“It’s okay. I can handle it.”
He located a shot that contained a full view of the room.
“There are ten people in the OR, not counting the patient,” Nick said. “There are nine names on this chart. I noticed the tenth man when he helped wheel Umberto in. There were two of them, actually. One left, and he stayed.”
“I remember,” the Mole said. “The one who left was quite a bit taller.”
“Exactly. I thought maybe the two of them, or at least this guy, were from security. That made sense at the time. But take your eyes off of Umberto and keep them fixed on the tenth man.”
Once again, Nick had the strange feeling of having seen the heavyset man before. He appeared quite a bit in the view from the camera above the foot of the narrow table. Not once during the terrible commotion surrounding Umberto’s death did he move from his spot—not so much as an inch to get a better vantage point or to help. This time through, Nick also noticed that, unlike Belle, the medical student, the perfusionist, or the anesthesiologist, the tenth man was wearing a surgical gown. In addition, he kept his hands inside the gown throughout the grisly ordeal.
Nick’s pulse was hammering. He ran the DVD again, and then once more. His eyes remained fixed on the man. At the instant the team finished transferring Umberto from the gurney to the operating table, Nick paused the playback, backed up a few frames, and then walked it forward again, his focus intensifying with each advance.
“There!” Nick exclaimed. “Did you see it? His hands stay underneath his surgical gown while Umberto is going through whatever it was that killed him. And look at his eyes. He is like dead calm.”
“You think he has some sort of device under there?” Mollender asked. “Something that could fry Umberto’s brain or burst an artery?”
“Maybe they had implanted some sort of radio receiver in there. Poor Umberto had multiple procedures done at the Singh Center. One of them certainly could have been that.”
For a time, there was only silence as each of the other three—Mollender, Noreen, and Jillian—mulled over the awesome possibilities. Finally, Jillian spoke.
“So, why did they kill Belle?” she asked in a near whisper.
Again there was silence. Then the color drained from Nick’s face.
“Oh, God,” he breathed.
“What?”
“Belle wasn’t the only one who heard Umberto. She may not have been the only one who could understand that he was speaking Spanish in addition to his Arabic.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“We’re assuming that Belle was murdered because she said something to the wrong person. What if she wasn’t the only one who spoke up? What if it’s not just Belle they killed?”
Noreen took a few steps backward.
“I’m not sure I can handle this anymore,” she said. “Do we need to call the police?”
“I don’t know yet,” Nick said. “But I do know we need your help, Noreen. If Belle is the only one who has died, then I’m way off base. But we need to check on the rest of the people on that flip chart.”
Noreen was beginning to hyperventilate.
“Look around,” she exclaimed. “There are reasons I work with computers and not people.”
Mollender took Noreen by the hand and walked over to her desk, where she had two computers already set up and running.
“We’ll do this together,” he said. “Noreen, I’ll work off your laptop, you take the desktop. We’ll start searching each of the names on the Web and see what comes up.”
“I’m scared, Saul.”
“We need to do this. Lives may be at stake. Nick, listen, in addition to the other nine who were in the OR, maybe you should put down Annette Furst, the video editor who works for me. She’s very much alive. I saw her yesterday.”
“That might be a good sign. Maybe I’m completely off base here. Or maybe they just haven’t thought to include her. They make mistakes all the time. Cover-up is their middle name.”
“All right.”
“Okay. Start with the surgeons,” Nick directed them. “Saul, take Spielmann, and Noreen, look up what you can on Leonard.”
Noreen sat in her chair, while Mollender had to hunch over the desk to access the laptop. They both opened Web browsers and in near synchronized movements began scouring the Internet. Mollender struck first.
“Jesus!” he exclaimed. “Spielmann’s dead. She died just a couple of weeks ago in her apartment in New York, apparently from an anaphylactic reaction to a bee sting.”
