Death Rounds (39 page)

I kept the rest of my account factual and, at Riley’s request, omitted for the moment any mention of the various suspicions I’d had about Mackie, Rossit, and Hurst But by now Cam’s failure to show up made it almost impossible not to speculate out loud about his being involved. When Riley himself finally raised the question, Fosse, between calls to his board members, protested from his side of the room that he still couldn’t believe it.

Throughout the rest of my statement, Riley took occasional notes and frowned repeatedly but interrupted only when he needed explanations about the bacterial organisms involved. When I came at last to showing him the message still on the computer, he whistled, then commented, “Jesus, Doc, your story is one hell of a lot more than a threat against your wife! I’m way over my head on this one.”

“I know, but believe it or not, I was having trouble getting the CEO here to move on it,” I explained, nodding toward Fosse but keeping my voice down. “I called you because I could at least report the threat against Janet myself. Things seem to be moving better now.”

At that moment Williams appeared in the doorway and motioned to me to join him. He, too, was masked, gowned, and gloved and had been with Miller and his techs running tests on the contents of the petri dish. “We did a Gram stain on the colonies and confirmed they’re definitely staph,” he told me, “and we’ve detected the presence of both methicillin and vancomycin in the growth medium of the petri dish. To put it bluntly, the organism’s practically marinating in the drugs, and it’s still flourishing like hell.”

The grim news was nothing more than I expected. I took him completely by surprise, however, when I told him about the sign-in book and what I expected that lead to give us.

“Fantastic,” he replied, his eyes lighting up.

“But we’ll need more doctors,” I told him. “It took Popovitch two days to review all that material—what about the other ID specialists on staff here?”

“Already called in—to help out with the quarantine—but we can switch them to going through records. They’re familiar with the
Legionella
cases, so they should be able to spot anything that Popovitch was able to see. But I’ll need your help at the meeting before you join them.”

“Hey! That search could save lives—”

“Listen! There’s going to be one hell of a squawk about what needs doing here, and there’s a whole lot more lives at stake if we can’t make this quarantine work. I need someone local with credibility who will back me up.”

“But I don’t work at UH.”

He winked at me and shrugged. “So? You’re the
only
Buffalonian I know with credibility who’ll back me up. That means you still get the job.” His eyes flicked over to where Riley was now standing beside the stool. “Who’s he? The dick you called?”

“Yeah,” I answered rather absently, not at all pleased to be pulled from the search. “He’s from homicide. I imagine he’ll want to talk to you.”

I introduced Williams to the detective, and as I anticipated, Riley asked Williams how seriously he took the threats against Janet and the other personnel in the hospital. I watched Riley’s eyes widen as Williams outlined the full extent of a hot-zone operation.

While the two men talked, I overheard Fosse discussing the situation with the mayor and the chief of police in what must have been a conference call. He was requesting that every available officer be used to surround the hospital. The police were to arrive without lights and sirens and take up their positions in the dark with as little noise as possible. He then had a similar conversation with the governor, asking for the National Guard to be on standby.

By this point Williams and Riley had fallen silent and were listening along with me to Fosse’s end of the conversation.

“We’ve allowed the evening staff one phone call each to advise their families they won’t be home,” he was explaining, “but haven’t told them why yet, only that we’re preparing for an emergency. I expect the shit will hit the fan in a few minutes when we start giving information and announce the quarantine. We’ll be in much worse trouble by morning when the city wakes up. What we’ll do with the day shift I’ve no idea yet, and once the media gets hold of the story, I don’t know how we’ll handle it all.”

At that point all of us started to put in our two cents worth and, at the end. Fosse reversed his request to the governor. I heard him settle on a thousand troops, the first of them to arrive by dawn.

Never was there any mention of how much force either the police or the soldiers should use if someone panicked and made a run to escape the hospital. But Riley brought it up. He leaned over and whispered, “If any poor bastard does take off, what the Christ are we supposed to do—shoot him?”

* * * *

“Sorry, Janet, but something’s happened, something big. I’m here with the police.”

