Charlatans

by Robin Cook

  “I’m hoping he’s home alone,” Keyon said. “That will make things a lot easier and cleaner.”

  They had already run the house through a number of databases to find out the current owner. It was Gary Sheffield, age forty-eight, who was divorced five years ago and worked for an insurance company as a statistician. He had no criminal record and no children.

  “Are you ready?” George said.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” Keyon said. He turned the van’s ignition off. Suddenly there was the sound of crickets, particularly when they opened the van’s doors. It was a warm summer night. The rain had stopped. From all directions came the hum of window air conditioners.

  They walked quickly, but not too quickly, climbing the three steps of the house and positioning themselves on either side of the front door. They were professionals and had done this many times. George rang the bell, and the chimes could be heard through the door.

  They waited. Just when George was about to ring the bell again, the overhead porch light came on. A moment later the door opened a crack and an eye peered out. “Can I help you?” Gary Sheffield said.

  “I believe you can,” Keyon said. “Are you Gary Sheffield?”

  “I am,” Gary said. “Who are you?”

  “l am Special Agent Dexter of the FBI, and this is Special Agent Marlowe,” Keyon said. He held up his badge so Gary could plainly see it. George did the same. “We need to talk to you for a few minutes.”

  The door opened fully. The blood had drained from Gary’s face. “What do you need to talk about?”

  “We are part of the Cyber Action Team of the FBI,” Keyon said. “It has been brought to the Cyber Division’s attention that there has been significant felonious online activity perpetrated from this location. It needs to be investigated.”

  “What kind of felonious activity?” Gary said in a hesitant, tremulous voice. He was, as his visitors assumed, of medium height, corpulent but not obese, with blotchy skin and thinning hair. He was not a stud.

  “That is exactly what we have to talk to you about,” Keyon continued. “Now, we can arrest you and take you to the FBI field office, or you can let us in and talk with us and perhaps clear up this problem. It’s your choice, sir.”

  Gary backed away, still holding on to the front doorknob.

  Keyon and George entered a small foyer. Gary closed the door. He was visibly trembling. “We can sit in the living room,” he managed, gesturing to his left.

  “We’ll stand, you sit,” George said, pointing toward the couch as all three entered the drab room. There was an open laptop on the coffee table displaying a dramatic photo of mountains as a screen saver. There was also an open bottle of beer.

  Gary did as he was told. He reached out and shut the laptop.

  “First off, I want to ask if you are alone in the house at the moment.”

  “Yes, I am alone,” Gary said.

  “Okay, good,” George said. “Second, I’d like to ask if you are familiar with cybercrime punishment here in Connecticut?”

  Gary shook his head. He visibly swallowed.

  “It is considered a serious offense, punishable by up to twenty years in prison.”

  Gary stared back without blinking.

  “Is there any other computer in this house,” Keyon asked, “other than the laptop here on the coffee table, a desktop or another laptop?”

  “No.”

  “Good,” Keyon said. “Now, we may have to confiscate this machine because what we suspect is that it has been used for serious cyberstalking, harassment, and threats to a thirteen-year-old girl by the name of Teresa Puksar. Does that name mean anything to you?”

  “I suppose,” Gary said weakly.

  George and Keyon exchanged a knowing glance.

  “It seems that this online activity,” Keyon continued, “has been carried out by an individual whose user name is Savageboy69 and whose Facebook profile is under the name of Marvin Hard. Are either of those names familiar to you?”

  Gary visibly swallowed again. He nodded.

  “Okay, very good,” Keyon said. “We are making progress here. That’s encouraging.”

  “So those are two of your online monikers?” George asked.

  Gary nodded again.

  “Do you use any other sock-puppet names?” George said.

  “I used Barbara Easy for a while, but not for a long time.”

  “Interesting,” George said with a wry smile. “A little gender role reversal. Very clever. Was it rewarding?”

  Gary didn’t answer.

  “Let’s get down to specifics,” Keyon said. “As Marvin Hard you managed to get Teresa Puksar’s IP address and then used it to get her real address. With that you threatened her with swatting if she didn’t send you nude pictures. Is that an accurate description of your activities?”

  “Should I be talking to a lawyer?” Gary asked hesitantly.

  “That is your call, Mr. Sheffield,” Keyon said. “But if you want to involve a lawyer at this early stage of our investigation, we will have to arrest you, confiscate this laptop, and take you to the FBI field office. Then, within twenty-four to forty-eight hours, you will be able to make a call to your attorney if you have one. Does this sound like the way you want to go? It’s up to you.”

  “I don’t know,” Gary admitted. He felt like he was caught between a rock and a hard place.

  “As I said at the door,” Keyon said, “we would like to clear all this up and be on our way. Arresting you creates a ton of paperwork for us. We’d prefer to avoid it. We need to finish our investigation, make sure you understand the kind of risks you are assuming with your trolling behavior, and make sure you mend your ways. In your favor, you didn’t try to meet up with this underage young lady. That’s good. At the same time, threatening her is certainly against the law. Exactly what you were going to do with the nude photos is another issue entirely. Luckily, at this stage, we can ignore the child-pornography problem. But there are a few things we need to ask you.”

