by Allen Wyler
Her tongue flicked across her lips. She scratched the back of her neck. “What? You think I’m stupid? No fucking way, man.”
“No, I know you’re not stupid, but I think you need the money for whatever you’re on. This is all quite simple. I need my case. I want you to get it for me. You need the money. You do the task, you get paid. That’s all there is to it.” Khan started across the street toward the alley they’d left moments ago. She followed, Tyler just behind her. They stepped into the street.
“Man, what a crock of shit. You want some frigging attaché case, go get it yourself. I don’t need to be starting no trouble.” She rubbed both biceps and shivered in the warm air.
Khan stopped at the entrance to the alley, pulled out his wallet, held a twenty dollar bill up in front of her face. “You want this, you earn it by going in that building down there.” He pointed to the loading dock. “And get that case.” His other hand dangled the key. “Here’s the key to my office.”
The woman’s eyes riveted on the bill fixed between Khan’s fingers, then shot to the key and back again. “Ahhh man, if this ain’t a huge crock of shit …” She glanced up the street as if wrestling with a decision, then back to Khan. “Why don’t you dudes just settle for a blow? I’m good, man … I can suck the paint off a Ford pickup truck.”
Khan had another twenty in his other hand now. “Twenty now. Twenty when you return with my case.”
“Fuck!” Her hand shot out, snapped the bill from between his fingers. “Let’s get this show on the road.” She muttered, “Know damn well I shouldn’t friggin’ be doing this.”
Khan walked her down the alley, Tyler dropping back to tail them. They stopped a few feet from the edge of the loading dock where Khan handed her the copy of Jim Day’s key and pointed out the door off the loading dock. He explained the location of Bernie Levy’s office and told her the maroon leather attaché case was inside on the corner of the desk. Khan did such a good job spinning the tale that Tyler found himself almost believing it. A moment later Tyler watched her trudge up the stairs and vanish through the door.
Soon as the door closed, Khan said, “I suggest we move to another location,” and started back to Tyler’s original hiding place.
They hadn’t waited two minutes before the door banged open. Two men stepped out onto the loading dock, the thin woman between them. She said something and pointed to the spot where she had left Khan. The men squinted, jumped down onto the pavement and glanced around.
Staying in the shadows, Khan and Tyler moved quickly toward the street. Once they rounded the corner, their pace picked up.
Khan glanced over to Tyler. “See, I kept you from walking into a trap. Do you trust me now?”
NANCY LISTENED TO the huge man tromp downstairs and say a few words to the tall thin one introduced as Benson. A moment later she heard what may have been the front door close, then the sound of a television being turned on. Before the man left, he’d removed her blindfold. She scanned the combination bedroom/office again, saw a bed, a desk with computer, an elliptical cross-trainer and a sliding glass door out to what would logically be a deck. Two solid doors. One obviously a closet. The other probably into a bathroom. With the overhead room light on and it being dark outside, the reflection off the glass made it impossible to see more than the first few inches of deck beyond the door track.
The man had told her to sit in a black leather chair, then he’d tied her wrists together with what looked like quarter inch rope and bound her across the abdomen to the chair. Probably because of her hysterical crying he hadn’t bound her ankles or gagged her. More importantly, he hadn’t tied her wrists all that tightly. She sniffed the last of her tears and decided there was no one to help her but herself. What to do? She glanced around the room once more. Seeing nothing that might help her, she raised her wrists up and examined the binding. A double square knot. Splaying her hands apart, she worked her mouth down between her wrists until her front teeth could bite a grip on the cord and pull.
The first loop came easily. The second one did not. As hard as she tried, it would not loosen. Just then she heard the heavy tromp of the man’s feet on the stairs.
A moment later his huge shape obliterated most of the doorway. She looked up, saw his eyes studying her, felt them focus on her breasts. She looked down and tried to quell the urge to scream at him, for if she did, he might gag her.
“Want a beer?”
She shook her lowered head.
