Death Rounds (43 page)

I hadn’t paid much attention before to the order in which the Phantom’s different methods of attack were used, but I quickly checked now which type of attacks had occurred when Cam was out of town. On both occasions the symptoms had resembled a SLUDGE BAM syndrome, the result of organic phosphate, or insecticide, poisoning. In fact, from Cam’s committee minutes it was easy to see the overall chronology of the attacks. There seemed to be two phases. Provoked psychoses and incidents of induced vomiting were intermingled in a haphazard fashion over an initial period of four months. But then, the Phantom’s activities had ended with a consecutive string of five insecticide poisonings, including the last two, for which Cam was away.

I leaned back in my chair and thought about the pattern: five insecticide poisonings in a row—three while Cam was in town, followed by the two when he was away—then no further activity from the Phantom for two years. The sequence certainly intrigued me.

At first I wondered if Cam had developed the insecticide method of attack after perfecting the other two techniques, then got an accomplice to carry it out a few more times during the out-of-town speaking engagements. But the alibi occurring twice was too clumsy, and Cam would have known it was. Fosse had probably put it mildly when he said the pair of convenient coincidences “raised a few eyebrows.” So why had those last two attacks been timed like that?

I thought for a while longer. Complex scenarios suggested themselves, again involving accomplices, but none of them rang true. The Phantom’s brilliance at keeping himself invisible went totally against the notion of his resorting to sharing his secret with someone else and rendering himself vulnerable to being exposed by that person.

Frustrated by the vagueness of it all, I pushed out of my chair and started to pace. One thing that struck me clearly, as an ER doctor, was how significantly more dangerous the insecticide poisonings were—potentially lethal in fact—compared to the effects of ipecac or a short-acting hallucinogen. Vomiting or seeing things for half an hour almost seemed appropriate tit for tat against the kind of petty cruelty the Phantom had singled out for punishment. After all, the cruelty, though vicious and inexcusable, wasn’t a killing offense. Even Janet had insisted her ordeal at the hands of the residents hadn’t at all been typical of what Brown, and presumably the other punishers, had usually indulged in.

It felt strange to be even commenting on appropriateness when referring to the acts of a maniac. Yet switching to pesticides was a definite escalation, taking the punishment to a level where it could kill, even though the crimes remained minor. If such an irrational step-up had a logic to it, I couldn’t figure it out, and I finally concluded the reason must be buried in whatever madness drove this psycho.

No other revelations leaped off the pages at me. Before leaving, I quickly nipped ahead to more recent entries in the minutes and located the sessions that had investigated both Brown’s
Legionella
infection and that of the OR nurse who’d died. I learned nothing new from the committee’s conclusions but scribbled down the chart numbers for each nurse’s medical files. I wanted to go through the cases myself.

I paged the same guard-cop tandem I’d had before and got by more yellow tape to enter the personnel department. It was actually a set of offices—I counted nine in all—behind a main entrance door. Eight of the rooms were evenly divided on either side of a long hallway. The ninth, located at the back of the complex, was the largest and contained the files. I made my escorts wait while I verified no one was lurking anywhere, even looking into a large oak armoire full of coats which was by the main door. When I checked the file room I could see that Cam had evidently skipped these records as well; there were no folders lying around to indicate that he’d been here before me. But I knew from the sign-in book that Michael had, so I sent the two uniformed men away, both of whom seemed amused by my skittishness, locked myself in, and got to work.

I stuck to my plan and, using my list, dug out the personnel files of the Phantom’s first targets from two years ago. Six had already left the employ of the hospital, but their files were kept, as were all hospital records—even those of the dead—for the possible eventuality of legal action. Of them all, I found that only three had ever had official complaints leveled against them and that none of those complaints had resulted in disciplinary measures.

