Deficiency

TEN

"Am I a suspect of some kind?" Terri asked Will Dennis, who was waiting for her at the nurse's station. She had gotten to the hospital a little early and had seen Sally Peters, a fifty-four-year-old widow who suffered serious hypertension.

Will Dennis raised his eyebrows in surprise. She had barely acknowledged him before asking. Perhaps it was her medical training or just being under the sign of Sagittarius that made Terri the type of person who was so direct and to the point. It was to think about all of this while she was attending patients, but all day at the office she found herself slipping into it. Her eyes drifted from charts and her thoughts fell back to the bizarre deaths of both young women, especially Kristin Martin because, as short as it was, she did attempt some therapy.

"Why would you think that, Doctor?" Will responded. She looked at the nurse on duty and then started away without answering him. Will Dennis walked alongside her. She paused at the elevator and turned to him.

"I don't have any satisfactory medical explanations for you. I told you that you would have to seek out more learned people," she began. Although Will Dennis's eyes were full of interest and curiosity, he didn't really look at her with suspicion and accusation. Of course, she attributed most of that to his skills at questioning witnesses and suspects, but she also wondered about her own paranoia, something she could lay at Curt's feet for sure.

"We are doing just that, and we're not getting answers that help us along. No one we've spoken with yet, and we've even gone to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, can offer anything that even comes close to a logical, noncriminal cause for all this. It's possible that something you saw, something you remember, might just lead us in a sensible direction." The elevator door opened.

She nodded.

"You're right. I'm sorry," she said. "It's been a long day and especially made longer by a horrid night."

"I understand," Will said after they stepped into the elevator.

"Well," she began. "As I said, I tried to get her to speak, to tell me if the cause of her difficulties might be an allergy, perhaps to a bee sting. She mouthed something that sounded like 'he.'"

" He? That's it? He?"

"And I can't even swear to that," she added quickly. "Don't hold me to it."

"No, no, of course not," he said thoughtfully.

"I'm sure pathology has already told you about any suspicious-looking traumas." Will nodded. The elevator door opened and they walked out and toward the cafeteria.

"What is especially puzzling to me," Terri continued, "is the selectivity of the deficiency. One woman lacking vitamin C and another lacking B and of course the speed with which they each went into the deficiency ailments."

"Yes," Will said. "I had detectives question Kristin Martin's grandmother last night and according to her, the girl showed no signs of illness, and today, questioning her employer, fellow employees, we've come up with the same sort of puzzling description we had when we spoke to the people who knew Paige Thorndyke: she was full of energy, healthy looking, no complaints of pains or any of the other symptoms."

Terri listened and nodded. They went to the counter and began to choose their dinner.

"Let me get this," he offered at the cashier. "Expense budget." She smiled and went to a table far enough away from nurses and doctors having their dinners. Some recognized the district attorney immediately. Will Dennis sat across from her.

"Someone has already suggested terrorism, you know," he mentioned as he shook his lemonade container.

"Terrorism? Here? Why?"

He shrugged.

"They've got to start somewhere and make an example so they can throw the country into a panic like they did with anthrax."

Terri smirked.

"We've become a nation of paranoids." She started to eat and then thought of something. "Do you know if Paige Thorndyke knew Kristin Martin?"

"We're working on that, but at the moment it appears they did not have any sort of friendship or relationship, nor did they frequent the same places, although Kristin did go to the dance club Paige went to the night she died. Kristin was there more frequently."

"I see. I would hope you might find something, some connection that would help us all understand any of this. Nothing at either crime scene?" she asked.

"No, nothing yet."

"I even feel funny calling them crime scenes. You haven't established any crime was committed, right? I mean, it looks like Kristin Martin might have been raped, I suppose, but unless Paige Thorndyke was kidnapped and brought to that motel forcibly, a woman having sex is not a crime in this country, at least not yet," she added.

Will Dennis smiled and began to eat. She pecked at her own food.

"Once this comes out, you will probably see a run on vitamins," Terri said.

"Maybe the vitamin companies or a company is behind it then, huh?" She paused and looked at him. He was half serious, she thought. Talk about rampant paranoia.

