Natural Causes

by Michael Palmer

  “Well, chile, I wasn’t jes’ watchin’ him,” the woman chided. “I was watchin’ you.”

  • • •

  Savoring the sweet, scrubbed summer air, Sarah left the medical building on the campus side and crossed to where she had chained her bicycle. The campus was fairly well lighted and patrolled. And although there were, from time to time, reports of women being harassed at night, and in one case mugged, Sarah did not find the broad mall particularly menacing.

  The groundskeepers periodically posted notices requesting that bicycles be left only in designated areas. But since those areas were outside the campus, house officers and nurses who planned to be at the hospital after dark continued to secure their bikes to the wrought-iron railings leading up to the entrances of many of the buildings.

  Sarah had chained her Fuji to a low, steel-pipe railing by the side entrance of the surgical building. It was a convenient site, and one she had used frequently with no problem. Now, as she rounded the corner, she was struck by the darkness of the spot. The light over the entrance was out, although she could never remember its being so before. She peered through the gloom and took one tentative step forward … then another. The man was pressed tightly against the wall to her left.

  Sensing a presence, Sarah froze. She squinted and blinked, but her vision had not yet adjusted enough to pierce the blackness. The night was soundless. She strained to hear breathing or movement of any kind. Someone was there … close. She shifted her weight to her right foot, preparing to push off and sprint away.

  “I know you’re there. What do you want?” she suddenly heard herself saying.

  Five endless seconds passed … ten.

  “P-p-please d-don’t r-r-run,” the man said in a whispered stutter.

  Sarah reflexively moved away from the voice even as she was turning toward it. The man, now a silhouette, stepped from the shielding darkness. He was not much taller than she, and very slightly built. Sarah could just make out the narrow contours of his face.

  “Doctor B-B-Baldwin. I’ve been f-following you f-for days. I must s-speak with—”

  “Sarah, is that you?”

  Sarah whirled. Rosa Suarez was standing not ten feet away, angled so that she could see Sarah but not the man. At the sound of the intruder’s voice, he bolted. Head down, he charged past Rosa, shoving her off balance and very nearly to the ground.

  “Stop, please!” Sarah cried.

  But the man was already crossing the lawn of the campus, heading full bore toward the front gate. Her pulse jackhammering, Sarah rushed to Rosa’s side.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, I think.” Rosa was breathing heavily as she stared across the deserted campus in the direction the man had run. She patted her chest. “Who was he?”

  “I don’t know. He called me by name and said he had to speak with me. Then when you called out, he ran.”

  “How strange.”

  “He stuttered terribly—worse than almost anyone I can remember. And he said that he had been following me. You know, now that I think about it, I believe I’ve noticed him, too. He drives a blue foreign car—maybe a Honda. God, was that weird just now. I can’t believe I just stood there and didn’t run. Now I can’t stop shaking.”

  Rosa took Sarah’s hands in hers. Almost instantly the shaking began to lessen. Sarah unlocked her bike. Slowly, the two women walked together toward the main gate, Sarah wheeling her bike along.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t support you at that meeting tonight,” Rosa said. “How did it go?”

  “Pretty well, I think. Lisa’s lawyer has a court order to inspect my herbalist’s shop tomorrow morning and take samples.”

  “Are you worried about that?”

  “Actually, I’m relieved it’s happening. The sooner they check the samples, the sooner this lawyer will see I couldn’t have been responsible.”

  Rosa stopped and looked at her. It was quite apparent to Sarah there was something on her mind—something she wanted to talk about.

  “Sarah, I—I’d like it very much if you could walk me home,” she said finally. “My bed and breakfast is just a few blocks from here. I’d like to explain why I chose not to discuss my findings and opinions at your meeting.”

  “There’s no need to.”

  “The fact that you’re being followed bothers me. I think that what I’ve discovered may be very important—especially if what just happened to you has something to do with this case.”

  “Go on.”

