jared. “I’m taking you at your word, Mr. Samuels. Model patient. I’m nearing the end of a double. That’s over sixteen straight hours of nursing on a floor that would fit right in at the Franklin Zoo. It’s been one hell of a long night, and my usual overabundance of the milk of human kindness is just about dried up. So don’t cross me.”

  Jared smiled, made a feeble peace sign with his bandaged left hand, and tucked the notebook between his arm and his side.

  The exhausted nurse returned to the head of the litter and resumed the slow trek through the tunnels to the Berenson Building.

  The doors to one of the Berenson elevators opened as they approached, and a patient was wheeled out by two nurses. Jared saw the two bags of blood draining into two separate IVs, and a woman’s tousled black hair, but little else, as Cary Dunleavy stopped and spoke to the nurses.

  “What gives?” Dunleavy asked.

  “GI bleeding. Getting worse. She’s going to the OR for gastroscopy. The team’s already up there waiting.”

  “Good luck. Let me know how it goes.”

  “Will do,” the nurse said. The stretchers glided past one another. “Sorry for the delay, Mrs. Sandler,” she continued. “We’ll be there in just a minute or two.”

  Mrs. Sandler. Several seconds passed before the name registered for Jared. “Ellen!” he called out, struggling once again against the leather strap.

  Dunleavy stopped. “Hey, what’re you doing?”

  Jared forced himself to calm down. Ellen was on her way to the operating room, hemorrhaging. The option of waiting for seven o’clock rounds no longer existed. Kate had to see the notebook as quickly as possible. Even if the odds were one in a million against finding an answer for Ellen, she had to see it.

  “Dunleavy, I’ve got to talk to you,” he said with exaggerated reason. “Please.”

  Wearily, the nurse again walked to where he could be seen.

  “Dunleavy, you care. I can see it in your face. You’re tired and wasted, but you still care.”

  “So?”

  “That woman who just went past here on the litter is Ellen Sandler, a friend of my wife’s and mine. Dunleavy, she’s bleeding—maybe bleeding to death. There’s a chance the answer to her bleeding problem may be in this notebook, but it’s written half in German and half in English, and it’s technical as hell.”

  “So?”

  “My wife is Kate Bennett, a pathologist here. Do you know her?” Dunleavy’s acknowledging expression suggested that he might actually know too much. “Well, she speaks some German, and she knows what’s been going on with that woman who just passed us. I’ve got to get this to her. She’s a patient at Henderson Hospital in Essex.”

  “Mr. Samuels, I can’t—”

  “Dunleavy, please. There’s no time to fuck around. Undo this strap and help me get to a cab. I can move all my extremities, see? I’ll be fine.”

  “I—”

  “Dammit, man, look at me! That woman is dying and we might be able to help her. Get me an against-medical-advice paper and I’ll sign it. I’ll sign whatever the hell you want. But, please, do it now!”

  The nurse hesitated.

  “That woman needs us, my friend,” Jared said. “Right this minute she needs us both.”

  Dunleavy reached down and undid the restraint. “It’s my ass unless you come back and talk to the nursing office. Probably my ass anyway.”

  “I’ll speak to them. I promise. So will my wife.”

  Dunleavy’s eyes narrowed. “Please, Mr. Samuels,” he said. “Don’t do me any favors.”

  Even through the analgesic mist of Demerol and the distracting pain in her chest, Kate Bennett could sense the change in her husband. Bandaged, bruised, and needing a crutch to navigate, he had made a wonderful theatrical entrance into her room, sweeping through the doorway past a protesting night supervisor and announcing loudly, “The fucker’s dead, Katey. Dead. He won’t ever hurt you again.” Then he had crossed to the bed, kissed her on the lips, and firmly but politely dismissed the supervisor and the special duty nurse.

  Now he sat on a low chair by her left hand, mindless of his own discomfort, watching intently as she opened the black notebook—the sole useful vestige of the fire, pain, and death in the Omnicenter. There was a strength about the man, an assuredness, she had never sensed before. The fucker’s dead, Katey. He won’t ever hurt you again.

  The words on the first page landed like hammer blows. Studies in Estronate 250, Volume III of III. Kate’s heart sank.

  “Jared,” she said, swallowing at the sandpaper in her mouth and painfully adjusting the plastic tube that was draining bloody fluid from her chest, “have you looked at this?”

  “Just to flip through. Why? Too much German? We’ll find someone to translate.”

  “No. Act
ually, there’s not that much.… Honey, it says here volume three of three.”

  “What?” He shifted forward and read the page. “Damn. I never saw any other books. There might have been others, but there was so much smoke. Everything was happening so fast.… Paquette could have explained everything if he had made it.”

  Kate searched her husband’s face as he spoke. It was not an excuse, not an apology, but a statement of fact. Paquette had held the key to a deadly mystery. But Paquette was dead. And Jared, battered, bruised, clearly in great pain, was alive. If she could unlock the answers, it would be because he had risked his life for her. “We’ll do the best we can with what we have,” Kate said, turning to the first page of what appeared to be a series of clinical tests on a substance called Estronate 250. “I’m still foggy as hell from the anesthetic and that last shot, so bear with me.”

  There were, all told, one hundred and twenty carefully numbered pages. Paquette, or whoever had conducted this research, had been meticulous and precise. Stability studies; dosage modification studies; administration experiments in milk, in water, in solid food; investigation of side effects. Kate plodded through thirty years of terse German and English explanations and lengthy lists of test subjects, first from the state mental hospital at Wickford and in more recent years, from the Omnicenter. Thirty years. Arlen Paquette had not sounded that old over the phone, but perhaps he had taken over the Estronate research from someone else.

  Ten minutes passed; then twenty. Jared shifted anxiously in his seat, and stared outside at the sterile, gray dawn. “How long does a gastroscopy take?” he asked.

  Kate, unwilling to break her fragile concentration, glanced over at him momentarily. “That depends on what they find, and on what they choose to do about it. Jared, I’m close to figuring out some things. I need a few more minutes.”