Her eyes shot open and she groggily pushed herself up off her pillow into a half-sitting position, then shielded herself from the light with one of her hands. “What?”

She sat stock-still as she learned of the threats against her and the hospital, her face a porcelain mask. She remained almost as inscrutable on hearing of Cam’s disappearance. When I told her Fosse’s revelation that Cam was once suspected of being the Phantom, she declared, “Those rumors must have been pretty few and far between. I never heard them.” Her tone was like ice, but she was suddenly blinking more, and I knew she was fighting back tears. Yet as I described the other extraordinary events cascading into place around the hospital, she seemed to bring even that subtle giveaway of emotion under control.

When I finished, she stared at me in absolute silence, her gaze now unblinking. Only her glistening eyes and her pupils widening with fear or anger or both continued to betray the depth of her turmoil. The quiet went on long enough to make Riley squirm. I could hear his leather shoes squeak behind me on the linoleum floor. Finally all she said was, “Cam couldn’t do this.”

“Why do you say that, ma’am?” the detective asked.

She looked at him as if he were an idiot for questioning her. “Because, I know the man,” she replied softly, as softly as the cutting sound a scalpel blade makes in flesh. “He isn’t insane, he isn’t a killer, and he would never even imagine something so monstrous as what’s happening here.” She looked at me. “Earl, I swear I don’t understand why he’s disappeared, but if you’ve ever trusted my instincts, trust them now. It’s not Cam! If the police waste their time pursuing the wrong man, it’s exactly the sort of thing that the real Phantom would count on, especially if he intends to continue killing!”

* * * *

While Riley questioned Janet further, I went back downstairs and met Williams scurrying off to his meeting.

“Coming?” he asked, though it sounded more like an order.

“No, I’ve got something to do down here first.” He started to frown. “But I’ll be along in just a few minutes.”

“Good,” he snapped, his forehead unwrinkling. “By the way, the police have formally taken over from hospital security. They’ve already found out that between six and nine tonight Mackie had several security guards let him into some of those same rooms and departments that Popovitch visited. It also seems Mackie was in such a hurry that every place he went he left anything he looked through in a pile for refiling.” Williams started to turn toward the stairs. “I’ve briefed the ID group as best I can about what they should keep an eye out for,” he said, speaking over his shoulder as he rushed away. “Don’t be late!”

“Best I can
my ass,” I muttered, resenting Williams as he disappeared through the stairwell door. “Best for Janet would be to put
me
in with the ID group right now.”

I found Miller in a classroom where he was briefing his technicians on what would be required of them tonight. Telling Janet about Cam had been difficult enough, but I knew her mettle. Steeling herself for whatever had to be faced was her nature. How Miller would take what I had to tell him, I had no idea.

I interrupted his session, asked if I could have a private word with him, then took him far enough down the hall that no one would overhear.

“In better circumstances I’d wait until you had an hour to spare and take you to an office where you could sit down, but there’s no time. What I’ m going to reveal to you may start to become common gossip in twenty minutes, as soon as Fosse and Williams begin their meeting, and I don’t want you to find it out by chance. Brace yourself, because I’m afraid the news is bad.” I took a breath, and told him everything in a rush.

Despite my attempt to prepare a few phrases beforehand, the words I said sounded hard and distant, as though they weren’t my own. They seemed instead like fragments from some terrible story told by someone else.

“Cam Mackie’s disappeared...he might be behind the threat to the hospital... somehow caused all the
Legionella
infections...may have infected your mother with the two organisms that killed her...”

As I spoke, I kept thinking I must be ripping him apart.

But Harold Miller reacted with silence, exactly as Janet had done. His stillness was uncanny, as though he had brought every cell in his body to a standstill and focused himself entirely on listening to how his mother had been destroyed. He didn’t get angry, he didn’t cry, he didn’t even show astonishment. He seemed to absorb what I was telling him the way a black hole absorbs light.

