“A threat? What kind of a threat?” he demanded, growing excited.
“Actually it’s good you’re here,” I continued, ignoring his question. “Find a quiet phone somewhere and call in as many technicians as you can reach. I’ll explain later, but we’re going to have to mobilize a huge operation in the labs tonight and, among other things, start a massive rescreening program.” I spoke as rapidly as possible so as not to allow him room for questions. “By the way, what happened about searching the asylum? I never got your call.”
Miller frowned at my evasions. “The earliest I could get a team organized was for tomorrow morning,” he replied, glancing over to where Fosse, now red-faced, was gesticulating and speaking in terse whispers to Williams. When I still didn’t explain what they were fighting about, Miller’s expression became an outright scowl, but he left to do what I’d asked.
“...just a petri dish and a microscope slide,” Fosse persisted, no longer keeping his voice down once Miller had gone out of the room. “I repeat, how do we know it isn’t some hoax rigged up to scare us?”
The CEO’s ongoing denial infuriated me.
But Williams handled him. “Pay attention, Reginald!” he snapped. “I’m going to teach you what it means to have fifty men and women wandering around your building with the superbug growing in them.”
Fosse looked increasingly alarmed as Williams, already towering over him, drew closer. “Staph in particular gets around by touch,” he continued. “It likes to live on hands, under fingernails, in groins, and up noses.” As he talked, he ran his right thumbnail under the fingernails of his left hand, crudely gestured with the thumb at his own crotch, then wiped it across the opening of his nostrils.
Fosse’s mouth dropped open at the unseemly routine.
But Williams wasn’t finished with the lesson. He held up the extended thumb until it was an inch from Fosse’s face. Fosse cringed, snapped his mouth closed, and pulled his head back.
Williams kept him cowering like that a few seconds, then softly asked, “Now are you really willing to go home, kiss your family good night, and tell them all’s well?” He brushed his thumb across Fosse’s lips.
Fosse shrieked, ducked under Williams’s arm, and started to back away. “Now ju-just a minute!” he sputtered, spitting out and wiping his saliva away with the back of his hand. Looking wildly from Williams to me, he declared, “You two can’t bully me like this! I insist we get Dr. Mackie here.”
“Earl,” Williams said, “I’ve no more time to argue with non-doctors.” He made the last word sound like an epithet.
Fosse reacted as though he’d been slapped. “How dare you speak—”
“Whoa! Settle down, both of you,” I ordered.
“Are you going to tell him what you suspect about Mackie?” Williams asked, his voice coldly neutral.
Fosse released Williams from his glare and turned to me. “What does he mean?” he demanded, his hostility unabated.
I hesitated a moment before replying. Not understanding why Cam had abandoned his secrecy increasingly bothered me. Without that, I knew, I didn’t have a good grasp of what had happened tonight. Maybe the man in front of me had the answer. “Mr. Fosse, why was Cam Mackie so defensive about my looking into the matter of the Phantom?”
He flushed an even deeper shade of red, then stammered, “I...I told you, I’ve no idea—”
“When I asked you in your office today, I think you lied when you said you didn’t know. I want you to level with me now!”
“Oh, God! Cam couldn’t do this—”
“Why was he so goddamned uneasy?”
“Look, I don’t want to discuss—”
‘Tell me!”
Fosse swallowed. “Why is it important? After all, a great man’s reputation is at stake.”
“Could he have been afraid I was about to stumble onto some proof he couldn’t deny, something that would make it so obvious he was responsible for the infections that he knew he could no longer hide his guilt?”
“No! It was nothing like that. They were simply old rumors, never proved—”
“What was he afraid I’d find?”
Fosse swallowed a few more times. Then he seemed to slump. “All right,” he said, taking a big breath and letting it slowly run out of him. “Two years ago, because of what happened to his father and because of his well-known abhorrence of anyone being cruel to patients...” Fosse paused for yet another large intake of air, “…there were whispers by some that he might be the one behind those events attributed to the Phantom.”
Whispers from two years ago. As startled as I was at the revelation—it certainly could be the reason that Cam hadn’t wanted me dredging up stories about the Phantom—I doubted the old rumors would have been enough to make Cam give up his cover if he were the killer. But they were enough to make me walk back to the phone and pull an end run around my own confusion, Fosse’s protests, and all the institutional denial a place the size of University Hospital could muster. Let the professionals sort it out, I decided as I called the police to report that a death threat had been made against my wife.
* * * *
“What are you doing here. Dr. Garnet? Is Janet okay?” asked a group of case room nurses who were on their way to work.
I was back in gloves, mask, and green gown again, waiting at the front security desk for the homicide detective I’d spoken to. It was 10:40, and already people on the night shift were arriving. Despite my outfit—Williams had declared that as of now everyone in the hospital must put on protective gear—some of the women who worked with Janet had recognized me as they flashed their identity cards to the guards.
