“Doing it drove away the flashbacks,” he continued, almost sounding reasonable. “I know they’ll probably return, but I can go on with my work somewhere else. Being a chief technician who’s had experience with the superbug ought to make me a hot commodity for any hospital in the nation. Wherever I go, I’ll be in charge of screenings. Who knows? Maybe picking off a punisher now and then when he comes back to haunt me will be enough next time.”
I wasn’t thinking much beyond getting myself out of this room. If I failed, I knew I was dead, either by getting my head smashed or by what he’d infected me with. But it had never once occurred to me that he could somehow walk from here, especially if he killed me, and not be a suspect. That his madness extended to taking this horror to other hospitals left me reeling. Was it possible? The police would eventually find our bodies. Could they actually end up reconstructing a story that let Miller slip away? I didn’t see how. Sooner or later someone would surely piece together what had happened like I did, but Miller hadn’t made many tactical errors and the mere fact he thought he could get off scot-free meant he’d probably seen a possibility I’d missed.
“You know what’s interesting about a swab. Garnet? I can be plating out organisms in the nasal mucosa of my subjects, giving them staph instead of culturing for it, and nobody can tell the difference.”
His words hardly registered at first. I was busily figuring how I’d make my move, flexing and unflexing my leg muscles, getting ready, when what he was saying washed over me with the clarity of ice water.
“I keep a special pile of infested swabs with me, ones I’ve already dipped into my cultures of the superbug. No one notices I seem to have some culture sticks set aside on my tray as I work. I can infect anyone I want with a colony of staph, and it can lie dormant for weeks, until I hand out a dose of Legionella.”
My first thought was. God help me! He’d infected Brown right before my eyes. My second? That it was definitely time to go!
I leaped from the chair with a scream and then pivoted left. I got a glimpse of the total astonishment in his eyes, then of the shovel starting through its arc toward my head. Already turning, I dropped on one leg and rolled farther toward where I’d left a storm window partly pulled off the rest of the pile and ready to be grabbed. The shovel grazed off my back passing over me as I twirled under it. Too terrified to feel my stiffness, I got to my feet without looking behind me and reached for the window. I got a hand around each side near the bottom of its frame, raised it over my head, and pivoted again to face him.
He was already coming at me, his shovel raised for another strike. He started his swing, but I got the side of the window in the way of the oncoming handle and blocked it. Wood on wood, the blow caused the pane of glass to shatter, some shards of it falling out and showering down around us, the rest remaining in a jagged rim around the inside of the frame. The shovel struck the cement floor with a loud clang. Miller retained his grip on it and immediately started raising it again.
But my window was already in the air. I brought the frame with the sharp glass fragments down around his head at the level of his eyes and pushed as hard as I could.
He screamed as the points found their way into flesh and sockets. The shovel clattered to the floor and he tried to grab the frame with his hands, but he couldn’t before I raked it farther down his head toward his neck. Some pieces of glass broke out of the frame and remained embedded in his flesh. Others held firm in the wood, slicing through his mask and lacerating the underlying skin. By the time they reached his jugular, he was pouring blood from his face and had shredded his hands trying to grab around what had become a halter of pointed glass daggers. Screaming and begging “No!” he groped blindly for me, more blood and pieces of latex flying off his palms as he flayed the air trying to find my arms. As soon as I saw his powerful fingers coming at me, I gave the frame another hard shove, felt the glass go farther into him with a little lurch, and knew I’d punctured something. I made a final thrust, then released my grip on the window.
My last push sent him staggering backward. His hands flew to his throat and his scream became a whistling gurgle as he went stumbling in reverse across the room. The sound told me I’d sliced his windpipe. He crashed against the work table and ripped it toward him as he slid to the ground. The contents fell around him and onto his bloodied head and neck. Even the incubator toppled over, landing upside down on his face. He was thrashing, choking, and continuing to make wet, rasping noises through his severed trachea. Blood spurted into the air and gushed over the floor. He clawed wildly at his neck trying to dislodge the frame and the shards of glass that had impaled him. I watched as he inadvertently shoved the incubator away from where it had fallen.
