Mortal Remains

Chapter 15

Victor slammed the door shut, snapped the lock, and ran for the phone. He’d barely dialed nine when the line went dead. He raced for the rear of the house. In seconds he was through the kitchen and out the back entrance. A fifty-yard sprint through a half foot of snow and he’d be into the forest. Moonlight glinted off the snow, revealing the black line of trees. The shouts of the intruders indicated they were still at the front of the house.

“Unlock the door.”

“We’ll go easy on you.”

“Liquor and money’s all we want.”

Yeah, sure.

The terrain sloped upward, and the leather soles of his shoes kept slipping. After a dozen paces he already gasped for air. He tried to accelerate, only to send his feet flying out from under him, catapulting to his hands and knees. The icy surface of the snow abraded his wrists. Sliding in every direction, he finally managed to get up and look over his shoulder, expecting to see that the four men had realized he made a break for it and were coming after him.

Not yet.

He started off again, still struggling to get some traction and gulping for air. By two dozen paces, he sobbed every time he exhaled, his chest burning as it heaved in and out. He continued on, choking, gasping, weak with fear, but halfway to cover. Once in the trees, he’d at least have a chance to dodge a bullet.

His feet slipped again. He pitched face first to the ground. Bits of slush filled his mouth, stuffed his nose, and dripped off his glasses. He spit and wiped his lenses so he could see. Panting fast and loud, he rose, then stumbled ahead. The shouts from behind grew louder.

“Stop!”

“We just want to talk with you.”

“Come here.”

He turned his head, straining to see where they were, but could only make out watery shadows.

He moved faster now, taking longer strides, the extra effort exacting its toll. Fatigue seared the front of his thighs until he could barely lift them. The incline steepened, doubling his workload.

He never once wondered why his pursuers were after him. Gay-bashers were a constant threat anywhere. Someone in town probably told these clowns about “the queer” living on Route 9, and this was some sick fuck’s idea of how to end the hunting season. But how far would they take it? That was the life-or-death question. That they had guns didn’t look good.

The shouts grew closer.

A tightness ripped through his chest.

“Oh, God, no,” he whimpered.

By the time he reached the forest’s edge he felt squeezed in a vise from the neck down and was staggering, his torso heaving, his heart hammering the inside of his ribs. He ducked behind the first tree he fell against and doubled over to get his breath, at the same time trying to make out the men.

A collective smudge jogged toward him through the gloom, at thirty yards and closing. He took extra big lungfuls of the cold, but couldn’t relieve the smothering sensation. Waves of nausea lapped at the back of his throat, and cold sweat soaked his shirt.

Something zinged by his ear and embedded itself in the bark above his head with a loud thwack.

No question now, this pack was out for slaughter.

He pushed off from the trunk he’d been leaning against and lurched deeper into the woods.

Angry cries ordered him to halt.

Panic drove him. He repeatedly churned up muddy snow, getting nowhere; the clamp that had locked around his chest grew tighter. Yet he fought to move forward, crawling and pulling himself along, grasping at any root or bush to get a handhold.

“Give it up, asshole!” More bullets hit the snow around him.

He knew he was doomed, but his instinct to survive wouldn’t let him yield. Even as they encircled him, stood over him, taunted and goaded him, he writhed to gain a few inches, to breathe a few more breaths.

“Hey, he don’t look so good.”

“Maybe he’s having a heart attack.”

The pain grew as if his heart were ballooning out of his chest, ready to burst, and the agony became unbearable. Yet he could still see their boots at his head, hear their voices.

“This is better than any accidental fire.”

“He won’t have a mark on him.”

“I better go back and reconnect his phone line. The snow will cover the tracks. Nobody will even know we’ve been here, let alone look for bullets.”

Why didn’t they kill him? Have done with it. He found himself begging that they end it. But as he tried to speak, his lips, embedded in snow, barely moved, and he had to lick them free.

“Hey, he’s trying to say something.”

One of the men bent down, removing a ski mask and placing his ear near Victor’s mouth. “Wants us to finish him off,” he announced after listening to his whispers.

“Give him your cock to suck. That ought to do it,” one of them added.

More cackling came from above as the kneeling man slowly got back on his feet. “I’ll give you a gun barrel to suck on, you make another crack like that,” he said, obviously not amused.

Victor hadn’t the breath to cry or the strength to budge. Sinking into a delirium of pain and asphyxia, his mind still flickered with life, firing out fragments of thought, the last dispatches of a dying brain.

They weren’t gay-bashers. Hadn’t once called him a fag.

He’d spent a lifetime dealing with that kind of insane fury. These men were more callous and calculating.

So why were they here to kill him?

Because he’d discovered the secret?

But how could they know? He hadn’t told anyone yet. Only left a message on Mark’s answering machine, saying to call him, that he had the answer.

His mind downshifted again, losing the function of logic forever. Only memories swept through his neurons now, unlocked from one cell after another as they winked out.

The aroma of turkey greeted them when Mark opened the front door.

Lucy busied herself with the bird while he stoked the woodstove and opened a bottle of white wine he’d put in the refrigerator before they left.

“It’ll be another twenty minutes,” she announced, holding out a pair of beautifully tapered glasses she’d gotten out of the china cupboard.

He filled them, then raised his in a toast. “Here’s to the first Thanksgiving dinner I’ve had at home in years,” he said, determined not to let his state of mind ruin her efforts at providing a nice evening.