“She’s the same,” I told them, “and thanks for asking. I’ll give her your regards.” I’d detoured through ICU on my way to the main entrance. Janet had been sleeping, but I’d hastily skimmed through her chart and grilled her nurses until I’d satisfied myself that for the moment there were no beginning signs of staph. Yet there was no lessening of my panic, knowing full well it could be too early to tell. I also knew that my only chance of stopping the organism was to figure out how he’d put it into her if he had, and, if possible, how to get rid of it before the infection started. If Phyllis Sanders’s course was typical, I had very little time to do so. It had at least been reassuring when the private guard told me that so far no one had even tried to get anywhere near Janet.
Her case room colleagues didn’t hide their quizzical looks at my costume as they hurried on their way, and I was glad they hadn’t time to ask questions about it, which I didn’t want to answer. They’ d find out soon enough, once everybody from the night shift was safely inside.
The detective who was on his way to take my report was the only cop I knew personally in Buffalo. I’d managed to convince the police dispatcher who’d screened my call, after a bit of an argument, to track him down for me. Within minutes, much to that dispatcher’s surprise. Detective George Riley of homicide had agreed for me to be patched through to him.
“Hi, Doc,” he’d said sleepily. “This can’t be good news.”
I’d helped him last year during the investigation of our former CEO’s murder. I had mixed feelings about the man. He was as much a bureaucrat as a detective—always protecting his ass against his superiors—but he’d listened to me when none of the other investigators had, and I figured I needed that kind of help right now. After hearing only the brief description that someone was trying to kill Janet and perhaps others with a deadly bacteria, he’d sounded incredulous but had agreed to come at once.
As I stood there waiting for him, the stream of workers, mainly nurses, continued to file into the building. They remained relaxed as they passed the security guards, obviously still unaware that they were walking into a quarantine.
Even before I’d left the lab, Doris Levitz had phoned back confirming the CDC agreed to throw its weight behind the measures that Williams had demanded, and Fosse had succumbed to the inevitable. On my way up the stairs there had be
en an announcement on the PA that all staff currently on duty would remain at their posts during shift change and that supervisory personnel were to assemble in the auditorium at midnight for further instructions. “The hospital has been ordered to remain on standby, pending further information about a possible external disaster,” declared the carefully worded announcement. Speculation was probably going on right now about what to expect—a plane crash, a bus accident, a bombing somewhere—yet I doubted anyone would guess immediately that they themselves were the potential victims and that they were about to become prisoners. The minute they were told to put on protective gear, however, suspicions would skyrocket. But it was after the midnight meeting when they’d finally be told about the Phantom that I expected all hell to break loose.
The security guard who’d come back from checking the offices whispered to me that he’d already been ordered to have his men position themselves at the exits of the building and not let anyone leave. Before hurrying off, he also advised me that he hadn’t found any open terminals but that Mackie’s unit was still warm.
I moved closer to the front doors and relished the cool night air on my forehead. Wearing the gown over my clothing felt hot, and the mask, as usual, was stifling. But it was thinking of Cam and what lay ahead that had my brain on fire. The one question—why would he admit now that he was the killer?—continued to plague me as I readied myself to report him to the police.
I inhaled deeply, trying to pull through my mask traces of the cool air that were drifting in from outside. The extra puff of oxygen didn’t give me new answers. The only reason I still came up with was that he must have figured I was about to stumble onto something current which would reveal he was guilty of causing the infections.
A porter pushed a cart stacked with surgical gowns, boxes of gloves, and masks up to the security desk.
Getting ready for the party, I thought grimly.
All the officials Williams had summoned and anyone else not slated for quarantine would now have to enter and leave the hospital in exactly the same way we entered and left the room of an infectious patient, putting on protective gear before stepping into the place, and discarding the outfit into bins on leaving. The process would be a giveaway as to what was going on. At the moment, thankfully, I didn’t see anyone so much as glance at the supplies parked off to one side.
There was still no sign of Riley. “Come on,” I muttered, growing increasingly impatient. I restlessly leaned against one side of the door frame, then the other, and watched the security guards checking ID. Anybody missing his identification badge had to sign in, just the way I’d had to, as any visitor would, before the guards let him pass.
The sight of those people writing in the book reminded me about Cam’s glancing through it earlier that evening and then running back into the hospital. Watching a nurse hastily start adding her name to tonight’s page, I wondered about what had set him off. I certainly hadn’t seen anything very telling in the few pages I’d skimmed through. Yet three hours later he’ d called us all and started his show rolling.
Then I thought. Sign in, just as I’d had to, as any visitor would, and felt a prickle of excitement run up and down my back. My God, could it be that simple? I quickly stepped over to the desk, grabbed the book from the startled nurse, and flipped back to the pages covering Saturday and Sunday.
There in front of me was what Cam must have seen.
Michael had inadvertently left an itinerary of the rooms where the guards had let him in to look at records this past weekend. Every department, every room, every place was listed with his signature beside it—Archives, Personnel Records, Administration, Vault for Confidential Minutes, Staff Health Records, Laboratory Services, Microfilm Repository. I could follow his route.
