Nothing.
Fifteen physicians, identified by code numbers across the bottom of the page, me included, made up the ER roster. A black bar rising above each number indicated the number of DOA cases. No one stood out. Most had one or two, a few had three or four, and a single physician apparently had none. I shouldn’t have been disappointed, but I’d thought maybe I was smarter and more clever than whomever I was after and that a bar graph would point to the killer. Obviously not.
I hadn’t broken open the number code yet, so I had no idea who was who. I’d do it later. At least I could eliminate suspicious thoughts about the doctors with low numbers. Perhaps I’d have to look at the two or three with the higher bars. As Doug had reminded me, this was a nest of vipers, and we had at least three snakes to trap.
I pressed the copy button, and as my noisy printer started drawing up the apparently innocuous graph, I laid in the program to compare the incidence of DOAs by shift. The noise of the type head stopped, and while waiting for the new table to pop on the screen, I ripped out the first graph and dropped it unthinking on the floor.
The grid for a week of work appeared, broken into three eight-hour shifts—days, evenings, and nights—starting at seven A.M. By these hours doctors and nurses the world over live their lives.
A superimposed grid then made an hour-by-hour sub-grid, and a spatter of dots finally appeared spread out over the screen. Each spot was a corpse. The groupings told us the times and days we were most busy with the already-dead over the space of a year.
Visually I couldn’t read much into it; the picture looked like a space map with over thirty stars, a few more than I’d estimated. I then punched in the analysis program that would plot any significant time and day groupings.
This took a little longer. Carole had given me the program in a simplified version for my lowly skills and PC. The same exercise went much faster at her desk, with her machine, and, more important, with her hands tapping in the commands.
Waiting out the hums and clicks, I stared at the first graph as it had fallen upside down at my feet. I had been foolish thinking a simple flick of a computer switch would give me a singular accusing bar graph rising up over a killer’s name.
Viewed from upside down, a black bar graph changed. The white background became the bar. The white bars measured the negative finds. And seen this way, one number had a massive white bar under it compared to all the others. The negative find, no DOAs, was made significant.
The code to identify this doctor was on another disk. I didn’t want to stop the program already plotting DOA times mid-run, so I waited, growing steadily excited that the absence of bodies might be the slip-up I was looking for.
The screen sprang out an ordered collation of times and days. There was no preference of days, but twenty-five of thirty-one DOAs had arrived in the morning hours. Most of those arrivals were between eight and ten.
This was a huge bias, but it could mean nothing more than that the derelicts who had died or been killed overnight got found in the morning and were sent in then.
Our doctors worked shorter blocks of time than the nurses and overlapped their shifts. This strategy lessened the stress and fatigue inherent in ER work. I requested that the schedule of individual doctors over the last year be correlated with the exact time slots in which there’d been DOAs, and that the result be represented by a bar graph again. As I expected, no single physician worked these slots more than any other, but this time I was ready for the negative find. Long white bars rose over several numbers, distinct from the black columns over all the rest.
The numbers with white bars hardly ever worked mornings. They included the same code number that had no DOAs.
Again, by itself, there was nothing sinister about this. Some doctors simply preferred afternoons and evenings and didn’t work mornings because of competing schedules and commitments outside the hospital. That had been my own preference before I became chief.
I played some more with the schedule data and asked for a list of the M.D.s preferring evenings and afternoons. As I expected, this consisted of about half the department. This group included the number I’d started to track.
Then I played a hunch. I shifted back to the DOA time and day graph and combined it with the year’s schedule. I asked for a correlation between the DOAs and whoever worked the preceding shift.
This was a very unusual request, and the computer had to whir and click much longer than before. As I waited, a cold draft stirred at the back of my neck. I absently added this room to the list of ones that Doug was to caulk against leaks. It was an early winter routine that mercifully lessened each year as the logs in the newer parts of the cabin finished settling. The older sections, permanently cozy, gave me faith the process would end someday.
As I sat there in the dark, listening to the machine while the gray light on its screen nickered, I felt chilled despite the warm clothes I’d put on. I’d get a sweater as soon as the program finished.
Just then the screen snapped into yet another horizontal spread of vertical bars.
Except this time I had my markers, two in fact, one white and one black. The black bar rose like an obelisk above all the rest, but not over the number I now knew by heart. Above that number was a white column.
It was like looking at a positive and a negative. The physician I’d been tracking virtually never did a shift prior to the arrival of a DOA. The doctor represented by the black bar was on duty before most of them were brought in.
I spooled back over the graphs I’d constructed and tracked this new number through their grids. I began to see what it might mean.
Before changing disks and activating the program to the identity code, I wanted printed backup of what I already had. Years of being computer stupid included some bitter “save-it-while-you-got-it” lessons. I also no longer completely trusted my ten-year-old clunker; it sometimes jumbled text and then showed a little bomb sign that meant I was out of luck. Before risking yet another disaster with the drawn-out routine of switching disks to make duplicates, I started running off paper copies of all the graphs. The printer sounded like a sawmill, laboriously grinding out each line I’d just concocted. While waiting, my fingers tap-danced the passing seconds on the blue surface of the disk containing the names.