"Look," she said leaning back, a little more frustrated and confused by this meeting. "I'm like what's-her-name in Silence of the Lambs here, practically a trainee called upon to help solve something experts are struggling to understand."

"Well," Dennis said, holding his smile, "maybe you'll have the same success she did."

"That was a novel, Mr. Dennis. This is real life."

"Doesn't feel like it," he said gazing around.

Terri stopped eating and studied the district attorney a little harder.

"You didn't come here to see if there was some little tidbit I had left out of my report, did you, Mr. Dennis? You have something else in mind, don't you?" she asked him.

For a moment it looked like he wasn't going to reply. He even looked like he might just get up and walk away, Terri thought. There was a debate raging in his own mind. He smiled and leaned forward.

"There is some information no one else has in this county, in your township especially," he said, "and very few have within the state, in fact."

"Am I going to be told this information?"

"I've been deciding that as we speak," he said. "It's not that I don't trust you with it; it's what I want to ask you to do about it."

"I see," she said. "Actually, I don't see," she continued, shaking her head and holding a smile of confusion.

"What would you say if I told you that the two young women who died so unusually here were two of now ten across eight states who have died in similar fashion?"

She shook her head.

"I wouldn't know what to say."

"When we had the diagnosis on Paige Thorndyke, it sent up a flare. The FBI contacted me and we all sort of stepped back and waited to see if the second shoe would drop. It did with Kristin Martin.

"This FBI investigation is a little over a year old, and they have not made any significant headway. They are excited about our situation because this is the first time a second death of similar causes has occurred within the same area. The previous deaths, which we will now call murders, were spread over considerable distance. Whoever is causing these deaths was careful about proximity. This doesn't seem to be a concern any longer and because of that, they believe whoever is doing this is still here. In short, they are expecting another fatality to occur within our county.

"What their serial killer division has concluded is that the time period between killings has gradually been dwindling."

Terri shook her head.

"So you and others believe these are murders? I can't imagine how someone can kill people this way," she said.

"Well, that's another thing, Doctor. He is not killing people. He's killing only relatively young women, women about your age."

Terri's smile seemed to freeze on her face.

"If we're dealing with such a fantastic situation, how do you know it's a he?" she asked.

"In all the cases, ours included, the victims had recently had sexual intercourse. The DNA they have been able to capture is identical, too. Whatever is going on, the same man is at each death scene."

"My God, what is this?" she asked, her heart pounding.

"We have a description of a man seen with Kristin Martin at Diana's Restaurant. It's a better description than the one we got from the bartender at the Underground or anyone else there, but not really detailed enough to get a good police sketch artist involved yet."

"Weren't there any witnesses involved with the previous deaths in other states?"

"Nothing concrete. Somehow, he manages to stay shadowy."

"I see. So this man I said came to question me and claimed to be a BCI investigator... he was FBI. I just got that wrong? My fiance thought an undercover investigation might be under way and you were pretending not to know about it," she said quickly.

"No. I was doing nothing of the kind, Doctor. We don't know who that man is. No one from any agency was assigned to interview you, however," he added, his words hanging for a moment in the air between them, "in some of the other instances, a similar thing occurred... there was a man who matches your description of the man who came to see you, and he did the same sort of thing."

"How weird. I thought he was at the funeral, but when I went to check, he was gone. It's all very strange."

"Very, but there is something else I have to tell you which will make it even stranger, I'm afraid."

She held her breath.

"What?"

"The description you gave me of the phoney investigator who had come to your office..."

"Yes?"

"He could very well be the man seen with both Paige Thorndyke and Kristin Martin."

"What?"

"Blond hair and cleft chin in each case."

If Terri didn't fully appreciate what a patient hyperventilating felt like before, she did now.

"So you're saying the killer for some sick reason is pretending to be investigating himself?"

"He might just be seeing how much is known about his activities and about him, although I will tell you the forensic psychiatrists and profilers working for the FBI suggest even weirder explanations."

"Such as?"

"Such as a true schizophrenic who kills as one personality and investigates as another."

"This still doesn't make an iota of scientific sense to me," she said. "How do you kill someone this way, and more importantly perhaps, why?"