My excitement mounted even more as I wondered if that’s what Cam had done. Had he followed Michael’s “trail” and discovered it led to evidence that he knew would expose him? Michael might not have discerned who the Phantom was from what he’d found, but Cam could have felt threatened enough to think he’d been forced into the open.
Then my mind leaped to the most tantalizing possibility of all. Anything that had so convincingly overcome Michael’s skepticism about a phantom infecting people must have laid to rest his biggest objection to the idea: not knowing how it could be done. Had he found out the killer’s method? That could be key to saving Janet’s life, to saving many lives, perhaps even Michael’s own if it wasn’t already too late.
I started to tremble, trying to decide what would be the fastest way to proceed. If Michael had signed for anything in each department he’d checked, there might be an individual record on-site. Or, perhaps, the clerks who’d come to work this morning would remember whatever documents they’d found left out for refiling. I could barely contain my eagerness to get started.
“Doc, Doc,” a voice said repeatedly from behind. “Doctor Garnet!” It took Detective Riley several tries before he penetrated my racing thoughts.
* * * *
“Whoa, Doc, you’re losing me. Begin at the beginning, and take your time.”
We were back in the lab, seated at the desk where the microscope was located. I was in such a rush to go after my new leads that I was having trouble relating the events of the last week in a way that Riley could follow.
He was a large man, and looked uncomfortable stuffed into a gown, mask, and gloves. Under the lights I could see perspiration forming on his forehead below the line of his thick dark hair. I’d had to help him pull everything on before we’d come down here, and knew his clothes were damp to begin with from the fog outside. Sitting there, ready with his pad and pen, he dwarfed the lab stool, its spindly legs much shorter than his own.
I settled myself down and tried to explain my story in a more logical fashion. I could hear Fosse on the phone across the room calling the hospital leadership personally—chiefs and board members—insisting that they come immediately, saying only that they’d be told about the crisis when they arrived at the midnight meeting. I knew the board members would be allowed to go home again, but the chiefs would be walking into the quarantine where they’d be held with the rest of us.
I managed to lead Riley through everything, from Phyllis Sanders’s infection, through the history of the Phantom, the events in the subbasement, the subsequent infections of Deloram, Michael, and Janet, and the happenings tonight, including what I’d just discovered about the sign-in book at the security desk. “Those records could save lives,” I stressed, “but we’ve got to hurry.”
He immediately called security and ordered them to seal the rooms that Michael had visited.
I kept the rest of my account factual and, at Riley’s request, omitted for the moment any mention of the various suspicions I’d had about Mackie, Rossit, and Hurst But by now Cam’s failure to show up made it almost impossible not to speculate out loud about his being involved. When Riley himself finally raised the question, Fosse, between calls to his board members, protested from his side of the room that he still couldn’t believe it.
Throughout the rest of my statement, Riley took occasional notes and frowned repeatedly but interrupted only when he needed explanations about the bacterial organisms involved. When I came at last to showing him the message still on the computer, he whistled, then commented, “Jesus, Doc, your story is one hell of a lot more than a threat against your wife! I’m way over my head on this one.”
“I know, but believe it or not, I was having trouble getting the CEO here to move on it,” I explained, nodding toward Fosse but keeping my voice down. “I called you because I could at least report the threat against Janet myself. Things seem to be moving better now.”
At that moment Williams appeared in the doorway and motioned to me to join him. He, too, was masked, gowned, and gloved and had been with Miller and his techs running tests on the contents of the petri dish. “We did a Gram stain on the colonies and confirmed they’re definitely staph,” he told me, “and we’ve detected the pre
sence of both methicillin and vancomycin in the growth medium of the petri dish. To put it bluntly, the organism’s practically marinating in the drugs, and it’s still flourishing like hell.”
The grim news was nothing more than I expected. I took him completely by surprise, however, when I told him about the sign-in book and what I expected that lead to give us.
“Fantastic,” he replied, his eyes lighting up.
“But we’ll need more doctors,” I told him. “It took Popovitch two days to review all that material—what about the other ID specialists on staff here?”
“Already called in—to help out with the quarantine—but we can switch them to going through records. They’re familiar with the Legionella cases, so they should be able to spot anything that Popovitch was able to see. But I’ll need your help at the meeting before you join them.”
“Hey! That search could save lives—”
“Listen! There’s going to be one hell of a squawk about what needs doing here, and there’s a whole lot more lives at stake if we can’t make this quarantine work. I need someone local with credibility who will back me up.”
“But I don’t work at UH.”
He winked at me and shrugged. “So? You’re the only Buffalonian I know with credibility who’ll back me up. That means you still get the job.” His eyes flicked over to where Riley was now standing beside the stool. “Who’s he? The dick you called?”
“Yeah,” I answered rather absently, not at all pleased to be pulled from the search. “He’s from homicide. I imagine he’ll want to talk to you.”
I introduced Williams to the detective, and as I anticipated, Riley asked Williams how seriously he took the threats against Janet and the other personnel in the hospital. I watched Riley’s eyes widen as Williams outlined the full extent of a hot-zone operation.
Death Rounds Page 30
