He checked his watch: 11:54 a.m. He had one minute.
Ben stood up and walked out into the corridor. He had never done anything like this before. He was not a criminal. The last time he had gotten in trouble that he could remember was when he received a speeding ticket rushing his wife to the hospital when she was in labor.
He took a deep breath, and continued down the corridor to the medical records room.
Ben opened the door, expecting to see a receptionist. He fiddled with the credentials in his pocket that had been forged by a counterfeiter that made fake identifications for illegal aliens and then withdrew his hand. Instead of a receptionist or a security guard or a police officer, there was a sign, handwritten with marker on a piece of paper, that had been pinned up on a small board: PLEASE DIAL 9 FOR OPERATOR IF YOU NEED HELP.
He smiled to himself. You had to love the way government operated.
Ben walked around the counter and past the large stacks of periodicals and folders and papers. What he was looking for wouldn’t be here. There was an adjoining room and he opened the door onto a world he couldn’t begin to fathom.
Manila folders were stacked on shelves from floor to ceiling. The Department of Health was slowly going digital, but they could not destroy the paper copies until the subjects passed away or moved out of state. The rows of shelves seemed to go on forever like an infinite library of people’s personal information. He didn’t want to spend the time running through here and he scanned the room for something that…there it was. In the corner was a computer with a barstool in front of it.
He went to it and sat down, typing in several names. He wrote the call numbers on his palm with a pen that was on the counter next to the computer and the writing got past his wrist before he was done.
Ben jumped to his feet, and began running down the rows of shelves. They were arranged by number, rather than alphabetically, and it took a few minutes for him to adjust. But once he did, it was just like scanning through the Dewey decimal system at any library. He found the first two files he needed but the third wasn’t where it was supposed to be. He read the name again: it was a female. He wondered whether it was under her maiden name and went back to the computer and found a number for her maiden name and got the file.
He nabbed seven more files and was about to head back to the computer and run the remainder of his names when he heard voices in the room next door. The door opened.
Ben jumped behind one of the shelves, kneeling down with the files in his arms. Two people, a male and a female, were discussing a retirement party that had been thrown for someone at the office. They stopped near the shelves, about ten feet from where Ben was. His heart was pounding so hard it was causing him to be breathless. Sweat was beginning to trickle down his neck and back and it tickled his skin.
Slowly, he began to crawl away from them. He got another twenty or thirty feet before he heard them say goodbye. The male continued down toward him and the female went back to the main office.
Ben was frozen as he heard the footsteps approach him. The man was in another row, just to the right, but he was bound to see him when he walked by. Ben thought about dumping the files and acting as if he had just mistakenly walked into the wrong office. But that couldn’t happen. These files were valuable and they wouldn’t get another chance: the office of medical records was moving to a secure location a hundred and eighty miles away. If he wanted the files, this was his only shot.
He stood to his feet. There were over four hundred employees in this building alone. What were the chances that this guy had met every single one?
Ben turned the corner and began walking toward the man.
The man was tall and black with a potbelly. He wore a short-sleeve shirt and a tie and he eyed Ben but didn’t say anything.
Ben smiled and said hello as he walked past him. Relief washed over him; his heart felt like it had fallen into his stomach and his knees were weak.
“Excuse me,” the man said from behind him, “can I help you with something?”
Ben looked to him. “Me?”
“Yes, you.”
“Oh, I’m Timothy. From Dr. Wharton’s office upstairs. Cami called about these records yesterday and no one was here when I came down.”
“What records are those?”
“For the smoking study that Dr. Wharton’s doing. They told me everything’s cleared up.”
“No one ran it past me, but I wasn’t here yesterday.”
“Well I’ll wait if you like and you can call up there and verify.”
The man looked him up and down, running his eyes over the names on the files he was holding. “Nah, just make sure you sign out for ‘em at the front desk.”
“Thanks.”
Ben walked out the door to the reception area where the woman was sitting. He smiled as he signed a fake name to a sheet that was sitting on the counter and then went out the front door, having to lean against the wall a moment because he felt like he was about to faint.
CHAPTER 15
The Center for Anti-Vaccination Studies was a five-room suite in an office building occupied by middle-income lawyers and dentists. The first floor always smelled like popcorn and massage oil from a parlor that took up the first suite. They claimed to be licensed massage therapists, but Ben had never seen one degree or certificate on the wall. Plus, the men coming out of there seemed just a bit too happy.
He walked past it now and smiled to the receptionist at the front desk, a stack of files under his arm as he hit the up button on the elevator.
The fifth and top floor was much like the first except that it smelled a bit better. The CAVS’s five rooms were better decorated than most, with glass walls on the interior and exposed brick in the offices. The floor was a slick hardwood donated to CAVS from a contractor whose daughter had developed autism after a routine vaccination at the age of two.
Ben went through the office space, wondering where everybody was until he checked his phone: it was five in the afternoon on a Friday. He went straight to his office and shut the door. He placed the files down on his desk and sat in front of them a long time, just staring. There was a knock.
“Come in.”
Tate Buhler walked in, sipping a Mountain Dew Code Red. He saw the files on the desk and nearly spit up his drink. He shut the door. “You got them?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“You don’t want to know.”
Tate sat down across from him at the desk and they both stared at the files. There were fifteen total. Fifteen medical records of research physicians that specialized in vaccinations. One of these physicians had recanted everything they had ever written about the safety of vaccination after one of their children developed a severe learning disability days after the MMR vaccine.
“You think it’s real?” Tate said. “I mean, I know the government does some crazy shit, but firing a doctor and then suing to keep him quiet just ‘cause he’s against vaccinations sounds extreme.”
Ben smirked. “Do you remember the serial killer from the eighties who supposedly poisoned bottles of Tylenol and half a dozen people died?”
“Yeah, that was in Chicago or somewhere.”
“Well one of the people that died bought their Tylenol from a pharmacy. The public doesn’t have access to medications in a pharmacy. That means the Tylenol was tainted when it left the factory and so Johnson amp; Johnson and the dim-witted law enforcement who investigated the case came up with this serial killer story. They dodged lawsuits, criminal liability, any repercussions at all just because money can buy you whatever you want. If they can cover up the murders of innocent people, they can certainly cover up firing one person.”