  “To begin with, in my native country, Cuba, I was a physician.…”

  Sarah listened, rapt, to Rosa Suarez’s concise, eloquent sketch of her life. A political exile from Cuba, she found herself in a series of refugee camps with only minimal English, and the painful realization that there was no way she would ever be able to document her education or medical degree. Following a series of rather menial jobs, she managed to gain an entry-level, clerical position at the CDC. Her husband, a poet and educator in his homeland, worked in a book bindery, where he remained until his retirement a few years before.

  Within a few years, Rosa’s quick mind and medical expertise had landed her a place as a field epidemiologist. Some of her successes—a major role tracking down the source of the Legionnaire’s disease outbreak in Philadelphia and tying a regional increase in leukemia deaths in one Texas county to a nuclear-contaminated stream—Sarah had actually heard of. Then, at the peak of what had been a valuable career, Rosa was sent to investigate reports of an unusual bacterial infection that had begun cropping up in geographic pockets throughout San Francisco. Already the uncommon germ had killed a number of immune-compromised and otherwise medically debilitated patients.

  Her data, amassed over nearly a year, and involving thousands of interviews and cultures, pointed the finger of responsibility directly at the U.S. military. The army, she maintained, was using what they thought was a biologically inactive bacterial marker to test germ warfare/air current theories in the tunnels of the BART—the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. Because of the sensitive nature of her accusation, Rosa did not reveal her findings until her case was, to all intents, airtight. But somewhere along the line, she had spoken of them to the wrong person.

  A blue-ribbon commission of the country’s foremost epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists was appointed by Congress to validate her conclusions. What they found, instead, were critical pieces of data missing all along the line. Computer programs that Rosa herself had designed functioned poorly or not at all. Probability calculations failed to support hypotheses. Laboratory technicians denied ever having received specimens that she swore to having sent. Finally, and most ignominiously, one expert on the commission quite easily traced the source of the bacteria to a dump site on the edge of the city. The directors of the private laboratory responsible for the disposal error readily admitted it. They were fined but soon after, Rosa learned, were the beneficiaries of a hefty military contract.

  “So,” she said, “the dumping site was cleaned up, and of course, the rate of infection began to drop. I was put into mothballs, so to speak, and was brought out for this investigation only when no one else was available to do it.”

  “They sabotaged your work. I don’t believe it,” Sarah said. “Correction. Actually, I do believe it.”

  “Well, at least now you may understand why I have maintained some distance from everyone involved in this case—including you.”

  “Please, Rosa, don’t worry about it. Just do your work.”

  “Tomorrow morning I am returning to Atlanta for a while. My investigation is still in a most preliminary phase. But I have come across some things that disturb me, and I wanted to warn you.”

  “Warn me?”

  “It’s not what you think,” Rosa said, patting her reassuringly on the arm. “In fact, I’ve wanted for several days to tell you that my initial studies are pointing toward some sort of infection, not a toxin or poison. But I—I’ve just been reluctant to speak
of my work with anybody.”

  They had reached the doorway of the old stucco Victorian where Rosa was staying.

  “Then what is there to warn me about?”

  “Sarah, you are a kind and caring person—a credit to your profession. I can see the pain the charges against you have caused. I don’t want to go into details just yet, but I have reason to believe someone may be trying to keep me from getting at the truth in these cases. Assuming that person is not you—and that is an assumption I have chosen to make—you must be careful whom you talk to and whom you trust.”

  “But—”

  “Please, Sarah. Sharing this much has been difficult for me. I’ll tell you more when it seems right to do so. Meanwhile, I have a great deal of work yet to do, and you have a defense to put together.”

  Sarah sighed. “Your assumption is right, you know. I’m not that person.”

  Again, Rosa patted her arm. “I do know, dear. Just be patient with me, and be very, very careful.”

  Sarah waited until the epidemiologist was inside. Then she pedaled slowly toward the inner city. For a time, she worked at clearing her mind entirely. Failing that, she tried to focus on her new lawyer and the strange, stuttering little man. But always, her thoughts drifted back to Rosa Suarez’s cryptic warning.

