Doing Harm (41 page)

I lay it on the table next to the box and frown.
Stupid of me.
I had completely forgotten about the cell phones. Through the signals they send to towers, cell phones can be used to track a person’s location. The phones, I realize, are the only direct link between Luis and me: Even though they were prepaid, I’m sure the calls are logged by their numbers. If the police, or anyone else, had gotten ahold of this phone, they could have tracked me down to my home address through his text messages. Which, of course, would have led to uncomfortable questions and awkward situations. Now I have both phones, and the loop is closed.

Not exactly the smoking gun I was looking for; but, so far, so good. And it confirms that Luis was prepared for a worst-case scenario by keeping his phone someplace safe—someplace accessible by me, if necessary—while he was at his most vulnerable: asleep in University Hospital.

I slip the phone in my pocket and draw the second and final item from the box: a dog-eared paperback book entitled
Eye in the Sky.
The cover shows a large, floating eye and several small human figures fleeing from it. My eyes flicker over the author line.

Philip K. Dick.

Again, like a flashback in a movie, my memory jumps back to the night on the porch.

I’ve always been partial to science fiction.

Luis said that Philip K. Dick was one of his favorite authors.

Don’t forget what we’ve talked about here tonight.

Is the book a clue to something important? Something that could help me? But if so, what does it mean? I flip through the pages and immediately notice that text has been highlighted at sporadic points throughout the book with a yellow pen.

That’s interesting.

Something compels me to snap the book closed and check my surroundings rather than take a closer look at the highlighted text. I’m alone, but there’s a security camera, high up in one corner, keeping vigil over the room. It makes me feel exposed. So I tuck the book under my arm, walk back to the lobby, and return the safe deposit box to Librarian Lady. She hands me back my key, flashes a disdainful smile, and focuses her attention back on her computer monitor.

I pause and timidly clear my throat.

“Was there anything else, Mr. Mitchell?” She locks her glacial blue eyes on me, and the room temperature drops twenty degrees.

“I was, um, wondering—you mentioned I was the co-renter for this box.”

She arches an eyebrow but says nothing.

“So, who—I mean, when was the last time my partner checked the box?”

“Your partner? Partners usually talk with one another.”

“Right. He’s on vacation right now. A camping trip. Very remote. No cell coverage. One of those, uh, get-away-from-it-all-type places.”

“Humph.” She narrows her eyes and purses her lips, but nevertheless stabs the keyboard a few more times with her finger. “Your corenter, Mr. Reynolds, was last here on Sunday morning.”

Mr. Reynolds
. An alias. Not surprising. Knowing Luis, I’m sure the box can never be traced back to him directly. The bank is only a couple of blocks from University Hospital. He probably dropped it in the safe deposit box whenever he was going to be staying overnight on call in the hospital.

“You guys are open on Sundays?”

She stares at me like I’m a complete idiot. “A lot of banks are open on Sundays, Mr. Mitchell.”

I stammer thanks and beat a hasty retreat from the bank.

*   *   *

Once I’m safely home, I leave the blinds closed, collect the other cell phone from the nightstand in the master bedroom upstairs, and unzip one of the cushions of the couch I slept on last night. I tuck both phones inside it and zip the cushion up again. I then carry
Eye in the Sky
to the kitchen, sit down at the table and, in the dim light cast by the fingers of sun prying at the cracks in the blinds, open it to the first page.

The highlighted bits of text are numbers: some written out as numeric digits, some as words. I make my way slowly and methodically through the book, writing down each of the highlighted numbers on a sheet of lined notebook paper, each number to its own line. When I’m done, there are eleven different numbers—seven two-digit and four one-digit—printed on the page. I gnaw on the tip of my pen and try to figure out why Luis would go through all this trouble to make sure that I see these eleven particular numbers.

Think.