Harold Miller would probably survive his punctured trachea. Even the copious outflow of blood could be stopped if we hurried. But what he wouldn’t escape were the contents of the dark brown ooze that was spreading across his skin. The overturned petri dishes had spilled their lethal culture media into his deep and multiple wounds.
Chapter 26
I found both the key to the door and my phone in one of his pockets. He made a weak grab for me as I retrieved them, but lack of oxygen and loss of blood had rendered him harmless. Within two and a half minutes of my call. Wild Bill Tippet arrived with his resus team and went to work on him. Since Miller was a “gusher,” Tippet’s now being triple gloved, double masked, goggled, capped, and gowned was appropriate.
They intubated, got IVs running, and tamponaded the bleeding sites as best they could. Working around all the embedded glass and infested agar medium was hazardous at best. Then they made a run with him for the OR. Riley arrested him on the fly, reading him his rights while trotting alongside the gurney. When the detective warned his new prisoner that anything he said could and would be used in a court of law against him. Miller, unable to talk but still half conscious, gave the detective a baleful look as if to say You’ve got to be kidding.
In the OR they’d sew up his trachea, repair torn arteries or veins of size, and clamp, ligate, or cauterize the rest, whatever it took to get the bleeding stopped. But from the beginning we all knew we were working on a dead man.
Why bother? Williams best explained everyone’s thinking on the subject. “Keep the son of a bitch alive in case we need to know something from him about what he’s done!”
I later learned that shortly after they wheeled him out of the OR, they wheeled Brown in, unable to wait any longer before they amputated her right arm just below the shoulder.
I raced to ICU and woke up Janet, quickly telling her only that the killer was Harold Miller, that I’d explain everything afterward, but that right now she must immediately undergo a nasal lavage with bactericidal soaps through the posterior pharynx. Struggling to get her eyes open, she in turn gave a little scream when she saw my battered face. Still half asleep, she proceeded to give her own set of orders, demanding that I immediately find someone in ER to take care of my own problems and that the nurses were to get her a “real doctor” before she’ d even discuss the matter of lavages. After a few seconds, however, what I’d said seemed to sink in.
“Harold Miller was the Phantom?” she exclaimed incredulously. “Killed his own mother? Infected all those people? But he was just here less than an hour ago, taking swabs—Oh my God!”
After I agreed to have my lavage done with hers—I’d no idea whether he’d swabbed me as well—she consented. As we gagged and spat together, then applied copious amounts of mupirocin ointment up our nostrils, I prepared myself to tell her Cam was dead.
She took the news quietly, but that didn’t mean she took it well. I think she’ll probably rage in her soul until the end of her days against the wrongs that led to her friend’s dying. Her silence, I suspected, was a reflection of how she’d already resigned herself ever since he’d disappeared to the fact he was dead, though she never said it outwardly. Instead she let me comfort her, then comforted me over and over that I was not the cause of Cam
’s murder or Rossit’s. Afterward we never talked again about how I’d suspected Cam. Strangely, I didn’t feel that moratorium was because she blamed me for those suspicions. Rather I think it was her way of telling me that she didn’t have to talk about it, that she accepted what I’d done as reasonable and in good faith.
I was having greater difficulty dealing with it all. I kept dwelling on how I could have done things differently. Even Williams and Riley tried to reassure me to the contrary during my formal statement with a police stenographer, but I knew I’d go to the end of my days wondering if either Cam or Rossit or both would still be alive had I not thought them capable of murder.
* * * *
“Intravenous erythromycin and copious nasal lavages,” Williams immediately ordered for anyone who’d been screened by Miller and also exposed to a mask he offered.
