Fatal Complications

by John Benedict

  Just thinking about the money brought the smile slinking back to his face. He understood these people. They would do anything, say anything, and—here was the important one—pay anything to ensure political fortunes. This thing was paramount to them. Nothing else mattered. And they certainly had the money. He had finally tapped into the big one, the mother lode, and would exploit this for all it was worth. He’d be able to live out his life like a king, in the lap of luxury.

  But monetary gain was only part of the equation. While immersed in the pursuit of happiness—rather, hedonism—he could forget all about little boys and fires. He could drown out the screams of his son with his own screams of ecstasy, fueled by an endless supply of women, drugs, and alcohol.

  But even more than that, there was the bigger picture—all of the havoc he could wreak with that kind of money. He could literally tempt, subvert, and harvest thousands of weaker souls. This was the ultimate reward, the kind of thing that could shift the very balance of power in the universe. His breathing quickened with this intoxicating thought until, utilizing his considerable self-discipline, he reined in his unruly imagination. Patience was a virtue—this one they got right. He didn’t have the luxury of time to daydream; he had a date with the lovely Mrs. Daulton in the OB suite.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 11:30 P.M.

  “Okay, Mrs. Daulton,” said Diane, the CRNA, “you can move over now.”

  “Call me Kim, please.” Kim shimmied over to the cold, hard operating room table and looked around. She was not comforted by all the unfamiliar equipment, people, and lights. She felt like a bug about to be dissected. Thank God Luke was here. She couldn’t imagine going through this by herself. He sat down to her left and held her hand.

  “Okay, Kim,” Diane said. “We’ll hook you up to all the monitors and then work on the spinal. The anesthesiologist should be here in a minute.” Diane busied herself slapping on some sticky EKG patches.

  “What’s going on downstairs?” Luke asked. “Where’s Dr. Whitman?” He sounded uptight.

  Then the next fricking contraction hit and she barely heard the OB scrub nurse’s reply. “Haven’t you heard? It’s all over the hospital now. Senator Pierce is having his gallbladder out.”

  “That explains all the police cars and black Suburbans,” Luke said. “Stu’s really having a bad night.” Luke looked at Kim. “You okay, hon?”

  “Do I look okay?” Kim got out between clenched teeth. What an asinine thing to say. She felt like crying.

  “Hang in there,” Luke said meekly.

  Just then the door opened. “Here’s anesthesia,” the scrub nurse announced. Kim craned her neck to see between the nurses. She couldn’t get a clear view of his face, but in a second didn’t need to.

  “Luke, Kim—how are you two doing?” came the unmistakable deep voice of Dr. Katz. “Sorry I’m late, but things are a bit crazy downstairs. Senator Pierce is having surgery tonight.”

  “Yeah, we heard,” Luke said. “No problem.” Luke was definitely tense—she could hear it plainly in his voice. He was also a bad liar.

  “I helped Stu get started,” Katz said. “It’s a stressful case. There’s a cast of thousands down there, including a bunch of Secret Service agents milling about.” Katz chuckled easily as he walked across the room toward Kim. “And here’s the lovely Mrs. Daulton.”

  “Kim, you remember Dr. Katz?” Luke asked her.

  “Of course I do,” Kim replied. She had met him at an anesthesia welcome dinner for Luke several months ago. “Hi, Dr. Katz.” She held out her hand to shake.

  “Call me Jason,” he said as he took her hand in both of his and squeezed. His hands were warm yet powerful. “Now, I need you to curl up into a ball.”

  “Okay, Jason. It hurts a lot, though.” Kim sniffled and her voice broke a little. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to hold still.”

  “You’ll do fine, Kim,” Dr. Katz said as she curled forward as best she could.

  “Perfect.”

  His voice was soothing, and Kim tried to focus on it and not think about the next contraction. She glanced over in time to see Dr. Seidle at the sink, scrubbing his hands.

  “Is this your first child, Kim?” Dr. Katz asked as he began to prep her back with a cold liquid.

