The Inquisitor

Chapter 21

Janet's next few hours came to her in snatches.

She heard Earl yelling into a two-way radio that a hydro worker must have given him, demanding an ambulance, an incubator, and vials of protamine zinc, the antidote to heparin.

Seconds later the attendants seemed to be putting her on a stretcher.

She heard snippets of conversation about CPR and possible organ retrievals.

"Don't bring the bastard to St. Paul's!" she heard Earl snap.

The next moment she found herself in the back of a swaying vehicle, a siren rising and falling above the hiss of tires on the road and the battering of rain against the roof. Earl hovered over her, setting up portable oxygen tanks, inserting several IVs to infuse her with normal saline, and administering the first injection to counteract the hemorrhage.

"Let me hold him," she said, her voice sounding hollow to her own ears.

The rest of the way she comforted their son in a blanket, clutching him to her, refusing to surrender his tiny form back to the isolation of a plastic chamber just yet. This may be the only time he feels me hold him, she thought, and warned Earl off with a sharp glance when he suggested putting a line in one of the child's veins. Time enough for tubes and needles later.

They pulled up to the unloading dock and the rear doors of the vehicle flew open.

A pair of nurses she recognized from the preemie unit leapt inside, their uniforms a cliche of powder blue and baby pink. "We've got him, Dr. Graceton," the older of the two said, carefully lifting him, so little and so light, from Janet's hands to the isolette.

They transferred it onto a cart and ran off, wheeling the Plexiglas chamber between them.

Like a miniature coffin, Janet thought, and her insides gave a wrenching twist. "Stay with him," she ordered Earl, interrupting the string of orders he issued as his ER team rushed her into a resus room.

"I've got Janet," a familiar voice said. Michael Popovitch stepped to her side, the concern in his eyes at odds with the wrinkles of an attempted smile.

The ridges of anxiety on Earl's face rose up in surprise. "But you're not on-"

"They called me in. Now go."

"Thank you-"

"Get!"

Earl nodded, squeezed Janet's hand, and whispered to her, "I love you," then ran out the door.

"My thanks too, Michael," she said quietly. All the ER doctors were competent, but some, like Michael, held the distinction of being a physician's physician, that rare breed not afraid to take care of his own.

By the time he added red cells and fresh frozen blood to Janet's IVs, then got her to ICU, her vitals had steadied and her bleeding had started to subside.

She drifted in and out of nightmares that had her trapped back in her car, screaming at Thomas Biggs, demanding, "Why?"

Awake, she anguished about the baby. Had the violent labor injured him? Had the heparin thinned his blood? Had the combination of drug and trauma led to internal bleeding, in particular the dreaded complication of a brain hemorrhage?

Sometime before dawn she started half awake. Through barely open eyes, she saw Earl leaning over her and felt his hand, free of its glove, stroking her hair. Even in the dim glow of her night-light she could tell that his eyes were washed clear of the worry and dread from before.

He must know from the initial tests and examinations that the baby should be all right.

Her own fear released its grip, and she sank into a dreamless, exhausted sleep.

Two days later, Saturday, July 19, 11:10 a.m.

Preemie Unit, Obstetrical Department, St. Paul's Hospital

"Thomas Biggs was Jerome Wilcher's son," Earl began, settling into the chair by Janet's bed.

"His son?" She'd only just been wheeled upstairs to the obstetrical floor, where the baby could room with her. Though still wan from her ordeal, her color had improved at the prospect of holding the recently named Ryan Graceton Garnet in her arms. She kept glancing toward the door, expecting the nurses to bring him to her any second. Yet she'd also insisted that Earl tell her everything he'd learned about why Thomas Biggs had done what he did. She seemed to need an explanation, as if that would somehow make it easier to recover from the horror of her ordeal. "I thought Jerome and his wife had no children."

"Thomas's mother had been one of his mistresses."

"Really?" The revelation grabbed her full attention for a few seconds, then she resumed her watch of the door.