She smiled and curled up in the captain’s chair at the head of the table. She seemed to like that spot. After a few sips of her drink, she said, “Was it your plan to stir up a hornet’s nest tonight, or did those people really get under your skin?”

He didn’t want to talk about it. “Bit of both, I guess. Mostly I’m frustrated at how Braden has outfinessed every official attempt to get at Chaz since ‘seventy-four, mine included. And all that politeness as he pulls it off, I just couldn’t take it – wanted to throw it back in his face. At least now I’ve made the smooth-talking son of a bitch take his fight with me out in the open.”

“You did that all right.”

Not to mention he’d also assured any attempt by that same son of a bitch to drag Cam Roper’s name through the mud would now look like payback. “For what good it will get me,” he muttered.

“What do you mean?”

“We’re no further ahead in what we know.”

She watched him across the top of her glass. “But there’s more than that bugging you.”

Dammit, didn’t she realize he really didn’t want to have this conversation. “Look, Lucy, like I said, the place revived a lot of personal issues for me. Let’s just leave it at that, okay?” He’d sounded far testier than he intended. At least she’d get the point and back off.

To his surprise she laughed, reached across the table, and patted his hand. “Looks to me like it’s you who can’t just leave it at that, judging by the way the Braden bunch gets to you.”

She managed to make them sound like a cross between a popular TV family and a gang of outlaws. It was his turn to laugh. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to take your head off.”

“Purely understandable.” She took another sip of her wine. “My brothers say I’m like a tank when it comes to butting into their private business. Though I am a good listener, and you could do worse than talking to me about that kind of stuff. Believe me, I’m an expert on how the past can come out of nowhere and bite you on the bum.”

She didn’t offer to elaborate, and he didn’t ask, welcoming the light mood she’d created. To his surprise she sustained it throughout the meal and the rest of the evening, engaging him in a relaxed easy exchange of anecdotes about medical school, residencies, and the slapstick side of life and death as it’s sometime seen from inside a white coat.

They moved into his combination living-waiting room, and he lit a fire. For a while they sat quietly side by side on the floor, watching the flames. He felt comfortable with the silence. So comfortable, he decided, it was time to clear up at least one of the many unknowns that worried at him. “Lucy, what were you on the verge of telling me last night, before you left to buy a dress?”

He felt her stiffen. After a few seconds she said, “I haven’t been entirely honest about why I took my elective here.”

He didn’t reply, wanting to hear more, but not about to extract it piecemeal.

“You see, I’ve got ghosts here, too, just as you do,” she continued, “but I’m trying to find mine, not run from them. So what I’m about to say might be upsetting to you.”

The same feeling he’d had two days ago while they were talking in her car, that she was about to cut very close to a vital organ, crept through him, and once more he grew still.

“Where I’ve worked the last seven years, all that sudden death, families ripped apart, and the life-and-death struggles so many thousands went through to reunite with their blood kin, it awakened a similar hunger in me. When I came back, Mom and Dad were great and gave me all the papers they had.

“I’d been adopted from an orphanage in Albany. But after I got my original birth certificate unsealed, the father was listed as unknown, and all attempts to locate the woman registered as my birth mother came to a dead end. The people I hired to find her told me she didn’t exist, that a false name must have been used. They suggested I contact the place where I was born, that the birth records would be more extensive and might give an indication who my mother really was. That led me to Hampton Junction and Braden’s home for unwed mothers. But all my attempts to get the original records from Braden Senior failed.”

She paused and took a sip of wine, keeping her eyes on the flames. “First I went through legal channels. Apparently the records room burned just prior to the place shutting down. Then I went to Braden himself. He apologized, but said essentially the same thing. He even had affidavits attesting to the fire, as others had been looking for records before me. When I asked him to refer me to people who had worked in the place on the off chance they could help me, he said he’d have his secretaries try to find some of his old staff, but in the end told me they hadn’t been able to locate anybody who’d worked there the year I was born. Now maybe I’ve been working around war criminals for too long, but when record rooms catch on fire, or nobody can find the people who worked in a place, that’s when I begin to get a little suspicious.”

Another pause, another sip.

Mark didn’t budge.

“So I moved on to Plan B. Since I was going to do a residency in family medicine anyway, I chose the teaching hospital that offered rural electives up here, intending to find out what I could from the local residents.”

He felt incredulous. He’d been dreading something sinister, yet here was an innocent story that he could hardly believe. “How could that help you?” he asked.

“One thing I did know. My records at Albany were in a red file. The other dossiers were mostly green. The administrator there said she thought the red folders designated a mother from the Hampton Junction area, the color signaling the need for special precautions regarding confidentiality so no one living nearby would learn who in town had been a patient…”

He immediately thought of Nell’s friend. There couldn’t be too many local women who went there. Not that she necessarily might be Lucy’s mother, though that was a possibility. But she might know who else from the area had been in the place. What if Nell were to ask her – no, he mustn’t let his imagination run wild. It was too great a long shot.