One minute; one sheet finished. Five more graphs, and five minutes to go. What a dinosaur, I thought, and decided to go back downstairs to get a sweater.
As I walked through the kitchen and started toward the other end of the house, I could hear the stutter and whine of the printer overhead. It got quieter while I made my way through the cozy sets of chairs, couches, and small tables in the darkened living room, our chatting areas and reading nooks in happier times.
Soon the noise became a dull whir in the distance behind me, stirring my thoughts. I figured I understood why one physician was never around and another was nearly always present prior to the arrival of a DOA at St. Paul’s. And if I was right, that same telltale pattern would hold for most of the other DOAs recorded around Buffalo—if I lived through the night and ever got a chance to check that data.
I walked down the hallway that led to the master bedroom. It was even darker here, and I had to feel along the walls. I still didn’t want to turn on a light.
So many DOAs; so many statistics—yet some numbers had a vague familiarity. More chairs and nooks. I felt my way by them in the dark.
What other riddle involving numbers had I looked at recently? Stats related to the emergency study? Probably, and possibly of no significance.
I entered our large bedroom. After the darkness in the rest of the house, I found the blue glow of moonlight coming through the big corner windows more than enough to see by. Outside, the snow-covered lawns and surrounding thick forest were now equally visible. Doug had been right; the storm had stopped.
I found the sweater I’d remembered stashing in a bureau drawer and put on the pullover. The lake, still open, stretched out darker than the night, bla
ck glass set in a shore of white. I could even see under the pines at the edge of the lawn, where an hour ago I’d huddled in the shadows and watched for signs of someone inside.
It was probably a good thing they weren’t, I thought. From the dark in the room I would have been spotted easily as I ran to the cabin.
The cut of my tracks stood out like a laceration in the moonlit snow, deep with shadow. It looked darker than before, like a line of dried blood. Not much snow had fallen since I got in. But as I watched, I let my memory wander, struggling to recall what relationship these pieces of data had one to another.
Possibly. For some reason the word drifted into the back of my mind. The word probably floated in as well. Why did possibly and probably connect with the elusive numbers I was trying to recall? Three hundred? The number seemed to come out of nowhere. Three hundred what? My memory refused to divulge the source of that figure. I was ready to dismiss the silly little words as one of those trivial loops the mind can fixate on. But the loop continued to play, and the word study joined the others. They all swirled around like an annoying anagram that defied solution until, just as abruptly, the words settled and changed for me. Probability. Possibility. The chance of error of a study. The source of a p value.
I knew whose name I was going to find under the white bar on the code disk.
The phone rang like a scream in my ear.
I yelped without realizing it and spun around. Quickly I picked up the receiver of the phone beside the bed. I didn’t even have a chance to say hello.
“Earl, get out!” Doug shouted. “Get out now! A second set of tracks followed you in. Get out now!”
“Second tracks?”
“Don’t talk! Just get out. They’ve pulled an end run. The car that came up after the ambulance must have pulled the same maneuver the cab did with you and dropped at least one of them off at the same spot. We didn’t see it at first because of the storm. They’re coming for you through the woods.”
“Doug, I think it’s just a moose!”
There are qualities to a silence in which you know, with absolute certainty, that people have decided you’re insane. This was one of those moments.
Finally, Doug asked, “Earl, is this a code? You’re in trouble, right, and talking gibberish is meant to tip me off?”
“No, Doug, I met a moose. It followed my tracks. Hell, it led me out of the storm to the lake. It’s just a moose.” .
“I don’t believe it.”
“Christ, did you call in the cavalry yet?”
His stony silence started a rising dread he’d blown our cover, but finally, reluctantly, he said, “No, I wanted you out first.” More silence, then, “But I don’t like this.”
“How’d you just see the tracks?”
“The night binoculars are great once the snow stops.”
I knew now the computer was going to give me a name, a suspicious pattern on a schedule, but no proof. I could accuse, and arouse suspicions, but not necessarily convict. I still had to get Doug to wait. “Well, relax. It’s nothing,” I said to him. “Let’s watch a bit longer.”
There was more doubting silence on his end. “Hold it a sec,” he said.
I heard him carry on a hurried conversation with one of his guys in the truck. I could hear a snatch of Amie’s twanging. “No fuckin’ way that’s a moose track. Moose leave prints; that’s a steady human track. And it’s too fresh. Dr. Garnet’s tracks are already half covered, barely visible. These couldn’t be more than an hour old. Get the idiot out of there.”
Arnie had hunted both men and animals. He was edgy. As I listened, I found my mouth going dry. I involuntarily pressed my back to the wall. I peered across the dim room and out the window to the dark trees where my path left the forest.
Upstairs the clatter of the printer abruptly stopped. A shutter thumped the wall in another part of the house. The logs creaked in the wind, and a puff of snow flew against the panes of glass across the room from me. The printer sputtered to life again in the distance. It must be almost finished.
Doug came back on and diplomatically translated. “Uh, we got a serious difference of opinion here. Look, I want you out of there till we sort it out. Have you got that dinky little portable phone that works near the house?”
