Death Rounds

by Peter Clement

  I continued to hurry through the oppressive passageways, following a set of turns which I was used to by now, and was completely lost in speculation about how Brown had been infected. Cam couldn’t have done it by going on the ward in person, I thought as I rounded a corner and headed down a particularly musty section of hallway. His six-foot-five-inch frame would have been too easy to spot. Maybe he’d contaminated the ward—left colonies of staph where people would touch them during the times they wouldn’t be wearing gloves, such as when they were showering. There was an article in the MMB once, I recalled, that documented an incident in which an MRSA outbreak was traced to a soap dispenser in an OR. And I’d check with Miller, I decided, to find out if there was any way that Cam could have tampered with the specimen after Brown’s screening.

  I was somewhat startled by the sound of a door slamming somewhere around the next corner. Instinctively I slowed. Down here it didn’t take much to crank me up into a full panic. Echoes of that hideous laugh raced through my mind and fed my sudden fear that the lights would go out again.

  The repository was located in its own region of this netherworld, away from the archives, so it wasn’t any of Levitz’s group or the ID physicians who’d been working there. I heard another door close— this time the sound seemed closer—and I thought I could hear approaching footsteps. It could be one of Riley’s men doing another search, I thought, but I’d nearly had my head split open twice now, and I wasn’t going to take any chances. Tiptoeing, I backtracked, hoping to make it to the repository where the door had a bolt. Whoever had come after me in the human resources department had had a key, perhaps even passkeys. I kept watching the corner as I retreated from it, moving along with my back to the wall. Another door closed, and the footsteps came closer still. I wasn’t going to make it to the next turn in the corridor and out of sight before whoever it was saw me. Reaching behind my back I tried one of the doors I was passing. It was locked. I moved more quickly now, less conscious of noise, only concerned about getting away. I tried another door. It opened. I backed inside, found myself in a small room full of boxes, and quickly locked myself in. I stood in the dark and tried to control my breathing as the steps and the sound of doors opening and closing came nearer. Was he looking for me again? Was it merely one of Riley’s men after all? I heard the rattle of a nearby handle that was tried and didn’t open. The steps then continued, coming nearer, nearer. I was next.

  I leaned my weight against the door and held my breath. I heard the knob turn, feeling the movement transmitted through the ancient wood as I pressed on it with my shoulder. The possibility he could probably kick it to splinters if he knew I was in here flashed through my mind. He gave the handle two more hard twists, then walked away.

  I let out my breath, hardly able to believe he’d passed me by. My first impulse was to let him get out of earshot and then call Riley on my cellular. Let the police nail him, I figured. Then I thought, what if the police don’t get here quickly and quietly enough, and we lose him again? I heard more doors opening and closing, the sound receding each time. I quickly recovered my nerve, took a breath, and as silently as I could, released the lock to open the door a crack.

  He was thirty yards away, just rounding the next corner and passing out of sight. But this time he was close enough I could tell immediately who it was, even from the brief glimpse I’d gotten of him. Gary Rossit was prowling the subbasement of University Hospital.

  * * * *

  I felt as if an earthquake had rumbled through my head, toppling all my ideas and suspicions about Cam’s being the killer. Dashed as well was Janet’s theory—that the Phantom was some unknown figure who’d framed Cam. The sight of Rossit resurrected the notions I’d had about him in the first place—that he was involved in a brutal plan to sabotage University Hospital. The possibility I could have been right all along was almost as big an upheaval to me as seeing him there. But how had he gotten in?

  I didn’t have time to stand around and try to answer that question. I could hear him making his way down the next corridor as he continued to open and close doors. I decided I’d call Riley as soon as I learned what Rossit was doing or where he was headed and ran on my toes to where he’d disappeared into the next corridor. There I peeked just in time to see him pass from sight into yet another passageway.

