Lethal Exposure

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Thursday, 1:03 p.m.

Fox RiverMedicalCenter,

Main Cafeteria

“Have lunch with me,” Craig said to Trish, gesturing toward the cafeteria. “It’s hospital food, but it’s the best I can do right now, considering Jackson is meeting me here at three. And I’m paying. I owe you anyway, because you won our bet.”

“Our bet?” she asked with an uncertain smile. She adjusted her delicate glasses, falling into step beside him.

“When you first called me on the phone, you swore that this case would be unlike any of the others I’ve worked on. You were right.” He held open the swinging cafeteria door for her. The food inside smelled as if it had gone through an automatic dishwasher, but his stomach rumbled anyway.

“So I get fine hospital dining,” she said, arching her eyebrows. “Good thing I’m not normally a gambling woman.”

In the cafeteria line they each took a tray and studied the unappealing selection of foods. Craig refused to take one of the bowls of jiggling, brilliantly colored Jell-O, choosing tapioca pudding instead. He ladled out a serving of mushy spaghetti and meatballs. Trish looked at him sidelong, and Craig decided it might be better if he didn’t eat the meatballs after all. Trish chose a dubiously fresh salad, a helping of fruit cocktail, and a carton of skim milk.

They settled down at a table at the far end of the cafeteria. Craig scanned the mix of doctors, nurses, volunteers, and families visiting patients. The noise droned around them, giving them complete anonymity. He still had the nagging suspicion that she knew or suspected something about that morning’s attack, and he decided to follow his intuition.

“I’ve been thinking about you a lot recently,” Trish said, self-consciously removing her glasses.

Craig swallowed hard. That was a bold move for opening their first real one-on-one conversation in some time. “Then how come you never called me until a murder case forced you to?”

“Me?” Trish blinked. “How come you never called?”

Craig looked away, studying the gelatinous red and white swirls of the alleged spaghetti. He searched for the right words, but Trish had his thoughts in too much of a turmoil. Things had changed. They were two different people from the years they were together at Stanford.

Finally, she answered her own comment. “You’re right. We promised not to get into that finger-pointing thing, but I had hoped you would send me a letter… or something. I really did want to be friends.”

“Well, my caseload has been very full,” Craig said with forced enthusiasm. “You know me, devoted to the FBI.”

Trish took a bite of her salad. “And I’ve been intently involved with my own research. Johns Hopkins isn’t any more relaxing than your Bureau.”

“I don’t suppose it is,” Craig said.

“Because of my specialty I’m in intermittent demand, whenever a radiation accident happens. But my work with the PR-Cubed keeps me on the go constantly. We’re still doing follow-up and tracking of all the studies we did in the aftermath of Chernobyl. Remember when I went over there as a pre-med?”

“How could I forget?” Craig said. For months she had been wrapped up in her own thoughts, or bombarding him with stories of what she had experienced there. She had merely been a junior member of the team, a relief worker interviewing residents who had lived in the densest fallout plume from the nuclear reactor disaster. It had been her job to keep massive statistics, chronicling the overwhelming tide of medical problems from the Chernobyl survivors.

“The Ukraine is a beautiful country, like our Midwest. It’s the breadbasket of what used to be the Soviet Union… but that power plant accident was the greatest man-made disaster in history. The fallout spread from the Ukraine into Belarus, even around the world in the jet stream.” She shook her head, blinking her dark eyes as if to wipe away haunting memories.

Then she leaned forward, fixing him with her gaze. Craig felt a sense of dread as he wondered what she was about to confess.

“I met Georg Dumenco there, in the Ukraine, all those years before. He and his family. He desperately wanted to leave the country, to get his family safe, but there was nothing we could do. Once he emigrated here, I kept tabs on him through the PR-Cubed.” As she took her dark gaze from him, he felt as if a targeting cross had just slipped away. “So did other people, I think.”

Craig took a deep breath, trying to assess the information. “What do you mean by that? What happened to Dumenco’s family, the ones in the snapshots I found?”

Trish shook her head. “Nobody knows. They disappeared during the upheaval, the breakup of the Soviet Union. For years now, somebody… somebody at the PR-Cubed…” She trailed off.

Reflexively she drank her milk and ate more salad while Craig waited in silence. “I’m… having a hard time with this. It’s bringing back too many memories. Dumenco is dying from a radiation exposure, just like those people at Chernobyl. Maybe his family died back in the Ukraine before he came to this country. There’s nothing I can do for him, or for them.”

“But I’m sure you managed to help,” Craig finally said, still trying to get her to open up. “That’s what you’ve always wanted to do, help people.”

“But that isn’t always the case, is it?” she said testily. “How can you stand it, Craig? This fatalistic inevitability. By the time you’re called in to a murder investigation, the crime has already happened. You’re always too late… and I’m always too late. When I get called to treat a radiation exposure, like Georg’s, there’s not much I can do. I can’t even make him more comfortable as he dies.”

She pushed her tray away. “My sole purpose is to collect data on his decline and death. No one in the world could have cured his lethal exposure, but I’m the one they called-so I’m the one who ultimately fails.”

“Oh, Trish,” Craig said trying to be soothing, but he sounded scolding instead. What other information did she have? What did the PR-Cubed have to do with this? “You help people who receive smaller exposures.”

Trish sat back and thought for a moment, then smiled. “You’re right. Sometimes I can help. In fact, that’s why I’ve been thinking of you recently.”

Craig blinked, unsure of where she was going. She couldn’t be trying to get back together, could she?

Trish leaned forward. “I treated a friend of yours. They called me in after that Russian General Ursov received his exposure out in Nevada. You were there. The man couldn’t stop talking about you.”

“You treated Ursov?” Craig said in astonishment. But of course, it made sense. Trish LeCroix was one of the few medical radiation experts, and she was well known in her field. When a senior Russian military officer had received the large radiation dose, medical experts would have called someone like Trish. “So you’re the one he meant. In a letter he added a postscript saying that our ‘mutual friend’ sends greetings. I was baffled until now. I couldn’t figure out who he was talking about.”

Trish smiled. “I guess he played a little trick on you.”

“Those Strategic Rocket Forces guys, what a bunch of jokers.” He had thought a great deal about Ursov and respected the stoic general for his unwavering devotion… and now an idea formed in his mind.

Seemingly eager to be away from the prior conversation, Trish continued offhandedly, “Your friend Paige Mitchell seems a… nice enough sort of person. In her own way.”

Craig concentrated on his spaghetti. He couldn’t tell if Trish was being catty or if she was just trying to gauge his response. “We’ve worked closely on several cases now,” he said, wiping his mouth with a napkin.

She waited, but he refused to give her more details about the cases.

“She’s very smart,” he finally continued. “Easy to get along with.” He left the thought hanging.

He didn’t particularly enjoy being caught between two such women. It might be best for him, for the case, and for his own sanity if he spent the next days working with Jackson and trying to steer clear of both Trish and Paige.

Dumenco’s accident, the substation explosion, Goldfarb’s shooting, the saboteur in Dumenco’s apartment, and the mysterious attacker in the hospital-not to mention the Ukrainian’s connection with Trish and the PR-Cubed-gave him quite enough to worry about for the time being.