"Are you sure you want to hear this now?" He'd spent the last two days on the phone tracking fragments of information, then pieced it together sitting by her side in ICU while she slept. Whenever the nurses allowed, he also visited the nursery to hold the tiny, scrawny-limbed little boy with a wrinkled red face under a straight-up brush of black hair. He would watch in wonder as the miniature fingers of a doll-sized hand tentatively closed on his own gloved finger, barely able to reach halfway around it, yet exerting a titan's pull on his heart. To let the sordid, twisted story of Thomas Biggs intrude on such sacred moments seemed a sacrilege, yet it insinuated itself, each time leaving Earl weak-kneed at how closely that legacy of buried pain and obsession had touched Ryan and Janet.

She glared at him. "How the hell did you find out?"

"Through Cheryl Branagh. After my conversation with her Wednesday, she began to think that my idea of someone caring enough about Jerome Wilcher to avenge his death might not be so crazy. I made a call to the cemetery where she remembered attending the funeral, giving the caretaker a story that former colleagues wanted to include the late doctor in a hall of honor but were unable to track down any family members. The caretaker, demonstrating most people's willingness to give doctors confidential information, looked up who had been paying the maintenance for the grave. He found a Mrs. Kathleen B. Otterman, her address on a rural route somewhere in Tennessee."

"The B stood for Biggs?"

"Right. It was her maiden name- she's a divorcee. But I'd no idea of that when I first phoned. The woman herself wouldn't come on the line to talk with me, but her sister gabbed readily enough. Said Katie, as she called her, had been an invalid for years. I asked outright if they knew Thomas Biggs. 'Thomas?' she said. 'Oh, my God, what's happened?' I told her just about the electrocution, not the rest of what he'd done, letting it sound like an accident. Then I told her what hospital they'd sent him to. From the way she went to pieces, he undoubtedly meant a lot to her, and she kept saying, 'This will finally kill Katie.'"

"Is he still alive?"

"More a heart-lung preparation from what I hear. He's got spurts of brain activity that no one can really account for, enough that they won't pull the plug to chop him for parts just yet, though his kidneys and liver are spoken for."

She shuddered. "But what's the rest of the story? I mean, he'd have been what, thirteen when Jerome killed himself? And the man probably wasn't much of a dad, no? Why the hell would he go after Stewart now?"

"I've spent forty-eight hours trying to figure that out. I'm afraid all I could get were secondhand scraps of information, so it's been more filling in the gaps than anything else."

"But what about the police? Won't they-"

"The woman investigating Stewart's death, Detective Lazar, spoke with the county sheriff where Biggs's mother and aunt lived. He knew all the dirt about the family, and gave the impression most of the locals did too. According to him, Thomas's mother had still been married when she started having an affair with Jerome Wilcher. She'd worked as a technician at one of the labs he visited where they were doing research trials for one of his projects. After getting pregnant, she divorced her husband but kept her married name and raised Thomas on her own. Jerome Wilcher visited a lot but must have kept his little family a secret from his New York colleagues- probably because of that ex-wife who kept trying to clean him out financially. Thomas and his mother apparently never got much support, but at Jerome's death, they found out he'd set up a trust for Thomas's university education. Except Katie went off the deep end."

"How do you mean?"

"Once Jerome hung himself, she no longer saw any reason to be discreet, though most of the locals knew what was going on anyway. But she didn't just begin to speak openly about their long relationship. She obsessed about Jerome's death and belabored anyone who would listen with all the details about how he had been sabotaged by colleagues at NYCH. One tidbit that became common knowledge as a result of her going on all the time is that apparently Thomas discovered Jerome's body. The night he killed himself Katie and the boy were due to arrive on one of their rare trips to visit him in New York. Jerome must have been in such deep despair over the collapse of his career that by then he could no longer face them.

