“Wait a second,” Wendy said.
“I don’t think that’s possible. I want to graph this stuff. Let me see if I can find some paper.”
Wendy walked over to the reference desk.
Meanwhile, Marissa went back to the figures. As Wendy suggested, it didn’t seem possible for rates per cycle to go down while rates per patient went up. And not only that, the pregnancy rate per patient in 1988 approached eighty percent!
“Ta da!” Wendy said as she came back, triumphantly waving several sheets of graph paper. She set to work, swiftly sketching two graphs.
/0 PexCM7P6.-&m4Nrq0 lq6#
2A
3 It 5 7 8 1
CYCLE
After briefly studying her efforts, she pushed the paper across the table to Marissa.
“There has to be something we’re missing,” she said.
“This still doesn’t make sense to me.”
Marissa examined the graphs Wendy had drawn. It didn’t make sense to her either. Seeing the supposedly related curves going in different directions seemed contradictory.
“The crazy part is that they can’t be bogus statistics,” Wendy said.
“If they were making them up, they certainly wouldn’t have had the per-cycle success rate go down. They wouldn’t be that stupid.”
“I don’t know what to make of it,” Marian said. She handed the graphs back to Wendy, who folded them and put them in her purse.
“Let’s sleep on it,” Wendy suggested.
“Maybe we should go back to FCA and ask Mr. Lester,” Marissa said.
“But first let’s check to see if our Tristan Williams has been writing any more papers.”
After returning all the FCA journal articles to their proper shelves, Marissa. and Wendy returned to the computer terminals that Mrs. Pierce had pointed out to them. Wendy sat down while
Marissa leaned over her shoulder. Without much difficulty, Wendy set the computer to run a search for all articles written by Tristan Williams. After she pushed the Execute button, it took the computer only a few seconds to flash the result. Tristan Williams had written only one published article, and that was the one they already had.
“Not what I’d call a prolific bloke,” Wendy said.
“That’s an understatement,” Marissa said.
“I’m starting to get a bit discouraged. You have any suggestions nowT’ “Sure do,” Wendy said.
“Ixt’s have lunch.”
After inquiring at the circulation desk, Marissa and Wendy walked over to a cafeteria-style lunchroom and bought sandwiches.
Taking them outside, they sat on a bench beneath a beautiful flowering tree of a species neither one recognized.
“Do you think it’s really worth the effort to try to find this Williams character?” Wendy asked between bites.
“After all, he might not even appreciate our seeking him out. Sounds like this episode with his one and only paper was his undoing.”
“I suppose my interest is mere curiosity at this point,” Marissa admitted, “Maybe we should try one more thing. Let’s try calling the Royal College of Pathology and ask them about him. If they don’t know anything or if they tell us he’s in some distant place like Perth, we’ll give up. This already is beginning to feel like a wild-goose chase.”
“And then we’ll let ourselves have some fun!” Wendy said.
“Right,” Marissa said.
Once they finished eating, they returned to the library and consulted the Royal College of Pathology’s publication for the society’s address and phone number. Using a public phone in the library, Marissa made her call. The phone was answered by a cheerful operator who connected Marissa to an administrator named Shirley McGovern once Marissa told her why she was calling.
“I’m terribly sorry,” Mrs. McGovern said after Marissa repeated her question.
“It is the College’s rule not to give out information on its members.”
“I understand,” Marissa said.
“But perhaps you can tell me if he is a member of your organization.”
There was a pause on the line.
“I’ve come all the way from America,” Marissa added.
“We’re old friends..
“Well.. Mrs. McGovern said, “I suppose it is all right to tell you that he is no longer a member of the College. But beyond that, I cannot tell you more.”
Marissa hung up the phone and told Wendy what little she’d learned.
“Although she certainly implied that he had been a member in the past,” Marissa added.
“I suppose that further corroborates Mr. Lester’s story,” Wendy said.
“Let’s give up on the bastard. The more I think about him publishing a fictitious paper, the less I want to talk to him. Let’s go diving.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” Marissa said.
“As long as we’re on the medical school campus, let’s find the alumni office and see if he happened to go to school here. If this alumni office is anything like ours, they’d be sure to have the man’s latest address to hit him up for money. If they don’t know of him, then we’ll give up.”
“You’ve got yourself a deal,” Wendy said.
The alumni office was in the main administration building on the second floor. It was a small operation with only a three person staff. The director, a Mr. Alex Hammersmith, was cordial and eager to help.
“The name’s not familiar,” he said in response to their inquiry, “but let me have a go at our master list.”
He had a computer terminal on his desk and he typed in Tristan Williams’ name.
“How do you know this bloke?” he asked, keying the computer to start its search.
“Old friend,” Marissa said evasively.
“We came to Australia on the spur of the moment and decided to try to look him up to say hello.”
“Bloody friendly of you,” Mr. Hammersmith said as he glanced over at his screen.
“Here we go. Yes, Mr. Tristan Williams was a graduate here, class of 1979.”
“Do you have his current address?” Marissa asked. This was the first encouraging lead they’d had all day.
“Only his work address,” Mr. Hammersmith said.
“Would you care to have that?”