“You sure? ‘Cause I’m a going to have one. Way I figure, you and me can have us a pretty good party a little later. And there’s no sense you being all tight-assed when we do. Might as well get yourself drunk so’s you’d enjoy it. Know what I mean?”
She shook her head again.
“Hey, suit yourself. But me? I’m going to pop me a beer, enjoy me a little one-eyed monster and then, like the Terminator says, I’ll be back.”
35
TYLER SAID TO Khan, “Let me get this straight—you never changed the lab results on Torres?” They were sitting in a booth over in one corner of an all-night donut shop that smelled of fried dough, cigarettes, coffee, and sweat. Tyler believed the majority of customers were either crackheads or dealers. Either way, he and Khan were the oldest people in this place and looked pathetically out of context. Out the window, curbed at the other side of the street, a baby blue SPD cruiser idled with the front windows rolled down, two uniformed cops to either side of a vertical, dashboard-mounted shotgun, drinking coffee.
Khan picked up a paper cup filled with steaming, overcooked coffee, blew across the top. “I monitored that case.” He paused to sip. “After you filed the report, I went through the proper protocol and passed it on to Jim Day. You see, the way it is supposed to work—and this is lovely, the way Med-InDx set it up—is if you,” nodding to Tyler, “find a bug or problem with anything in the entire Clinical Information System, you’re supposed to report it directly to an on-site technician. Problems of that nature are really not intended to be handled by my department. And it makes sense, in a way … since what we have is a beta version, one they’re still actively working on. The problem is we have such a turn over of employees, there is always a group who aren’t familiar with that policy. As a result, a number of so-called problems come across my desk every week. Most are simple user mistakes, nothing of any importance. And so, I hand them off to the Med-InDx tech like a good little minion.” His angry eyes looked up at Tyler. “They all think because I’m Pakistani I’m too stupid to notice what’s going on in that medical center and I do nothing to assuage that impression.
“But this does not answer your question. Yes, I followed the Torres chart. I passed on the information to Med-InDx and within hours Torres’s medical record had been altered. Believe me, it wasn’t me who did it.”
Tyler looked into his own cup of coffee. Was Khan telling the truth? He was never a good judge of character when it came to situations like this. Never had been. He took people at their word because that’s how he’d been trained as a physician. You’d never make a diagnosis if you doubted everything a patient told you. Sure, you developed the ability to filter and arrange stories into the proper order, but you always accepted the patient’s word.
“Who do you think made the changes? Day?”
Khan held up both palms. “Your guess is as good as mine. But keep this in mind: unless Day holds an extremely high security level or is aware of ways to navigate the system without leaving footprints, I would think not.”
“If not Day, then who?”
“Without footprints, how can you tell? Could be either someone high up in the information stream or someone who cracked the system’s security.”
“But it has to be someone with sufficient motivation to want to make the changes. Who would that be?”
Khan shot him a wide-eyed, are-you-crazy look. “Anyone with Med-InDx options is a candidate to make those changes.”
“Not everybody’s willing to kill for stock options, Yuse
f.” He held up a hand. “Okay, that’s beside the point. Point is, we both know the system’s flawed. What is the flaw? I mean, how can that happen?”
Khan seemed to choose his words carefully before answering, “That’s a tough one. The easiest answer is that someone is purposely changing the information. And I must say, the thought did cross my mind. But, to what end? That does not make much sense, does it? Especially since it seems to occur at random.”
“I agree.”
Khan said, “The other possibility is something’s inherently wrong in the code … something that corrupts the information either as it’s entered or immediately after it’s entered. I suspect the latter. Otherwise it would be too easily noticed. The other bit of data supporting this theory is, like I just said, the occurrences seem completely random and, for what it’s worth, the errors don’t seem to be exclusive to only the medical record. I’ve seen similar problems with the accounting and scheduling software. To be even more specific, the problem seems limited to only proprietary Med-InDx sections … and not the ones they picked up from dot-com software casualties.”