“I think I just found something on Leonard,” Noreen added a few minutes later. “This is just too freaky. I think I might get sick. Leonard was riding his motorcycle when he was killed in a collision with a tractor-trailer. According to this report in the Chicago Tribune, the driver of the truck said it looked to him as though Leonard lost control of the bike and went into a skid across a lane and right into his path.”
“It could have been an accident,” Jillian said.
“Or somebody could have sabotaged his motorcycle,” Nick countered. “Keep going.”
Another tense minute passed. The only sound in Noreen’s office was of fingers tapping on keyboards. Nick added the location of each person’s death next to their names. Chicago. New York. North Carolina. There was no longer any doubt in the room.
Mollender was next to speak up.
“Dr. Thomas Landrew drowned,” he said grimly. “ ‘Avid sportsman and prominent anesthesiologist drowned while kayaking on the Chesapeake.’ ”
“When?” Nick asked.
“Just three weeks ago. April eighteenth. This is terrible. I actually knew about his accident. Landrew did the anesthesia on me when I had a hernia fixed a few years ago. He was a terrific guy. I just glossed right over his name.”
Nick wrote “Maryland” next to Landrew’s name.
Mollender continued.
“Kimberly Fox is dead too, assuming she’s the same Kimberly Fox on the board here. She was killed near her family’s home in Utah. Skiing accident, it says here. Broke her neck. No details. No mention that she worked at Shelby Stone, but it does say she was a nurse.”
“She could have moved,” Jillian said. “Nurses, especially younger ones, are constantly changing hospitals. Like Belle.”
“Mass murder, one by one,” Nick muttered.
“Oh, no, I’ve got another hit,” Noreen said shortly. Her voice quaked with a raw mix of fear and anxiety. “Cassandra Browning-Leavitt. Killed here in D.C. Shot from the woods while she was jogging along Rock Creek. No witnesses. Believed to be a random event. No suspects.”
“I remember Cassandra now,” Jillian said. “She was still working at Shelby Stone when she was killed. They sent a notice around after it happened warning people to be careful. That was a while ago. Maybe back in February.”
For a minute, two, nobody could speak. Nick felt a band tightening around his chest.
“Washington. Chicago. New York. North Carolina. Utah. Maryland. Somebody is killing these people and doing it in such a way that it doesn’t appear to be murder,” Nick said, “or at least not deliberate murder, and certainly not serial murder.”
“I knew it,” Jillian said viciously. “I told them. I told them all she’d never kill herself.”
“With these deaths so spread out across the country,” Mollender said, “who would think to link them?”
“We would, that’s who,” Nick answered. Then he drew a line through the names of those they had confirmed dead, including Belle. “That leaves us four people we haven’t accounted for yet. Roger Pendleton, the perfusionist; Yasmin Dasari, the surgical resident; Yu Jiang, who was a medical student at the time; and Saul’s video editor, Annette Furst.”
Noreen nodded. She kept her gaze fixed to her computer screen, her fingers sweeping across her keyboard, while her computer mouse remained in a state of constant motion, expecting to find death notices posted online for at least three. Mollender continued his search for other victi
ms as well.
“I’m not getting anything on Dasari or Jiang. But I logged in to our intranet at Shelby Stone,” Mollender said. “Pendleton is listed as still being an employee. I have an address for him. Phone number too. According to this, he lives in Alexandria, Virginia.”
“Let’s hope that’s true,” Nick said.
“What, that he’s in Alexandria?”
“No. That he lives.”
CHAPTER 42
“There are three possible reasons Pendleton’s not answering his phone,” Nick told Jillian. “Either he’s not at home, he’s busy, or he’s already dead.”
Jillian grimaced at the notion.
“Why are they doing this after so many years, Nick? It’s pure evil. Could a branch of our government really be responsible?”
“I wish I knew. I really do. Maybe people from Mohammad’s terrorist organization are finally exacting revenge for his death. Even though we know he wasn’t the one who died that day, maybe they don’t.”