"Why might follow how or vice versa. I don't know. What I do know," he said slowly, "is that you spent some quality time with this man. You're observant, doctor observant, and as you said, you thought you had seen him at the funeral."

"In other words, you want me to sit down with a police artist?"

"No, not yet. They don't want to spook him if he's still here and send him fleeing. Not just yet."

"I know I can recognize him quickly if I see him again," she said.

"Precisely," Will Dennis said. "The FBI agents working on the case wanted to come see you themselves, but I suggested they let me talk to you first." She stared at him and then looked up when one of the interns said hello in passing. He paused after she responded.

"Are you looking in on Mr. Kaplan tonight? He's raising hell up there."

"Yes, I am," she said smiling.

"Great. See you later," he said and walked on. She saw him join Mark Lester, the nurse who had been with Paige Thorndyke's friend Eileen Okun at the restaurant. They spoke and looked her way.

"Why did they want to talk to me? Were they going to tell me all this, too?"

"Perhaps not as much," Will Dennis said. "But enough, I suppose, before they asked you to do something."

"Something you're now going to ask me to do?"

"Yes," he said. He smiled. "I think we should keep all this close to home. It's our territory to protect, our people," he added.

"I thought the FBI works for all of us."

"They do, but it's only natural that the people who will look after you the best are the people who know you the best," he replied.

"Look after me? Why would they have to do that? Does this man come back to the people he questions? Is that the piece of information you're waiting to tell me?"

"Not as fat as I know," Will Dennis said.

She smirked.

"I don't like that sort of answer. It sounds too much like 'To the best of my recollection' or the like."

"I can't tell you any more than they tell me," he said.

"So then, what..."

"What I thought, what they thought once they heard about you and the man who came to see you, was you might go out, on any evening you can, of course, and..."

"Look for him? You mean, in dance clubs and bars?"

"We'll have someone there at all times, of course, but if you spotted this man and pointed him out... well, you might prevent another tragic death here." She shook her head slowly.

"I don't know. My fiance won't be too happy about doing that sort of thing, going to those places. He feels he's outgrown it, calls them meat markets, sex pits..."

"We were thinking of you going more in the guise of a single woman," Will Dennis said.

For a moment all the sounds in the cafeteria, the other conversations, the cling and clatter of dishes and glasses disappeared.

She took a deep breath and like someone emerging from under water, released it.

"You mean, be bait, try to attract him?"

"There's probably no other young, very attractive woman within a thousand miles who is also capable of recognizing medical problems or health threats and indeed knowing how to treat them, as well as recognizing the individual who might be responsible for all this," he replied in a single breath. "That's it, all my cards on the table."

"All?"

"Well, there is one more small thing," he said.

"Give me the whole dosage, Will," she told him.

He smiled.

"If you agree to do this, help us, even for a night or two," he said, "you'll have to keep it to yourself for obvious reasons. You'll have to keep everything to yourself. In other words, don't trust anyone, even someone else who might come to you and identify himself as a law enforcement officer of some kind, especially that sort of person. Don't accept any proof and don't talk to him. Just call me," he emphasized.

"You make it sound like there's more than one of them out there."

"At this point, who knows?" he said.

She stared and then shook her head.

"I'd have to tell my fiance about this idea of my going to local clubs," she said.

"I wouldn't. What if he decides it's too dangerous and comes after you, assuming you still wanted to go forward?"

She thought a moment.

"I don't know," she said. She glanced at her watch. "I have to get moving. My rounds."

"Okay."

"Let me think about it," she said.

"Of course."

"Maybe he's gone."

"Maybe," Will Dennis said. "It will be someone else's problem then, but until then, please remember my admonitions, Doc. Don't talk to anyone but me." She stood looking at him. He smiled and turned back to his food.

"I think I'll finish this," he said nodding at his plate. "It was better than I expected."

She smiled.

"I'll call you," she said.

"Here," he said quickly reaching into his pocket and producing a card. "It has my personal numbers on it. Call anytime."

"Okay."

She left him, but it wasn't until she was actually at the first patient's bedside, that she stopped thinking about all he had told her and all he wanted her to do.