by Robin Cook
Vinnie laughed so hard it sounded as if he was choking.
“Hey, it wasn’t that funny,” Jack protested, although he was now laughing along with Vinnie.
“Jack,” Laurie said, maintaining a calm voice with some difficulty. “I’m trying to be serious.”
“I am, too,” Jack managed. “And since you haven’t denied the nuptials, I’ll consider myself informed, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to decline the bridesmaid offer. Was there anything else?”
“Jack!” Laurie repeated. “I’m not getting married. I need to talk with you about something that involves you and me.”
“Okay, fine! I’m all ears.”
“I’m not about to talk to you here in the autopsy room.”
Jack made a gesture around the room with all its gothic details. “What’s wrong with this? I feel quite at home in here.”
“Jack! Could you be serious for a moment? I said it was important.”
“Okay, fine! What other venue do we have at our disposal that would better suit your needs? If you give me a half hour or so, I could meet you upstairs in the ID office, and we could chat over a nice cup of Vinnie’s coffee. The only problem with that is that the other hoi polloi will just be arriving for their workday. Perhaps you’d prefer we rendezvous in our scenic second-floor lunchroom and have something delectable out of the vending machines. There, we could hobnob with the janitorial staff. What’s your preference?”
Laurie eyed Jack as best she could through the plastic face shields. His reversion to angry sarcasm seriously eroded her earlier optimism about his receptivity, but she pressed on: “What I was hoping is that we could have dinner tonight, possibly at Elios, if we could somehow manage a reservation.” Elios was a restaurant that had played a role in Laurie and Jack’s long relationship.
For another extended moment, Jack stared back at Laurie. Although the day before he’d not given Lou’s comments about Laurie much credence, he suddenly wondered if there had been a germ of truth to what he’d said. At the same time, Jack reminded himself that he was in no mood for further humiliation. “What’s the matter with Romeo? Is he sick tonight?”
Vinnie chuckled again and then tried to suppress it when Laurie glared at him.
“I don’t know,” Jack continued. “It’s kind of short notice, considering I was supposed to go bowling tonight with seventeen nuns from out of town.”
Vinnie lost control and left the table. He wandered over to the sink and busied himself.
“Could you please be serious for a moment?” Laurie repeated. “You’re not making this easy.”
“I’m not making it easy?” Jack questioned superciliously. “That’s a switch. I tried for months to arrange spending an evening with you, but you were always heading off to some major cultural event.”
“It’s only been a month, and you asked me twice, and both nights I had plans. I need to talk with you, Jack. Will you see me tonight or not?”
“It sounds like you are really motivated about this rendezvous.”
“I’m very motivated,” Laurie agreed.
“Okay, tonight it is. What time?”
“Is Elios all right?”
Jack shrugged. “It’s fine.”
“Then I’ll call to see if I can make a reservation, and I’ll let you know. It might have to be on the early side, since it’s Friday night.”
“Okay,” Jack said. “I’ll wait to hear from you.”
With a final nod, Laurie left the table, opened the door to the hallway, and walked back to the storeroom to get out of her protective suit. She was pleased that Jack had finally agreed to get together, but, as Calvin had suggested earlier, she felt browbeaten about getting Jack to commit to their meeting, and, sensing his anger, she was no longer particularly optimistic about how he was going to react to her news.
After getting into her street clothes and rescuing her coat from the ID room, Laurie took the elevator up to the fourth floor. Her idea was to pay Peter a quick visit to give him a morale boost for his efforts and to make sure he hadn’t struck gold with either Sobczyk or Lewis. As preoccupied as she was with personal thoughts, she didn’t even consider the possibility of having to confront her nemesis, the laboratory director, John DeVries. Unfortunately, he was in Peter’s office, apparently in the process of dressing down Peter. He had his hands angrily thrust onto his hips, and Peter had a sheepish expression on his face. Laurie had unknowingly run headlong into the fray.
“Such timing!” John exclaimed. “If it isn’t the seductress herself!”
“Excuse me?” Laurie questioned. With such a sexist comment, she could feel her own ire rising.
“Apparently, you have been able to seduce Peter into becoming your own laboratory slave,” John snarled. “You and I have had this discussion before, Dr. Montgomery. With the pittance I’m allocated to run this lab, no one gets special service, which invariably makes everyone else wait that much longer. Do I make myself clear, or do you want me to write it out for you? Furthermore, you can be sure that Dr. Bingham and Dr. Washington will be notified of this situation. Meanwhile, I want you out of here.” To emphasize his point, John gestured toward the door.
For a moment, Laurie looked back and forth between John’s gaunt face and Peter’s. The last thing she wanted to do was make things any worse for Peter, so she refrained from telling John what she thought of him. Instead, she turned around and walked out of the lab.
As Laurie climbed the stairs, she felt more depressed than she had earlier. She hated run-ins with people, particularly people she had to work with. They often lead to inappropriate emotional responses like the one she’d had earlier with Calvin, although on this occasion with John, anger was ascendant. Thinking of Calvin, she vaguely wondered what the fallout would be, since John invariably made good on his threats. She thought the chances were good that she’d hear from the deputy chief, and what that would mean, she had no idea. She truly hoped she hadn’t caused any long-term problem for Peter, since he had to deal with John on a daily basis.