“It’s a thought, but terrorists usually go out of their way to take credit for acts of vengeance like this, and we haven’t heard a word.”
“Six people dead.”
“At least.”
Nick gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckle force, frustrated that so many answers still eluded them. Before they left her office, Noreen had handed Nick two leather cases, each containing a copy of the operation that she had burned to DVD. Now, Jillian held them in her lap, a reminder, she said, that Umberto and Belle were with them on this journey until the end.
The traffic was moderately heavy, and Nick estimated they were still ten minutes away from Roger Pendleton’s address in Alexandria. The Mole had volunteered to stay behind with a still-shaken Noreen, and to continue searching for information about the surgical resident and the medical student, neither of whom had proven that easy to find.
During the drive, Jillian wrote a note for Pendleton, begging him to call either of them as soon as possible. Twice she had tried to reach him at home and through the page operator at the hospital. Nick had also phoned Don Reese, but his call to the detective went straight into voice mail.
“Maybe we should call nine-one-one,” Jillian suggested, “let the authorities take it from here.”
“Remember what Reese told us? We’re in deep here too, Jill. If the police are going to get involved now, better if it’s Reese’s call how and when. In the meantime, we need to warn Pendleton to be careful.”
“I just hope that we’re not too late.”
“Me too,” Nick said with a heavy sigh. “Me too.”
Pendleton’s modest split-level ranch was the last house on a tree-lined dead-end street. The idyllic, family-friendly setting made the reason they were there even more disturbing. Nick pulled up along the grassy tree belt and had opened the driver’s side door when Jillian grabbed his arm and pulled him back inside.
“We can’t just go rushing in there, Nick,” she said. “We have no idea what we’re up against. I don’t want to see any more death, and I . . . don’t want anything to happen to you.”
Nick took hold of her hands. “Nothing’s going to happen to either of us. Trust me on that, Jill. We’ll knock on the door, we’ll leave the note, and then we’ll look for Pendleton at the hospital.”
“I’m sorry to sound like such a baby. That video really got to me—the thought of that man in the surgical gown calmly standing there, murdering Umberto. It’s as if he had no soul.”
“Well, thanks to you I’m reconnecting with mine,” Nick said. “I have an EMDR session later on. I intend to work at it the way I used to when I was studying organic chemistry or training for a climb.”
Jillian squeezed his hands, then caressed the stubble on his face.
“Are you ready?”
“Ready.”
Side by side they proceeded up the flagstone walkway to Pendleton’s red-painted front door, with Jillian clutching a copy of the DVD. All was eerily quiet save for the crunch of loose slate and the white noise of birdsong on the warm afternoon breeze. The yard was small, but well maintained, with no toys to suggest Pendleton had kids.
Nick peered into the living room through a small opening between the drapes, but could see only a few feet inside. There was no movement. He rang the bell, then tried the door. Locked.
“Maybe he’s at work,” Jillian said. “I don’t trust Shelby Stone’s page system.”
Nick pressed the doorbell a second time and they listened to a cascade of chimes reverberating inside the house.
“Let’s try around back,” he said, growing more anxious.
Suddenly the door swung open.
The man standing there was dressed in hospital scrubs and had a cell phone pressed between his ear and shoulder. He was hopping around in a circle, trying to wiggle on a sneaker.
Just untie it! Nick wanted to shout.
As Pendleton wrestled the sneaker onto his foot, he lost hold of his phone, which dropped to the hardwood floor with a sharp crack.
“If you’re recruiting me for your church, I’m going to be really pissed!” he snapped, bending down to retrieve the phone. “Jerry? Jerry, you still there? Shit, that’s just great.”
“We’re sorry to bother you.”
The man hesitated, taking in a deep breath.
“Don’t worry, it’s not your fault I’m a klutz. I’m running late and the guy on the phone was telling me where I needed to have been twenty minutes ago. Sorry if I raised my voice at you guys. Phone still seems to be working, though, so I’ll call him back. Just hang on, or else leave if you’re going to try and cost me money.”
