Deathbed

by William Kienzle

  “Mr. Harrington! Mr. Harrington!”

  Gerald Harrington thought he heard someone call his name. He wasn’t sure. The voice, while it seemed insistent, was barely audible over all the sounds in the still-crowded operating room.

  “Mr. Harrington! Mr. Harrington!”

  Harrington spotted him. A small, roundish man wearing perhaps the world’s worst toupee and standing behind the tape placed by the police to keep the crowd back. Harrington crossed to the man. “Hi, there. What can I do for you?”

  “This isn’t the whole story,” Bruce Whitaker said.

  “Not the whole story? What do you mean, Buddy?” Harrington was interested. Any competent newsperson would have been.

  “There are things going on in this hospital. Illicit things.” Whitaker could not resist a conspiratorial tone.

  “Illicit things?”

  “Yes. In the clinic. You can see for yourself. I’ll show you. Birth control. Devices. Instructions. Tubal ligations. You can see for yourself. I’ll take you there.”

  Harrington was pressed for time. He was by no means averse to following news leads, but he had to make judgments on which ones to pursue. This one gave every appearance of being both a wrong turn and a dead end. It was not just that the informant seemed to be a run-of-the-mill crazy; as far as Harrington was concerned, the man was speaking nonsense.

  “Okay, Buddy. Maybe I’ll check those things out later. Meanwhile, keep a good thought.”

  As Harrington prepared to leave, the sound man looked at him inquiringly. Harrington’s exaggerated expression told him that it was one more of the city’s many neurotics. The sound man nodded and the team departed.

  Damn, thought Whitaker, this is my golden opportunity. I don’t know how that explosion happened, but it was a godsend. Maybe literally. The news media are here in force. And I haven’t been able to lead anybody to the real story. Maybe I’m coming on too strong. But how else can I do it? We never thought of this part when we were planning. You need a PR person for this sort of thing. What am I going to do?

  “Hey, you!”

  “Me?” Whitaker was taken by surprise.

  “Yeah, you. I heard you talking to that TV guy before. I’m Pfeiffer, Detroit News.” He showed no identification, but he had a note pad, which was enough authentication for Whitaker. “You got something on this story?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.” How to handle this? Imagine: a real reporter who wanted to hear the real story! God was good!

  “Name?”

  “Bruce Whitaker.”

  “Doctor? You a doctor here?”

  “No. I’m a volunteer.”

  “Then what’s with the stethoscope?”

  “Oh, my . . . .” In the confusion he had forgotten the stethoscope. “Never mind that. I need it in my job.” Whitaker hoped the bluff would work.

  Pfeiffer looked a bit skeptical, but forged on toward a possible new development in this bizarre incident. “Okay. What’ve you got?”

  Not so pointblank now, Whitaker cautioned himself. “There’s a reason behind this explosion.”

  “You mean you know who did it?” Pfeiffer was immediately excited.

  “Well, not exactly. Almost.”

  “Whaddya mean ‘almost’! How could you know ‘almost’ who did it! Have you got both oars in the water?”

  “Let me tell you what’s behind all this, then you’ll know what I mean.”

  Pfeiffer closed his note pad and pocketed his pen. He would give this nut at most three more minutes to babble on. And that only because the reporter was feeling unusually generous today.

  “Inspector?” A Third Precinct detective approached Koznicki.

  “Yes?” Koznicki had been absently following the patching of the wall while recalling his conversation with Father Koesler. Unfortunately, this was his day off from the hospital. He had missed all the excitement. Koznicki would bring his friend up to date tomorrow.

  “Inspector . . .” The detective drew very near so he would not have to speak loudly. “We got lucky.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “We got a full ten prints off that nitrous oxide tank, and identical prints off one oxide tank in each of the other rooms. They’d all been bled. Undoubtedly by the guy whose prints were on the tanks and also on the valves.”

  “Very good.”

  “And we got an ID.”

  “So soon?”

  “Well, we had both hands. And we didn’t have to look far: He’s on parole from Van’s Can.”