Entering her office, Laurie closed the door behind her. She hung up her coat and noticed Riva’s hanging on its hook, which meant Riva was down in either the ID office or the autopsy room. Laurie sat down and thought about the telephone call she had to make. She’d been dreading it since the pregnancy test had been positive. In her mind, it was as if the process of making the call would finally and ultimately confirm the reality of her being pregnant. She had been trying to deny it to some degree, because of how big a mistake it was. As much as she wanted to have children, this was not the time, and she questioned what had gone through her mind to allow her to take the risk. Even though it was only a few weeks ago, she truly couldn’t remember.
Reaching for the phone, Laurie reluctantly placed the call to the Manhattan General Hospital. As the connection went through, she looked down at the material from the Queens cases, which she needed to add to her matrix, along with the case Jack was currently doing.
When the operator came on the line, Laurie asked to be connected with Dr. Laura Riley’s office. As the extension began to ring, Laurie was thankful that Sue happened to fix her up with a GYN doctor who also did OB. In the current medical malpractice milieu, that certainly was not always the case.
When Dr. Riley’s scheduling secretary answered, Laurie explained her situation. She found herself stumbling over her words when she revealed she was pregnant according to an OTC test kit.
“Well, in that case, we certainly cannot wait until September,” the secretary said brightly. “Dr. Riley likes to see her obstetrics patients at eight to ten weeks after the last period. Where are you?”
“It’s been about seven weeks,” Laurie said.
“Then we should see you next week or the week after.” There was a pause. Laurie realized that her hand holding the phone was trembling.
“How about next Friday?” the secretary said, coming back on the line. “That’s a week from today, at one-thirty.”
“
That will be fine,” Laurie said. “Thank you for squeezing me in.”
“My pleasure. Now, can I have your name?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I didn’t give it to you. I’m Dr. Laurie Montgomery.”
“Dr. Montgomery! I remember you. I spoke with you yesterday.”
Laurie winced. Her secret was now quasi-public. Even though she had never met the secretary, the woman now knew a terribly private, intimate detail about her life that Laurie had not yet decided how she was going to handle. Difficult choices would have to be made.
“Congratulations!” the secretary continued. “Hold the line! I’m sure that Dr. Riley would want to say hello.”
Without a chance to respond, Laurie found herself on hold, listening to music. For a brief moment, she thought about hanging up, but she decided she couldn’t do it. To keep her mind in check, she looked down at the stack of death certificates and investigative reports from Queens. Anxious for a diversion, she picked up the first and began reading. The patient’s name was Kristin Svensen, age twenty-three, who had been admitted to St. Francis Hospital for a hemorrhoidectomy. Laurie shook her head at the dimensions of the tragedy. It made her problems seem small compared to the death of a healthy young woman in a hospital after having her hemorrhoids removed.
“Dr. Montgomery! I just heard the good news. Congratulations.”
“You can call me Laurie.”
“Fair enough, and you can call me Laura.”
“I’m not sure congratulations are in order. To be perfectly frank, this is an unexpected and rather an inconvenient surprise for me, so I’m not sure how I feel about it.”
“I see,” said Laura, reigning in her exuberance. Then, with sensitivity born of experience, she added, “We still have to make sure you and the conceptus are as healthy as possible. Have there been any problems?”
“A bit of morning sickness, but it’s been very transient.” Laurie found herself uncomfortable talking about the pregnancy and wanted to get off the line.
“Let us know if it gets any worse. There are lots of suggestions for dealing with it in the thousands of pregnancy books available. As for books, my advice is to stay away from the most conservative ones, because they’ll drive you crazy, thinking you can’t do anything, like take a hot bath. With that said, we’ll see you next Friday.”
Laurie thanked her and hung up the phone. It was a relief to get the call behind her. Picking up the computer printouts of the cases from Queens, she tapped them against the surface of her desk to align them. The motion caused an almost subliminal unpleasant sensation in the same location where she’d had the pain while down in the locker room. She wondered if she should have at least mentioned the feeling and pain to Laura Riley. She thought she should have, but wasn’t about to call her back. Instead, she’d bring it up during her appointment, unless it became frequent or intense enough to warrant a call. She also wondered if she should have mentioned about being positive for the BRCA1 marker, but as with the discomfort, she decided it would be perfectly appropriate to discuss it on her first visit.
With the papers in one hand, Laurie reached for the phone again, but then hesitated with her hand on the receiver. She had it in her mind to call Roger for several reasons, not the least of which was feeling guilty about leaving him in the dark about what must have seemed strange behavior in his office. But she didn’t know what she was going to say. She wasn’t yet willing to tell him the whole truth for a number of reasons, but she knew she would have to say something. Ultimately, she decided she’d use the BRCA1 issue, as she’d already done.