“Very much so,” Marissa said, motioning Wendy to give her a piece of paper. Wendy handed her another sheet of graph paper from her purse.
“Mr. Williams is close by,” Mr. Hammersmith said.
“Only a few blocks away at the Female Care Australia clinic. It’s near enough to walk.”
Marissa sighed. She handed the graph paper back to Wendy along with the pen.
“We’ve already been there,” she said.
“They told us he’d left two years ago.”
“Oh, dear!” Mr. Hammersmith said.
“Terribly sorry about that. We try to keep our files up to date, but we’re not always successful.”
“Thank you for your help,” Marissa said, getting to her feet.
“I suppose Tristan and I were destined never to meet again.
“Bloody awful,” Mr. Hammersmith said.
“But hold on. Let me try something else here.” He went back to his computer screen and began typing on the keyboard.
“There we have it!” Mr. Hammersmith said with a smile.
“I’ve chocked the faculty roster with the 1979 year of graduation. We have three people from that year on staff My advice is to ask them about Tristan Williams. I’m sure one of them will know where he is.” He wrote down the faculty names and their respective departments and handed the sheet to Marissa.
I’d try the bloke on top of the list first,” Mr. Hammersmith said.
“For a while he was acting as the class secretary for the alumni journal. He works in the Anatomy Department, which is in the building directly across from this one. If after talking with him and the others you still haven’t turned old Williams up, come back. I have a few other ideas that might be worth trying. I could contact the Health Insurance Commission in Canberra for one.
If he’s doing any outpatient billing, they’d have to have an address for him. And of course there is the Australian Medical Association. I think they keep a data bank on physicians whether they are members or not. Beyond that, there’s the State Licensing Board. There are actually a lot of ways we might track him down.”
“You’ve been most kind,” Marissa said.
“Good luck,” Mr. Hammersmith said.
“We Australians love to see friends from abroad. It would be a shame if you two missed each other after you’ve come all this way.”
After leaving the alumni office, Marissa stopped Wendy in the stairwell.
“You don’t mind if we follow up on this, do you?” she asked.
“This is a step beyond our deal.”
“We’re here,” Wendy said.
“Let’s give it a shot.”
Marissa and Wendy had no trouble finding the Anatomy Department, where they went and asked for Dr. Lawrence Spenser.
“Third floor,” a secretary told them.
“Gross anatomy. He’s usually in the lab in the afternoon.”
Climbing the stairs, Wendy said, “The smell alone here is starting to awaken bad memories. How well I remember it from my med school days. Did you like gross anatomy first year?”
“It wasn’t bad,” Marissa said.
“I hated it,” Wendy said.
“That smell. I couldn’t get it out of my hair for the entire three months.”
The door to the gross anatomy room was ajar. The women peeked inside. There were about twenty shrouded tables. Toward the rear was a lone individual wearing an apron and rubber gloves. His back was to them.
“Excuse me!” Marissa called.
“We’re looking for Lawrence Spenser.”
The man turned around. He had dark curly hair. Compared to the people Marissa and Wendy had been seeing, he seemed pale.
“You’ve found him,” the man said with a smile.
“What can I do for you?”
“We’d like to ask you a few questions,” Marissa called.
“Well, it’s a little hard to converse across the room,” Spenser said.
“Come on in.”
Marissa and Wendy entered and weaved their way among the many shrouded tables. Both women were aware that the plastic sheets were covering corpses. Wendy tried to breathe through her mouth so as not to smell the formalin.
“Welcome to gross anatomy,” Spenser said.
“I’m afraid I don’t get many visitors.”
Wendy recoiled from the sight of what he had been working on. It was the torso of a cadaver, sawed off at the umbilicus. The eyes were half open, the mouth pulled back in a sneer with the tips of yellow teeth barely visible. The skin of the left cheek had been dissected, revealing the course of the facial nerve.
Following Wendy’s line of sight, Spenser said,. “Sorry about Archibald here. He’s been under the weather lately.”
“We’ve just come from the alumni office,” Marissa told him.
“Excuse me,” Wendy said, interrupting her.
“I think I’ll wait outside.” She turned and started for the hall.
“Are you okay?” Marissa called after her.
“I’ll be fine,” Wendy said with a wave.
“Take your time. I’ll be outside.”
Turning back to Spenser, Marissa explained, “Anatomy wasn’t her favorite subject.”
“Sorry about that,” Spenser said.
“When you do this every day, you forget its effect on others.”
“Getting back to what I was saying,” Marissa continued.
“We were over at the alumni office and Mr. Hammersmith gave us your name. We’re doctors from the States. We’re looking for Tristan Williams. Mr. Hammersmith said you might know of him since you two graduated together.”
“Sure, I know Tris,” Spenser said.
“In fact, I spoke to him about six months ago. Why are you looking for him?”
“Just old friends,” Marissa said.
“We happened to be in Brisbane and wanted to say hello, but he’d left the FCA.”
“And not under the best of circumstances,” Spenser said.
“Poor Tris has been going through some hard times, but things seem better now. In fact, I think he’s quite happy where he is.”
“Is he still in the Brisbane area?” Marissa asked.
“Hell, no!” Spenser said.
“He’s out in Never Never.”
“Never Never?” Marissa questioned.