  “What does his rap-sheet show?”

  “Attempted murder.”

  “Hmmm. Name?”

  “Whitaker. Bruce Whitaker.”

  Koznicki reflected. “Rings no bells. Where do we find him?”

  “See that guy over there in the white coat talking to Pfeiffer?”

  Koznicki followed the direction of the detective’s inclined head, then nodded.

  “That’s our guy.”

  Koznicki shook his head in disbelief. “Take him.”

  The detective nodded to his partner. They closed in.

  “Bruce Whitaker?”

  “Y . . . Y . . . Yes?”

  “You are under arrest for malicious destruction of property, violation of parole, endangerment to life, and a few more things we’ll think of as time passes.” The detective took a card from his wallet as his partner handcuffed Whitaker. “You have the right to remain silent . . . .”

  “You!” Pfeiffer was astonished. “You? You did this? My crazy did this? How lucky can I get? Now, you were saying . . .”

  All for nothing! They will never believe him. All for nothing! What a waste! I have accomplished nothing. I should have done it myself from the beginning. It must be done. And I must do it! I must do it quickly now!

  13

  It was one of those days when Detroiters felt lucky to get where they were going. It had snowed off and on, with varying intensity, for the better part of two days, accumulating an additional five inches.

  Because he had traveled Ford Road, the Ford and Lodge Expressways, all priority-plowed thoroughfares, Father Koesler had actually arrived early at St. Vincent’s. So it was with a sense of unhurried relaxation that he was able to enjoy coffee and a Danish with Inspector Koznicki in the cafeteria.

  Since yesterday had been Koesler’s day off, he had missed all the excitement. He’d read the first sketchy details in last evening’s Detroit News in a story carrying Mark Pfeiffer’s by-line. TV news had had film on both the six and eleven o’clock news. He hadn’t yet had an opportunity to read this morning’s Free Press.

  But all of these gaps in his news-information education were more than filled in by the presence of essentially an eyewitness to the event. By now, Koznicki had told Koesler, step-by-step, what had happened almost twenty-four hours ago not far from where they now sat.

  “What a coincidence,” Koesler observed, “that you should be called in on this case.”

  “That is indeed what it was—a coincidence. I just happened to be the officer on duty that night.”

  “I haven’t as yet been able to get a very clear picture of what happened. The account in the News seemed sort of garbled. One of those stories that a reporter gets as a sort of exclusive, but while he’s got it first, he doesn’t know exactly where it’s going.”

  “A very perceptive observation, Father. Mr. Pfeiffer happened to be actually interviewing our suspect as he was arrested. Another coincidence, and a very serendipitous one for Mr. Pfeiffer.”

  “I should say. Then about all I got from the TV news was a glimpse at the pandemonium here, then a brief look at the suspect covering his face as he was taken in.”

  “I gather you haven’t read today’s Free Press or the morning edition of the News? They have rather more complete accounts of the matter.”

  “Haven’t had a chance yet. What was the guy’s name? Whit-something . . . Whitman?”

  “Whitaker. Bruce Whitaker.”

  “Hmmm. Why does t
hat name ring a bell?”

  Koznicki smiled. “In time you would remember. But you must recall some four years ago, four very conservative Catholic men tried to take vengeance against their former seminary professors? And they were not too successful, although they came close? Well, it is typical of this man that, on the one hand he would not think to use an alias, and that, on the other, no one would remember him anyway.”

  “Yes, yes, yes, I remember. Of course! The gang of four! Good grief, they could scarcely tie their shoes! That’s why he looked familiar.” He shook his head. “Bruce Whitaker did all that damage? It hardly seems possible. I mean, with his penchant for failure . . .”

  Koznicki frowned. “Well, he does claim he did not do it.”

  “But you have evidence?”

  “Tanks containing nitrous oxide were emptied in each of the operating rooms. His fingerprints were found on each tank. His were the only prints of unauthorized personnel we found in that area.”

