It was Jack’s suggestion that all of the anesthetic machines be inspected before being used again. He also recommended that when not in use they be kept under lock and key. Oliver Cowan suggested locks be installed on each of the operating suite doors and some system of key distribution be devised. The suggestion was accepted by all concerned and a work order was issued to the maintenance department.
“Our main aim is to avoid general alarm,” Chartrand said in his wrap up. “What we can’t afford, either fiscally or from the standpoint of continued patient care, is to interrupt services indefinitely. So. Let us keep a tight rein on the number of informed people—no sense sending up flares for our perpetrator—quarantine the anesthetic machines when they’re not in use—” he stood “—and let’s see what the authorities have to say. Meeting adjourned.”
* * *
Detective Wes Fransen sat across from Peter Chartrand at the administrator’s teak desk and triggered his inhaler. He was a big man, sixty pounds overweight, and this humid weather played hell with his asthma. He waited thirty seconds, the wheeze easing off a little, then took another hit. Holding his breath, he looked at Chartrand and said, “Ashtray?”
The administrator slid over a pewter ashtray, a golf trophy that had never been used. Fransen crushed his butt into it. It was six PM. All booked cases in the OR had been completed. The only procedure still underway was an appendectomy, which Dr. Marti was handling. For the time being all other area emergencies were being shunted to the Civic Hospital, the official pretext being a fouled ventilation system in the Med Center OR. Forensics was still busy sweeping the room for evidence and Fransen’s men had been quietly gathering statements since before three o’clock. So far, nothing.
“What we have here, Peter,” the detective said, “is your basic can of worms.”
“Tell me about it.” Chartrand dug a bottle of Maalox out of a drawer and took a swig. He grimaced. “I just hope we can keep a lid on it.”
“Good luck. Between you and me, I don’t think we’re going to find squat.” The detective plugged a Marlboro into the corner of his mouth and lit it with a book match. He squinted at Chartrand through a wreath of smoke. “What we’ve got to do now is narrow the field. Determine who has both access and the requisite know-how and grill them. We need profiles. Who’s got problems in their personal lives, that sort of thing.”
Chartrand sneezed. He was allergic to smoke, but couldn’t bring himself to complain. Like most citizens, cops made him nervous.
“Two names come to mind,” Chartrand said. “Not as suspects, but as individuals who might be able to steer you toward possible suspects. The first is Paul Daw. He’s a staff psychiatrist who provides an informal counseling service for some of his colleagues. The other is Jack Fallon. He’s Chief of Anesthesia and Director of ICU. He keeps pretty close tabs on his staff. He might have a few ideas.”
“What about Fallon himself?”
“Jack? I really don’t know him well enough to say. He’s aloof, a little spooky sometimes, maybe, but there’s no one better at what he does. I know he’s made enemies around here, but that sort of thing happens to almost anyone in a position of power.”
“Can you arrange a meeting?”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Chartrand said. “I believe Jack is still in the building.”
* * *
After the staff meeting Jack went to ICU to do rounds, then to his office to dictate some notes. Detective Fransen was already there, perched on the corner of Jack’s desk. He introduced himself, flashing his badge, and got straight to the point.
“Can you think of anyone on your staff who might be inclined to do such a thing?”
Fransen picked up an artifact from Jack’s desk, a jade carving of a martial artist, and began palming it from hand to hand.
“Anesthetists are a quirky lot,” Jack said. “But I don’t believe we’re harboring any psychopaths. Would you mind putting that down? It’s quite precious to me.”
“Sorry,” Fransen said, obliging. He glanced at the figure as he set it down. “That’s Kung Fu or something, isn’t it? Are you into that, Doctor Fallon?”
“I have a peripheral interest.”
“So no one comes to mind?”
“Not immediately. If I were you, I’d start my investigation in the biomedical department. Those are the people with the know-how. Most anesthetists are like car owners, Detective. They can drive the machines—turn them on and off, put them through their paces—but if something goes wrong under the hood...”
“I see your point. Thanks, Doctor Fallon. I won’t take up any more of your time.”
Jack smiled. “Glad to help.”
“Oh, before I go, could you direct me to Doctor Daw’s office? I’d like to have a word with him, too.”
“It’s on the main floor,” Jack said. “West wing. Room 2D.”
* * *
Paul sat at his desk after Fransen left, the smell of cigarette smoke lingering in the big man’s wake. Paul’s hands were trembling, the armpits of his dress shirt soaked with sweat.