  “Like what?” Gary said.

  “A key point,” Keyon said. “Are you working with anyone else? Have you communicated to anyone anything at all that you have learned about Teresa Puksar in your ongoing chats and messaging with her? Anything in particular that she has revealed to you or you have learned?”

  “No,” Gary said. “What I do online is private. I don’t share it with anyone.”

  “From some of your messages that I’ve read, I think that is a wise idea, Mr. Sheffield,” Keyon said. “You presented yourself as a twenty-year-old college student to Miss Puksar, but to me you seemed even younger than she. Be that as it may, right now we are mainly interested in one particularly important question: Have you communicated to anyone Miss Puksar’s physical address or her IP address? Now, don’t answer immediately! I want you to think for a moment, because it is very important. Have you told anyone Miss Puksar’s location or anything about where she lives?”

  “I don’t have to think about it,” Gary said. “I haven’t told anyone.”

  “Have you written Miss Puksar’s address on any paper or transferred it to any storage device or put it into your contacts? Think, Mr. Sheffield!”

  “It is just in this laptop,” Gary said, pointing to the machine on the coffee table.

  “How about your cell phone?” Keyon suggested.

  “There’s no address in my cell phone,” Gary said. He was beginning to perk up, sensing he was pleasing his interrogators and that this scary episode was coming to an end.

  “Show me!” Keyon said.

  Gary straightened out his right leg and pulled his smartphone from his front pants pocket. He went into his contacts and pulled up Teresa Puksar. There was a phone number with a 617 area code. He showed the screen to Keyon, who nodded.

  Keyon looked at George. There was a moment
of nonverbal communication between them as they tried to decide if they were finished with the interview. Each nodded slightly, indicating that he was content, meaning that they had learned what they needed to know. Keyon used his right hand to form a make-believe gun with his index finger extended and thumb upright. He pointed it at George.

  George took the hint, and in quick, smooth motion reached under the lapel of his jacket and pulled out a Smith & Wesson .38 Special revolver from a shoulder holster. A fraction of a second later the gun was pointing directly at Gary’s forehead. The report was loud in the small room with its unadorned plaster walls and ceiling. The soft-nosed bullet hit Gary in the middle of his forehead, snapping his head back and spraying the wall behind the couch with blood and bits of brain.

  With a wave of his hand to disburse the smell of cordite, George reached out and picked up the laptop and the smartphone. “Let’s take some other crap besides his electronic gear to make it look like a robbery gone bad,” he said.

  “Right on,” Keyon said as he pulled on a pair of gloves. He rolled the corpse to the side and got out the man’s wallet. Then he pulled off Gary’s Rolex.

  5

  FRIDAY, JULY 7, 10:02 A.M.

  Noah walked out of the operating room area by pushing through the double swinging doors and headed into the surgical lounge. He was feeling relatively chipper after having ducked into each OR to check on the residents to see firsthand how they were faring in their surgery assist roles, particularly the first-year residents. Although he was reasonably confident there were no problems, since there had been zero complaints from the attending surgeons or the OR nurses the entire first week, he liked to check himself just to be certain, since he had been the one doing the assignments. There was nothing quite like just wandering into an OR unannounced and listening to the unedited banter between the surgeon and the residents and sensing the atmosphere. A lot could be deduced, especially when it could be augmented by a quick corroborating chat with the circulating nurse. Although a few of the surgeons recognized him out of the corner of their eyes, most didn’t. It was as if he was his own undercover agent.

  In the surgical lounge Noah felt relaxed enough to grab a cup of coffee and stand by the window, gazing out at the busy Boston Harbor as he drank it. Although most of the activity on the water was commercial, there were a few pleasure boats with people enjoying the summer weather. For a brief moment he fantasized what it was going to be like once he finished his long, grueling, and totally immersive training in less than a year and attained his long-sought-after goal. Although he loved his role as a surgical resident, he knew he’d been metaphorically imprisoned in the hospital for five years, a fact brought painfully home by Leslie’s regrettable but understandable departure. Outside of the hospital he didn’t have life, and he was in his mind becoming something of a social recluse. After all was said and done, would he be able to resurrect some normal social abilities and enjoy himself like those people out there boating in the sunshine, or was he destined to always be a medical workaholic? He had no idea. It was going to take a lot of effort and maybe a bit of luck. The hope was that he could somehow meet a woman who would not be challenged by his single-minded commitment to medicine.

  Noah sighed and turned his back on the outdoor scene and gazed around at the people who populated his reality. With no surgery scheduled, he could take a moment for the first time since he had arrived at the hospital at a quarter past five to reflect on how things were generally going in his isolated world. Professionally, things were remarkably okay. The morning had been busy as per usual, but without incident. The SICU was quiet and Carol Jensen was even complimentary about Lynn Pierce, the new first-year resident. The on-call senior resident had no complaints about the new junior residents during the night. Work rounds had gone well, and even the first-year residents’ presentations were surprisingly coherent and to the point, offering yet another bit of evidence that the Residency Acceptance Committee had done a bang-up job. Even the first basic science lecture that morning at 7:30 was a thumbs-up, according to feedback he’d gotten. And finally, Chief of Service rounds had gone better than he could have imagined. Dr. Hernandez had even given him a pat on the back at the conclusion as a rare but welcome compliment.