I placed a hand on his shoulder to comfort him, but his muscles felt like bundles of high-tension wires vibrating under my fingers. I cast about for something to say that might soften the impact of what I’d just hit him with. “Janet doesn’t believe he’s done any of it. She’s convinced it’s all the work of someone else,” I told him, not fully understanding why I did. I suppose I felt if he knew someone else had believed in Cam, still believed in Cam, he might feel less singled out for betrayal.

“Do
you
think he murdered my mother?” was all he asked, as though he couldn’t process anything I’d said after that single revelation.

“I honestly don’t know what to think,” I admitted. “Some of what happened tonight doesn’t add up, even though I confess I’ve had terrible suspicions about Cam myself. But Janet’s adamant he’s innocent, and her instincts are disturbingly good.”

He looked at me with that dreadful torment in his eyes which I’d grown so used to seeing. “Thank you for telling me this, Dr. Garnet. You’ve no idea what your and Janet’s efforts to get at the truth behind my mother’s death mean to me. Not many people would do as much.” His voice trembled, the sound of it resonating with strain. His vocal cords must have been stretched tight as a drum.

We talked a few more minutes. He kept the forced steadiness in his voice from cracking, and his attempt to comfort me after I’d given him such devastating news suggested a remarkable inner strength on his part. But during our brief conversation, I recoiled from the darkness and pain I felt simmering beneath the surface of his disciplined manner.

He excused himself, explaining he had to get back to his staff. As I watched his powerful shoulders recede down the hall, I could still sense the extraordinary strength I’d felt in them. He was like a volcano ready to erupt.

A ripple of alarm ran through me. I’d been so concerned about the anguish he’d feel when he learned his mother had been murdered, I never thought what he might do about it. I hoped to hell he didn’t find Cam before the rest of us did.

Chapter 19

One of my patients once gave me a brutal insight into me bond between healers and the sick. “Doc, it’s a matter of risk. I have it. You don’t. You can empathize or sympathize as much as you’re able, but at the end of the day, it’s me who does the suffering, maybe even the dying, while you never have to agonize about getting out of here alive. None of you can know how I feel.”

I glanced at my watch as I hurried upstairs. It read 12:20. By now everyone at Fosse’s meeting knew exactly what it felt like to wonder about getting out of here alive.

The hospital sounded like a hive that had been poked with a stick. In the stairwell I could hear running footsteps echoing down at me from the floors above. Doors slammed in the distance. On entering the corridor I heard murmured conversations coming from inside a long row of offices. Phones were ringing. When I crossed the main foyer and headed toward the auditorium, I saw two uniformed police officers at the entrance, struggling into protective gear. Some of Fosse’s invitees were scurrying along with me. In our gloves, masks, and surgical gowns, we looked like latecomers to some bizarre midnight costume ball.

All of us could hear the yelling up ahead well before we got to the auditorium. Two shifts of supervisors, all the chiefs, and a complete turnout by the board members shouldn’t add up to more than a hundred and twenty people. But it sounded like Fosse had ten times that number in there, and all of them angry.

Those with me seemed hesitant to go in. I stepped up, shoved open the doors, and saw pure bedlam. Williams was up onstage with Fosse, and both men were desperately calling for quiet. Below them was a herd of people, all of them in protective gear, milling about the front of the stage, yelling.

“No way!”

“I’m outta here!”

“This is the United States, asshole!”

Scattered throughout the auditorium were a few dozen people who weren’t joining the crowd. Up against the far wall I saw Riley, huddled with three gray-haired men. They were all staring incredulously at the scene in front of the stage. One of them turned and tapped Riley on the shoulder, motioning him to lean his head closer so they could talk. Through the gaps between the back ties of the man’s gown I could see flashes of his dark blue uniform.

People in the crowd, still bellowing, started to turn and head toward the door where I was standing. A hundred and twenty people wasn’t a huge number, but as a substantial portion of them approached, they looked like a mob to me. Over the tops of their heads I saw Williams’s and Fosse’s eyes grow big as saucers.

“Wait!” yelled Fosse.

The wild bunch was no more than twenty feet from me now and seemed pretty determined to walk out and defy the two men’s authority. Riley’s comment flashed through my head.
What are we going to do—shoot them ?