When the detective asked him if he could think of anyone who might be capable of deliberately causing a patient’s death, a memory flashed in Paul’s mind with an abrupt and intrusive force, causing him to cut his gaze away from Fransen’s. The memory shook him to the core—or more correctly, the connection the memory induced—but he believed he’d recovered quickly enough to deflect suspicion.
And that was all it was, really. A suspicion. An unconscious leap from the known to the unknown triggered by Fransen’s question. Thinking about it now, without that wheezy hulk of a man staring across the desk at him, Paul was ready to dismiss it as absurd.
But still...
He took a ragged breath and closed his eyes, letting the memory unfold. Fifteen years ago now, shortly after meeting Jack for the first time: Paul an intern, doing a three-month stint in ICU; Jack the senior resident, assigned to supervise Paul during his rotation.
Paul recalled his first impressions of Jack, day one of his rotation, the program director making the introductions. How he, Paul, had gasped softly and felt his face redden when Jack smiled at him and offered his hand to be shaken. Tall, deeply tanned, movie-star handsome, so striking Paul could scarcely meet the man’s gaze.
“Nice to meet you, Paul,” Jack had said, shaking his hand with surprising gentleness, his free hand touching Paul’s arm. “Glad to have you aboard.”
Jack had taken him around the unit then, introducing him to the nurses and the few patients who were well enough to appreciate the gesture. Then they had done rounds together, Jack demonstrating a level of skill and clinical acumen Paul could only aspire to. It wasn’t long before Paul came to consider the man a mentor. He could think of no finer practitioner to model himself after.
But all that changed one late night during Paul’s second month in the rotation. It changed abruptly and with all the subtlety of a razor slash...
* * *
“Jesus, Jack, what are you doing?”
Jack faced Paul calmly in the darkened ICU cubicle. He did not switch the ventilator back on.
“What does it look like?” Paul reached for the switch and Jack pushed his hand away. “Leave it,” he said. “It’s almost over now.”
Paul’s gaze flashed to the nurses at the main desk, twenty feet away. “Come on, Jack, turn it back on. You can’t do this...”
“Look at him,” Jack said. “Can you picture yourself in his skin? Or someone you love?”
Paul looked at the dying patient, an elderly man riddled with cancer: skeletal limbs, eyes grotesquely socketed, belly as distended as a full-term pregnancy.
“That still doesn’t give you the right—”
“Oh, but it does,” Jack said. “It most certainly does.”
The oscilloscope showed the erratic pattern of a dying heart. Jack had silenced the alarms.
Paul said, “Shit, I’m getting out of here...”
“Listen,” Jack said, switching the ventilator back on. The old man was dead; it had taken only a minute. “I understand how you feel. I felt the same way the first time I saw this being done.”
“You mean...”
Jack nodded. “Other people do this, too. Quite often, in fact.” He turned the monitor back on, the alarm beginning to whine. “So you’ve got a decision to make.” Nurses were converging on the room now. “Either you talk—and if you do, it’s going to be hard to convince anyone you didn’t take an active part.” Paul opened his mouth to protest and Jack raised a silencing hand. “Or you can trust me.”
Three nurses entered the cubicle. Jack’s eyes, sleekly reptilian in this low light, bore into Paul’s.
“He’s gone,” Paul said, surprised at how steady he sounded.
“That’s a blessing,” one of the nurses said. She glanced at Jack and something seemed to pass between them. “Dr. Fallon, will you sign the death certificate?”
Jack turned to Paul. “Why don’t you sign it, Paul?” he said. “You’ll be needing the practice—”
* * *
A familiar voice said, “Daydreaming, Paul?” and Paul opened his eyes, so startled he almost fell out of his chair.
Jack was leaning in the doorway, smiling at him.
“Jack, no...man, you gave me a start.”
“That why you’re sweating?”
Paul sat straight in his chair, clearing his throat, his hands squaring papers on his desk, looking for something to do.
Jack said, “What did the cop want?”
Paul felt his face redden. “Just sending out feelers, I guess. Wanted to know if I could think of anyone who might fit the profile.”
“And?”
“I told him no.”
Jack was smiling, but his eyes pinned Paul like a bug to a sheet of bristol board. He said, “Hell of a thing, isn’t it. These killings. Who do you think it might be?”