  Noah felt good enough to treat himself to a second cup of coffee. He couldn’t have imagined the morning going any better, or the first week, even though he’d not been back to his apartment for six days. The only minor bumps in the road were a few quirks in the complicated duty schedule, but he and Candy Wong had worked out the kinks to everyone’s satisfaction. Noah had even had a chance to talk individually to all twenty-four first-year residents, commit their names to memory, get a feel for their aspirations and interests, and assign them appropriate faculty mentors. So even that burden was out of the way.

  After rinsing out his mug, Noah planned on taking full advantage of the current unexpected pause in his responsibilities by changing out of his scrubs and heading for the library to read the journal articles he’d selected for Tuesday’s Journal Club meeting. But his plans were quickly undermined when he found himself cornered by the sink. Unbeknown to him, Dawn Williams, the circulating nurse in the Vincent case, had come up behind him, patiently waiting for him to finish with his mug. At almost six feet tall and slightly overweight, she wasn’t one to be lost in the crowd, especially when she was standing so close that her nose was within a foot of Noah’s. He knew her to be a hardworking, opinionated, and candid OR nurse.

  “Do you have a moment, Dr. Rothauser?” she asked. Her voice was hushed and clipped, which Noah immediately interpreted as not a good sign.

  “I suppose,” Noah said, unsure if he wanted his unexpected tranquillity rattled. The woman was obviously upset. He glanced around. The surgical lounge was busy but not overflowing. At the moment, no one was paying them any heed.

  “I wanted to give you my two cents about the Bruce Vincent case,” Dawn continued, keeping her voice low. Noah couldn’t help but notice she wasn’t blinking.

  “Should we go somewhere less crowded?” Noah suggested. The mention of Vincent’s name was enough to fire up his own pulse. Here was yet another situation that made him wish he had a private office. It was clear that whatever Dawn had to say was meant for his ears only.

  “This is fine,” Dawn said. “No one is listening.”

  “Okay. I’m all ears.”

  “I know you are going to be presenting the case at next week’s M&M, so I would like to make sure you are aware that Dr. Mason didn’t even appear for about an hour after anesthesia had been started. He wasn’t part of the pre-op huddle. That should not happen, plain and simple, and had he been there, the outcome probably could have been different.”

  “I am aware there was some delay,” Noah said diplomatically.

  “He had three patients under anesthesia all at the same time,” Dawn snapped, her voice rising. When she realized how loud she’d become, she covered her mouth with her hand and glanced around to make sure no one was listening. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Noah said. “I haven’t finished my investigation of the case, but I will be talking with everyone involved, including you if you have more to add. Thank you for coming forward.”

  “I know there is an ongoing departmental debate about concurrent surgery,” Dawn continued in her hushed voice. “But this situation with Mr. Vincent was beyond the pale. I just wanted to be sure you knew. I think it has to be brought up.”

  “I appreciate your telling me your opinion,” Noah said. “I will be sure to bring up all the facts about the case, including the delay.”

  “Thank you for hearing me out,” Dawn said. “Mr. Vincent was a wonderful man. His passing is a tragedy that shouldn’t have happened. At least that is my feeling. I miss him every morning I drive into the hospital garage. Well, thanks for your time. And good luck. A lot of people are upset about this.”

  “For good reason,” Noah
said. “It is a tragedy when anyone dies in surgery, especially a young, healthy person and a beloved part of the BMH community. Again, thank you for speaking with me.”

  “You are welcome.”

  With that said, Dawn nodded slightly before turning and walking toward the lounge’s exit.

  Cursing under his breath, Noah watched Dawn disappear. His sudden aggravation was not directed toward her. His irritation was directed at himself for having continued to put off working up the Vincent case and then fibbing about it, telling Dawn he hadn’t finished when he had barely started. He should have begun in earnest right after his mini-confrontation with Dr. Mason in the Fagan Amphitheater. Instead he’d been like the proverbial ostrich sticking its head in the sand, vainly hoping the whole mini-nightmare would somehow miraculously disappear. Since that was not going to happen, he had to get a move on and do the necessary legwork because the M&M Conference was looming the following Wednesday, only four full days away.

  Reluctantly giving up a trip to the library, Noah ditched the idea of putting on his street clothes. Instead, to save time, he merely grabbed his white coat and pulled it on over his scrubs before taking the stairs down to Stanhope 2 en route to his all-too-public desk. The idea of heading to the library to prepare for the Journal Club was out the window. The unexpected exchange with Dawn had been the wake-up call he needed. Free time for him was a rare commodity.

  He’d briefly started preparing for the M&M after the disturbing exchange with Dr. Mason by writing down all the people associated with the Vincent case, whether he thought he needed to interview them or not. But doing this wasn’t a real beginning but rather a way of controlling his immediate anger and anxiety. Once he’d finished, he’d put the sheet of paper away in one of his desk drawers and forgotten about it, which was easy, thanks to the tidal wave of more immediate responsibilities that engulfed him as the new super chief resident.