“… Now don’t get me wrong. I would have chosen you as my first pick for a rural rotation anyway. The residency program rates a stint with Mark Roper as their top elective, and being here with you and your patients – I adore it. But I also hoped working with you would give me a quick way into the community. I thought that maybe I could find something that would lead me to my biological mother. When I heard about the discovery of Kelly’s body, and that you were investigating her murder, I changed my schedule, bumping my rotation ahead. I figured there’d be no surer way of finding out what I wanted than by getting myself into the middle of what would probably be a major gossipfest, everyone talking about the Bradens and that era, then take advantage of it by steering conversations toward the subject of the home. So here I am. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think my own quest would make any difference to my doing a good job working with you. And I couldn’t be sure you would accept me if I told you my story outright. I hoped after a week or so, once you were satisfied with my performance, I’d be able to confide the rest, and it wouldn’t make a difference to you. And if in the process of trying to find my mother, I helped you dig up something on the Bradens that would help you, so much the better.”

She fell silent and just kept staring at the fire.

His initial relief gave over to feeling a little uneasy at how calculating this all sounded. Strip it down, and she’d basically come here to use his patients and the investigation to pursue her personal agenda. But she was also a legitimate resident and damn good doctor who had provided first-rate care to the people he’d entrusted her with. So was there a problem here?

For one, he’d shown her evidence in a coroner’s case. Should any of those files ever add up to charges against Chaz, the fact they’d been in the hands of someone who had her own issues with Chaz’s father might give the Braden lawyers yet another conflict-of-interest gun to hold over his head. He couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of that.

She turned her head and gave him a contrite smile as if she sensed his discomfort with what she’d done. “I would have told you all this by next week. Events just started to roll faster than I expected, and you got the jump on me. Our first day together, when you said how everyone would let me in on the seamier sides of Hampton Junction, I nearly ‘fessed up then and there. I hope you can forgive me.”

Forgive? His instincts leapt to point out the potential problems she’d caused, but in the firelight her dark eyes emitted a sad warmth that laid a calming hand on his concerns. “Of course,” he said, deciding against saying anything for the moment. It was too late to do anything about what had happened anyway.

They remained where they were for a while, sipping wine, Lucy talking about the service industry that had sprung up for people trying to find a biological parent – everything from detectives to tracking programs on the Internet – and how none of it worked for her. To Mark it sounded as if she was still trying to justify her subterfuge. In any case, the openness between them from before dinner was gone.

Before going to bed, he took his messages.

“… Dr. Roper, it’s Victor. I think I’ve found what had companies using Nucleus Labs so jumpy. Also, I got to wondering about the group of New York doctors and, being in a suspicious frame of mind, figured I ought to check if there were anything in the test results themselves to warrant someone wanting to store them separately. I hacked into the terminal we forward them to, and there’s a peculiar little something there as well. Give me a call…”

Instantly he felt wide-awake. He was dialing the number when the next recording sounded.

“… Mark, it’s Earl. I’m in the hospital, admitted as a patient. We have to talk…”

Holy shit! he thought. There was no answer when he got through to Victor’s. “Maybe he’s out somewhere for Thanksgiving dinner,” he said to Lucy, who had appeared at the door to his office. She must have overheard the messages.

He was already dialing the number for NYCH.

“I’m sorry, sir, but all calls to that number have been blocked. I can give you the nurse’s desk.”

“Are you a relative?” said the woman who picked up.

“No, I’m his colleague, Dr. Mark Roper. He and I are working on a coroner’s case together. I must talk with him.”

“Dr. Garnet has been sedated, sir, and Dr. Collins has left strict orders he not be disturbed.”

“Then connect me with Dr. Collins’s home.”

“One moment.”

“Mark!” Melanie greeted him. “I’m sorry, I guess I should have informed you about Earl’s admission. Apologies.”

“What happened?”

“Looks like he picked up a bug from our fair city’s fine cuisine. I’ll have preliminary cultures in the morning.”

“But is he all right?”

“Sure. I mean, he’s got a lot of discomfort, but vitals are fine, lytes et cetera check out okay, and believe me, he’s well covered in the analgesia department.”

Mark’s heartbeat ticked up a notch. He hesitated to ask his next question, thinking it would sound crazy, but went ahead anyway. “Melanie, I know you’re going to think I’m nuts for even suggesting this, but is there any way Earl could have been deliberately poisoned?”

“You mean by the likes of Chaz Braden?”

“My God. Earl told you?”

“Only about your suspicions over what happened to Bessie McDonald. As for him, his case seems bona fide. Certainly Earl didn’t say anything to make me think differently. But don’t worry. I’m hovering over him like a mother hen. Chaz Braden, or anyone else I haven’t personally authorized, won’t get near him.”

That’s a pretty big promise, Mark thought, knowing perfectly well how staff could come and go as they pleased on a busy ward, whatever Melanie might order. Nevertheless, he thanked her, asked that she phone him if there were any changes in Earl’s condition, and hung up.

Quickly telling Lucy what had happened, he tried Victor’s number again.

Still no answer. “I guess we’ll have to wait until morning. He’s obviously got a better social life than I thought.”

“Let’s hope he’s getting laid,” she said with a wicked grin, and walked over to where she’d left the boxes of birth records she’d been going through. “As for me, I’m going to work on these a while. You, mister, better go to bed. You look tired.”

Mark felt a flash of alarm, his concerns about the integrity of evidence resurfacing. Then he thought, What the hell. She’d already been through them once. From his own look at them, they didn’t seem to have a bearing on the case anyway. And somewhere in there should be her own birth record. Maybe she’d find something useful in that regard. Who was he to stand in the way of a woman’s search for her mother?