  I continued after him, wondering if he were after me. Possibly, except he wasn’t using much stealth. In fact, all the noise he was making made it an easy matter to follow him. I thought again about calling Riley. But what would the detective grab him for, slamming doors? All at once I had to backpedal in my thinking. Even his being here wouldn’t give the police reason to arrest him. For all I knew he might have walked through the front door and signed in. As the chief of the infectious disease department at St. Paul’s, he’d certainly have a joint appointment at this hospital, the way I had. Now that I thought about it, given the circumstances, especially with Cam’s disappearance, it was perfectly natural he might come in, offer to look around, and see what he could see. When I peered into the next passage, I saw he was past the repository and crossing the far intersection, heading straight into a part of the subbasement I’d never entered before.

  Better tag along, I thought.

  But I had to wait a while to let him get farther ahead of me in this next section—it stretched into the distance as far as I could see—until I could safely follow from a long way behind and use recessed doorways to hide in. I’d no idea where we were headed, and the manner in which he kept poking around, sticking his head into every room he could, I began to wonder if he had any specific destination in mind. He seemed instead to be searching for something.

  Luckily for me the overhead lights were dim and spaced far apart, so I had lots of shadow to cover my moves while I skirted along the wall from doorway to doorway. Here and there rows of boxes were stacked to the ceiling, affording further cover when I needed it.

  As we progressed in tandem through this lengthy tunnel, I kept looking beyond where Rossit was peeking into yet more rooms until eventually I could make out where the passageway ended—against a larger door than the rest which was illuminated by a solitary lamp hanging over its portal. Between it and where I was standing in one of the shadowy spots, there was very little light and many more piles of boxes, but if I didn’t want to be seen when he started back, I figured I’d better get into a hiding space now. Although Rossit was short, his torso and arms had always given me the impression of considerable strength, and I didn’t savor the idea of his finding me down here while I was spying on him. I even wondered if I hadn’t already had a taste of how powerful he was two nights ago when I’d had my own arms pinned, my gut slugged, and my head rammed into a door.

  I found a dark area behind one of the nearby stacks of boxes and crouched down, still keeping an eye on Rossit making his way toward the end of the passage. When he arrived in front of that final door and reached for the handle, I figured he’d give a quick look, like he’d already done to a few hundred other rooms down here, and then return toward me. Watching him slowly push it open, I got ready to hunch over in the shadows. But instead of simply glancing in, he stood at the threshold a few seconds, then stepped inside, leaving the door open behind him. I waited for about a minute, watching, thinking he’d come out any second. He didn’t.

  Overhead some pipes clanked. Otherwise the place was completely quiet. I began to feel cramped staying in one position and tried to shift my legs to make them more comfortable. As I waited, an ever so slight hint of something pungent and overripe penetrated my mask and invaded my nostrils. Probably a rat had died behind the boxes I was kneeling beside.

  Suddenly from the room Rossit had gone into I heard a creaking noise, like rusty hinges. Then there was silence again. Was there another door out of there? I kept my breathing slow and shallow so I’d detect the slightest sound that might indicate he was still inside.

  Nothing.

  The pipes overhead clanged especially loudly, maki
ng me jump, then fell quiet again. I still couldn’t hear anything coming from the room. Fearing I’d lost him, I stood up and began creeping very stiffly along the right-hand wall toward where I’d be able to see by the half-open door. The odor I’d noticed before persisted despite my moving away from the boxes and began to cloy in the back of my throat. I was about ten feet from the entrance when I heard a soft noise. I froze in midstep.

  It was a scraping sound, muffled, not anywhere near, but definitely coming from the other side of that door. It kept repeating, as if someone were pushing something. My first thought was that there might be containers somewhere in that room similar to the many boxes that lined the hallway and that Rossit was moving a bunch of them around for some reason. When the scraping continued, I crept another five feet until I could see partly through the doorway. A ceiling light inside revealed a medium-sized storage area filled with stacks of storm windows and more piles of boxes. In my line of sight against the far wall, though partially hidden behind yet more boxes, was a long table half covered with a white sheet that had been folded back on itself. Visible on the table was a large metal cube of some kind, about two feet square. Beside it I recognized racks of test tubes, bottles, and stacks of petri dishes. Parked in a corner of the room, also half hidden behind some containers, was a small supply cart.