What are numbers good for? A location, maybe? The site of another clue? GPS coordinates, in latitude and longitude, usually contain longer strings of digits: The seconds portion alone for each latitude and longitude is typically expressed to four decimal places. Nevertheless, I turn on my laptop and try shuffling the eleven numbers around in different combinations in Google Maps, but only come up with various locations in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

I close my eyes and rub my eyeballs with the heels of my palms. Luis would have
wanted
me to solve this puzzle. He’d have tied these numbers in with something he knew I’d be able to recognize.

But what?

I crack the book and stare at each of the numbers again in turn, one by one, searching for additional details. Six of them are written out as words, five as actual numbers; two of them occur at the beginning of a sentence, three of them at the end; four of them are page numbers—

Wait a second.

Three of the numbers, and only three, occur at the end of a sentence—which means that each of these numbers immediately precedes a period. Is it possible that Luis intended for the periods to be included with these numbers? That would make for eleven numbers in all, three of them followed by a period …

Or, to think of it another way:
four
separate numbers separated by three periods.

My pulse quickens.

I carefully recopy the numbers, placing them all on the same line, in a single row, and insert the periods at the proper positions. Three numbers. Period. Three numbers. Period. Three numbers. Period. Two numbers.

To a computer geek like me, a string of digits like that can mean only one thing.

An Internet Protocol address. IP for short.

Every computer, printer, and other machine hooked into the Internet, or any other network, has an IP address. It suggests that Luis might be trying to guide me to a Web site. My hands tremble as I enter the numbers, with the corresponding periods, into my Web browser window.

The screen flashes briefly.

I hold my breath.

A login page appears with a prompt, in English, for a password. The rest of the page is in some language I don’t understand, but it looks Eastern European. It’s definitely not Russian. Polish, maybe.

Or Slovakian.

I breathe out sharply and smile.

It must be some random server Luis hijacked, most likely a secure offshore site he hacked on which he could store digital data. But what kind of data? My insides hum with anticipation. I’m as thrilled as a fourteen-year-old boy who’s managed to outsmart the Internet porn lockouts on the family computer.

Until, that is, it occurs to me that Luis has left behind a twenty-character code standing between whatever is on that server and me, with no obvious clues as to how to access it.

Shit.

Luis certainly wasn’t naïve or stupid enough to have used something as simplistic as a birthday, or a name, or any other easily recognizable patterns for the code. No—I have to assume that this code is composed of random letters, digits, and symbols. In which case it would take the fastest computers in the world decades to crack.

Dead end.

I pound my fist on the table.

But I’m so close.

There must be another way to figure this out. Luis was obsessed with—what had he called it?
Compartmentalization.
He had wanted to keep vital information separate. He must have hidden the code elsewhere. The question is, where? Hoping that maybe the book itself is enough of a clue, I pull a synopsis of
Eye in the Sky
off the Internet. It sounds like a pretty weird story, with alternate universes and metaphysical ruminations on the nature of existence. But a few things pop out at me. There’s the title, of course, which invokes some kind of omniscient being. And then there’s a character in charge of security at a large company, who at the end of the book is revealed to have been manipulating reality for the protagonists, like an unseen puppet master.

Omniscient. Puppet master.

I snort. Those aren’t bad descriptions for GG. She always seems to be one step ahead; like we’re playing chess, and at each turn she already knows my next move. It’s almost supernatural. Like, how the hell did she know I was sitting in Mrs. Samuelson’s room before I ran to the fake code for—

Wait a minute.

How
did
GG know when I left Mrs. Samuelson’s room in the SICU the night of her death? Other than me, there was no one else there except for Carol, a few other nurses, and the security guard. Nobody, including the security guard, saw her come in through the front door, so she must have slipped in through the back door of the SICU. But that means I practically would have stumbled over her in my mad rush to get to Mr. Schultz’s room, when I was using the same door.

Unless she could see me run out of Mrs. Samuelson’s room without actually being in or around the SICU.

Like an eye in the sky.

Or like the camera I saw in the safe deposit box room at the bank.