As she spread out some of the papers on the kitchen table, he saw large sheets that looked like accounting ledgers with reams of handwritten numbers on them. “What are those?”

“A summary I’m making of all the statistics. I got pretty good at spotting trends on spreadsheets like these in the refugee camps. I thought I’d give it a go here.”

Impressed by her diligence, he wished her good night, and went upstairs to bed.

But as he tried to fall asleep, his ugly confrontation with Braden crowded in, hanging over everything like a cold shroud. Damn the man to hell for suggesting such muck about his father.

He eventually drifted off.

Bad dreams ambushed him throughout the night. The one that brought him fully awake found him in the cold water where they’d found Kelly with her killer out in the blackness, circling him, drawing closer. He struggled to reach the surface, but his limbs moved in agonizing slow motion as he sank deeper, and the dark liquid congealed around him with the smothering slipperiness of blood.

That same evening, Thursday,

November 22, 11:30 P.M.

New York City Hospital

Earl’s eyes shot open.

He lay motionless, peering through the darkness, wondering what had awakened him. He heard a soft click, the sound of his room door swinging shut.

Someone must have been in to check on him and just left.

Probably a nurse.

Mentally he felt wrapped in cotton from the morphine he’d gotten during the day, but for the moment he didn’t have any pain. He definitely didn’t want another shot, not the way it turned his brain into cream cheese.

When the first dose wore off, he’d managed to phone Janet and explain what had happened, trying to minimize his symptoms. “Don’t worry, you know these things are usually over in twenty-four hours. I’m just sorry I can’t have Thanksgiving dinner with you and Brendan.”

“Dammit, Earl, be straight with me.”

“I am, I swear-”

“You wouldn’t let anyone drag you into a hospital bed unless you were half-dead. Now tell me what’s going on – really.”

“Everything’s fine, Janet, just fine…” As he’d talked, it became all he could do to keep his voice from giving away the sheer agony in his stomach. He didn’t want her jumping on a plane, bringing Brendan, and having them both fretting at his bedside. He finally convinced her to stay put.

“But if you’re not telling me something, Earl Garnet, I’ll doctor you myself, starting with the biggest colonoscopy tube I can find-”

“Of course I’m telling you everything.”

“You lie like a pirate.”

“Me?”

“When it comes to whether you’re sick or in trouble, you do.”

To Brendan he’d said, “Just a sick tummy, like you get sometimes.”

“Drink Seven-Up,” his son had advised.

He’d also tried to reach Mark, got his answering machine, and left the number.

Then he’d requested a nurse to contact Melanie. “Ask her to please change the order to Demerol or codeine – something that won’t put me so out.”

A matronly red-cheeked woman wearing granny glasses had cheerfully spiked another needleful of morphine into his IV line. “No such luck. Dr. Collins says you need your rest.” She relaunched him to the other side of the universe.

The soft squeak of crepe soles approaching his bed snapped him into the present, and a white shape glided toward him in the darkness.

“Who’s there?” he yelled, jackknifing upright.

“It’s Tanya Wozcek, Dr. Garnet. Quiet down. I shouldn’t even be here.”

“Tanya?”

She snapped on his bedside lamp. The light caught the bristles of her short hair and turned it into a silvery brown aura. “I heard you were admitted. All the women on my floor are talking about what a weird coincidence it is, you getting sick after asking all those questions about Bessie. I had to make sure you were all right, so I slipped away.”

“I’m okay,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Chaz Braden hasn’t been near you, has he? I mean, is there any way he could have made you ill?”

Whatever he suspected Braden of doing, the last thing he needed right now was an outlandish rumor casting himself as the man’s latest victim. Should he or Mark ever find enough evidence to lay charges against Chaz, he could just imagine what a defense lawyer would say. “So Chaz Braden, in addition to murdering Dr. Kelly McShane, making Dr. Bessie McDonald slip into a coma, and firing a shot at Dr. Mark Roper, also managed somehow to poison Dr. Earl Garnet, even though no one can tell us when or how. Is there an MD in Manhattan he hasn’t attacked?”

“No, I haven’t even seen him since last Saturday. And though I appreciate your concern, I insist you don’t go spreading-”

“That doesn’t mean he won’t take advantage of your being here.”

“Tanya, don’t get carried away-”

“Dr. Garnet, for God’s sake, he got to Bessie. He could get to you the same way, or have someone sabotage you for him.”

That gave him pause. Still, such talk had to stop. “No way,” he said, even as he began to wonder about whom Braden might have hired to poison him. “There hasn’t been anyone near me, and if we go around making unsubstantiated allegations, no one will ever believe us once we do get evidence-”

“Dr. Collins has got you on morphine, for Christ’s sake. A squad of Marines could march in here, and there’d be times you wouldn’t know.” As she leaned in to speak with him, the illumination from the lamp caught her face from the side, exaggerating the shadows around her mouth and eyes. “So tell me, how do you feel?”

“Crappy.” He grinned at his choice of word.

Her worried expression continued to hover over him like an overwrought half-moon. “But are your symptoms what they should be, or has he done something else to you?”

Let’s see, he thought. Excruciating pain, nausea, a bellyful of writhing snakes, and soon to come, promising more delights. Maybe vomiting, most certainly the runs. Yeah, Tanya, that seemed exactly right. What a relief. I’ve only got one thing wrong with me, with or without any help from Chaz Braden. Clenching his jaw even tighter against a new volley of cramps, he muttered, “Of course they are.” Now go away, so I can twist and squirm in peace.