The alleged infractions were exactly the sort of petty things I’d come to expect—one complainant reported being repeatedly roughly handled during dressing changes, another told of being verbally abused whenever she requested her pain medication, a third had been ridiculed for wetting the bed after her requests for a bedpan had been ignored. All three accused nurses had denied any intent of wrongdoing and were let off without so much as a reprimand. Obviously Janet was right about the cruelty being hard to prove, and it certainly was clear why most patients wouldn’t even bother to report it.

The absence of so much as a nasty note in any one of the other fifteen files put to rest my earlier idea that the Phantom had encountered all eighteen punishers as a result of formal complaints being brought against them. I nevertheless wrote down the names and addresses of the three patients who had filed charges, in case I wanted to reach them. I was curious to know if they’d also discussed their problem informally and off the record with someone outside normal disciplinary procedures—someone to whom other patients might also have complained about a punisher rather than pursue the matter through proper channels.

But it was when I started paying attention to dates again that I got a big surprise. The three complaints I’d been looking at were made several months prior to the first attack by the Phantom, and the three people named in those complaints were his first targets.

I felt a prickle on the back of my neck.

What’s more, each attack occurred within weeks of the hearings into those complaints—hearings that had failed to take disciplinary action against the punishers.

Like electricity on a rheostat, the prickle grew to a tingle.

I couldn’t explain much else I’d encountered tonight, but I felt I was looking at what had sparked the creation of the Phantom. The sudden clarity after so many vague leads began to make me feel heady.

The membership of the disciplinary committee was included with the rulings, but I didn’t recognize a single name. That didn’t diminish my excitement much. I already knew the Phantom was operating outside this committee, and even though the proceedings were suppose to be confidential, if UH was anything like St. Paul’s, confidential proceedings usually leaked like the Titanic.

“What have you got?” said a familiar voice from a few feet behind me.

I jumped a foot and screamed as loud as I could. Whirling in midair, I saw it was Williams. “Jesus Christ!” I roared at him.

His eyes wrinkled merrily at the corners, the result of a smile which his mask kept me from seeing. Obviously he was amused at his effect on me.

“Will you stop doing that?” I asked him crossly. “How did you get in here anyway?”

“The door was open,” he said casually. “Fosse told me where you were.”

“What do you mean the door was open? I locked it.”

His eyes became a little less merry. “Sorry, but I found it open. Maybe you didn’t do it right.”

“Bullshit I didn’t do it right!” I exclaimed, striding out of the room and down the hallway toward the lock in question. I was halfway there when in burst Fosse, looking wide-eyed above his mask, followed by half a dozen other people in protective gear. One of them was holding a brass lamp upside down, waving the base in the air like a club. “What happened?” Fosse demanded, breathing hard as he pulled up. “We heard a horrible scream.”

“That was me,” I said curtly, glaring at Williams.

The large man immediately said, “Sorry,” then explained what had happened and apologized again, especially to me, for having upset everyone. But while he continued to settle Fosse and the chiefs down, I stepped over to the door and verified I indeed knew how to set the lock property.

“Someone unlocked this door while I was working in here,” I said over my shoulder. The group quickly fell silent as I turned back to them and added, “Maybe whoever it was sneaked in, then left, or maybe the person’s hiding right now in one of those rooms behind you.” I’d spoken coolly, looking past them toward the eight darkened doorways on either side of the long corridor.

“Shit!”

“No!”

“You’re kidding, right?”

The bunch of them reflexively drew together, forming a circle with their backs to the center.

“We’d better look,” said Williams quietly, no trace of the jokester in his voice now.

He moved toward the first door, slowing as he approached it, then slipped his hand around the edge of the frame. When the light snapped on Fosse and the others followed behind like a timid posse, the one holding the lamp in the air at the rear.

It was hard not to laugh as they repeated this procedure before they peeked into each room. I started to feel a little foolish at having been a bit too spooked by an unlocked door. I found myself staring at the armoire beside me, almost embarrassed at wanting to look in it again, especially after having endured knowing glances from the guard and the cop when I’d checked it not forty minutes earlier. I’d make sure Williams and his bunch were at the other end of the hall where they couldn’t see me when I stole a look this time, I decided. I was probably going to take enough of a ribbing as it was when the little search I’d sent them on came up empty.

