Devil's Waltz Part 18

"Why don't you wait to see what this Torgeson says? If he feels the seizures have been manufactured, you'd have more ammunition for an eventual confrontation."

"Confrontation, huh? Can't wait."

As we neared the waiting room I commented on how little impact Laurence Ashmore's murder seemed to have made.

"What do you mean?"

"No one's talking about it."

"Yes. You're right-it's terrible, isn't it. How hardened we get. Caught up in our own stuff."

A few steps later she said, "I didn't really know him-Ashmore. He kept to himself-kind of antisocial. Never attended a staff meeting, never RSVP'd to party invitations."

"With those kinds of social skills, how'd he get any referrals?"

"He didn't want referrals-didn't do any clinical work. Pure research."

"Lab rat?"

"Beady eyes and all. But I heard he was smart-knew his toxicology. So when Ca.s.sie started coming in with those respiratory things, I asked him to go over Chad's chart."

"You tell him why?"

"You mean that I was suspicious? No. I wanted him to go in with an open mind. I just asked him to look for anything out of the ordinary. He was very reluctant. Almost resentful-as if I was imposing. A couple of days later I got a phone message saying he hadn't found anything. As in, don't bug me again!"

"How'd he pay his way? Grants?"

"I a.s.sume."

"I thought the hospital was discouraging them-didn't want to pay overhead."

"I don't know," she said. "Maybe he brought in his own overhead."

She frowned. "No matter what his social skills, what happened to him is horrible. There was a time, no matter how ugly things got out on the street, if you wore a white coat, or a steth around your neck, you were safe. Now that's all broken down. Sometimes it feels as if everything's breaking down."

We reached the clinic. The waiting room was overflowing and as noisy as a steam drill.

She said, "Enough whining. No one's forcing me. What I wouldn't mind is some time off."

"Why don't you take some?"

"Got a mortgage."

Several mothers waved at her and she returned the greetings. We pa.s.sed through the door to the medical suite and headed for her office. A nurse said, "Morning, Dr. Eves. Your dance card is full."

Stephanie smiled gamely. Another nurse came up and handed her a stack of charts.

She said, "Merry Christmas to you, too, Joyce," and the nurse laughed and hurried off.

"See you," I said.

"Sure. Thanks. Oh, by the way, I learned something else about Vicki. A nurse I used to work with on Four told me she thought Vicki had a bad family situation. Alcoholic husband who roughed her up quite a bit. So maybe she's just a bit frayed-down on men. She still bugging you?"

"No. Actually we had a confrontation of our own and reached a truce of sorts."

"Good."

"She may be down on men," I said. "But not on Chip."

"Chip's no man. He's the boss's son."

"Touche," I said. "An abusive husband might explain why I put her teeth on edge. She could have turned to a therapist for help, gotten nowhere, developed a resentment. . . . Of course, major family stress could also lead her to act out in other ways-become a hero at work in order to raise her self-esteem. How'd she handle the seizure?"

"Competently. I wouldn't call it heroic. She calmed Cindy down, made sure Ca.s.sie was okay, then called me. Cool under fire, everything by the book."

"Textbook nurse, textbook case."

"But like you said before, how could she be involved, when all the other crises started at home?"

"But this one didn't. No, in all fairness, I can't say I really suspect her of anything. It just tw.a.n.gs my antennae that her home life's troubled and she comes over here and s.h.i.+nes. . . . I'm probably just focusing on her because she's been such a pain."

"Fun referral, huh?"

"High intrigue, just like you said."

"I always keep my promises." Another glance at her watch. "Got to get through my morning exams, then drive out to Century City to pick up Torgeson. Got to make sure his car doesn't get caught up in the parking mess. Where'd they stick you?"

"Across the street, like everyone else."

"Sorry."

"Hey," I said, feigning insult, "some of us are international hotshots and some of us park across the street."

"Guy sounds like a cold fish over the phone," she said, "but he is hot stuff-served on the n.o.bel Committee."

"Hoo-hah."

"Hoo-hah in spades. Let's see if we can frustrate him too."

I called Milo from a pay phone and left him another one-beep message: "Vicki Bottomley has a husband who drinks and may beat her up. It probably doesn't mean anything, but could you please check if there are any domestic violence calls on record and if so, get me the dates?"

Textbook nurse . . .

Textbook Munchausen by proxy.

Textbook crib death.

Crib death evaluated by the late Dr. Ashmore.

The doctor who didn't see patients.

Just a grisly coincidence, no doubt. Stick around any hospital long enough and grisly becomes routine. But, not knowing what else to do, I decided to have a closer look at Chad Jones's chart myself.

Medical Records was still on the bas.e.m.e.nt floor. I waited in line behind a couple of secretaries bearing requisition slips and a resident carrying a laptop computer, only to be informed that deceased patients' files were housed one floor down, in the sub-bas.e.m.e.nt, in a place called SPI-status permanently inactive. It sounded like something the military had invented.