  “That’s interesting. So he seems to have emptied the nitrous oxide tanks. I’m not familiar with that. What’s nitrous oxide used for?”

  “It is one of the gases that is used as part of a mixture in anesthesia.”

  “And if there isn’t any nitrous oxide?”

  “The patient does not go to sleep—at least not as rapidly or deeply as the anesthetist would expect.”

  “Hmmm. So, emptying the tanks . . . that wouldn’t seem to accomplish much. Sounds like it’s right in the ball park for those guys. What was he trying to do anyway?”

  Koznicki shook his head. “He claims he was trying to call attention to the hospital to reveal its immoral deeds. But, at that point, he becomes quite incoherent.”

  “Strange.” The rationale made no sense to Koesler. But then he did not consider any of the hospital’s policies immoral. “At any rate, he certainly got everyone’s attention.” He looked at Koznicki questioningly. “But then, you said he claims he didn’t do it.”

  Again Koznicki frowned. “He is an odd person and this is an odd case.”

  “Oh?”

  “He freely confesses that he bled the nitrous oxide tanks—which affected virtually nothing. But he denies tampering with an extremely dangerous tank that might have injured or even killed someone—anyone, in this case—and which did become a media event.”

  “Excuse me, Inspector, but that doesn’t sound very odd to me. It seems kind of understandable that someone would admit doing something harmless yet deny responsibility for a serious crime . . . no?”

  “As far as that goes, Father. But Mr. Whitaker goes on to confess and deny things he has not been charged with. Some things which are—well, incredible.”

  “Such as?”

  “Do not feel inappropriate should you laugh at this Father; everyone else has. He claims that he mutilated a shipment of curtain hooks, mistaking them to be—can you imagine—intrauterine devices!” Koznicki barely suppressed a snort.

  Koesler started to laugh, then suddenly stopped. “Wait a minute! That explains it. I was here in this cafeteria when a woman brought in a box of curtain hooks that had been damaged. The presumption was that it was the manufacturer’s fault. But if I remember correctly, the lady said she had stored them in the compartment reserved for IUDs.”

  “You mean—”

  “It makes some sort of crazy sense now. Apparently, he went looking for the IUDs, but didn’t know what they looked like. He found the hooks in the drawer with an IUD label on it.” He shook his head. “I must admit, if you didn’t know what an IUD was, these hooks might just pass for IUDs. But . . . “His brow furrowed. “. . . why would he want to mutilate IUDs?”

  Koznicki tapped an index finger methodically on the table. “If he was telling the truth, at least about his reason for bleeding the nitrous oxide tanks, he wanted to call attention to the hospital—for whatever reason.”

  “Mutilating IUDs seems a pretty roundabout way of doing that, although I guess it could work. Of course no doctor would put a mutilated IUD in a patient. But if one were to assume that a woman was fitted with something like that, you could be certain she’d be hurt. She’d probably see another doctor, then a lawyer. Next, she’d be talking to reporters.”

  Koznicki looked intently at his coffee, with a bemused expression. “You know, Father, I never thought I would hear a rational explanation for, on the one hand, mistaking curtain hooks for IUDs, and, on the other, mutilating the hooks. But I believe you may have hit upon it.”

  “It does sound like his method of operation, doesn’t it? Like the MO of all four of those guys. But you would have found this out anyway, Inspector. In your investigation you would have discovered the mutilated curtain hooks that had been stored in the wrong drawer.”

  “That is true. But it is a happy coincidence that you happened to be there when the damage was reported. It has saved us much time. I wonder if I would be tempting fate to test you on Mr. Whitaker’s second bizarre confession?”

  “I would really be surprised if it worked. But go ahead, Inspector. What was it?”

  “Well, this confession was as unsolicited as was his admission that he had mutilated curtain hooks. He claims that several nights ago he altered a patient’s chart, putting a woman into a test program she should have been excluded from because she was allergic to the medication used in the program.”

  Koesler’s eyes widened.