I’d bought it for work in the garden. Doug had borrowed it during projects here in the old days before he got the cellular.
“Yeah, I got it. What are the two watchers up to?”
“Nothing. Just sitting there.”
“If someone else is on the way in, how’d they know I was here?”
“I don’t know! Look, just get out of there. Go up and hide in the cliffs behind the cabin. We’ll watch these turkeys here. If they move or anyone shows up where you are, we call the cavalry. Phone me when you’re outside, to check that your cheap walkie-talkie talks.”
In a flash I saw what we’d forgotten. “My tracks! They’ll see my new tracks heading out again and follow them right to where I’m hiding.” Even though I’d decided to be a decoy, I thought I’d have control of when I’d allow them to see me. Then I could have timed it to happen just before the cops arrived. The Holi Mont police were about ten minutes away, and we’d told them to come in without sirens when they got our call. But now, instead of dodging the killers for a few minutes, hopefully long enough for them to incriminate themselves, I might be at their mercy a lot longer, no matter how quickly the police got there.
Doug’s silence confirmed he hadn’t thought of this either, even with his safer version of our plan. We were improvising now, and our scheme, either way, was coming apart.
“Earl,” he said urgently, “it’s gotta be that you head up the cliffs and watch for them from there or I call the cops now and scare them off.” He let this sink in, then added, “It’s your call.”
I was getting scared, but leaving these killers free frightened me more. If the secret of the bar graph was what I thought it was, my “accidental death” was not only to keep me from trying to expose a mass murderer, it was to allow the killings to continue. “All right,” I agreed, “I’ll hide in the cliffs, but we wait and watch. I’ll call you when I’m outside.”
“Remember, take off through the woods back toward the highway as soon as we call the cops. They’ll probably check out the cabin first before they start tracking you again. If the cops get here fast, we might even trap them while they’re still in the house.” But he sounded pretty tense about our prospects.
“Okay,” I answered, “but did anyone ever call you cheeky and bossy?”
“Wait till you see my bill.” He hung up.
The click that ended the call stuttered and became a dial tone. The drone was unpleasant, like a fly in my ear. I’d wanted to tell him what I’d found on the computer and whose name I expected to reveal with the identity code in case anything happened to me. I decided I’d call him back as soon as I was safely outside.
I glanced back at my outside track through the windows.
How did they get on my trail, get a car up here, and replicate my slow drop-off?
I visualized rolling out of the cab; the hollow was completely invisible to the rest of the road. Hell, I saw the dimming taillights of the departing cab go out of sight over the rise between the watching ambulance and me. They couldn’t have seen me.
As I stood in the darkness looking out, I replayed the image of the departing cab. In my mind I saw the shadow of the driver hunched over the dashboard, then taillights.
Suddenly I had it: The dash. The radio. The ambulance must have been monitoring the cabbie when he’d radioed in. He probably mentioned dropping off some lunatic in the woods. The ambulance driver would have realized it was me. And now they were coming in the same way.
I moved away from the window and turned toward the hallway. The portable phone was at the other end of the house on a charger in the guest bedroom. I’d grab it and call Doug once I was outside. Time for the cavalry. I was halfway through the dark passage before I remember
ed what I’d find: a phone unplugged.
I always unplugged the damn charger when we were away. It got too hot while charging, and I was worried it would short and burn.
I’d use the phone at the entrance and then get out to the cliffs.
I had reached the long hallway that passed from the living room to the kitchen. The vestibule and entrance-way were about halfway down the corridor that stretched ahead of me. I heard another burst of noise from the printer upstairs.
Then a gust of cold air caught my face.
I went still. The door was open! Or was it another draft? I’d stopped breathing. More cold air blew against my skin. My thoughts raced ahead. The tracks outside hadn’t been darker, they were deeper. They’d already gone by. My tracker was in the house!
I was too still. I had to buy seconds to get out, which meant I had to keep moving. I couldn’t let on I knew the killer was already inside.
As I made each step, I thought I’d be jumped.
I crept up to the entrance of the vestibule and peeked around the door frame.
Empty. The outer door was closed, but a cool, steady breeze came at me from where the pane of glass beside the lock used to be. I slipped into the vestibule but kept watching the dark corridor by backing to the door. With my left hand I made a grab for my boots; my right fumbled blindly behind me for the handle. The floor was wet with melted snow. I stepped on the missing pane of glass and crunched it. The suction cup that had removed it was still in place. If I cut my foot, I didn’t feel it.
Above me the whine of the printer stopped. The silence was as still as my breath.
I felt the thudding up the dark end of the hallway before I actually heard the running. I was more startled by a steady rising beep, familiar as a heartbeat, but grotesquely out of context here.
I got the door partly open behind me as a figure in a black ski suit, gloves, and mask neared the vestibule. The beeping increased its crescendo. The intruder was holding out two paddles, like lethal suction pods. They were connected by coils of wire to a small monitor slung on a shoulder strap. The beeping had reached a steady scream. The paddles were fully charged and ready to deliver. A single jolt and my heart would be a fibrillating sack, useless as a bag of squirming worms.
Lethal Practice Page 28
