Treasure of the Dead

Chapter 25

Fabi heard the clinic manager — not Dr. Avila but another physician in charge of day-to-day operations— close his office door. She heard his key turn in the lock and then listened as his footsteps approached her office. The closest building exit to him was in the other direction, so Fabi guessed he was going out of his way to stop by her office, since her light was on and the door open. Anticipating his arrival within seconds, Fabi cleared her screen of the document she had been looking at and replaced it with a routine accounting form.

Sure enough, the manager — Fabi had already forgotten his name — turned into her office, jacket slung over his briefcase, keys in one hand. “Hey, Fabi — you doing all right?”

She beamed at him as if she had never had so much fun. “Oh yeah! Getting the new database up and running.”

The supervisor’s eyes flicked momentarily to her screen and then back to her eyes. “Glad to see you hit the ground running. But it’s your first day so don’t burn yourself out, okay? We like to keep our employees long-term around here.”

He left and Fabi waited a few minutes before resuming her research activities — waited until she heard the outside door close, faintly heard the sound of the manager’s car engine starting up. Then she got up from her desk and walked out into the hallway, looking both ways while listening carefully. She was pretty sure she was the last one in the clinic, but to be safe she did a walkthrough of the building. She didn’t need anyone catching her at what she was about to try. After completing a circuit of the facility and finding it deserted, Fabi made her way to the manager’s office.

His door was closed so she reached out and turned the knob, only to find it locked. Fabi found that to be a little suspicious. None of the other office doors were kept locked after hours. The building itself was reasonably secure; it had to be, since this was a health clinic where drugs were kept. But an office? The computers did contain information that could be considered sensitive — patient records, financial information — but that data was encrypted and password protected.

Maybe the manager was reluctant to leave his office open knowing that a brand new employee would be here after he left? He didn’t know her, after all. But still, he was aware she had volunteered under Dr. Avila’s umbrella of clinics on Haiti for some time now, and therefore should be considered trustworthy.

Fabi examined the lock more carefully. Not a serious affair like a deadbolt, but merely one of those stock doorknob locks meant more for convenience than anything else. She removed one of the bobby pins from her hair and used it to pick the lock. As a child growing up in Haiti, she’d had plenty of friends in school to show her these sort of tricks.

She stepped into the office and softly closed the door behind her. Leaving the room lights off and using a small keychain flashlight, Fabi took a quick look around the office. As expected, nothing at first glance seemed fishy. The manager had visitors to his office every day, in any case, so she wouldn’t anticipate anything not above board to be in plain view.

She walked behind the desk and eyed the computer. Powered completely off. She was no technology or hacking expert, and so no way was she going to try and get into that; she knew it would be protected, and even if she could get in, she wouldn’t know how to cover her tracks.

She surveyed the room again from this new vantage point. When her weak beam highlighted a rusty metal file cabinet, she moved to it. The piece of old furniture was about head high, with six deep drawers. She tried a couple of them, but they were locked. Eyeing the locking mechanism, Fabi swept a hand on top of the cabinet, but aside from a thick layer of dust, she came away empty. Then she eyed the desk again and moved back to it. Figuring these drawers would be locked, too, she tried the shallow one in the center beneath the computer keyboard. To her surprise, it slid open with a creak.

The contents were routine office supplies, but she lifted a plastic divider tray that held rubber bands and staples and smiled when she saw a small gold-colored key beneath it. She took it over to the file cabinet and tried it in the lock. It fit, and when she turned the key she felt the click of the lock disengaging.

She opened the top drawer and rapidly scanned the files it contained, held in hanging folders. These were patient records, and Fabi nodded her silent approval that they were kept in a secure fashion before moving on to the other drawers. Two more also contained patient records, while another two seemed to be devoted exclusively to routine clinic financials. Flipping through the folders in the bottom drawer, however, Fabi’s features took on a puzzled expression. What were these?

After a few minutes of examination, she determined that they were one-off projects of some kind. Each had its own budget and records. She was about to close the drawer when the title card of one of the folders, each of which appeared to be named for a different project, caught her eyes.

The same one she had come across earlier in the computer file. She plucked the folder from the cabinet and moved to the desk chair where she could examine its contents more thoroughly. She had just dug in when she heard footsteps coming down the clinic hall outside.

Quickly, Fabi doused her light and snapped the folder shut. The footsteps grew louder. She pulled the chair out and got beneath the desk.

Then the sound of the walking stopped, and the door to the office opened.