  Kim shivered a bit. “Yes, it’s our first.” Luke squeezed her hand—she noticed his hand was cold and clammy. “Do you have children, Dr. Katz?” she asked.

  “Well, I had one.” The way he said this struck Kim as odd. At first she thought it was simply sadness—it sure sounded like he had suffered a loss. But it went beyond that—maybe more like bitterness. She wished she could see his face to help gauge his feelings. He stopped prepping her back momentarily and added, “It was a long time ago—doesn’t matter.”

  Kim didn’t know what to say. She realized she had inadvertently struck a nerve and regretted asking the question. Dr. Katz continued with the spinal and Kim barely felt a thing.

  “There, all done, Kim,” he said.

  “My butt’s getting warm already.”

  “That’s a good sign, Kim,” Dr. Katz said. “Now, I need you to lie down.”

  Dr. Seidle came into the room and got gowned and gloved.

  “Hi, Mark,” Luke said.

  “Hi, Luke, Jason,” Dr. Seidle said. “Kim, what’re you doing here tonight? I thought I told you I’d see you next week.”

  He was kidding her, but once again she wished Rob Gentry were here taking care of her. “Sorry, Dr. Seidle, the contractions just started. But I feel great now—I can’t feel those blasted things anymore. You ought to warn people about those.” Kim turned to Luke. “I can’t wait to see Abi.”

  “Me too,” Luke said. She had relaxed a little now that the awful pain was gone, but she could tell Luke was still tight as a drum.

  “You’re going to be nice and comfortable, Kim,” Dr. Katz said.

  Kim zoned out for a moment, trying to imagine just how Abigail would look. It struck her as strange that she had been carrying this baby around for nine months and she felt she knew her intimately, but she had no idea what she looked like. The fuzzy ultrasound picture hadn’t been a big help.

  “Can you feel this, Kim?” Dr. Seidle said. “I’m pinching you with an instrument.”

  “Not a thing,” Kim said. Wow, this is definitely a weird feeling.

  “Okay, here we go,” Dr. Seidle said.

  Kim looked over at Luke, who was fumbling with her camera. He kept glancing over at the monitors. Dr. Katz had one hand on Luke’s shoulder and was quoting a Bible verse, she guessed in an attempt to calm him down.

  Dr. Katz’s beeper went off. “Uh-oh,” she heard him say. “I’m being stat paged to the OR—must be trouble with the senator. Diane, you take care of Mrs. Daulton here. The spinal seems to be working fine. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Katz quickly left the room.

  Kim was beginning to feel at peace. No more horrible contractions. The pain was gone. Dr. Katz had done a great job with the spinal—she hadn’t felt a thing. The C-section was underway and she was nice and comfortable. She felt herself almost floating. The conversation around her drifted in and out.

  Then something peculiar grabbed her attention and she snapped awake. She replayed Dr. Katz’s last words. He had been quoting scripture from Romans. This, for some reason, sent her mind spinning and she recognized this feeling as a precursor to one of her lump intuitions or precognitions. And it felt like a big one.

  In her mind’s eye, numbers from the Sudoku puzzle danced and swirled about her—

  -273/√-1/50/50/86,400/2.71

  6.02*10^23/3.14/2.71/8.714/3*10^8/2.71

  The disjointed gears of her mind whirred faster and faster, creating an almost uncomfortable sensation of pressure, or pain, in her head as the dissonance built. Then, just as suddenly, the gears slowed, aligned and came together with a loud clunk, meshing perfectly. She was suffused with a sense of release. She had come to love this feeling and
described it as more exhilarating than sex.

  She now held the key to the Sudoku puzzle before her. She relaxed and rode her wave of intuition.

  Dr. Katz had provided the key when he mentioned Romans. She had completely forgotten about Roman numerals. Duh! The Sudoku puzzle was not at all complex. There was no complicated algebraic numerical solution like she had been focusing on. It was a code, a substitution code, pure and simple.

  The two fifties were undoubtedly Ls.