But instead of running around helping him get everything done, I became a patient tethered to an IV pole, receiving my prescribed intravenous erythromycin to prevent my contracting the Legionella that Miller had exposed me to. I kept my cot alongside Janet in ICU but slept fitfully. By 5:00 A.M. I was awake for good. Since I could wander throughout the hospital by pulling my wheeled mast with its dangling bag and plastic tubing along at my side, I slipped out of the unit and squeaked my way down the corridor to where I got a coffee from a vending machine. Then I poked into abandoned rooms until I found a phone to call St. Paul’s ICU.
“It’s remarkable. Dr. Garnet,” the nurse said, “Dr. Deloram’s hope about the purulent sputum not being from staph proved founded; the culture’s negative. Better yet, Dr. Popovitch’s vitals are stronger. His fever’s down, and most important, his blood gases are improving. It looks like we might even try to start weaning him off the respirator later today, though that will be a long process.”
I found the elevator, rode it down to the ground floor, and pulled my pole with its wheels squealing in protest across the large deserted foyer to the front doors. The guards knew who I was and let me stand in the doorway where I could enjoy the early morning air. I was still enveloped in a mask with my usual protective gear and would be obliged to remain so until several rounds of cultures on me proved negative. But at least the mist felt good on my forehead, and it being Thursday, I could hope to be free of masks and such by the weekend.
Standing below that massive stone facade, I looked up and saw the underside of the chins of the gargoyles. The granite sentinels peered off into the predawn night. I felt like yelling up at them, “The threat is over,” but I didn’t, of course, and they never wavered in their vigilance. Together, we watched the sun come up.
* * * *
Late in the morning we discovered that the results from previous screenings had been tampered with. All the current victims now dying from staph pneumonia were recorded as having been negative two days before, which was impossible. We had to start reculturing everyone in the hospital. On the positive side, the prophylactic erythromycin had slowed the emergence of Legionella cases. Only five more people developed the prodrome, and the course of their illnesses remained mild.
Ultimately none of the victims Miller had infected with staph during his last round of screenings showed any traces of staph on culture after being lavaged so promptly, including Janet and me.
But the dying wasn’t over yet. During the next few days three more of the earliest victims, already severely ill with Legionella, died of staph pneumonia. The final death toll from the superbug was thirteen, not including Phyllis Sanders.
Williams’s rule of thumb regarding release from quarantine was “Three negative screenings and you’re free.” By Sunday morning ninety percent of those who’d been confined were cleared to leave.
The CDC supervised a review and clean-up of every square inch of the hospital.
“We’ll eventually give the place a clean bill of health,” Doris Levitz said over coffee one morning.
“But will the public?” asked Williams, the front half of his scalp registering his skepticism in multiple wrinkles.
I thought of the gargoyles peering off into the distance and wondered if they would become sentinels looking in vain for the return of patients.
* * * *
Sunday also marked the day Janet got out of ICU, her Legionella in full retreat. I never developed any symptoms at all and was equally grateful that the numbness was gone from the left side of my face. My hearing, I was assured, would be back to normal within a few days.
The hospital had virtually no patients now, and Janet chose a room in OB where she could have the company of some of her colleagues and friends. Since I could be wherever I parked my pole, I also checked into OB, to much teasing by everyone on the ward.
“Who knows,” Janet said coyly when we were alone in our room, “maybe nine months from now we’ll be back here for real.”
We were on the phone constantly with Amy and Brendan, reassuring Amy that we’d both be home in a few days and cooing at Brendan. We wanted to see him so badly, but we wouldn’t budge until even theoretical risks from Legionella to an infant were well past
“By the way,” Amy told us, “since you haven’t been here, Muffy’s been sleeping in Brendan’s room, guarding him like he was her own pup.” Amy held the receiver up to Muffy’s ear, and we heard her barking excitedly at the sound of our voices.
I’d continued to check on Michael every few hours and been reassured he was making progress. But I wasn’t prepared for the call that came to our room that evening. “Earl, it’s Stewart Deloram. I’ve got someone here who wants to speak with you. Hang on a minute.”