"And if that weren't trauma enough for Thomas, the mother went nuts afterward, first trying to hang herself in her basement at the farmhouse. Local rumor had it that she staged the event so Thomas would find her in time to cut her down. But the real damage she did him, according to the neighbors, was done over the long term. When she ran out of sympathetic people willing to listen to her ranting about how Jerome had been so heinously wronged, she unleashed it all on Thomas, feeding him a steady diatribe of hatred against those whom she held responsible for his father's death. To his credit, he moved out as soon as he could, but that wasn't until four years later, when he accessed the trust fund and got himself into a community college as far away as possible. But his mother had unquestionably done her work on him, marked him indelibly- much the way, I suppose, a terrorist might indoctrinate a son to be a suicide bomber- spooning him a daily diet of malice against the intended target."

"He went into medicine just to avenge his father?"

"I doubt that. Again relying on what the locals say, it seems he always wanted to be a doctor, just like the father he never really had- an understandable enough impulse. But his aspirations to follow in the old man's footsteps had an unmistakably morbid twist, thanks to Mama. With the smarts to have his pick of all the top schools, he chose the one where his father had been destroyed. Whether he went there with a plan in mind, to hunt down the one his mother held responsible for Jerome's death, we'll never know. But I doubt it. Otherwise, he probably would have come here straight off. Maybe he first wanted to make a mark where his father had been, and the compulsion to destroy the man who'd engineered his father's downfall only took hold later. And of course, there's the possibility his mother continued to egg him on. But again, that's all part of the story that I doubt we'll ever know."

"My God," she said, quietly, as if thinking out loud. "And he would have gotten away with it too, except for you starting to investigate Elizabeth Matthews's death."

"Yeah, he would have. And the real irony is, I don't think Thomas Biggs had anything to do with that woman's dying."

3:30 p.m.

Earl thought J.S. seemed worse than when he'd initially broken the news about Thomas to her. Her moods fluxed all over the place- flashed with outrage, plummeted into misery, roiled with disgust- and every one of the changes beamed at him through glistening dark eyes.

"It was an act. All a vicious act," she said the instant he stepped into her room. She'd also been transferred out of ICU that morning, the same as Janet.

"He fooled everyone, J.S." he told her. "Me, Janet, everyone."

"But I loved a lie. What the hell does that say about me, my instincts, my trusting anyone again?"

"I think Thomas believed his own lie most of the time. Escaped into it. He couldn't have pulled off that big a charade as an act. The whole thing was complex as hell, and none of us will ever encounter the likes of it again."

"You think that makes me feel better? I loved something unreal. And in the end, the bastard tried to kill me, for no reason other than what, a dry run for his plan to make Janet miscarry?"

"Oh, he had a reason. You were smart enough to eventually see what he feared that Janet and I would see, especially if I checked the records of people using pass cards when they weren't on duty."

"How do you mean I could have found him out?"

Earl swallowed, grateful for something he could answer. "Because he couldn't run his trials only during the nights he was on duty- not enough time- and because he didn't want you to know he was sneaking back into the hospital other nights, he did it only when you were safely at work, and not apt to want to spend the night with him."

She blushed. "It wasn't that often."

"Well, he couldn't risk you even phoning him in the middle of the night and wanting to know where he was. If you realized the killer worked only when you were safely in ER, you might catch on."

"But I didn't." She seemed as disgusted with herself as ever.

"Oh, I bet you had doubts but dismissed them. Look at those." Earl persisted, determined to dig up some evidence that might make her see she hadn't been totally naive. "They'd prove your instincts weren't all that bad, if only you trusted them enough."

She didn't respond, still looking morose, then all at once cocked her head at him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, quit beating yourself up. You probably weren't as completely fooled by him as I was. Take that business about the pass cards. He kept asking if I had started to check them yet. I didn't think much of it then, but now I realize that he'd been making sure I hadn't started yet. And there was other sneaky stuff I didn't twig to, such as how he ingratiated himself into our cluster study. His apparent enthusiasm to be part of it seemed in keeping with what an ambitious resident might want, but of course he was only out to keep an eye on how close we were getting to the truth. And now I recognize all the clever little ways he raised doubts about Stewart while apparently trying to champion him. But at the time, no way. He even got me and everyone else to want him on staff. So don't think you were alone in getting taken in."