  Kim was familiar enough with mathematical and physical constants to make some other connections here—3.14 were the first three digits of pi, the ancient geometrical constant; 2.71 were the first three digits of the base of the natural logarithms, otherwise denoted as e; 3*10^8 was the speed of light in m/sec, known in the physics world as c. So she had—

  -273/√-1/L/L/86,400/E

  6.02*10^23/PI/E/(8.714)/C/E

  She knew she was on the right track. The puzzle had been composed by someone employing a physical constant substitution theme—someone undoubtedly with a math/science background. In short order, she deduced the rest: -273 degrees Celsius corresponded to absolute zero in degrees Kelvin or K in scientific shorthand. The square root of -1 was i in the world of imaginary or complex numbers. And 6.02*10^23 was the well-known Avogadro’s constant from chemistry, abbreviated N. She locked briefly on the 86,400, but then recognized it as the number of seconds, or s, in one day. She wasn’t familiar with 8.714, but quickly realized it had to be R of the famous ideal gas law of PV=nRT, for the puzzle to make sense. The substitution was complete:

  K/I/L/L/S/E

  N/PI/E/R/C/E

  Rearranging, the puzzle was solved—

  K/I/L/L

  S/E/N

  PI/E/R/C/E

  This was amazing—way too coincidental not to be a valid solution. She must tell Luke. But when she tried to tell him, she found out she could barely move. “Luke,” she cried, but heard only a whisper. “Luke!” she screamed.

  “What is it, babe?” Luke bent down, his face next to hers.

  “Can’t talk.” She saw him go ashen. “The puzzle—I solved it—forgot about Roman numerals.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Su-do-ku.” She was now speaking in gasps.

  “Not now. Can you breathe okay?”

  “It says ‘Kill Senator Pierce.’”

  “What?”

  “Kill Senator Pierce,” she repeated, in barely a whisper.

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded because she couldn’t speak.

  “Can you breathe?”

  “No,” she mouthed, her panic rising.

  “Diane, get me a tube!” she thought she heard Luke say before she blacked out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 11:45 P.M.

  Katz kept his mask up as he made his way out of the delivery room, afraid if anyone saw him they might notice the “cat that ate the canary” expression plastered across his face. He hadn’t been stat paged back to the OR, but he did need to check that the senator was indeed heading south. He certainly didn’t want to set foot anywhere near the OR and get tangled up with the authorities. Or get sucked into any resuscitation efforts. Nikolai would have to be his eyes and ears. He headed toward his office with a positive spring to his step. Amazing, he thought—things were working out better than he might’ve predicted.

  The Daultons were busy having their blessed event—although with a little monkey wrench thrown in, courtesy of the total spinal he had just administered. No time for silly puzzles, now. Unforeseen just a few days ago, that both Mrs. Daulton and the senator would be here the same night, but actually there were some advantages. His master must’ve planned it this way—pre-destiny or something like that. And, he had to admit that Seidle had been right on this score, the reason for the panicky phone call Seidle had made this morning—

  “Jason, this is Mark.” Seidle had sounded very agitated. “Listen, she’s got the fricking Sudoku! I saw it sticking out of her purse. I’m about to examine her.”

  “Slow down,” Katz said. “What’re you talking about? Sudoku? Who are you talking about?”

  “Kim Daulton. I knew we couldn’t trust them. What should we—”

  “Get a grip, Seidle. You’re not making sense. First of all, what the hell is a Sudoku?”

  “The puzzle, you moron! She’s got the puzzle with the FBI agent’s writing all over it. The one you said you took care of.”

  Hmm, that is bad news, Katz thought. “How the hell did she get that?”

  “I don’t know—I didn’t ask her that! I didn’t want to draw any attention to the fact that I saw it. What matters is, she has it.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Katz said, trying to think. “Look, we don’t even know if it means anything. The trouble is, I heard she’s a frickin’ math whiz and just might solve it.”

  “Exactly! So what do we do?”

  “The senator’s surgery is tonight. We just have to keep the two of them busy for a little longer.” Suddenly, an idea hit Katz.

  “When is she due?”

  “What?”

  “When is she fucking due?”

  “Soon—uh, next week sometime. Why?”