  My pulse rocketed into triple digits. Son of a bitch, he’s brought me to his lair! I tried to keep my breathing steady. The scraping continued to come from somewhere behind the door, and I could hear Rossit grunting now as he worked. But I couldn’t see him. Whatever he was dragging around in there, it was heavy. That odor still hung in the air, and though it wasn’t perceptibly stronger, its persistence began to make it repulsive. I stopped breathing through my nose but knew the scent was continuing to fill my mouth. It remained there a few seconds, nearly beyond the range of my sense of smell, but not completely. Soon I began to detect traces of it again as the aroma seeped up the back of my throat and floated into the posterior regions of my nostrils. Since my first anatomy lab nearly thirty years ago I was sensitized to even a hint of that distinctive stench, no matter how many flowers they put out in a funeral parlor or how high they turned up the vents at the autopsy lab.

  It was time for the police. I readied myself to tiptoe down the dark hallway behind me. I’d phone Riley as soon as I was far enough away to be out of earshot, probably when I’d locked myself safely in the repository. The cops could then come and collect Rossit, the lab equipment, and, I knew, much worse. But I’d barely taken a few steps when the scraping noises from deep in the room abruptly stopped. In a flash I feared he’d heard me and was coming. Reflexively I ducked behind some of the nearby boxes. No sooner was I crouched down than the silence was ripped by loud retching noises, followed by the thudding of running feet.

  I pressed myself back against the wall where it was darkest and huddled into a ball with my face cradled in my arms. I allowed myself a wide enough slit for one eye to peek through. The door flew open the rest of the way, banging noisily against the inside wall as Rossit bolted from the room. In the fraction of an instant he passed under the overhead light I glimpsed vomit streaming from under his mask and down the front of his gown. His eyes were as wide as saucers with black bull’s-eyes in them. Then he was tearing away in the semidarkness, his labored breathing loud and full of whimpering sounds, his shoes slapping against the floor.

  The echo in the place amplified the noises of his retreat as he got farther away in that long corridor. I got up from my hiding place and watched him go. Silhouetted against the distant light where the hallway joined the rest of the hospital, he gave the illusion of running in place.

  It wasn’t the behavior I expected from a murderer. Come to think of it, if this was his lab, why had he spent so much time poking his head into all the other rooms on the way to it? Leave the questions to the cops, I readily decided, pulling out my cellular and dialing the security desk. “This is Dr. Garnet,” I announced as soon as I heard the receiver pick up. “You know I’m working with Detective Riley.”

  “Yes, sir!” came the reply. “I’ve accompanied you myself to the basement.”

  “Listen up. By no means let a Dr. Gary Rossit out of this hospital, you hear! He’s on his way toward you. Stop him, no matter how much he protests. Alert all the guards at the other entrances. Now!”

  “Right away, sir!”

  “And notify Riley—”

  The buzz in my ear told me he’d hung up. Obviously, for him, an order was something to be jumped to. “If only we could get the residents to obey like that,” I said out loud, wanting to break the leaden quiet that pressed in on me.

  Rossit had passed out of sight and sound, leaving me listening only to the occasional “thunk” of an overhead pipe. I continued to take in air by mouth, but nothing I did could keep away all traces of the telltale smell and nothing would lessen the terrible dread I felt about entering that room. Nevertheless, I walked up to the fully open doorway and stepped in.

  At first I saw only more storm windows and boxes. Then, looking over the top of a particularly large pile of cartons stacked in the middle of the floor, I could see a three-quarter-size metal door set in the far wall. It was open, but the area it led to was in darkness. I recoiled from looking in. The smell where I stood was already much more powerful than it had been outside, and mouth breathing left me actually tasting the odor of rot. I needed a few minutes to let my olfactory senses accommodate to the aroma; pathologists always taught us never to run from a stink but rather stay in the room a few minutes and let it become bearable. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it didn’t. The trick was to get through the few minutes. I walked over to the table and tried to focus on the items laid out on its surface while fighting the urge to throw up.