“What’s in here?” She turned to read the label of his IV bag.

“Normal saline, with extra potassium, exactly as it should be.”

“And who prepared it?”

“Dr. Collins herself. She did it to save the nurses – Oh, God.” All at once he felt scalded inside, as if something were shredding the walls of his intestines.

“What is it?”

“Just please leave. I’ve got to call the nurse.”

“For more morphine?”

“Whatever.”

“Why not Demerol-”

At the moment he didn’t care. “I’ll ask for it. Now, please get out of here.”

“Who gives you your shots? Always the same person?”

“Yes! She looks like Santa Claus in drag. Now dammit, Tanya, I’m ringing my buzzer.” He flayed at it with one hand, cradling his stomach with the other.

“Okay,” she said, pressing it for him, then heading to the door, “but I’m keeping an eye on you.”

He let out a long moan, and twisted himself into a pretzel.

Two hours later he fell and cut his head making a rush for the toilet as the remainder of his symptoms, long expected, kicked in.

That put an end to the morphine.

It also earned him a tube down his stomach.

His life became sandwiched between basins at one end, bedpans at the other, and the unremitting agony of a gut on fire in between.

They started giving him Demerol, but it barely muted the pain. A second dose didn’t work much better, other than to make him sleepy. He knew not to request a third. It’d have the same effect as morphine as far as suppressing his gag reflex, and he’d be choking on vomit.

“How about we ask Dr. Collins about a tube in your trachea to protect your airway? Then we could knock you right out,” the nurse with red cheeks suggested.

He declined. Then he thought, “Wait a minute. Weren’t you on the day shift?” he asked, fearing he’d let himself get disoriented.

“Dr. Collins asked that I switch to nights, just so you got the best of care.”

Oh, great!

By dawn he felt like an empty husk. “I’m dehydrating,” he told Santa, trying to prop himself up on one elbow. He flopped back, unable to bear the weight. “The IVs aren’t keeping up with the fluid I’ve lost. And better check my potassium. My muscles are so weak I can hardly move.”

“This isn’t a service station, Dr. Garnet.” Her icy tone sounded as cold as the North Pole and just as hostile, making it clear he wouldn’t be breaching the divide between patient and staff on her watch. But she sped up the IV.

By the end of her shift he could barely hold an emesis basin.

“And how are we today?” Melanie asked, disgustingly chipper as she swept in at 7:00 A.M. on the wings of a crisp lab coat, obviously giving him the honor of being her first case for morning rounds. A semicircle of sleepy residents sporting more wrinkled wear shuffled in after her and formed a small white amphitheater at the foot of his bed.

“As you recall,” she began, addressing her entourage without giving him a chance to answer, “Dr. Garnet came into ER over twenty-four hours ago with symptoms of bacterial enteritis characterized by inordinate pain, yet a relatively delayed onset of diarrhea. With this subtle discrepancy, I suspected this might be E. coli 0157:H7, rather than the more typical organisms we might expect. Of course I withheld antibiotics pending cultures. As I passed through bacteriology this morning, I picked up the preliminary results. All sorts of normal E. coli are being grown as would be the norm, but no salmonella, no shigella, and no Campylobacter. That means, I think it’s reasonable to assume that hidden amongst these noninfectious E. coli, we’ll find the infectious strain, or a serotype close to it, that I initially suspected. Of course we’ll have to wait a full forty-eight hours…”

As Melanie went on and on, Earl felt like a specimen laid out in front of her and began to resent the gleeful way she talked about her probable diagnostic coup, oblivious to the agony he was in. It’s not all about you, Melanie, he wanted to yell at her, figuring she must have used the word I over two dozen times. He remembered when no one, including her, thought she’d make it through medical school. Well, she might have gotten smarter, but her bedside manner remained the pits.

He curled up on his side again, as red-hot spasms did laps from one end of his gut to the other.

She finished her spiel, told him she’d be back, and was out the door with her posse before he could stop her.

But she had to increase his IVs. Check his potassium. Listen to him lie about not being Kelly’s lover. “Melanie!”

No reply.

Son of a bitch!

Minutes later she whisked back into the room, all smiles and shaking a new IV bag with a big sticker on it indicating she’d added a twenty milliequivalents dose of potassium. In seconds she’d replaced the old with the new and had it running into him at a good clip. Turning to his other arm, she produced a rubber tourniquet from her pocket and tied it snugly around his biceps, then gave his veins a swipe with a cold alcohol swab. They bulged, glistening blue, and he shivered, thinking of the toxins coursing through them.

“You always draw bloods and start IVs on your own patients?” he said, trying to make small talk in the face of knowing too damn well the assault that his intestines, kidneys, pancreas, and brain were under. Even if he didn’t die, he could still end up with seizures or diabetes or be on dialysis.

“Yeah, I’m known for it,” Melanie said, taking yet another tube of his blood. “What the hell, nurses being busy as they are. Treat ‘em right by giving them one less thing to do, and they’re on your side for life, right, Earl?”

He tried to grin at her in agreement, but it felt more like a grimace. Flippant banter between physicians was how they normally coped with the life-and-death tensions that went with the job – a kind of whistling past the graveyard. But when that grave might be his, the schtick grew a little thin.