  Just be patient with me, and be very, very careful.

  If the woman’s intention was to frighten her, Sarah acknowledged finally, she had done a pretty damn good job.

  CHAPTER 19

  July 21

  THE SHOP OF THE HERBALIST KWONG TIAN-WEN OCCUPIED the ground floor and basement of a dilapidated, four-story brick tenement. Sarah paid more than customary attention to her appearance and to selecting an outfit, then left her apartment at seven-fifteen and walked the few miles from the North End to Chinatown. She sensed some apprehension at having to deal with Jeremy Mallon, and was still bewildered by the frightened, stuttering man and by Rosa Suarez’s strange warning. But the morning was bright and unusually clear, and she felt upbeat—about taking this step to eliminate her herbal supplement from suspicion and about seeing Matt Daniels again.

  She had known Kwong from her days at the Ettinger Institute, and following her return from medical school, she had checked him out with several members of the Boston holistic community. He was still highly regarded. Nevertheless, she interviewed him twice before selecting him as her supplier. He spoke almost no English, but Sarah’s once-decent Chinese was still good enough to conduct business with him. When she needed a translator, Kwong would rap his cane on the ceiling or strike it against a certain steam pipe. And within a minute or two, one of his American-born grandchildren would appear.

  Sarah was impressed with the man’s knowledge and drawn to his consistently optimistic outlook. And of course, there were the striking similarities—physical and metaphysical—between him and Louis Han. She could not help but believe that in Kwong, she was getting a glimpse of her mentor had he lived into his seventies.

  Initially Sarah picked up her herbal orders herself. But as the pressures of her medical training mounted, she had begun having the mixture delivered. Now, perhaps for the first time, she realized how much she missed her visits to the shop. The frayed connection with Kwong was, she thought sadly, just another item on the list of casualties exacted by her residency.

  The shop was on a narrow street, barely more than an alley, off Kneeland. As Sarah rounded the corner, she saw the old man and Debbie, one of his granddaughters, standing by the building. She was wondering why the two weren’t inside when she noticed the yellow vinyl ribbon crisscrossing the doorway and windows. It pained her to think of Kwong’s humiliation and confusion when some sheriff’s deputy or constable showed up with a court order to seal off the place.

  “Hello, Mr. Kwong,” Sarah said in Cantonese. “Hello, Debbie. I’m sorry for this.” She gestured toward the ribbons.

  Kwong brushed off the apology with a gnarled hand, but Sarah could tell he was agitated. She suddenly realized that it had been perhaps a year since they had actually seen one another. His gray-white goatee was unkempt and stained with nicotine below his lip. His blue silk robe—possibly the only outfit she had ever seen him wear—was threadbare and frayed. Had he aged so? Or had she simply been viewing him through younger, more naive eyes?

  “A man has been guarding the shop ever since they put up those ribbons,” Debbie said. “He goes from the alley back around to here, and then to the alley again. He said he wants to make sure no one tampers with anything inside. What does he mean?”

  “Nothing, Debbie,” Sarah said. “Things will be back to normal for you before you know it. I’m just so sorry that you and your grandfather have to go through this at all.”

  The old man’s frailty was striking. Sarah prayed that Mallon and his people would simply take whatever samples they wanted and leave. If they tried intimidating Kwong in any way, it would be up to Matt to protect him at all costs. She was about to try to explain the situation to Kwong through Debbie when Matt entered the street from the far end. Eli Blankenship was lumbering along beside him, gesticulating forcefully, as if to get across a difficult point. Sarah was relieved to have him along. There was no finer intellect at MCB, nor any more imposing physical presence, either. Matt was reasonably tall and well built, but next to the professor, he looked slight.

  With Debbie’s help, she introduced the men to Kwong. It seemed clear the herbalist had no interest in any of them beyond having them leave him alone.

  Matt immediately excused Sarah, Blankenship, and himself and led them to the other side of the street.

  “Does the old guy know what’s happening?” he whispered.

