“There’s someone behind us,” Jason said.
Carol twisted in the front seat and looked out the back. They rounded a curve and the headlights disappeared. But on the next straightaway they reappeared. They were closer. Carol faced forward. “I told you we should have stayed.”
“That’s helpful!” said Jason sarcastically,
He inched the accelerator closer to the floor. They were already going well over sixty on the curvy road. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel, then looked up at the rearview mirror. The car was close, its lights like eyes of a monster. He tried to think of what he could do, but he could think of nothing other than trying to outrun the car behind them. They came to another curve. Jason turned the wheel. He saw Carol’s mouth open in a silent scream. He could feel the car start to jackknife. He braked, and they skidded first to one side and then to the other. Carol grabbed the dash to steady herself. Jason felt his seat belt tighten.
Fighting the car, Jason managed to keep it on the road. Behind him the pursuing car gained considerably. Now it was directly behind, its headlights filling Jason’s car with unearthly light. In a panic, Jason floored the accelerator, pulling his car out of its careening course. They shot forward down a small hill. But the car behind stayed right with them, hounding them like a hunting dog at the heels of a deer.
Then to both Jason and Carol’s bewilderment, their car filled with flashing red light. It took them a moment to realize that the light was coming from the top of the car behind them. When Jason recognized what it was, he slowed, watching in the rearview mirror. The car behind slowed proportionately. Ahead, at a turnout, Jason pulled off the road and stopped. Sweat stood out in little droplets along his hairline. His arms were trembling from his death grip on the steering wheel. Behind them, the other car stopped as well, its flashing light illuminating the surrounding trees. In the rearview mirror, Jason saw the door open, and Marvin Arnold stepped out. He had the safety strap off his.357 Magnum.
“Well, I’ll be a pig’s ass,” he said, shining his flashlight into Jason’s embarrassed face. “It’s lover boy.”
Furious, Jason shouted, “Why the hell didn’t you turn on your blinker at the start?”
“Wanted to catch me a speeder.” Marvin chuckled. “Didn’t know I was chasing my favorite lunatic.”
After an unsolicited lecture and a ticket for reckless driving, he let Jason and Carol continue. Jason was too angry to talk, and they drove in silence to the freeway, where Jason announced, “I think we should drive to Portland. God knows who may be waiting for us at the Seattle airport.”
“Fine by me,” Carol said, much too tired to argue.
They stopped for a couple hours’ sleep at a motel near Portland, and at the first light of dawn, went on to the airport, where they boarded a flight to Chicago. From Chicago, they flew to Boston, touching down a little after five-thirty Saturday evening.
In the cab in front of Carol’s apartment, Jason suddenly laughed. “I wouldn’t even know how to apologize for what I’ve put you through.”
Carol picked up her shoulder bag. “Well, at least it wasn’t boring. Look, Jason, I don’t mean to be sarcastic, or a nag, but please tell me what’s going on.”
“As soon as I’m sure,” Jason said. “I promise. Really. Just do me one favor. Stay put tonight. Hopefully, no one knows we’re back, but all hell might break loose if and when they find out.”
“I don’t plan on going anywhere, doctor.” Carol sighed. “I’ve had it.”
CHAPTER 15
Jason never even stopped at his apartment. As soon as Carol disappeared into her building, he told the cabdriver to drop him at his car and drove directly to GHP. He crossed immediately into the outpatient building. It was seven P.M. and the large waiting room was deserted. Jason went directly to his office, pulled off his jacket, and sat down at his computer terminal. GHP had spent a fortune on their computer system and was proud of it. Each station accessed the large mainframe where all patient data was entered. Although the individual charts were still the best source of patient information, most of the material could be obtained from the computer. Best of all, the sophisticated machinery could scan the entire patient base of GHP and graphically display the data on the screen, analyzed in almost any way one could wish.
Jason first called up the current survival curves. The graph that the computer drew was shaped like the steep slope of a mountain, starting high, then rounding and falling off. The graph compared the survival rate of GHP users by age. As one might expect, subscribers at the oldest end of the graph had the lowest survival rate. Over the past five years, although the median age of the GHP population had gradually increased, the survival curves stayed about the same.
Next, Jason asked the computer to print month-by-month graphs for the last half year. As he had feared, he saw the death rate rise for patients in their late fifties and early sixties, particularly during the last three months.
A sudden crash made him jump from his seat, but when he looked out in the hall he saw it was just the cleaning service.
Relieved, Jason returned to the computer. He wished he could separate the data on patients who had been given executive physicals, but he couldn’t figure out how to do it. Instead, he had to be content with crude death rates. These graphs compared the percentages of deaths associated with age. This time the curve went the other way. It started low, then as the age increased the percentage of deaths went up. But then Jason asked the computer to print out a series of such graphs over the previous several months, month by month. The results were striking, particularly over the last two months. The death curves rose sharply starting at age fifty.
Jason sat at the computer terminal for another half hour, trying to coax the machine into separating out the executive physicals. What he expected he would see if he’d been able, was a rapid increase in death rates for people fifty and over who had high-risk factors such as smoking, alcohol abuse, poor diets, and lack of exercise. But the data was not available. It had not been programmed to be extracted en masse. Jason would have to take each individual name and laboriously obtain the data himself, but he didn’t have time to do that. Besides, the crude death-rate curves were enough to corroborate his suspicions. He now knew he was right. But there was one more way to prove it. With enormous unease, he left his office and returned to his car.
Driving out the Riverway, Jason headed for Roslindale. The closer he got, the more nervous he became. He had no idea what he was about to confront, but he suspected it was not going to be pleasant. His destination was the Hartford School, the institution run by GHP for retarded children. If Alvin Hayes had been right about his own condition, he must have been right about his retarded son’s.
The Hartford School backed onto the Arnold Arboretum, an idyllic setting of graceful wooded hills, fields, and ponds. Jason turned into the parking lot, which was all but deserted, and stopped within fifty feet of the front entrance. The handsome, Colonial-style building had a deceptively serene look that belied the personal family tragedies it housed. Severe retardation was a hard subject even for professionals to deal with. Jason vividly remembered examining some of the children on previous visits to the school. Physically many were perfectly formed, which only made their low IQs that much more disturbing.