"Patients of ours?"
"That is affirmative, although Dr. Bennett is only aware that one of them is. Both women had autopsies that showed, in addition to the blood problems, a rare condition of their ovaries."
"Have you asked the Monkeys about them?"
"Affirmative. The Monkeys say there is no connection here."
"Does that make sense to you, Carl?"
"Negative."
"Keep looking into matters. I want a sheet about this Doctor Bennett "I'll learn what I can and teletype it tomorrow."
"Tonight."
"Tonight, then."
"Be well, old friend."
"And you, Cyrus. You'll hear from me later."
Wednesday 12 December
Coronary strikes out Bobby. Kate cringed at the Boston Herald headline on her office desk. The story was one of the rare events that managed to make the front page in both that paper and the Boston Globe. Though the Globe's treatment was more detailed, the lead and side articles said essentially the same thing in the two papers.
Bobby Geary, beloved son of Albert and Maureen Geary, son of the city itself, had been taken without warning by a clot as thin as the stitching on a baseball. The stories, many of them by sportswriters, were the heart-rending stuff of which Pulitzers are made, the only problem being that they weren't true. The storm, which had begun the evening before, had dumped a quick eight inches of snow on the city before skulking off over the North Atlantic. However, neither the columns of journalistic half-truths. nor the painful drive into the city could dampen the warmth left by the C talking and the sharing that had followed the candlelight meal Kate had i prepared for her husband.
For the first time in years, Jared had talked about his disastrous first marriage and the daughter he would, in all likelihood, never see again.
"Gone to find something better" was all the note from his wife had said.
The trail of the woman and her daughter had grown cold in New York and finally vanished in a morass of evanescent religious cults throughout southern and central California. "Gone, to find something better."
Jared had cried as he spoke of the Vermont years, of his need then to break clear of his father's expectations and build a life for himself.
Kate had dried his tears with her lips and listened to the confusion and pain of a marriage that was far more an act of rebellion than one of love. Kate was finishing the last of the Globe stories when, with a soft knock, a ponderous woman entered carrying a paper bag. The woman's overcoat was unbuttoned, exposing a nurse's uniform, pin, and name tag.
Kate read the name as the woman spoke it. "Dr. Bennett, I'm Sandra Tucker. Ginger Rittenhouse was my roommate."
"Of course. Please sit down. Coffee?"
"No, thank you. I'm doing private-duty work, and I'm expected at my patient's house in Weston in half an hour. Dr. Engleson said that if I remembered anything or found anything that might help you understand Ginger's death I could bring it to you."
"Yes, that's true. I'm sorry about Ginger."
"Did you know her?"
"No. No, I didn't."
"We had shared the house only for a few months."
"I know."
"A week after she moved in, Ginger baked a cake and cooked up a lasagna for my birthday."
"That was very nice, " Kate said, wishing she had thought twice about engaging the woman in small talk. There was a sad aura about her-a loneliness that made Kate suspect she would talk on indefinitely if given the chance, patient or no patient. "We went to the movies together twice, and to the Pops, but we were only just getting to be friends and …"
"It's good of you to come all the way down here in the snow, " Kate said in as gentle an interruption as she could manage. "Oh, well, it's the least I could do. Ginger was a very nice person. Very quiet and very nice. She was thinking about trying for the marathon next spring."
"What do you have in the bag? Is that something of hers? " A frontal assault seemed the only way. "Bag? Oh, yes. I'm sorry. Dr. Engleson, what a nice man he is, asked me to go through her things looking for medicines or letters or doctors' appointments or anything that might give you a clue about why she… why she…"
"I know it was a hard thing for you to do, Miss Tucker, and I'm grateful for any help."
"It's Mrs. Tucker. I'm divorced."
Kate nodded. "The bag?"
"My God, I apologize again." She passed her parcel across the desk.
"Sometimes I talk too much, I'm afraid."
"Sometimes I do, too." Kate's voice trailed away as she stared at the contents of the bag. "I found them in the top of Ginger's bureau. It's the strangest way to package pills I've ever seen. On that one sheet are nearly two months worth of them, packaged individually and labeled by day and date when to take each one. Looks sort of like it was put together by a computer."
"It was, " Kate said, her thoughts swirling. "Pardon?"
"I said it was put together by a computer." Her eyes came up slowly and turned toward the window. Across the street, its glass and steel facade jewellike, was the pride of Metropolitan Hospital of Boston. "The pharmacy-dispensing computer of the Omnicenter. The Omnicenter where Ginger Rittenhouse never went."
"I don't understand."
Kate rose. "Mrs. Tucker, you've been a tremendous help. I'll call if we need any further information or if we learn something that might help explain your friend's death. If you'll excuse me, there are some phone calls I must make."
The woman took Kate's hand. "Think nothing of it, " she said. "Oh, I felt uncomfortable at first, rifling through her drawers, but then I said to myself, If you're not going to do it, then…"
"Mrs. Tucker, thank you very much." One hand still locked in Sandra Tucker's, Kate used her other to take the woman by the elbow and guide her out the door. The tablets were a medium-strength estrogen-progesterone combination, a generic birth control pill. Kate wondered if Ginger Rittenhouse had been too shy to mention to her roommate that she took them. Computer printed along the top margin of the sheet were Ginger's name, the date six weeks before when the prescription had been filled, and instructions to take one tablet daily.
Also printed was advice on what to do if one dose was missed, as well as if two doses were missed. Common side effects were listed, with an asterisk beside those that should be reported immediately to Ginger's Omnicenter physician. Perforations, vertical and horizontal, enabled the patient to tear off as many pills as might be needed for time away. The setup, like everything at the Omnicenter, was slick-thoughtfully designed, and practical-further showing why there was a long list of women from every economic level waiting to become patients of the facility. Kate ran through half a dozen possible explanations of why she had been told Ginger Rittenhouse was not a patient at the Omnicenter, then she accepted that there was only one way to find out. She answered,
"Doctor Bennett, " when the Omnicenter operator asked who was calling, emphasizing ever so slightly her title. Immediately, she was patched through to Dr. William Zimmermann, the director. "Kate, this is a coincidence. I was just about to call you. How are you? " It was typical of the man, a dynamo sometimes called Rocket Bill, to forgo the redundancy of saying hello. "I'm fine, Bill, thanks. What do you mean coincidence'?"
"Well, I've got a note here from our statistician, Carl Horner, along with a file on someone named Rittenhouse. Carl says he originally sent word to you that we had no such patient."
"That's right."
"Well, we do. Apparently there was a coding mistake or spelling mistake or something."
"Did he tell you why I wanted to know?"