“I really have no idea,” Paul said, and remembered the last time Jack had looked at him this way...in the moment before the nurses came into the cubicle that night in ICU.
“Well, chum,” Jack said, the smile reaching his eyes now, “gotta go. We should get together again sometime soon. Double date. You could bring that little French number...Cerise, wasn’t it?” Paul nodded. “Still seeing her?”
“No.”
“Shame,” Jack said, giving him a wink. “She must’ve been a wild one in the rack.”
“Yeah,” Paul said, trying to plant a grin on his face. “A real animal.”
“Ah, well. Plenty more where that came from, eh, buddy?”
“Yeah. Tons.”
Jack gave his head a little shake and walked away, his heels beating a slow tattoo down the hall.
* * *
Wes Fransen had been a cop for twenty-eight years, a detective for nineteen of those, and in that time he’d become a pretty apt scholar of human nature. Lies, for the most part, were easy to spot. They came in all shapes and flavors, but by now he could see the majority of them coming from a mile away. Truth could be a little tougher, but it had a quality which, to the practiced observer, could generally be discerned. He saw it at the AA meetings he’d attended twice a week for the past nine years, and occasionally, in his job. Truth had a kind of...glow.
But a gray zone existed between truth and fiction which continued to perplex him. Because the lie, if there was a lie, was seldom deliberate. Fransen had no reliable barometer for this phenomenon. The only thing he knew for certain was its cause. Fear. And when he left Paul Daw’s office on that sticky Monday evening, he slotted the psychiatrist into this category. The doctor knew something or suspected something, but he was just too shit scared to articulate it.
Fransen circled Paul’s name in his notebook, going around and around it until it jumped off the page. Beneath that he wrote the word ‘Fallon’, adding a big question mark beside it. Spooky was the word Chartrand had used, and Fransen was inclined to agree. Big, cool, and spooky.
He pocketed the notebook and headed for his car.
PAUL DAW STOOD AT THE foot of Jenny’s hospital bed with Craig Walsh, the two physicians speaking in hushed tones. Jenny lay motionless beneath the blankets, eyes closed, respirations shallow and even. It was eleven o’clock Tuesday morning.
“From a surgical standpoint she’s ready for discharge,” Craig said. “I’ll leave it up to you how best to deal with the depression.”
“I don’t think she’ll be ready to leave anytime soon,” Paul said. “I’d like to arrange a transfer to Psychiatry.”
With what felt like an enormous effort, Jenny opened her eyes and said, “It’s impolite to decide a lady’s fate without consulting her first.” She rose up on her elbows and blinked at them dazedly.
Paul said, “Sorry, Jen. I thought you were...”
“Out of it?” She was amazed at how drained she felt. “Well, maybe I was.” She produced a brittle smile. “But now I’m back.”
Paul cleared his throat. “Uh, Craig was just saying that from his point of view you’re ready to go. It’s been almost four days—”
Four days?
“Jen, are you all right?”
“Yes.” Her face was sheet white. “I just, I didn’t realize...”
“You were having a pretty rough go of it,” Paul said. “Bad dreams, hysterics. We had to sedate you.”
Slivers of it came back to her then: waking up screaming in the night; ghoulish visions of her miscarriage; staff restraining her; painful injections in her hip.
“I lost my baby,” Jenny said, thinking that if she didn’t play her cards right she could end up stuck in here for days. “It was a terrible experience. But I feel better now and I want to go home.”
“I’m not sure we should rush things,” Paul said. “Why not spend a few more days...?”
“Paul, I’m fine. Now I’d like you to arrange my discharge.”
Paul glanced at Craig. “Okay. I’ll set it up for this afternoon.”
When they were gone Jenny decided to test her legs. It took some doing—after four days on her back and God knew what medications, her legs felt like Slinkies—but she got herself going, shifting from handhold to handhold at first, then shuffling into the bathroom to examine herself in the mirror.
My God
, she thought. Sunken eyes stared back at her; a sallow face with a thin, bitter mouth; tousled, greasy hair. She hardly recognized herself.
She slipped out of the hospital gown and stepped into the shower. The water was only lukewarm, the shower head so badly clogged only half the perforations produced spray. But it felt grand. She stood there for ten minutes, rotating slowly, letting the water arouse her blunted nerve endings. Then she toweled herself off and looked around for something to wear. She’d come in wearing only a bra, covered in a sheet the paramedics had thrown over her. Finding nothing, she buzzed the nursing station to explain her dilemma.