She leaned closer. “And in your case, given your suspicions about the cause of Bessie McDonald’s coma, I think it best I handle as many procedures on you as is humanly possible. I mean, after our drink the other night, I started to think. Do you know how many ways a doctor could secretly do away with a hospitalized patient, yet never get caught? It’s unreal.”

With that, she bade him good-bye, and left.

Thanks for the comforting words, Melanie, he wanted to call after her. Instead, he simply lay there, trying to put what she’d said out of mind. Only to end up thinking instead about the surface of his gut shredding itself raw as the E. coli bacteria deepened their hold and even more toxins flooded into his bloodstream. He tried to prepare mentally for the hemorrhages that were bound to follow. What lay ahead wasn’t hard to imagine. He’d seen too many patients lying in their crimson waste to have any illusions about it. He started to regret having lied to Janet about the seriousness of it all. He wanted to see her, to see Brendan. Especially if – No, he mustn’t think that way. Wouldn’t, dammit. But another round of pain skewered him so hard he couldn’t help but think the worst.

That same morning, Friday, November 23, 8:05 A.M.

Hampton Junction

Mark navigated the red Jeep by following the loom of the road under a foot of fresh snow.

“Still not answering,” Lucy said, snapping her cellular shut.

They’d been trying to raise Victor since seven.

The coffee he’d gulped down before leaving the house seemed to repercolate itself at the back of his throat. Let him be getting wood. Or be gone for a walk. Maybe off on a drive.

But the Victor he knew would not only have been by the phone, eagerly awaiting Mark’s call, ready to divulge whatever he’d discovered, but also would have called Mark by now, perhaps a dozen times over.

Ice coated everything, and the frozen world seemed metal hard, cast in silver, gray, and black. Even the shiny surface of the snow had a jaggedness to it.

Mark’s grip tightened on the wheel.

Victor’s car stood in the driveway.

A Tiffany lamp glowed warmly behind the front window.

No smoke rose from the chimney.

They walked up the unshoveled steps and knocked on the front door.

No sounds came from inside.

Mark reached for the handle, turned, and shoved the door open.

It revealed a long, dim, central hallway leading toward the back of the house.

Empty.

“Victor?” he called.

No answer.

“It’s Mark Roper and Lucy.”

Still no reply.

Mark stepped inside, making his way between the antique tables and shelves loaded with porcelain figures that lined the walls. The place seemed cold. “Stay here,” he said, continuing down the corridor. A peek through the door on his right revealed a magnificent mahogany dining room table and china cupboard, but no Victor. The door on the left opened into a small living room dominated by a baby grand but otherwise empty.

He followed the hallway toward the back, coming to a swinging door at the end that he presumed led to the kitchen. “Victor?” he repeated, the floorboards creaking under his boots. The air here felt cooler still.

He pushed his way through.

The back door was open. Halfway across the threshold lay Victor, facedown, his legs covered with drifted snow. A half dozen logs lay scattered on the floor in front of him.

Mark swallowed once, walked in, and knelt by his head. The skin was ice-cold. He felt for a carotid pulse, knowing he wouldn’t find any.

Whenever Mark found himself alone with a dead body, the absolute silence of the corpse unnerved him the most. No soft sounds of air moving in and out of the lungs, no brush of clothing against the skin with each inhalation or expiration, no tiny cricks that tendons sometimes make when a person moves, not even a gurgle from the stomach. He instinctively slowed his own breathing, so as not to disturb that stillness, and the world around him seemed to go quiet as well. It was as if all that dead flesh, like a black hole, sucked the sounds of life from the room.

What had happened appeared obvious. An overweight, hypertensive, diabetic man had gone out to get wood in the snow, and the exertion had brought on a heart attack. Except he must have initially fallen outside, Mark thought, noticing recent scratches on Victor’s wrists. They were identical to the ones he himself had received the other night while running from his pursuer, his wrists plunging through the icy crust of the snow each time he slipped.

Maybe that outside fall had been a simple slip, or due to the initial symptoms of what killed him, and he’d been able to pick up the logs and continue to the back porch.

He looked around at the once-cozy room where Victor had prepared meals, mostly to dine alone. Brightly embroidered wall hangings offered homespun encouragement for the future, confidently predicting: MY PRINCE WILL COME; A KITCHEN IS THE HEARTH OF A FAMILY’S HOME; A COUPLE’S LOVE IS A FEAST FOR LIFE. Beside these were photos of a young man whom Victor had told him about. His first name was Brad, and he had died the year before Victor moved here. They’d been lovers for over a decade. Victor thought a period of time in the country would make it easier to get over his grief and move on. It never happened.

Mark snapped open his phone to call Dan. Only when he saw the blurry numbers did he realize his eyes were full of tears. He stayed kneeling, wiping them clear, whipsawed between sad and angry, not really understanding why. After all, he’d seen patients die before, even people who had called him friend.

He heard the floorboards creaking. “Did you find him?” Lucy asked from out in the corridor.

He tried to warn her back, but she stepped through the door.

“Oh, no!” Her hands flew to her mouth as she sank to her knees by his head. “The dear, dear man.” She reached out and ran her fingers along the side of Victor’s face, brushing the tip of his magnificent mustache.

Mark quickly turned away. Victor would never feel her simple gesture, just as in his last years he’d so rarely felt the caress of someone who loved him.