I’ve seen security cameras around University Hospital, in the large lobbies and waiting rooms on the ground floor, but never any in the actual patient rooms. Is it possible that there are security cameras in the SICU, trained on the patients in their beds? If so, one of them might have caught GG in the act. I mull that over. If there are cameras, they must be hidden, and I’m sure University Hospital Security would have something to do with them. Hadn’t my friend Jason mentioned to me that he worked with University Hospital Security? Gnawing on my lower lip, I take out my phone, select Jason’s number from my list of contacts, carefully compose a text message, and hit
SEND
.

I place the phone on the kitchen table and stare at it. I cross my arms and nervously bounce my leg up and down. The portable keystroke logger I’ve been carrying around, the one that uses the same technology I had used to crack GG’s e-mail account, is sitting on the table next to it, so I pick it up and spin it around idly in my fingers.

Several minutes tick by.

Come on, Jason, come on …

The phone buzzes. I pounce on it and hungrily read the reply.

*   *   *

The view I see on the video is from above, as if I’m watching from a corner of the ceiling; and wide-angle, so that everything in the small room is clearly visible. It’s nighttime. Mrs. Samuelson is lying in her bed, sleeping; I’m dozing next to her in the armchair, with my computer sitting on my lap. A time stamp in the lower-right-hand corner of the picture reads 4:15
A.M.
August: less than ten minutes before Mrs. Samuelson coded.

What happens next in the video plays out like a string of images in a silent movie: My chin, which I see had been resting on my chest, jerks upward as I awaken and frantically survey the room. I then see myself check my pager, call the nurse, and frantically dash out the door, leaving my white coat and laptop sitting on the chair.

As I continue to watch the video, I lean forward in my chair, squeezing the life out of the armrests in anticipation as I see …

… five more minutes of footage of Mrs. Samuelson soundly sleeping.

What?

Then, in rapid-fire succession, follow the events that are indelibly, painfully scorched into my brain: Mrs. Samuelson’s bolting upright in the bed, clutching at her chest as I run back into the room; the frantic and ultimately futile attempts to save her life; the cardiac surgeon calling the time of death.

Jason pauses the video and sighs. “Anything else I can do for you today, Steve? Open the personal medical files of every celebrity and politician who’s recently been treated at University Hospital, maybe? Stick my neck even further out on the chopping block?” We’re sitting in front of the computer in a small office in his house. He tilts back, and the squeaking of his chair mingles with the high-pitched squeals of children drifting through the open door of his study.

“What I still don’t understand,” he continues, “is how you knew about this surveillance system. Christ, the installation guys even made it look like they were fixing the ventilation system so the SICU nurses wouldn’t suspect anything.”

“I told you, Jason, I—”

“—had a hunch. Right. Because you realized security is so important in the SICU. Yes, that’s the reason for the hidden cameras. But come on, Steve. Honestly. Who told you? Was it that med student you’ve been working with this summer? The one with the big”—he glances toward the open door and lowers his voice a notch—“tits? What’s her name? Gigi? She’s been doing administrative work with the Safety Committee for the past few years. I bet she somehow found out about the SICU cameras, then told you. Well, I suppose it was only a matter of time before word leaked out.”

He starts muttering angrily as he logs out of the secure account he had used to remotely access the camera’s video files. “I told the Security people they shouldn’t have put in the others yet. Not until we had a chance to explain things.”

Others?
Does he mean that there are more?

“Maybe if we looked at just one more—”

“No,” Jason says, emphatically. “Absolutely not. I’ve already broken, like, twenty major rules, what with all of the medical-liability and patient-privacy issues involved.” He scowls at me. “What the hell were you looking for, anyway? What did you expect to see on that video clip? That poor lady threw an air embolism, pure and simple, because of the hole in her central line.”

“I … I’m not sure, Jason. I had a hunch about something, but I guess I was wrong. I came to you because I thought you could help me, and because I trust you. I’m sorry. Really. I don’t want you to get in any trouble.”