  “In addition,” Koznicki continued, “he claims that his scheme worked even though he is certain he omitted an essential part of the plan. He says he forgot to remove from the chart a sticker which informed medical personnel that the patient was allergic to the medication being used in the test.

  “And the reason he forgot to remove the sticker was because he had been observed by a security guard who—and Mr. Whitaker can offer no explanation for this—neither stopped him nor apprehended him. The guard, Mr. Whitaker claims, merely challenged him from a distance down the hallway and then, could anyone believe it, disappeared.” The Inspector looked more bemused than ever. “In all my years in the department, I have never encountered anyone like Mr. Whitaker.”

  Koesler was silent for a few moments. Then, “You know, Inspector, strange as it seems, I think I can put that one together.”

  It was Koznicki’s turn to look surprised.

  “I remember the mix-up when a patient got the wrong medication,” Koesler began. “It must be the same case. The patient had pneumonia and was given penicillin but she was allergic to it and had a bad reaction .. . right?”

  “That is what he claimed. Indeed it is.”

  “I remember that very well because I talked to the woman shortly after she was admitted. She told me she had been asked to be part of that test, but she told them she was allergic to penicillin, so she’d been excluded. I had no more to do with her—she was on Sister Rosamunda’s floor—until I overheard some nurses discussing her deteriorating condition. Then I remembered her allergy and pointed it out.

  “Everyone thought it was an accident, one of those foul-ups that are forever happening in hospitals. Fortunately for St. Vincent’s, the patient had a faith in God so strong that she attributed everything that happened to her as coming from God—even what seemed to be a near-fatal blunder in a hospital.

  “But you undoubtedly would have uncovered that incident also in your investigation. Just as you would have found the mutilated curtain hooks. And it’s always possible that Whitaker was aware of these incidents, just as I was, and was confessing to them for God-knows-what reason.” Koesler looked to Koznicki for some reason.

  “Well, under this hypothesis, he might have been building a basis for some sort of insanity plea. Or he may just be one of those compulsive people we meet from time to time who must confess to every crime imaginable.”

  “Okay,” Koesler agreed, “but what may be unique about what Whitaker told you was the part about the security guard who challenged him from a distance down the corridor and then seemingly disappeared. If that part is true, t
hen it would add a lot of credence to his overall story, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, but how could it be true?”

  “There’s a patient named ... let me see, I’m sure she’s still here.” Koesler checked the current patient list he’d picked up earlier. “Yes, here she is: Alice Walker. I was sure she’d still be here. Sister Rosamunda made sure she’d stay here long enough to have her infected feet taken care of.

  “Okay, on the night in question, the night that Whitaker claims he altered a patient’s chart and was challenged by a vanishing guard, this Alice Walker’s life was saved by what had to be that same guard.

  “The official story had it that Mrs. Walker was having a before-bedtime snack when she started to strangle on some crackers. At that point, or so the guard claims, he happened to be passing her room when he heard choking noises. He claims he came to her rescue and with the Heimlich Maneuver saved her life. That’s the story the guard told and the story that went around the hospital.

  “However, the next morning, I heard Mrs. Walker’s confession and brought her Communion. And, after Communion, she told me quite a different story of what had taken place.

  “According to Mrs. Walker—and I have no reason to doubt her—the guard did not ‘just happen’ to be passing her room when she began coughing. He had been in her room a considerable time. He was . . . um . . . carousing in the other bed with someone, a nurse or an aide, Mrs. Walker couldn’t be sure. The curtain had been pulled around her bed.

  “Anyway, at about the time she began choking, the guard didn’t apply any Heimlich Hug. He fell out of bed, rolled across the floor, hit her bed, knocking her out of it; she fell on top of him and that dislodged the food that had been stuck in her windpipe.”

  Koznicki could not help himself. He began to laugh. It was several minutes before he was able to compose himself.

  Somehow, when Alice Walker told the story, Koesler had not found it all that funny. Now, as he recounted it to Koznicki, it seemed ludicrous. Only gradually, inspired by the Inspector’s example, was Koesler able to get control of himself.