Laurie picked up the phone and dialed Roger’s direct line. What was really motivating her was her desire to take copies of the Queens materials over to him so she could talk with him directly about them. Despite the turmoil in her mind from her personal problems, she’d come up with an idea about the cases from Queens that might possibly solve the mystery of SADS.
fourteen
WHEN LAURIE GOT OVER TO the Manhattan General Hospital, she was ushered directly into Roger’s office, where he was waiting for her. The first thing he did was close the door. Then he gave her a sustained, silent hug. Laurie hugged him back, but not with equivalent ardor. On top of the residuals from the marriage flap, she knew she wasn’t going to be entirely forthright with him about her own situation, and it made her feel self-conscious. If he noticed her restraint, he didn’t mention it. After the embrace, he turned his two straight-backed chairs around to face each other just as he had done the day before. He had Laurie sit in one, and he took the other.
“I’m glad to see you,” he said. “I missed you last night.” He was leaning forward into her space with his hands clasped and his elbows on his knees. Laurie was close enough to smell his aftershave lotion. His day was just beginning. His fresh shirt still had the telltale creases from the laundry box.
“I’m glad to see you, too,” Laurie said. She reached out and handed him the investigative reports and the death certificates on the six cases from Queens. She hadn’t had time to make copies, but it didn’t matter. She could just as easily download them again. By giving him the material, she hoped to deflect the conversation away from her mental state, at least for the moment. Besides, she was eager to tell him her idea.
Roger scanned the pages quickly. “My word! They do seem similar to ours, even to the extent of occurring at around the same time in the morning.”
“That’s my take. I’ll know more details when I get the hospital charts. But for the sake of the discussion, let’s assume they are mirror images. Does that suggest anything to you?”
Roger looked down at the papers, thought for a moment, and then shrugged. “It means the number of cases has doubled. We now have twelve cases, not six. No, we have thirteen, including the death last night. I assume you’ve heard about Clark Mulhausen. Are you going to be doing the autopsy?”
“No, Jack is doing it,” Laurie said. She had told Roger a little about Jack during their five-week courtship, including the fact that she and Jack had been lovers. When Laurie had first met Roger, she had described herself as “mostly unattached.” Later, when she and Roger had gotten to know each other better, she had admitted that she had used that particular description of herself because of unresolved issues with Jack. She had even gone to the extent of confiding that the problem involved Jack’s reluctance to make a commitment. Roger had accepted the news with great equanimity, which had enhanced Laurie’s estimation of his maturity and self-confidence, and the issue had never resurfaced.
“Look at the dates on the Queens cases,” Laurie suggested.
Roger again glanced through the papers then looked up. “They were all in the late fall of last year. The last one was in the latter part of November.”
“Exactly,” Laurie said. “They were clumped pretty close together, at a frequency of slightly more than one a week. Then they stopped. Does that suggest anything to you?”
“I suppose, but it sounds like you have something specific in mind. Why don’t you tell me?”
“Fair enough, but first listen! You and I are the only ones who suspect we might be dealing with a serial killer, but we’ve been effectively gagged. I can’t get the OCME to take a stand on the manner of death, and you can’t get the hospital authorities even to admit there’s a problem. What we’re fighting here is institutional inertia. Both bureaucracies would rather sweep the issue under the rug until something forces their hand.”
“I can’t argue with that.”
“What’s held us so effectively in check from your side is that your hospital has such a good mortality rate that these deaths aren’t appearing on the radar. From my side, it is the failure of toxicology.”
“They still haven’t found anything remotely suspicious?”
Laurie shook her head. “And the chances they might in the near future just took a nosedive. I’m afraid our crotchety laboratory director discovered my undercover effort this morning. If I know him, from now on he’ll mak
e sure that any further work on our cases will go to the very back of the queue. And even when he does get around to them, he’s surely not going to do anything special.”
“So, where are you going with all this?”
“It means it’s up to us alone to try to root out this possible serial killer, and we’d better do something if we’re going to prevent any more senseless deaths.”
“We’ve known that practically from day one.”
“Yes, but up until now we have tried to work within the constraints of our institutions and our job descriptions. I think we have to try something else, and it seems to me these cases from Queens present an opportunity. If these deaths are homicides, my guess is that there is one serial killer, not two or more.”
“I suppose I had assumed as much.”
“Since Saint Francis is another AmeriCare institution you should have reasonable access to their personnel database. You’re in the perfect position to get personnel information. What we need is a list of people, from janitors to anesthesiologists, who worked the eleven-to-seven shift at Saint Francis in the fall and Manhattan General in the winter. Once we have the list, then we could check the people out. This is where my idea gets a little fuzzy, but if we could come up with a couple of credible suspects, then maybe we’ll be able to get the hospital or the OCME to take a stand.”
A slight smile played across Roger’s craggy face as he nodded. “An elegant idea! I’m glad I thought of it.” He laughed and gave Laurie’s thigh a playful pat. “You make it sound so simple. But that’s okay. I think I should be able to cajole that kind of information out of someone, and wouldn’t it be interesting if it really came to something? I mean, I wonder if there really will be such a list. I know another list that exists for sure, a list of the professional staff with admitting privileges at both institutions. I have direct access to it as chief of the medical staff.”