“I’m fine,” she said.
Distant footsteps could be heard behind Olsher, from the hallway. The deputy chief took a quick glance, then whispered, “Looks like you got a visitor.”
“What?” A visitor? At this hour? “Who is it, Larrel? Is it Beck?” Helen liked Beck, even though it was hard. Beck didn’t resent Helen’s rank, she merely was suspicious of anyone with rank. Which was normal and very human. Helen had been the same way when she first joined. However—
“It’s Tom,” Olsher piped to her. “See ya later.”
The name jolted her.
Tom.
Oh, no. What am I going to— This was a surprise she didn’t need. There was no time to prepare, no time to think out what she wanted to say, no time—
“Hi, Helen.”
Speechless. Locked in mental rigor. What am I going to say to him? What should I do? Yet here he was, standing right in her office. She’d been thinking about him off and on for the last several days, knowing she would have to confront him eventually but— Burying my head in the sand, as usual, she admitted. She missed him, she wanted to talk to him and try to work things out, but how could she? After that phony story about the hospital annex, an annex that didn’t exist?
Helen felt stifled. “Hi.”
“So, how have you been?”
“All right. Well, busy I should say.”
“I guess so, with all this P Street stuff wreaking havoc in the papers. I’ve had five FOIA requests already, for ID verification on Dahmer’s body. Even got a double-check order from the people running the Bureau’s Optical Latent Mainframe. It’s crazy.”
“Yeah,” was all Helen could say. She tried not to look at him but had to. Dressed as usual, in decent gray slacks, a white Christian Dior shirt, and a labcoat. The image kicked her back to any similar night in he past: they’d both be getting off late, he’d come pick her up, and they’d go back to his place and fall asleep in each other’s arms. It was comforting, it was nice. But…
Not tonight, she guessed.
Eventually he broke, shifted his stance. “Well, I’m not any good with small talk and neither are you. I guess the real reason I came was to, you know, find out what’s going on…with us, I mean.”
“I—” She couldn’t take her eyes off him. “I don’t know.”
Tom shrugged, looked awkwardly around the office as he spoke. “You have this paranoid idea that I’m seeing some other woman, but I’m not. It’s your imagination.”
Helen bit back a more perfunctory response. First of all, she was sick of being called paranoid, even though she knew she was. And how could he even say such a thing straight to her face. “Tom, look, I called the hospital to see if the annex number was the same one on your pager. And you know what they told me? They told me that there is no annex at the hospital.”
Tom shrugged again. “Of course there isn’t an annex at the hospital. The annex isn’t on the hospital premise, it’s downtown on Bilker Street.”
Helen’s eyes widened.
“It’s a supply repository, Helen, a warehouse. The hospital rents space there for inventory storage. Every hospital in the county rents space there. That’s where we keep our overstock, and certain deliveries are taken there if there’s no room at St. John’s. And that’s also the reason there was a different prefix on my pager. I would’ve explained it all if you’d have given me the chance.”
Helen continued to sit there with her eyes propped open, as if glaring at her own haste and, yes, her own paranoia. Her fingernail ticked against the desk, right next to the phone book.
“Go ahead and check if you don’t believe me.”
She couldn’t do that—that would be too much. And, now, it was plain to see just by looking at him that he was telling the truth.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“And to get back to my point. I don’t think we should trash our whole relationship because of something like this.”
Helen nodded in embarrassed agreement. In no time, she was rubbing her locket.
“So why don’t we, like, get together sometime soon and talk about things. Not right now—I need a little space right now and I’m sure you do too. But soon. I mean, if you want to.”
“I do want to,” she peeped.
“Okay, then. We’ll get together soon, okay?”
“Yes.”
“Take care—” He smiled. “And quit rubbing that locket.”
She smiled back, flushed, and watched him leave, sat there and listened to his footsteps disappear down the vacant hall.
How many more ways can you be an asshole, Helen? she asked herself. How many more ways can you screw up?
She tried to resist the impulse but couldn’t quite do it, and this made her feel even worse. Even now, the number she’d seen on Tom’s pager reminded burned in her head—224-9855—and in her reverse directory, she looked it up.
No surprise, either. 224-9855, BILKER MEDICAL SUPPLY ANNEX, 959 Bilker Street, N.W.
He was telling the truth.
Yeah, screw up a little more why don’t you, Helen? Chase every man out of your life forever. Paranoid bitch.
She wanted to get up just then, run after him, apologize and plead with him. I love him, she realized. I’ve got to tell him.
At the same time, though, her printer began to percolate, paper feeding automatically as her search request was finally answered.
M:\> MAC SEARCH SYSTEM REQUEST
FR: CLOSS, H. WSP VCU, CRED #/ID 455
DE: PROXIMAL THEFT REPORT/FED CONTROL #51995/ SUCCINICHOLINE /SCHILLER INC>/LOT #42239SV/EXP. 3-97/LICENSED UNDER U.S. PATENT #4,315,926
CASE NUMBER TH 1514 MADISON PD
M_INIT ALLOCATE SPEC MEMORY
STATE SIGNAL CODE 84CV/ COUNTY EMT VEHICLE #154 REPORTS THEFT OF CONTROLLED PHARMACEUTICALS ON 1500 BLOCK, UTAH STREET, MADISON.
Utah Street, Helen paused to muse. A ghetto block. It was more than that, though. The 1500 block, part of Madison’s Precinct Five, was the worse crime district in the city.
PARAMEDIC COOPER, C., REPORTED DEAD ON ARRIVAL TO ST. JOHN THE DIVINE’S HOSPITAL VIA MULTIPLE GUNSHOT WOUNDS TO THE ABDOMEN AFTER LONE ARMED ATTACKER ENTERED VEHICLE #154. DRIVER GOODWIN, D., SUFFERED HAIRLINE CRANIAL FRACTURE AND CONCUSSION AND NOW LISTED ON COMP LEAVE IN GOOD CONDITION. PHARMACEUTICAL VAULT REPORTED RANSACKED.
M:\>FIND [……………GO TO NEXT]
AMONG FDA CONTROL SUBSTANCES REPORTED STOLEN:
SEARCH OBJECT:
CARTON, ONE, TWELVE (12) .4 MG INTRAMUSCULAR VIALS OF PARALYTIC AGENT SUCCINICHOLINE SULPHATE (SOLUTION) [SEE LOT # ABOVE FOR MNFR REC.]
END OF SEARCH SYSTEM REQUEST
How do you like that? Helen thought, creaking back in her chair. An ambulance jacking. It happened all the time these days. Drug addicts would frequently make phony 911 calls to some remote, dark alley, overpower the paramedics, and steal any drugs that the vehicle might be carrying.
And this perp stole a carton of succinicholine sulphate?
An interesting find but it was useless to her without the date. Quickly she punched in the cited Madison PD case number, waited, stared at the screen at moment later.
FIND: MADISON PD CASE # TH 1514, PREC 5
CITED: SIGNAL 84CV/THEFT OF PROPERTY FROM REGISTERED COUNTY EMERGENCY VEHICLE