"Nobody got taken quite the way I did."

He struggled to come up with a reply but flushed instead.

The defiance in her gaze died. "Sorry. It's me I'm angry at for being so stupid, not you."

"And I bet if anyone had doubts about the guy when none of us did, it's you." He didn't know anything of the kind but figured the challenge was worth a try if it checked her self-doubts even a little bit.

She fell silent again.

Maybe Susanne should try to talk with her, he thought.

She cocked her head at him again. "You know, there were some things I wondered about. The night we responded to Elizabeth Matthews's code, Thomas seemed particularly peeved that Yablonsky had called the resus team. It struck me as odd how he kept pressing the point, ridiculed her even, when a simple reminder to check a patient better the next time would have sufficed. But of course he probably hoped that by browbeating Yablonsky, she'd keep subsequent calls to a minimum. That way there'd be little likelihood of anyone noting anything suspicious, at least until he had everything ready to pin the deaths on Stewart." Her brow furrowed. "Unfortunately, that made her explode about you."

"She would have done that anyway, I figure." He wanted to keep her talking, as if it might prevent her from sliding back into the hole she'd been in. "In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Yablonsky hadn't already noted the increased mortality rate, being head nurse in charge of the records. Figuring how easily nurses could get fingered once patients started dying in unexplained numbers, she planned to make certain she didn't get blamed, whatever the cause. I just happened to be handy."

Her expression became pensive. "You know, there's another thing that sounded a little too neat- the way he practically echoed all the feelings I had about losing my father at the age I did when he talked about his own father dying. At the time, I suppose, I figured the similarity meant we were soul mates. And when we talked about growing up in the country, we seemed to share common likes and dislikes there as well. But he was adopting all my likes and dislikes as his own, to fool me."

"It might have gone deeper than just a sham."

"How do you mean?"

"Given how he practically lived his part, maybe he used your feelings to shed his own. He made your memories and emotions his, like pulling on a new skin."

"Jesus, that's creepy."

"I think a lot of how he presented himself came from inventing his new history on top of true events, then making it part of his own memories, which is why he never had any major slip-ups."

She held her index finger up, as if about to point at something. "But he wasn't foolproof, even in his pretending to help you and Dr. Graceton. At first he didn't have any ideas and I had to push him, then all at once he was Mr. Helpful. That struck me as funny too, that he didn't come up with his own ideas sooner. He probably thought at first that everyone going after you would muddy the waters, then got worried you'd find out too much, hence his getting closer to you so he could steer you wrong."

A little spark had appeared in her eye that hadn't been there before. By being able to pick holes in the deception that had deceived her so profoundly, she would gradually cut the lie down to size and, he hoped, become less fearful of being taken in again. "You see, J.S.? Now why didn't you just tell me that at the time? Look at all the trouble we could have saved. You're so clueless."

She gaped at him a full ten seconds, puzzlement scrawled in the furrows of her forehead, the sagging of her jaw visible even behind her mask. Then she started to giggle. "Wait a minute, Dr. G., you're messing with me."

"Damn right. And I'll keep messing with you until you stop being so hard on yourself. And I bet if Jimmy were here he'd give you holy hell-"

The sudden pain that slashed through her eyes stopped him cold.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"Sorry, Dr. G. I still get really tired, really fast. Do you mind if I rest now?"

"No, not at all."

On the way out, he stopped by the nurses' station. "Has Jimmy Fitzpatrick been in to see J.S. yet today?" he asked the clerk.

The large ebony-skinned woman beckoned him closer. "Several times," she whispered. "But J.S. left orders not to let him in."

3:50 p.m.

Erie Basin, Buffalo, New York

A light chop slapped against the bow of Jimmy's canoe, but the combined power of his and Earl's stroke kept the sleek craft on an absolutely straight course. A breeze from the west cooled the skin, and the dazzle of sunlight off the dancing aquamarine surface made it impossible not to squint, even behind sunglasses.