Tyler nodded. Khan’s explanation paralleled Ferguson’s story. “I still don’t understand how data might spontaneously change, or if Levy knows about it, why he hasn’t fixed it.”
Khan broke off a piece of plain donut. “A bug like that can be extremely problematic. Especially one’s that intermittent and random, like this appears to be. If you can’t reproduce the symptoms it’s almost impossible to trap and troubleshoot it. The best you can do is develop a patch to work around it.” Khan gave a little laugh, “And then, of course, there’s the great Bernie Levy.” He popped the piece of donut into his mouth.
“Meaning?”
Khan flashed a bemused smile, held a finger to his mouth until swallowing. “You met him the other day. What was your impression?”
“Other than the fact he blew me off, I didn’t have time to form one.”
Khan’s eyebrows shot up. “You took no notice of the shrine to Bill Gates? The shrine that doubles as his office?”
Before Tyler could answer, Khan added, “It goes beyond that. His obsession has engulfed his personal life too. His daughter’s name is Willamina, in honor of Gates. Rumor has it his wife wouldn’t let him get away with just plane old William. Oh no, she insisted it be more feminine.” Khan laughed, obviously enjoying the tale. “The point is, he considers the medical record portion of the system his. He refused to delegate any part of the programming. But we’re straying from the point, aren’t we.” Khan’s eyes lost their mirth. “I know you were digging around medical records after I restricted your privileges. Looking for what, other examples?”
“Yes.”
“And did you find anything worthwhile?”
Tyler hesitated a few beats. “Guess that depends on what you’d consider valuable. Besides, from what you’ve told me, you probably recorded every key stroke I punched in that keyboard, so you tell me what I found.”
Khan studied him a moment. “Doctor Mathews, let us, as you Americans like to say, cut to the chase. I believe we hold the same goal dear to our heart … to stop a flawed system from obtaining the JCAHO endorsement. Unless, of course, they—meaning Med-InDx—can demonstrate convincingly that the bug has been dealt with appropriately. In that case, I have no problem with the software. In fact, if it were not for that little,” he cleared his throat to emphasize the next word, “problem, I’d say it is an excellent solution. Is this not a fair statement?” Khan leaned back against the booth like a poker player laying down a straight flush.
With Ferguson’s warning lurking in the back of his mind, Tyler crafted his response so as to get more information with out giving away his own. “Sounds like you’re on a crusade. I’m not. I just want to practice neurosurgery and get on with my life.”
Khan nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, my point exactly. Benson has you very well compromised.” He paused, studying Tyler before flipping a dismissive wave. “Yes, yes, I know all about the drugs planted in your locker. Benson’s work. All of it. And for one reason only … to force your silence. Benson and Levy know you have the power to expose their secret and in the process destroy what they’ve worked so hard for these past four years. They’re deathly afraid of what you might do with that information. That’s what this is all about.”
Tyler felt a wave of relief and hope come over him. “You have proof Benson did it?”
Khan smiled. “Yes, of course. I have it all on tape.” Before Tyler could speak, Khan continued, “You are relieved at this? Does this mean you are ready to cooperate with me?”
“What exactly is it you want from me?” Tyler asked suspiciously.
“Come now, Doctor Mathews … I know you are a smart man. But perhaps I should make my position perfectly clear. I have the evidence of a software bug. You, I believe, have evidence to show its consequences. In fact, it has, to put it bluntly, killed several patients. Am I not correct?”
“Yes.”
“And you have been able to document this? Unambiguously?”
“There’s still something about your story that bothers me … if you’ve been on my side all along, why didn’t you say something earlier? Why didn’t you help me? I mean, why now?”
Khan leaned forward, both forearms planted firmly on the table. “Ahhh, a good question. Simple enough answer. When you first came to me I had no idea if you were one of Benson’s spies. He’s a canny one, Benson. He’s had concerns about me for several months now but hasn’t been able to know for sure.”
