"Why didn't someone ever pick up on this?" Eric asked. "Sooner or later, a nurse or doctor-" He stopped in mid-sentence and began flipping rapidly through his notes.
"What is it, pal?" Subarsky asked.
"What it is, David," Eric said grimly, — "is the answer to my question.
Look, look here. Except for the last three cases, Craig Worrell and Norma CuBinet were involved with every one. That's MbrreU as in W and Cullinet as in C.-the abbreviations in Donald Devine's record book. The reason MbrreH wasn't part of the last three cases is that he got arrested and then disappeared."
"I'm impressed," Subarsky said. "I really am. But we still don't have the answer to the sixty-four-dollar question. Why?
What would anybody want with a bunch of corpses?"
"That's the point. They weren't corpses. They looked dead enough to get pronounced dead with no one raising an eyebrow, but- Dave, don't you see?
That's the tie-in! That's the goddam tie-in with everything!"
"What?"
Eric paced across the room and back.
"Can I take over there for a second?" he asked.
"The E.K.G department records are totally computerized. We call up tracings all the time."
"Help yourself," Subarsky said, pushing himself up. "Listen, I've got a little experiment going on in the lab next door that I need to rerun with some new reagents. Give a holler if you need me. Otherwise, I'll be back in ten or fifteen minutes. By then, I expect you to have all the answers for me."
"David, keep all this between us, okay?"
"That goes without saying, my friend. Congratulations on unearthing all this."
"Nice choice of words, Subarsky," Eric said, summoning up an E.K.G.
"Real nice."
Subarsky lumbered off as the first tracing appeared on the screen.
It was the E.K.G taken during the resuscitation of patient RE-a forty-eight-year-old woman Erie now felt certain was named Pamela Fitzgerald. The pattern was one Eric knew all too welclass="underline" broad, slow complexes at the rate of six to eight per minute. Checks of two other cases showed the same.
Eric set the keyboard aside. On a sheet of paper he wrote the questions: How?
Who?
Why?
Beside the first, he wrote: E.R. or inpatients with no next of kin.
Tetrodotoxin administered by C. Resuscitation attempted by W or by unsuspecting resident. transfer to G. of H. for further treatment in basement by?.
Possible antidote given. Death certificates presigned by T Bushnell.
Mortuary records forged. transportation of drugged? subject to Utah by D.
Devine.
Beside the second: Crai Worrell. Norma Cullinet. Donald Devine.
Sara 9 'kagarden? Joe Silier? Best Bet: Haien Darden.
Death's-head priest. Anna Delacroix.
And finally, by the third, he could write only a large question mark.
Sickened and frightened by what he was, — , discovering, Eric wandered out into the corridor. Through the high plate-glass windows, he could see the ambulance parking area far below and the entrance to the emergency room. Everywhere, it seemed, business was as usual.
Patients and nurses, uniformed EMTS, and white-coated physicians bustled in and out of the buildings, proud or relieved to be associated with the hospital considered by many to be the world's best And no place was there even a hint of the terror their august institution had spawned.
Eric felt unsettled and anxious about what lay ahead-about the possibility of making a mistake that would alert the wrong people too soon. Timing was everything-timing and an airtight case. His credibility, for the moment, was all but destroyed in everyone's eyes except, he hoped, Dave Subarsky's. If Caduceus realized how far he had come, there was no telling what countermeasures they would take.
Already they had seen to the removal of Loretta Leone's body and tissue samples. That move in itself spoke of resourcefulness and power, just as surely as the deaths of Thaddeus Bushnell and Donald Devine spoke of the lack of moral boundaries. The worst thing he could do would be to tip his hand too soon. Records could be removed as easily as had Leone's specimens.
"Pe-People could be bought off or silenced altogether.
Incriminating evidence could be planted. And of course, he and Laura could simply disappear.
"Give up?"
Dave Subarsky moved in beside Eric and stared down at the E.R. lot.
"Hardly. I'm just deciding where to head next."
"And?"
"The nurse I kept mentioning, Norma Cullinet?"
"Uh-huh."
"She's a patient on the neurosurgical service. She fell and fractured her skull."
"So?"
"So, I don't know what shape she's in, but I think I'm going to try and talk with her."
"Neurosurgery, huh? Well, I hope she's better off than most of the neurosurgical patients I've seen. Most of those you couldn't communicate with at all unless you had an English-Vegetable dictionary."
"Not.true and not funny," Eric said.
"Sorry. You know me-nothing's sacred."
"I know. Sorry for snapping. It's just that this stuff is so damn ugly, I can't handle any sicko humor right now, even yours."
"I understand," Subarsky said. "Sometimes my mouth just has a mind of its own. Well, listen, pal, I've got a slew of errands to run in town.
Let me shut off my terminal and I'll walk you down."
The two of them were headed down the stairway toward the tunnels when Eric looked back at Subarsky.
"I appreciate your help this morning, David," he said. "Now I want you as far away from all this as possible, okay?"
"Sure."
"I mean it. I don't want to be the cause of anyone's getting hurt, especially a friend."
"Okay, but you know I'm here if you need me."
Eric hesitated, and then stopped and handed over the Xerox ledger sheets and his notes.
"David, if anything happens to me, I hope you'll try to break this thing open," he said.
"Nothing's gonna happen, but if it does, you can count on me doing just that."
"Thanks," Eric said. "Thanks for everything."
Once in the basement, the two men shook hands and headed in opposite directions.
Five floors above, in Dave Subarsky's office, the telephone was ringing.
It rang more than a dozen times before it stopped.
"Dammit, Eric, where are you? Where the hell are you?"
Laura Enders listened as the phone in the office where Eric was supposed to be continued to ring.
Finally she set the receiver down and finished dressing. Her hands were shaking and she could barely focus on what she was doing.
Five minutes, she decided. She would try once more in five minutes.,Then she had to do something.
It was only boredom, really, that had led her to check in with the desk at the Carlisle. Now she wondered if the force at work was something much stronger than that. The message, which she had copied down verbatim after three repetitions by the Iranian desk clerk, had come in during the early morning.
Your brother SCOtt is with me. To find out where to get him and where to bring reward, call 236-4356 every hour on the hour until you reach me. Rocky.
It was nearing nine o'clock. Laura struggled to keep her hopes in check. More likely than not, the call was a hoax-or worse, a trap.
Under no circumstances would she give anyone the number at Bernard's apartment; nor would she go anywhere alone. At two minutes before the hour, she tried Dave Subarsky's office once more. Once more there was no answer. She watched the seconds march off on her watch until another minute had passed, and then dialed. A man answered on the first ring.
"This is Rocky," he said.
"Rocky, this is Laura Enders."
She held the receiver with both hands to keep it steady.