  “Can’t you induce her labor?”

  “Well, I guess I could. But she’s breech—she’s scheduled for a section. There’s no real indication.”

  “The indication is we need to stop her from working on the puzzle. Plus, if she comes into the hospital, you can keep an eye on her while I watch the circus in the main OR.”

  “Well, I guess I could apply some prostaglandin gel when I examine her.”

  “Excellent. Now you’re thinking.” Katz paused as another idea struck him. “Listen, Mark, we need a backup plan, just in case. Plan B, as they say. If we get wind that she figured the puzzle out and it has anything to do with Pierce, you must eliminate her during the section. We’ll deal with Luke afterward.”

  “What? Did you say eliminate?”

  “Yes, eliminate. Remember, Mark, this is for keeps—the big leagues.”

  Seidle didn’t say anything.

  “I’m counting on you,” Katz said. Since when had he aligned himself with such a weasel?

  “All right, I guess I could do that,” Seidle answered weakly. “If I had to.”

  Katz shook his head at the recollection. Relying on Seidle had probably been a mistake. Giving him the gun may also have been an error. The stakes were too high with this one. Greed and ego were fine motivators, useful in their own right, but they only went so far. They didn’t carry the emotional punch of love or hate or lust for power that might be required to push a man like Seidle to commit cold-blooded murder.

  So Katz was proud of his little bit of improvisation back there in the delivery room—very creative. The timing had been a little hairy, but giving Daulton’s wife a total spinal was a brilliant touch. That would definitely take Luke and Kim out of the picture. Kim wouldn’t be able to work on the stupid puzzle, and Luke wouldn’t get any heroic notions about helping with the senator’s unfortunate case. When you want it done right, do it yourself, he always said.

  Katz entered his office and locked the door behind him. He pulled out his cell phone and speed dialed Nikolai’s number.

  “Hallo,” came the Russian’s reply.

  “Nikolai, are you still in the OR complex?”

  “No.”

  Damn it! “Where are you?”

  “In hospital, boss.” Nikolai’s voice sounded a bit slurred, and not just because of his thick accent. Shit, he sounds like he’s high.

  “I need you to go back to the OR and give me an update on the senator,” Katz said. “All hell should be breaking loose by now. Call me back as soon as you can.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  Katz stabbed at the END CALL button with exasperation. Fucking moron. He thought he had made it clear to Nikolai to stay around the OR until he was sure the senator was toast. Another unreliable partn
er. Damn, now he’d have to wait for Nikolai’s report. He sighed, sat back in his chair, and turned on the computer. Only when he was sure the senator was dying would they complete the money transfer. He would then exit the hospital and make good on his plans to vanish, leaving Seidle and Nikolai and Swatara Regional far behind. They’d all go their separate ways. But for now, all he could do was wait. He retrieved candles and the special picture of his son from a locked bottom drawer in his desk. He lit the candles and knelt at his makeshift altar and began chanting in the ancient tongue.

  When Katz couldn’t wait anymore—you could only chant for so long—he checked his watch. It had been almost thirty minutes. Why didn’t Nikolai call? Fuck verification. The senator should definitely be fried by now. He quickly accessed the proper site and typed PIE IS COOKED. SEND MONEY.

  Suddenly his cell phone vibrated on his hip. He assumed it was Nikolai getting back to him. Finally. He glanced at the caller ID and was surprised to see it wasn’t Nikolai’s number. It was a number he didn’t recognize—though it looked like a hospital extension. Better take it.

  “Hello,” Katz said.

  “I need to talk to you,” came an agitated female voice.

  “Who is this?” Katz demanded. “It’s Gwen Miller. I need to talk to you.” Her voice was strained and she sounded slightly out of breath.

  “Listen, Gwen, it’s after midnight and I’m really very busy.”

  His computer beeped and a new message appeared: MONEY HAS BEEN TRANSFERRED.

  “Gwen, you need to call me back—”

  “Wait, don’t hang up!” She was half whispering, but sounded a bit hysterical. “I saw you at the incinerator!”