"I'm sure," Eric said, unable to keep impatience from his voice.
"Okay," Clarkson said after some thought. "Dr. Farrell, do you have a phone with a second extension?"
She nodded. "Dr. Najarian, I'm going to listen while you talk to this Dr. Blunt. If it sounds on the up-and up, I'll drive you in to White Memorial. Just remember, you're still under arrest. Any crazy stuff and you'll be back on the floor."
"I understand."
Ivor Blunt was outraged at the early hour.
Eric quickly found himself squirming in his seat as the crusty toxicologist questioned his every statement.
"Let me get this straight," Blunt said. "You want me to get up, shlep into the hospital, Turn on my equipment, and analyze some dust that was put on your cheek during a voodoo ceremony in downtown Auston?" i(Correci.
"]X. Najm, are you crazy?"
"What I am is poisoned, Dr. Blunt," Eric said evenly. "Please, you've got to help me."
"Doctor, try to see it my way. You come into my office asking if I can analyze a woman's blood for this toxin that's never been found in Massachusetts. Then, not twenty-four hours later, you're calling me from some podunk hospital, claiming to have been poisoned with the stuff."
"That's right, sir."
"You sick now?"
"N'of yet, no."
"If these men wanted you dead. why didn't they just put a bullet between your eyes?" be "I lieve they wanted to" make a point to the people they've been terrorizing, Eric said.
"errorizink with tetrodotoxin."
"That's right." There was a prolonged silence, during which Eric rattled off what prayers he knew.
"I think you're crazy," Ivor Blunt said finally, "but since you've already got me wide awake, and since I'll never get back to sleep over my wife's snoring, I'm going to do what you want."
"Thank you," Eric sighed. "Thank you, sir. We can be at your lab in forty-five minutes."
"Take your time. Bring me your powder and four red-top and one green-top tubes of blood."
"I'll have them drawn here."
"Fine. Do you have a personal psychiatrist on the staff?"
"No. No, I don't."
"That's too bad," Ivor Blunt said. don't like this, Bernard," Laura said, listening as Eric's apartment phone rang a ninth, then a tenth time. "I don't like this at all."
For nearly three hours they had sat in Bernard Nelson's office, drinking coffee, sorting through the material they had brought with them from the Gates of Heaven, and trying to locate Eric. There was a message from him at the Carlisle which had come in some time around ten, but since then, nothing. Five calls to his apartment and one to the hospital had gotten them nowhere.
The nervous energy generated by their break-in at the funeral home and their grisly discoveries was wearing off, and Laura was beginning to feel desperate for some sleep. Bernard Nelson was bearing up even less well, and had already taken a prolonged nap on his couch. They had decided, at least for the night, that she should steer clear of her hotel. If someone had tried to run her down, there was good reason to avoid anyplace she might be expected to be.
Their escape through a back door of the mortuary had seemed unnoticed.
But still, Bernard had driven around for nearly an hour, making absolutely certain no one was following them. Finally they parked in the alley behind his building and entered through the basement. Only when they were in his office with the curtains drawn did they begin to examine what they had gathered from Donald Devine's safe.
Before they did, however, Bernard placed a brief, anonymous call to the Boston police, suggesting that someone stop by the Gates of Heaven.
"Where could he be?" Laura asked, concern shadowing her face as she set the receiver down.
"Where did you say his parents lived?"
"Watertown."
"Maybe he went home and stayed over."
"Why wouldn't he have left the number at my hotel, or at least have called back?"
"I don't know, Laura." Nelson rubbed at his eyes.
"Listen, I hope you don't misunderstand what I'm about to say. I know you think a great deal of Eric.
And I suspect from what you've told me that those feelings are not misplaced. -But people are not always what they seem to be. You haven't known him that long. There are any number of things he could be into that he hasn't let you in on."
"Maybe." Laura thought for a moment and then added, "But I don't think so. I think we should go over to his apartment."
Bernard Nelson massaged the back of his neck and once again stretched out on the couch.
"Laura, a couple of days ago in East Boston, some heavies nearly tore the two of you apart. Yesterday afternoon someone probably tried to kill you. There's every reason to believe that whoever they are, they're watching his place as well as yours. If they've already got him, the best thing we could do is wait until they contact us. It's you, and your brother's tape, they're after, not him. If they haven't got him, well, then the best thing we can do is wait anyhow." He forced a smile. "Besides, one break-in a night is my limit."
"I have a key."
Bernard looked up at her and softened.
"Are you sure his phone's working?"
"The operator says it is."
"Well, I still think we're better off getting a couple of hours sleep and at least waiting until it's light. It's just too dangerous, really it is. Trust me on that."
"I'm very worried about him."
"I know you are. Listen, the couch in my waiting room's a fold-out.
Give me just a couple of hours."
"Oh, okay. What about all of this?" she asked, gesturing to the piles of notes, receipts, and ledgers.
"Laura, our late friend generated and squirreled away more paperwork than the Department of Defense. If we couldn't make-any sense of this stuff at tWO A.M our chances are even less at three.
There's something buried in there that's going to shed some light on the man and his basement, I'm certain of that. But frankly, at this point I can barely remember my own name."
"I understand," Laura said.
"Good. In that case you remain the leading candidate to become my apprentice."
"Bernard, before you sleep I want to tell you again how grateful I am for what you've done."
"Cigars, woman. Talk in terms I can relate to."
She smiled. "I haven't forgotten. Listen, why don't you use the fold-out. I'll stay up for a while longer going through this stuff Then I'll try Eric one more time. If we haven't connected with him by, say, six or seven, we can try his place."
"Good enough."
Groaning with the effort, Bernard Nelson pushed himself up, grabbed a pair of old army blankets from his closet, tossed one on the couch, and then lumbered into the waiting room with the other. In minutes, Laura heard the sonorous breathing of exhausted sleep, Then, with a sip of cold stale coffee, she settled in behind the desk.
Bernard had estimated that in their haste to get out of Donald Devine's bedroom he had gotten perhaps half the contents of the safe.
Before they left the mortuary, he had slipped back to the upstairs apartment and verified that, as they suspected, whatever they had left behind had been taken, and the, apartment ransacked. undoubtedly the police would put robbery at the head of their list of motives. Of course there was still the intensive-care room to explain away.
Laura set aside the folder of correspondence and contracts, and concentrated on two ledgers. One of them, dating back six years and replete with names, addresses, payments, and various abbreviations, seemed to be a record of the considerable number of clients Devine had tended to. The other, held closed with a heavy rubber band, was also a list of names and abbreviations. However, between the last page and cover, this one was stuffed with receipts from.various gas stations-at least a hundred of them, and possibly many more than that. Laura set the pile in front of her, made some room, and one at a time smoothed each one out, arranging them by date.