  Sarah shrugged.

  “He’s not addled by any stretch,” she said. “I suspect he has a pretty good idea of what’s going on. But I’m not sure he understands that it all has to do with me, and not with him.”

  “He looks like he’s spent more than his share of time with his lips curled around the stem of an opium pipe.”

  “So what? Opium is part of his culture. Any idea where Mallon is?”

  “Nope. I expected him to be late, though. It’s an old legal ploy to unnerve and annoy the other side. It’s survived in the law game over the ages mostly because it works.” He motioned them back to Kwong and the girl. “Debbie,” he said kindly, “please apologize to your grandfather for our imposing on him, and promise that we will compensate him for the trouble and inconvenience.”

  The girl, dressed in baggy jeans and a sweatshirt, was perhaps thirteen. She had a plain face and short, jet hair. Sarah was about to suggest that Matt choose words she was more likely to understand than impose and compensate, when the teen rattled off a translation to Kwong. The old man responded with no more than a grunt and a dismissive wave of his hand.

  “He says that it is his pleasure to serve you, and that you need not think about paying him,” Debbie said.

  At that moment, a Lincoln Town Car pulled up at the end of the street. Sarah turned to Kwong to reassure him about the new arrivals.

  “The pudgy guy’s Sheriff Mooney,” she heard Matt say to Eli, “and that tall guy—isn’t he the one from the weight loss shows on TV?”

  She groaned softly and looked back at the Lincoln. Peter Ettinger, ramrod straight, towering above Mallon and the sheriff, was staring down the narrow street, straight at her. Even in the pale, indirect morning sun, his silver hair looked almost phosphorescent.

  “You bastard,” she muttered to herself. This must be Mallon’s expert witness.

  She gave Kwong, who now looked somewhat confused, a gentle touch. Then she stood back and watched as the two groups of men, like combatants in some macabre sport, approached one another for introductions. She took the moment when Matt reached across to shake Peter’s hand and froze it in her mind for future reference.

  The county sheriff, the MCB chief of medicine, Peter, Matt, a bewildered old Chinese man, a precocious teen. The whole affair was suddenly taking on a carnival atmos
phere. In just a few minutes, when the eight of them worked their way inside, things were bound to get even more bizarre. Kwong’s shop was an impressive hodgepodge, with no clearly defined aisles. Eight people would be well beyond its critical mass.

  Matt led the opposition back to where she was standing. Peter allowed himself to be introduced to her. He reached out his hand, but Sarah refused to take it.

  “So,” he said. “It appears we’ve gotten ourselves in a wee bit o’ trouble.” His smug expression was close to the one Sarah remembered from that last horrid day in his office.

  “And it appears we’ve become even more overbearing and unpleasant than we used to be,” she replied.

  This isn’t the wide-eyed earth child you brought back from the jungle, Peter, she was thinking. If it’s a fight you’re spoiling for, you’re not going to be disappointed.

  “You two know each other?” Matt said.

  “Dr. Baldwin once did some work for me,” Ettinger said quickly.

  “Hard labor would be a more descriptive term, Matt. I’m not proud of it, but we lived together for three years before I woke up and jumped the wall.”

  “Lived together!” Matt exclaimed. “Mallon, what in the hell?”

  In the second or two before Mallon responded, Sarah could see the confusion in his eyes. Peter hadn’t told him! The bastard wanted to get back at her so badly, he hadn’t said a word about their past.

  “He—um—Mr. Ettinger is being used to help us organize our case,” Mallon said, blustering. “We—we certainly never intended having him appear in court. He is serving us strictly in an advisory capacity.”

  “Well, I would certainly hope you can do better than a rebuffed suitor for your expert witness,” Matt said. “I’d hate to have my job made that easy. Shall we go in and get this over with?”

  Mallon said nothing. But it was clear from his stony expression that Matt had drawn blood, if only a drop or two.

  “Nice going,” Sarah whispered. “Now please, just make sure Mallon doesn’t take it out on Mr. Kwong.”