But Earl, seated in the bow, remained tense. He knew when Jimmy had invited him out here it wouldn't be for the pleasure of a Saturday paddle. "So are we making a run for the Canadian border, Jimmy?" he said, deciding to break the ice. Since setting out twenty minutes ago, his host had been uncharacteristically quiet.

"Actually, I wanted to tell you I had a job offer."

Not what Earl expected. "Oh?"

"Denver, Colorado. They need a hospital chaplain, and as a bonus, I get a little parish to moonlight in outside the city- ranch country, where I can do my rounds on horseback. Lone rider stuff."

"Really? Are you going to take it?" The thought of St. Paul's without Jimmy sobered him.

"That depends."

"On?*

"Whether I'm going to be carrying some pretty nasty baggage or not. I won't let my name hurt these people."

Earl paddled in silence a few strokes, digging the water extra hard, reveling in the pull on his back muscles. "What about here?"

"No matter what, I'm resigning. You know I have to. I won't put you or anyone else in a position of covering up for me. Besides, my work here is done, with Wyatt stepping down and the young lions taking over. The question is, will that be the end of it?"

"You mean, am I going to help people figure out the complete explanation of what happened here? What good would that do anyone? Patients got the morphine they should have had in the first place. Nobody will be looking past Thomas Biggs to explain the corresponding shift in death numbers."

More silence, except Earl felt the surge of Jimmy's paddle make the boat leap ahead, creating its own small wake in the greater sea.

"How did you know?" Jimmy asked after a few seconds.

Earl exhaled, as if he'd been holding his secret like a breath. "There were two increases in the mortality rate on that floor. The initial one involved mainly people who were DNR, which meant they were likely near death and liable to have the most pain, and it occurred in the first three months of this year."

"So?"

"Thomas Biggs was doing one of his rural rotations in the Finger Lakes district. He couldn't have done it, and I had to cast around for another candidate. Thinking back, I remembered how you tried to fob me off with that story about the dark man when I wanted to take a close look at Palliative Care."

"Hey! That story's true, every word of it."

"Yeah, right. I also found it odd how you'd leapt to Yablonsky's defense during death rounds, since she personified the kind of indifference you detest. It didn't make sense unless you knew for certain that she hadn't caused Elizabeth Matthews's death. What happened? You were making your usual rounds when you slipped the people who needed it a shot of extra morphine, found the poor woman in agony, and for once her husband not at her side. So you gave her an injection, not realizing I'd already ordered a proper dose. At least you, or whoever else worked with you-"

"I'm not saying that-"

"Fine. Simply make sure your band of merry men, whoever they are, is disbanded before you leave. You do that, and I'm not going to be asking questions."

Jimmy said nothing for a few seconds, then chuckled. "Well, well, looks like you've a touch of the outlaw spirit as well."

"Maybe. Let's just say I'm willing to bend the rules when it makes sense. But I also intend to make you lone rider types obsolete around here. If there's wrongs to be righted, it'll happen legally. Get my drift? And that includes helping widows."

"So I can go to Denver without dragging along a potential scandal waiting to happen."

"You'll have no problems from me." I wish you wouldn't go, he almost added. Yet he knew in his heart that Jimmy had to leave. With him completely out of the scene, there'd be less chance of a misstep that might remind someone of his close proximity to the patients in Palliative Care.

"And to be thinkin' someone once accused you of not being one of the good guys," Jimmy said, and picked up the pace, forcing Earl to do the same. The increased speed made the waves clap more loudly against the red canvas shell that covered the cedar frame.

At each new level of speed, as soon as Earl matched his strength, Jimmy notched it higher, their breathing and the splash of water drowning out the sounds of the city behind them.

"What about you and J.S.?" Earl shouted.

"She needs time to trust herself again."

"And then?"

"I'll ask her to marry me."

Earl started to laugh. "Maybe you should at least court her with a few canoe rides first."

Sunday, July 20, 10:05 a.m. Palliative Care

"I'm going home for keeps," Sadie Locke told Earl, her eyes more alive than he'd ever seen them. When she'd left a request that he drop by, she'd said she had great news.