“Let’s wait in the car,” he said to Lucy. “I’m going to call Dan and treat this place as a crime scene, so don’t touch anything on the way out.”

“A crime scene?”

Mark nodded. If there was anything to Victor’s last message, his death had been damn convenient to someone.

“No forced entry, nothing broken, no suggestive marks on the body. Suspicious as hell, right?” Dan asked when Mark told him to treat the death as a possible homicide.

“I know it sounds crazy, Dan, but humor me. Too many timely illnesses have happened on this case.” Mark filled him in on what Victor had been up to and how Earl had to be admitted to NYCH.

As Dan listened, his scowl deepened, but in the end, he pulled out the yellow tape. “You realize I’m on thin ice here,” he muttered, cordoning off the driveway.

Within half an hour men and women in dark blue jumpsuits, SARATOGA SPRINGS P.D. written on the back, were crawling all over the house using Ziploc evidence bags and tweezers to collect every stray hair, thread, or broken nail they could find. A pretty blond woman, her regulation peaked cap worn backward, hunched over Victor’s computer and carefully covered the keys with a fine white powder. “Look at this, Chief,” she said, summoning Dan to her side. “Most of his prints have been partially smudged out.”

“Wiped?” Mark asked, leaning in to see.

Dan shook his head. “More like someone’s used it while wearing gloves.”

“Can I try and turn it on?”

The woman stood aside. “I’m all finished. Be my guest.”

Mark pushed the ON button, and the screen flickered to life. Against a background of tropical fish, it requested an access code. “Have you got someone who can hack into these things?”

Dan chuckled. “Yeah. They’re called kids.”

“Seriously.”

“There’s a white-collar crime unit in Albany. They’ve done a few favors for me from time to time.”

“Anything quicker?”

“We’ve got some floppies and CD-ROMs back at headquarters programmed to search for passwords,” the woman said as she packed away her supplies. “I could give them a try. But we’d need a warrant.”

The prospect of learning what Victor had found out, like scent to a hound, unleashed a rush of adrenaline in Mark. “Great. I’ll come with you-”

Victor’s phone beside the computer started to ring. They all looked at each other. Mark took the initiative, and picked up the receiver. “Victor Feldt’s residence.”

“Victor?” It was a woman’s voice. She sounded young, but he couldn’t be sure.

“Who’s speaking, please?”

“I need to speak with Victor.”

“I’m Dr. Mark Roper. Can I know who’s speaking?”

“Dr. Roper? Is Victor all right?” She sounded alarmed.

“Can I know who’s speaking, please?”

“Oh, God, what’s happened?”

“Are you family-”

He was cut off by a dial tone.

He tried *69 to get the caller’s number.

It had been blocked.

“Don’t get too excited about our CD program helping you,” the technician said on her way out the door. “Whoever was at the keyboard after Victor might have gotten in and already trashed everything, or worse, substituted new data for old, which means the original is really gone.”

3:40 P.M.

Hampton Junction

A low gray sky had slid over the valley, as oppressive as a slab of cement.

“Earl, it’s Mark. How are you feeling?” He’d asked Lucy to drive so he could use the phone.

“Mark? Frankly, I don’t feel too good.”

He sounded groggy as hell. “I’m not surprised. Melanie told me what happened to you. Are you able to talk? It’s urgent.”

“Talk’s about all I can do.”

“You’re sure you’re able? I could call back.”

“Now you’ve got me dying of curiosity. Shoot!”

Mark briefly explained who Victor was and everything that had happened to him.

“You think he was killed because of what he discovered?” Earl asked at the finish. His voice had become hard-edged, with none of its previous languor.

“If so, it was very cleverly staged. Even the lividity matched how we found him.” The purplish discoloration where venous blood pooled, then clotted in the lowest points of the body during the first hours after death was an indelible record of the person’s position when he died. A pattern that didn’t conform to how the body lay would indicate someone had subsequently moved or repositioned the corpse. “I’ve arranged to do an autopsy on him tomorrow morning at Saratoga General, so I’ll be able to pick up obvious signs of foul play. And I’m going to screen his blood for every drug I can think of that could precipitate an MI. The lab people are going to scream, but I’m on my way there now to make sure I’ll have everything I’ll need. But there may be no signs or drugs to find.”

“And you’ve no idea what he turned up?”

“Nope.”

Earl exhaled into the phone. “How can your man and whatever he found have anything to do with Kelly’s murder?”

“I’ve no idea yet. We’re going to try and get into his computer.”

Silence reigned on the line.

“Earl?”

“I’m here. Just thinking, to see if I can put any of this together.”

“What you ought to be thinking about, with opportune comas and heart attacks going around, is if someone made you sick as well.”

More silence.

Finally, Earl said, “To be honest, I’ve started to wonder the same thing. My end of the investigation has sure as hell been sidelined, if that’s the motive.”

“I’m afraid it might not end at that.”

Again more silence.

“Anyone try to get near you who shouldn’t?”

“You mean like Braden? No.”

“Earl, get somebody you can trust to stay in your room. Can Janet join you?”

“I’m not putting her in danger.”

“Then hire a guard. Jesus, man, if we’re right, you’re a sitting duck.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“You’re sure? Why don’t I make the arrangements?”

“I said I’ll take care of it. Got to hang up now. Goddamn nature calling!”

The line went dead.

“How is he?” Lucy asked.

