Alabama was waiting. Now all they had to do was tie up a few loose ends.
"Would you like to make the call, or shall I?" Berger said.
--29--
The guard at the gatehouse was not one of the regulars, but Jess had seen him once or twice before. He waved her ahead in Charlie's car with barely a glance at her temporary pass, and a smile that was a little too friendly. She stopped and backed up. "Excuse me. Is Dr. Wasserman around?"
"Don't know that he's arrived as yet, but I just got on duty ten minutes ago. Say, I know you, I never forget a face like that. You wouldn't want to grab a drink with me when I get off shift, say, around five o'clock?"
She smiled vaguely. "I've got a class."
"No kidding? That late, huh? You in school? I would've thought you were another of them specialists. People coming and going, I gotta open the gate every goddamn three minutes--"
"Sorry, I'm sort of in a hurry."
"Some other time, then. Be seeing you."
Good Christ Almighty. She parked in a space behind the hospital and went around to the front. No point in letting Wasserman know she was here too quickly.
But inside the doors she noticed an unusual silence. The playroom was empty. Her footsteps were too loud in the deserted hallway.
At the elevator, something made her pause. There were four floors in this building. The third, she knew, held bed-rooms for the children. But what was above them? She stepped in and pressed the fourth-floor button, but nothing happened. She noticed a slot for a key next to the button. Curious. As she was jamming the button hard with her thumb, an orderly she didn't recognize hurried around the corner and stuck his arm in the door to keep it open. "You there! The doctor wants to see you in his office as soon as possible."
She thought of protesting. The orderly was big, heavy through the shoulders. He had her by the elbow. "Come on, Miss Chambers. Right this way."
He knew my name, she thought. They were looking for her. Why? Did Wasserman know she had taken Sarah out of the facility? Of course he knows. If not, it could only be a matter of time; though Jeffrey had done his best to get them out without being seen, cameras could have caught something, someone would have talked.
The orderly steered her down the hall into Wasserman's office and closed the door. She found herself alone with the memory of him. Desk swept bare, coat hanging in the corner, a lingering scent of shoe polish and Old Spice aftershave. For a moment she saw him at home in a spotless and slightly outdated apartment, decorated to hide the absence of a woman's touch. Wasserman was bright and proud and completely socially inept. She wondered briefly if he had trouble finding dates and thought his awful aftershave would help.
All right, okay, let's put this time to use.
She cracked open the door and checked the hallway; empty. The file cabinets were locked. She found the key in the center drawer of his desk. She found the patient files kept alphabetically by name and flipped through them. Her fingers paused for a moment on Brigham, Dennis, and she thought rather fondly of the poor, sad boy in his baseball hat and white socks; and then she moved on to H.
Sarah's file seemed no fatter than before. Jess scanned it quickly and saw nothing that hadn't been there the first time. She replaced the file and tried the other drawers on his desk. Locked. A wire end of a barrette would do the trick. You 're getting in pretty deep. But judging from the behavior of that orderly out there, things couldn't get much worse. This might be her only chance.
She found a barrette in her shoulder bag, crouched, and slipped the lock in twenty seconds flat. Inside the top left drawer was an assortment of pens and pencils, a tape recorder, three pads of legal paper, a Snickers bar wrapper, a half-empty bottle of bourbon, and in the back, a handgun, curled like a blackly oiled snake. She checked it; loaded. What the hell is that for?
No time now. In the bottom drawer were more file folders done up in plastic slipcases and rubber bands. One of them was stamped project sv-alpha. Sarah Voorsanger? Jess took it out and carefully undid the rubber bands, slid it away from static-free plastic. Here were the missing PET scans from a number of intensive tests using radioactive dye to study glucose metabolism and regional cerebral blood flow. Several areas were circled in red marker and labeled.
PET scans were expensive, and the use of radioactive tracers in children was unusual. There were scans from more than fifteen separate tests. She slipped one into her bag.
There was more: the missing family history, transcripts from interviews with Cristina and Ed Voorsanger, a medical diagnosis on Annie Voorsanger . ..
And then this, the last. A series of charts that seemed to track medication levels. But they were nothing she recognized.
The sound of a doorknob made her skin prickle. She slid the drawer closed but did not have time to lock it.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Wasserman stood red-faced in the doorway, wearing a white starched shirt with rolled-up sleeves. He was sweating profusely. "Get away from my desk. Do they teach snooping in graduate school, Miss Chambers?"
"Excuse me. I dropped my barrette--"
"You're out of line. I know you took Sarah off the premises yesterday afternoon. That was a very stupid thing to do. It went against my explicit orders, it violated countless number of state and federal laws, and it put my patient in danger."
"Dr. Wasserman, surely you know that something un-usual is going on with her. It's not ethical to continue drug therapy in her present condition. Anyone can see that she's perfectly lucid and capable and she's being held against her will. Now if you'll just listen to what I have to say--"
"Don't you preach ethics to me. What sort of treatment I choose to administer does not concern you any longer. You're through here as of this minute."
Jess felt her control slipping a little. "Why didn't you show me her complete file, Doctor? Is there something you don't want me to see?"
She was learning a great deal about Evan Wasserman now, and what she saw didn't suit him. Anger made his eyes red and piggish and his underarms itch. She could tell by the way his shoulders twitched.
He was moving now, around the desk, close enough to her so that she could smell his breath. "This experiment is over. I will see that you are reprimanded and that your school records show this as a permanent black mark. You're a fool, Miss Chambers, if you believe the things others are preaching. Sarah Voorsanger is a very sick young woman and her delusions are barely being held in check. I'm sure she would be better served if you were out of her life."
Bullshit. "If you would just think this through, I'm sure we can--"
"I've done enough thinking. Give me your temporary staff pass."
"I forgot it at home," she lied. "The guard out front knew who I was."
Some emotion surfaced briefly in his face and he seemed to fight it down. For a moment she wondered if he would frisk her. "I want you to turn it in to Jean Shelley as soon as you get back to school. She'll have some words for you, I'm sure. Good-bye, Miss Chambers."
She refused to give him the satisfaction of watching her slink out with her tail between her legs. "What are you afraid of, Doctor? That I've found out the truth?"
"The truth about what, for God's sake?"
"Sarah, and what you've done to her. You had to know I'd see something sooner or later. Why did you allow me in here? There has to be some reason."
"I'm not going to listen to another word of this nonsense." Wasserman marched over to the intercom on his desk and pressed the button. "Andre? Come in here please, and escort Miss Chambers to her car."