Khan’s explanation sounded too easy, too rehearsed. “Why not fire you? That’d take care of things.”
“Because I am upper level management. He would have to go through the board to fire me.”
“So what? Why not frame you like he’s done with me?”
“You are a suspicious one, aren’t you. Fair enough. The answer again is simple. You were easy. You have a past … one that made the drug angle very believable. Me? It is not so easy. And unlike you, I would have an exit interview with the board and that’s something Benson fears since he doesn’t know exactly what I know.”
Had to admit, Khan’s proposition made some sense. By working together, Tyler would have the enough information to get Ferguson off his back and refute the bogus drug charges.
Khan asked, “Are you willing to join forces?”
“Okay—yes, I made copies of the records. In fact, in Torres’s case, I made the copy before I let you know about it, so yeah, I have date stamped evidence the reports were changed after the report was filed.”
Khan beamed. “Excellent.”
Tyler remembered something else he wanted cleared up. “But let me ask you one more thing.”
“Certainly.”
“If you knew the drug thing wasn’t true, why did you restrict my network access?”
Tyler’s cell phone rang. He pulled it from the rucksack and glanced at the face. The number was unfamiliar. A premonitory bolt of panic gripped his heart.
NANCY TUGGED, FELT the cord give a little. Another tug and it started to pull free. A moment later it fell away from her wrists into her lap. Now, with both hands free, she reached down and slid the cord around her waist so the knots at the back of the chair came around to the front. Another few seconds and these knots were untied too. Quickly, she stood up, rubbing the rawness from her wrists where the cord friction abraded them. She moved to the sliding glass door, flipped the latch and slid it open only enough to step outside onto the deck.
For a moment she stood in the heavy night air allowing her eyes to adjust to the dark. Off across a void she recognized the three television towers atop Queen Anne Hill. Then it struck her. This must be a Lake Union houseboat.
She was surrounded by water.
A wave of nausea hit followed by vertigo. Arms blindly searching for something to grab onto, she stumbled back to the safety of the room, tripped over the door track and fell to the floor.
36
A
VAGUELY FAMILIAR voice asked, “You want your wife again alive?”
The words didn’t make sense. Tyler glanced at the phone in his hand, returned it to his ear. “What?”
“Do you want to get your wife back alive?”
A bolt of anxiety slammed Tyler’s gut. His mind started racing, running through possibilities, praying for a wrong number or someone playing a sick joke.
The voice continued, “Because, unless you do exactly as I tell you, you’ll never see her again.”
The voice … he’d heard it before. Where? Who?
“You still there, Mathews?”
“Who is this?” Tyler’s heart was hammering his temples, his hands tingled. Khan watched with a questioning expression, as if suspecting something.
“Do I have to tell you? You haven’t figured it out yet? And here I’ve been deluded into believing you were such a smart little fucker. Well, guess what! I was wrong about that, wasn’t I?” A pause. “You know who I am and I believe by now I have your complete and undivided attention, so it’s time to play let’s make a deal. Only in this game there is only one door and only one deal. To put it bluntly, you have no choice or negotiating power. Are you following any of this, or are you still trying to figure a way to sneak into Bernie Levy’s office?”
Khan mouthed, “What is it?”
Tyler waved off the question, his total attention on Benson. “I’m listening. What do you want?”
“What I want, my young, stupid friend, are three things. One, I want you to sign a statement retracting your egregious allegation that our medical record system has a problem and admitting that your outrageous accusations against me and my administration represent nothing more than an unfortunate side effect of your ongoing battle against substance abuse.”
Benson paused. The constriction in Tyler’s throat tightened, “And?”
“Yes, well, the next item on the agenda—to be included in the aforementioned statement—is for you to agree to enter a drug rehab program … which I might add, will be paid for by your benevolent employer, Maynard Medical Center. Let it not be said that we are unwilling to work with an impaired staff physician, no matter how serious the problem may be.”