“Not so good.”

“Hiring a guard, now that’s a good idea. Do you think he’ll do it?”

“I don’t know. But if he hasn’t by later tonight, I will.”

The Braden mansion came into view, all its parts coated in gleaming white, again reminding him of a bird, but iced over this time, trapped in midflight. And the limousines were gone. The lack of tracks in the drive meant they’d left during the night.

“Hunting season over?” Lucy said.

She drove in silence after that, her lips drawn in a tight line. As he watched her profile in the thin winter light, her skin seemed pale, translucent even. The tiny furrows at the corners of her eyes narrowed. “Mark, may I give you some advice?”

He smiled. Whenever a woman asked if she could give him advice, he inevitably got it, wanted or not.

“You better take care,” she continued, without waiting for his permission.

“In what sense?”

“You don’t get it, do you?”

“How do you mean?”

“If you’re right about Bessie, Victor, and Dr. Garnet, you could be next.”

3:45 P.M.

New York City Hospital

Mark’s phone call and the news about Victor Feldt galvanized Earl, made him realize the extent this business might be a killing game. It sent his mind racing through possible scenarios – when he wasn’t writhing in pain.

If he’d been deliberately poisoned, and the bug was indeed E. coli 0157:H7, then the normal incubation before the onset of symptoms was three to nine days, but sometimes as short as two. It could have been slipped into his food or drink anytime since he arrived in New York last Saturday up to Tuesday evening.

The reception? Unlikely, since no one else was sick – unless someone hired a rogue waiter to do the job. The same went for the hotel. But why increase the chances of getting caught by bringing in an outsider who might later blab everything to the police? The smart thing would be to act alone.

So when?

In the bustle of the hospital cafeteria? Someone could have been close to him in line, slipped something into his food or drink. But that raised other questions. How would the person have transferred the organism to his food? The easiest way to transport it would have been in water. But he would have noticed if someone had soaked his plate – unless it was added to an already full cup or glass. Or was in such a small quantity he wouldn’t have detected it. Still, the pouring move would be tricky, since the person would likely have used a sort of container and acted when nobody was looking. With a lot of people around, somebody else might easily see. No that wasn’t it-

“Dr. Garnet?” Tanya Wozcek poked her head in the door, greeting him with a big smile. “How are you feeling?”

The pain only lapped at his innards for the moment, temporarily spent. “Okay, I guess.” As she approached his bedside, he tensed.

She eyed his IV bags and checked the rate of flow. “Everything still what you’d expect?”

“Pretty much. Except I’m more goddamned weak than ever.”

She frowned. “I peeked at your test results. Potassium, lytes, and hematocrit – they all seem fine.”

“Well, I sure don’t.”

She studied him, her overly intense gaze flicking to the IV bottle and back to him again. The movement made him uneasy, and a chill swept through him. What did he know about her, anyway? He’d taken her word about her devotion to Bessie McDonald. What if the opposite were true? As Bessie’s nurse, she’d have had an easy time secretly injecting her with anything, including a dose of short-acting insulin. And what better way to mislead him, loudly voicing her suspicions and concern? No, it didn’t make sense. She wouldn’t have had to voice anything to cover up what happened to Bessie. Yet Tanya had raised his own doubts about the coma. If she just kept quiet, most likely he would have dismissed it as an unfortunate but plausible outcome for a woman with a history of strokes, exactly the way everyone else had. Then again, that could all have been a clever way of winning his trust, so she could get close to him.

“Results can be wrong,” she said, her somber expression still disquieting. She reached for the tray of blood-taking equipment that Melanie had left by his bedside. “Let me check them again. I’ll submit the sample under my name, in case someone’s been tampering with your readings.”

She was as paranoid as he needed to be.

Still not entirely certain he trusted her, he gingerly held out his arm. Because he’d seized on a strategy that could bring everything to a head. Let whoever it was make a move. Odds were his would-be assassin had some mortal complication from his toxic E. coli infection planned for him. That meant sooner or later they’d come face-to-face. So get the showdown over with. The trick? To be ready.

Suspect everyone.

Stay alert.

And keep tucked into his bedclothes a handful of syringes. They had three-inch needles that he’d already stolen off the tray of blood-taking equipment. Weak as he was, he could drive them into an eye of the attacker.

Even Tanya’s.

She slid the gleaming tip of her needle into his vein, and he poised himself to spring at the first sign of her doing anything bizarre.

But the woman expertly finished the task, pressed a piece of cotton to the puncture site so it wouldn’t bleed, and smiled. Then she rushed toward the door. “I’m taking this to the lab myself,” she said. “I’ll be back at eleven, when my shift ends.”

Earl loosened his grip on the makeshift weapon but remained tense. He couldn’t stay awake forever; eventually he’d have to hire a security guard. Even then he’d only be delaying an adversary who had already gotten to him once without his knowing. It would also tip him or her off that he, Earl Garnet, was onto the fact he was a target. Unless Janet hired the people in the guise of a twenty-four-hour nursing service. Still, better to chance luring the killer in now, while this creep still believed Earl to be unprotected as well as unaware. Having already refused any more Demerol, he counted on pain to keep him from falling asleep, at least until morning. If by then nothing had happened, he’d ask Janet to bring on the watchdogs.

As he lay waiting, the afternoon light waned, and a thickening sludge of dirty brown smog nuzzled the window.