On the wall just outside the sub-bas.e.m.e.nt stairwell was a map with one of those red YOU ARE HERE arrows in the lower left-hand corner. The rest was an aerial view of a grid of corridors. The actual hallways were walled with white tile and floored with gray linoleum patterned with black-and-pink triangles. Gray doors, red plaques. The hallway was fluorescent-lit and had the vinegary smell of a chem lab.

SPI was in the center of the webwork. Small box. Hard to extrapolate from two dimensions to the long stretch of corridor before me.

I began walking and reading door signs. BOILER ROOM. FURNITURE STORAGE. A series of several doors marked SUPPLIES. Lots of others that said nothing at all.

The hallway angled to the right.

CHEMICAL SPECTROGRAPHY. X-RAY ARCHIVES. SPECIMEN FILES. A double-width slab that said: MORGUE: NO UNAUTHORIZED ADMITTANCE.

I stopped. No smell of formalin, not a hint of what existed on the other side. Just silence and the acetic bite, and a chill that could have been due to a low thermostat setting.

I pictured the map in my head. If my memory was functioning properly, SPI was another right turn, a left, then a short jog. I started walking again, realized I hadn't seen another person since I'd been down here. The air got colder.

I picked up my pace, had managed to slip into a thought-free speed-walk when a door on the right wall swung open so suddenly I had to dodge to avoid getting hit.

No sign on this one. Two maintenance men in gray work clothes emerged from behind it carrying something. Computer. PC, but a big one-black and expensive-looking. As they huffed away, two more workers came out. Another computer. Then a single man, sleeves rolled up, biceps bunched, carrying a laser printer. A five-by-eight index card taped to the printer's console read L. ASHMORE, M.D.

I stepped past the door and saw Presley Huenengarth standing in the doorway, holding an armful of printout. Behind him were blank beige walls, charcoal-colored metal furniture, several more computers in various states of disconnection.

A white coat on a hook was the sole hint that anything more organic than differential equations had been contemplated here.

Huenengarth stared at me.

I said, "I'm Dr. Delaware. We met a couple of days ago. Over at General Pediatrics."

He gave a very small nod.

"Terrible thing about Dr. Ashmore," I said.

He nodded again, stepped back into the room, and closed the door.

I looked down the hall, watching the maintenance men carry off Ashmore's hardware and thinking of grave robbers. Suddenly a room full of post-mortem files seemed a warm and inviting prospect.

11.

Status permanently inactive was a long narrow room lined with metal floor-to-ceiling shelves and humanwidth aisles. The shelves were filled with medical charts. Each chart bore a black tab. Hundreds of consecutive tabs created wavy, inch-thick black lines that seemed to cut the files in half.

Access was blocked by a waist-high counter. Behind it sat an Asian woman in her forties, reading a tabloidsized Asian-language newspaper. Rounded characters-Thai or Laotian, I guessed. When she saw me she put it down and smiled as if I were delivering good news.

I asked to see the chart for Charles Lyman Jones IV. The name didn't appear to mean anything to her. She reached under the counter and produced a three-by-five card t.i.tled SPI REQUISITION. I filled it out, she took it, said "Jones," smiled again, and went into the files.

She looked for a while, walking up and down the aisles, pulling out charts, lifting tabs, consulting the slip. When she returned she was empty-handed.

"Not here, Doctor."

"Any idea where it might be?"

She shrugged. "Someone take."

"Someone's already checked it out?"

"Must be, Doctor."

"Hmm," I said, wondering who'd be interested in a two-year-old death file. "This is pretty important-for research. Is there any way I could talk to that someone?"

She thought for a moment, smiled, and pulled something else out from under the counter. El Producto cigar box. Inside were stacks of SPI requisition forms held together with spring clasps. Five stacks. She spread them on the counter. The top slips all bore the signature of pathologists. I read the patients' names, saw no evidence of alphabetization or any other system of cla.s.sification.

She smiled again, said "Please," and returned to her newspaper.

I removed the clasp from the first pile and sifted through the forms. It soon became obvious that a system did exist. The slips had been cla.s.sified by date of request, each stack representing a month, each piece of paper placed in daily chronological order. Five stacks because this was May.

No shortcuts-every slip had to be examined. And if Chad Jones's chart had been checked out before January 1, the form wouldn't be here at all.

I began reading the names of dead children. Pretending they were just random a.s.semblages of letters.

A moment later I found what I was looking for, in the February stack. A slip dated February 14 and signed by someone with very poor penmans.h.i.+p. I studied the cramped scrawl, finally deciphered the last name as Herbert. D. Kent Herbert, or maybe it was Dr. Kent Herbert.

Other than the signature, the date, and a hospital phone extension, the slip was blank; POSITION/ t.i.tLE, DEPARTMENT, REASON FOR REQUEST hadn't been filled out. I copied the extension and thanked the woman behind the counter.

"Everything okay?" she said.

"Do you have any idea who this is?"

She came over and peered at the form.

"Habert . . . no. I just work here one month." Another smile. "Good hospital," she said cheerfully.

I began to wonder if she had any idea what she was filing.

"Do you have a hospital directory?"

She looked confused.

"A hospital phone book-the little orange ones?"

"Ah." She bent and produced one from under the counter.