"Really?"

"Yes! Donny's arranged for someone to run the Lucky Locke Two so he can stay in Buffalo, and we're moving into our old home, along with the nurses he's hired, until…" She shrugged, seeming almost apologetic for broaching the subject of her pending death.

He smiled and took her hand. "That's wonderful, Sadie. Absolutely wonderful."

"And I hear you're a new dad. I'm so glad your wife and the boy are safe. What's his name?"

"Ryan."

"And I hear he has a brother?"

He smiled. Evidently she'd been finding out all about him. He didn't mind- in fact, he considered it a good sign that she still took an interest in the world around her. "Yes. Brendan. He's six."

"A good spread. Too close in age, and brothers fight."

The small talk continued until he decided he'd better get back downstairs to Janet. "Well, I have to be going, Sadie, and I'm delighted at your plans-"

"Dr. Garnet, can I ask you a personal question?"

"Sure."

"You've seen people die. I don't know what to expect. Is it always hard?"

He felt stunned by the question. And at a loss about how to answer. "Well, Sadie, it's very individual. But as long as pain is well treated, and I'm sure there'll be no problem with that now, most pass away very peacefully."

"I hear some fight and hang on. I don't want that."

He thought a moment. "You know, there's one thing that's always amazed me. Some people make a decision it's time to let go, and then the rest just happens. It's as if there's a fundamental life switch that's in us to throw, if we can access it. Don't ask me how, but over and over I've heard a dying patient say it's time, and then there's no stopping the process. Sometimes in just a matter of hours. When that happens, it's all calm and very natural."

"Do you think there's a heaven?"

"Whoa, Sadie. Maybe you'd better talk to Father Jimmy about that."

"Nonsense. He's a company man and is going to spout the party line. I want to hear a skeptic's point of view."

He chuckled. "A skeptic?"

"You know what I mean. No agenda to push."

He let out a long breath. "I don't know. I figure there's something a lot bigger than us out there." He remembered the time he'd felt like a drop of water returning to the ocean, but shut it out. That wouldn't comfort her. "You know, another thing I've noticed is that people with loved ones around find it easier."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Not only the dying, but facing the unknown that lies beyond. It's as if the friends and family are proof they're not a nobody, that they've led a good life, and if there is a reckoning, it'll work out."

"Like me having Donny."

"Like you having Donny. I mean, already it's made a difference. You're almost glowing."

"I am happy he's here, and relieved he's staying."

"So you see-"

"But what about the stories of seeing people on the other side? Is that heaven?"

He chuckled. "I guess it depends what they think of you, for better or worse."

"So you're a hell-is-other-people kind of guy."

"Except heaven can be other people too, if they think well of you." He started to think his answers sounded pretty good.

"No Exit"she said, almost dismissively.

"Pardon."

"No Exit. It's a play by Jean-Paul Sartre, an existential philosopher. Father Jimmy loaned me a copy. You're practically saying the same thing as that guy."

Earl said good night and retreated from the room, feeling he'd been whipped in Philosophy 101 by an octogenarian.

He lay in a gray zone.

I could see him below me.

Smelled the cloying, sick sweetness of his burns, felt the tube feeding oxygen to his seared lungs, and saw the glistening muscle that bulged through the deep fissures of his cracked skin.

But I floated above it all, no longer part of him.

Even the pain seemed distant.

But not the fear.

Out there in the darkness they waited.

Shrouded black shapes ready to take me, their silence as vast and overwhelming as the void behind them.

I didn't want to go there.

But I could feel myself being pulled inside out by their stares.

And one in particular who stood a little apart from the rest.

I didn't know him, but the ice in his gaze froze me with terror. I could feel the cold off him every time he drew near, and though I tried to scream, no noise came from my throat.

Yet he must have heard something, because he would recede a little, all the while looking at me with a hatred that putrefied any remaining shreds of life, further weakening my tie to the blackened husk below.

He moved on me again, sapping my resistance a little more.

I couldn't hold out much longer.

The shapes swayed expectantly.

And began to close in.