  It was almost as Williams and I had predicted. The large cube-shaped object was an incubator with a thermostat and a heat lamp. It was probably intended for hatching chicks and was open on top, but he’d laid a big cookie sheet over it as a cover. Inside was a rack of half a dozen shelves—again some kind of kitchen accessory. On each of these shelves were a dozen petri dishes, every one of them teaming with bacterial colonies. His equipment looked more like the stuff of a cooking class than the tools of murder.

  I lifted the bed sheet off the other end of the table and discovered four closed preserving jars full of water. I presumed these were his supply of Legionella. Bundles of culture sticks and collection tubes were lying on trays, and boxes of gloves and masks were within easy reach. But when I removed the sheet entirely I found myself looking at something I didn’t understand. Half a dozen surgical masks were spread out side by side. Near them was a box of thirty-cc syringes fitted with very small number 25 needles. I picked up one of the masks, yet couldn’t see anything special about it. When I put it down, however, I realized I had a little moisture on my gloves at the tips of my fingers. When I examined the other five, I discovered they were all damp as well. Had he spread them out to dry? But why were they wet in the first place?

  I’d have to figure it out later. At the moment I had as good a hold on my stomach as I was ever going to have, and it was time to get on with what I’d come in here to do. I walked over to the entrance of that small chamber. Pathologists must simply have lousy noses, I concluded as I resorted to holding mine and trying to swallow at what seemed like once every second.

  I knelt down and peered into the darkness. The tiny space was barely five feet high at the zenith of a low arched stone ceiling. Braced for the worst, what startled me was that I didn’t see the corpse I’d been smelling. Instead I was looking at another bunch of large boxes randomly placed about the floor, if floor was the right word. It was nothing but dirt. There was enough light streaming into the cramped space from behind me that I could see where many of these boxes were shredded near the bottom, some of them with holes in their sides the size of a cat. Their contents were probably documents, because chewed strands of paper trailed out from those holes onto the ground
like streamers. Were these containers what I had heard Rossit dragging around?

  It took my eyes a few seconds more to see the scrape marks where he’d hauled them off an area of darker, coarser earth compared to the gray powdery soil surrounding it. This patch was a few feet wide, and at the far end I could make out a small spot where the dirt was especially roughed up and scattered. Without giving myself time to think about it, I took a breath, went in on all fours, and crawled toward the freshly disturbed ground until I was looking down at what seemed like a shallow depression of mud. There was absolutely no sound in here, and the weight of the whole hospital seemed to press in on me. I gritted my teeth, and tried to push aside the wet dirt with my gloved hand. After letting my eyes adjust again to the lack of light, I could make out that the mud had earth-caked features. The rats hadn’t had to dig down more than a few inches to chew on Cam Mackie’s face.

  I broke into a sweat despite the cold clamminess of that closed space, and when I had to breathe, the air was so putrid that my throat involuntarily seized. Desperate for a breath, I backed out as fast as I could.

  He was waiting for me. I had started to get up when I caught a glimpse of his crepe-soled shoes behind me on my left. I tried to wheel around and get my arm up to protect myself. But I was still partially bent over, and the ceiling light was behind him, so all I could make out was a silhouette and the shape of the shovel he was holding in the air like a bat. The instant before he brought it down on my head I realized he was too tall to be Gary Rossit.

  Chapter 24

  When I next opened my eyes, I was staring at my crotch. My head was lolling on my chest; the slightest effort to raise it sent spears of pain up my back and into my skull. I was leaning forward against some kind of restraints—duct tape, it looked like—around my chest and arms. My hands were bound behind my back, and I was strapped into a chair with my legs lashed together, also with duct tape.