His composure regained, Pendleton placed his call and learned what he needed to about the emergency case waiting for him at Shelby Stone. The perfusionist was a trim, balding man in his early thirties, and struck Nick as an athlete.
“Roger Pendleton?” Jillian asked.
“Yeah. That’s me. Look, I’m really in a hurry, guys. There’s a transplant going down. So if you’re selling something, especially God, just assume I’ve got one already, okay?”
Nick stepped forward.
“Roger, I’m Dr. Nick Garrity, a surgeon working with the Helping Hands medical van. This is my friend, Jillian Coates. She’s a psych nurse at Shelby Stone.”
Pendleton seemed to soften at that.
“Okay, what’s up? Not often a tech like me gets paid a house call. Not ever, actually.”
“I know you’re in a hurry, but we need to talk. It could be a matter of life or death.”
“Yeah? Alas, so is the operation if I don’t make it in to the hospital. I’m on backup and the guy on duty is tied up, and word is a heart’s come in.”
“When we say matter of life or death, we mean yours,” Nick said. “We really need to talk. Can you get anyone else to go in for you?”
Pendleton studied Nick’s face and his expression darkened.
“No, I can’t get anyone to go in,” he said. “How many backups do you think we have? Okay, okay. I’m sorry to sound snippy. I can’t imagine what you’re talking about, but I can give you two minutes.”
Standing just inside the open doorway, Nick relayed what they knew of the identity switch in the OR three years ago, and the fact that over recent months, six of the ten people who were there for the disaster had died suddenly. Then he handed over a copy of the DVD recording the events.
When Nick finished, Pendleton stared down at the disc, a deep furrow across his brow.
“So you’re saying that I’m on somebody’s kill list?”
“There’s nothing else to believe, Roger,” Jillian said.
“Well, I stopped in and met Mohammad the evening before the case. I try and do that with all my patients. His photo had been all over the papers. I promise you that was him in his room that night, and him on the table the next day, and him who went berserk and flew into my equipment, and him who died.”
“Six out of nine medical personnel are dead, including my sister, Be
lle,” Jillian said patiently. “We believe the man responsible for the OR death, if not all of them, was number ten—one of the two who wheeled the patient in. We are absolutely certain that the victim in the operating room that day wasn’t the man you thought he was.”
Pendleton checked his watch.
“Look, I don’t know whether you two know what you’re talking about or not, but I do know I’ve got to finish getting dressed and get to the hospital.”
“You sure you don’t have just a few minutes to watch that video?” Nick asked. “It will convince you.”
“I don’t need to watch anything to remember that day. That sort of thing you don’t forget. All I can tell you, and I probably shouldn’t even be doing that, is that after it was over, I was called into my boss’s office. There were a couple suits waiting there to speak with me. They told me what had just happened was a matter of national security and that I was to tell nobody about anything I had seen. They made me sign a paper stating just that, and warned that if I spoke about the case, I could lose my job or even face prison time. They gave me a name to refer any reporters to, but I have no idea where that is. Otherwise, I’d refer you to them. Look, just give me your card and I’ll get you the name. But I gotta leave.”
Jillian shot Nick a concerned look. “That would explain why Belle never told me much about the operation.”
“Look, I appreciate the warning,” Pendleton said, “but I have to get to the hospital right away. I’m not sure I can even talk with you about this case without risking my job and God only knows what else. Why don’t you tell me quickly what you think I’m supposed to do now, and I’ll think it over?”
“Just please give us your cell number and pick up if you see it’s me or Jillian calling. Also, stay very aware of your surroundings and remain extra vigilant. We’re trying to contact a detective we know in D.C.”
“I appreciate the visit. I’ll pick up if you call.”
“We tried to reach you a bunch of times on the way over here, but you didn’t answer. You had us a little worried.”
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