That door was propped slightly open with a similar block of foam. Carver eased through and was on a small, square concrete landing. He craned his neck and could see up the zigzag, brightly lighted stairwell all the way to the fourth floor. Since he’d entered the building he’d seen no one, and presumably no one had seen him. His heart was pounding like a mad carpenter’s hammer. Sweating coldly, he smiled and began to climb the stairs.
The fourth-floor fire door was also propped open just wide enough to prevent the latch from catching. Carver edged it open wider and peered into darkness. From his hip pocket he drew the penlight he’d brought and switched it on. The narrow yellow beam jumped out at eye level, and he quickly brought it down to focus on the hall carpet. He wasn’t sure if light could be seen through a window from down in the parking lot or street, but it was wise to minimize risk.
It was quiet in the dark hall. The antiseptic hospital smell from below had permeated the third floor. It was a scent Carver hated; it reminded him of pain and the death of people who’d been integral parts of his life. Some of them were people he’d despised; still, their passing more clearly defined his mortality and in his way he mourned them.
Holding the narrow yellow beam low, he limped along the hall. All the doors were closed. Most of them were lettered with doctors’ names, or words like ADMINISTRATION or FINANCE. Carver recognized the door he’d passed through a few days ago to talk to the redheaded receptionist and Dr. Wynn. And Nurse Gorham, the beautiful Marquise de Sade, R.N.
As Val’s friend Jane had said, the door at the end of the hall was unlettered. Carver turned its knob and pushed.
No give.
The door was locked.
He quickly made his way to the door that said ADMINISTRATION and tried it.
Ah! Unlocked.
He went inside and limped around behind the receptionist’s desk, then began searching through the drawers.
He found everything but keys.
As he straightened up with a soft groan, something gleamed in the flitting penlight beam. He focused the light and saw a thick ring of keys dangling from the lock of a gray metal file cabinet. It looked like a complicated insect that had been surprised and frozen by the light on its climb up the steep wall of steel.
He smiled and wiped the damp back of his hand across his lips. The odds were good, with that many keys.
He went to them and pulled the file cabinet’s key from the lock. Carrying the key ring, he limped back into the hall and down to the file room’s locked door.
He counted carefully. The ninth key he tried opened the file room door. He played the penlight beam over the floor to make sure there were no obstacles, then entered.
There were no windows in the room, so he located the wall switch and flicked it upward.
Fluorescent tubes buzzed and flickered to life, then light flooded the room and Carver felt a rush of disappointment.
There were no file cabinets.
The room was only about ten feet square. There was a small gray metal table in its center, with an IBM computer on it, a box of disks, and some pens, pencils, and erasers. A gray folding chair was at one end of the table. There was some sort of cabinet that took up most of one wall and had louvered metal doors.
Carver opened one of the doors and saw a bank of small, square filing drawers. He slid one of the narrow drawers out on its casters.
It was lined with 31/2-inch computer disks.
He cursed anew the age of the microchip. If anywhere in the medical center there were printouts of whatever was on the disks, he didn’t have time to search for them.
He saw that the drawers were labeled alphabetically. When he pulled out the K drawer, he saw more disks. All of them were labeled in blue ink. Under K he found “Keller” and started to remove the file.
Then he decided someone might notice it was missing.
He limped over to the computer on the table, and the open box of disks. He got the Keller Pharmaceutical file from its drawer and laid it on the table next to a disk he drew from the box. Carefully he peeled the adhesive label from the Keller disk, then pressed it onto the other disk. Placed the substitute under K in the file drawer.
He remembered a “Deceased” heading in the file cabinet. Quickly he found Jerome Evans’s file disk and substituted for it as he had the Keller disk.
He took the genuine disks with him as he made his way out of the building the same way he’d entered.
Still on an adrenaline high, he felt good when the night air hit him.
In fact, great.
“Get what you wanted?” Val asked eagerly, when Carver was standing outside the Dodge.
“I think so. It’s on disks.”
“Computer disks, I guess you mean.”
“Yeah. So it’ll take a little time before I find out whatever there is to know.”
“With the world all complicated the way it’s gotten, you’re gonna need a computer.”
“I know somebody who’s got one,” Carver said. He looked at his car parked out on the street. “Right now, I need to get back to the Warm Sands and get some sleep.”
“Was tonight worthwhile?” Val asked, as he hunched forward in his seat and started the Dodge’s engine.
Carver said, “I’ll let you know.”
He watched as Val cranked up the window to hold in the air-conditioning, then drove slowly from the lot.
Carver limped toward the Olds, feeling the thickness of the humid night as if he were plodding underwater, the stolen disks heavy in his pocket.
Val was right. The world got more complicated every day. Somehow, while Carver wasn’t paying attention, it had been turned into an electronic jungle.
Making it an ever more dangerous place for hunted and hunter.
28
Carver stood leaning on his cane behind Beth, looking over her shoulder. They were in her room at the Warm Sands, breakfasting on stale doughnuts and coffee he’d brought from a quick-stop market down the highway, seeing what was on the Keller Pharmaceutical disk Carver had stolen last night. He was fully dressed, Beth was in panties and bra, seated like a supplicant at the room’s tiny desk with her portable computer open and glowing like a god before her.
It had taken her only a few minutes to key up the information on the disk, which consisted mainly of Latin medical descriptions and columns of figures.
“Not much here but what looks like a record of orders, delivery dates, and payment amounts and dates,” Beth said. The radio was on in the room, not very loud, rap music. The human voice was never meant to be a drum. He wished she’d turn that crap off.
He leaned closer and studied the orange-tinted screen. It would take someone more knowledgeable than either of them to know what the listed drugs were for, what the prices and delivery dates meant. Maybe a CPA with a medical degree.
While he was leaning so near her, Carver decided to kiss Beth on the ear. He was bending farther forward to do that when he noticed one of the abbreviations on the computer screen: MCL.
Beth shivered as he spoke less than an inch from her ear. “What do you make of that?” he asked. He pointed to the half-dozen identical abbreviations.
She rubbed her knuckle in her ear. “That your mind’s not entirely on the job.”
“I mean those sets of letters. They might stand for Mercury Laboratories.”
“If they do,” Beth said, “it appears some of the medical supplies were drop-shipped. Ordered and paid for through Keller Pharmaceutical but delivered direct from Mercury.”
“Nothing necessarily unusual there,” Carver said, “but it does isolate the Keller drugs that were developed by Mercury.”
“Some of them, anyway,” Beth said. “Other Mercury shipments might have reached the medical center by way of Keller.”