I heard rustlings, then I could hear him breathing for a few seconds before he spoke, as if it were difficult for him to get the receiver into position. “Boy,” Michael rasped, “that was harder than giving up cigarettes.”
On hearing my friend’s frail voice, my eyes filled with tears. “Michael, you are amazing! Simply amazing,” I told him.
He gave a sound in return that was half chuckle and half wheeze. “Gotta go,” he said. “They seem to think I shouldn’t talk for long. Better humor them. Bye, Earl.”
When I hung up, Janet needed no explanation. My side of the conversation was enough to make her eyes sparkle. We hugged, laughed, and cried, sharing our joy.
That night we slept in the same bed. Despite the narrow mattress and the fact that our IVs kept getting tangled we managed to resume our campaign to keep Brendan from being an only child.
* * * *
“He says he wants to see you,” Williams told me.
“See me! Did he say why?”
Riley answered. “Miller’s not saying anything to us, anything at all. Who knows what the creep wants? My advice. Doc? Don’t bother. You’ve been through enough.”
It was late Monday morning, and we were having coffee together in the otherwise deserted cafeteria. The area, along with ICU and OB, was one of the few that had been declared clear of staph. As a result, we were free of protective clothing as we sat around and talked, and it felt wonderful, despite the grim business we were discussing.
“I agree with Riley,” Williams chimed in. “We’ve pretty well put together what happened. There’s no need to talk to him. He’ll be dead in twenty-four hours, anyway.”
Undoubtedly he would, I thought, and I might end up wondering about what he wanted to tell me for the rest of my life. “Why don’t you two fill me in on what you’ve figured out,” I suggested. I wanted to think over whether I’d see Miller. “For starters, what happened the night Cam disappeared?”
Riley looked at Williams, got the nod to do the honors, and started. “We figured that Miller overheard Cam Mackie when he called you and Douglas. Maybe Mackie even confided to Miller what he’d found in the charts, not realizing that he was talking to the killer. If that was the case. Miller would be faced with a crisis. He already had to know that his mentor was brilliant enough to beat every one of us to figuring out the rest of it. But the fact that Mackie had already zeroed in on evidence of
how the three nurses were infected in a matter of hours—evidence so complex, I remind you, it took the rest of us days to find—must have convinced Miller that his own exposure could occur just as quickly. According to our preliminary path report, he probably only knocked Mackie out in the lab, then finished him off by strangling him to death sometime before burying his body. The crime scene investigation will tell us more for sure. That chamber, by the way, was a root cellar at one time.”
“We timed it out,” joined in Williams. “Miller could have carried an unconscious Cam Mackie to that room, killed him, then raced back to the lab with the samples of staph that he set up for you and me to find. Once his display was ready, he probably used Mackie’s office, dialed the number of that single line phone, and waited until one of us answered. When he heard your voice, he started sending those messages. I bet he preferred your getting there first, because he could terrorize you about Janet. Distracted, you were more likely to jump to the conclusion he wanted you to make about Mackie.”
Riley took over. “While you and Douglas were figuring out what to do and dealing with Fosse, Miller had time to slip back to his hiding place, bury Mackie, and cover the grave with boxes. Then Miller returned to the bacteriology lab, claiming Mackie had also telephoned him.”
I remembered how Miller had looked freshly showered that night when he’d arrived at the bacteriology lab. The thought of him having just washed up after killing and burying Cam sickened me.
“What about the asylum?” I asked. “Was he ever there?”
“Probably,” Williams said, “until you spooked him that first night you ran into him. The second time you saw him with the cart, we think he could have been getting ready to move. Given how little equipment he had, it would have been an easy matter—a couple of trips at most.”
While refilling our cups from a silver serving pot, I asked, “Did anyone figure out how he used the screening process to set up the targets?”
Death Rounds Page 41