I was looking left toward the passageway, leaning forward a little, checking to see that the others were out of sight when I stepped up to the heavy wooden doors and pulled on the latch. The panel exploded open with such force that he must have had his leg raised at the ready to kick it out. The full weight of the wood smashed into the right side of my head, then my upper body, throwing me against a desk that was behind me. All I saw coining out of the cabinet was a raised lab coat held up as a screen before it was thrown roughly over my head like a sack. I was immediately squeezed by a pair of arms pinning my own down. I tried to yell but all my breath had been knocked out of me, and I couldn’t see because of the coat over my head. I felt myself yanked to my feet, then one of the arms let go, only to return and deliver a hard punch right into my solar plexus. If there’d been any air in my lungs to begin with, it would have roared out of me with a bellow and brought the others running. As it was I doubled over, making little more than gagging noises muffled by the coat over my head. I couldn’t breathe in and lost even more air when I started to gag on my vomit. I then felt him grab me by the scruff of the neck and yank me forward, still bent over. I’ve been here before, was all I had time to think before I smashed head first into something very hard.

Except this time I didn’t lose consciousness. He probably hadn’t been able to get me up to speed and the coat had blunted the blow, but I nevertheless collapsed into a gasping choking ball. By the time I got the coat off my head, the door leading out of the complex was closing, its motion slowed by an overhead arm attached to a pneumatic cylinder. I was halfway to my feet when Williams came trotting up the hallway, the lines in his forehead furrowed into question marks. The noises of an oak door against a skull or a fist hitting a gut weren’t all that loud, but I guessed it had eventually been enough to get his attention.

“Get him,” I croaked, still doubled over as I pointed toward the door just when it clicked shut.

The large muscular man was out of the room like a shot. Even with the carpets I could hear his steps pounding down the corridor as he gave chase. I staggered over to the doorway. “Call security,” I rasped at Fosse, who’d finally made it up from the rooms in the rear. His “leaders” hung back about twenty feet behind him. “And Detective Riley, fast! Tell him the killer just ran out of administration.”

I was now breathing a bit, but not well. At least I didn’t think I was going to vomit any more.

I got to the door, more or less erect, and started after Williams. He was just exiting the far doors that led out of administration and into the rest of the hospital. Whoever we were chasing was already out of my sight. I started to jog, my breathing quickly becoming more labored and disgustingly noisy. By the time I got to those same doors, even Williams was nowhere to be seen. I stepped into the outside corridor, hoping that the linoleum floor there would amplify the sounds of running feet enough for me to tell which way they’d gone. Nothing. I located the nearest stairwell and threw open the door just in time to hear the clatter of quick echoing steps coming from way below me. They were suddenly cut off by the noise of a door slamming.

I started down.

Two floors below was main, or ground, level. I stuck my head out the door of the landing and listened. There were no sounds of running.

At the first level basement, it was the same. This creep must have led Williams into the subbasement, I thought, feeling my fear mount as I headed down that final flight. I didn’t know how quickly Fosse was getting reinforcements organized, but I was sure he didn’t know which direction Williams and I had taken once we were out of administration.

I braced myself as I opened the door and prepared to step into that oppressive corridor. But I wasn’t prepared for what awaited me. The subbasement was in complete darkness...again.

Chapter 21

“Williams!” I yelled.

There was no sound.

“Williams!” I screamed.

Still nothing. I was standing in the stairwell, holding the door open, letting the light from behind me flow into the blackness of the passage in front of me. I didn’t have a clue what part of the subbasement I was in; I hadn’t seen any stairs the other times I was here.

I kept hoping to hear the sounds of guards or police on the stairs above. “Can anybody hear me?” I yelled up into the silence. “We need the police down here!”