Lethal Remedy

by Richard Mabry

  "What am I supposed to see?"

  "Look where my flashlight's pointed."

  At first, she saw nothing out of the ordinary—just rafters and insulation, all coated with a generous layer of dust. But in the area where Mark's flashlight beam settled, she could see that there was much less dust, fewer cobwebs. And sitting on a rafter she saw a series of small boxes interconnected with wires.

  She looked up to see Mark's eyes were fixed on hers. "There's your crying baby. A digital recorder with a separate speaker, connected to a timer, and all neatly wired into the house's electrical current. I suspect that it's set to go offon random nights, playing just long enough to get you out of bed."

  Sara couldn't believe it. This was something you read about in detective novels or saw in a James Bond movie. It didn't happen to divorced women living in a nice neighborhood in Dallas. The questions flew through her mind. Why? Who?

  "Would you happen to have some wire cutters? Or even a pair of pliers with wire-cutting jaws? I'll cut this thing loose. We can talk later about who did it and how. Right now, I want to assure you that you're not going to be awakened by those cries anymore."

  Sara's heart sank. No, she wouldn't hear the electronic cries anymore. But neither would she hear the cries of her own baby. He was dead. As dead as the love she'd once had for Jack Ingersoll.

  The man behind the hotel desk wore a dark suit, a gleaming white shirt with a conservative tie, and a smile as false as Grandma's teeth. His English was only slightly accented. "Welcome, Herr Doktor Ingersoll. Or do you perhaps prefer Herr Professor?"

  "Either will do," Ingersoll said. He dropped his passport and American Express Platinum Card on the registration counter. "I'm quite tired from the overseas flight and would like to go to my room as quickly as possible."

  "Of course." The man beckoned to a bellman and said something in German. The bellman gave a curt nod and hurried away for a luggage trolley.

  "We have for you a very nice room on the Executive Level. Zimmer sieben funfzig." He paused and translated. "Room seven fifty." The clerk pushed the credit card back toward Ingersoll, along with a few other pieces of paper. "Here is information about our services. All your expenses will be direct-billed to Jandra Pharmaceuticals. I will return your passport as soon as I have completed your registration form."

  Ingersoll scooped up the credit card and other papers. One of them, a business card, fell to the floor, and when Ingersoll picked it up he saw that engraved letters identified the Hotel Hessischer Hof, with an address in Frankfurt, Germany. At the bottom, smaller script spelled out the name and phone number of Wilhelm Lambert, Generaldirektor. Not bad. Business class on Lufthansa. Quartered on the executive level of a first-class hotel, met by the general manager. So far, Jandra was treating him right. Then again, he knew that all this would vanish like the morning mist if Jandramycin failed to live up to corporate expectations.

  "Please go with Kurt, Herr Professor," the manager said, and Ingersoll fell in behind the bellman. Apparently the Germans respected him more as a professor than as a physician. Then again, there were several kinds of "Doktor" here. Most of them were nonmedical and many of them honorary titles, but to be a true "Professor" was a horse of a different color. He made a mental note to identify himself in that fashion in the future.

  "Professor Ingersoll. Is that you?" He turned to see a stout, middle-aged man in a wrinkled blue serge suit of European cut hurrying after him. "Please forgive me, but I recognize you from your pictures. I believe it's important that we meet."

  Ingersoll frowned. "Yes, I'm Professor Ingersoll. And you are. . . ?"

  "I am Doktor Heinz Gruber. From the University of Ulm Medical Center." Seeing Ingersoll's puzzled expression, the man continued, "I lead the research studies being done in Germany on your compound, EpAm848. Or should I say, Jandramycin."

  "Oh, I didn't recognize the name." He extended his hand. "Pleasure to meet you."

  "I know you are just arriving, and must be tired, but I think it's very important that we talk. I believe we have much to discuss. Much."

  Ingersoll weighed the alternatives. He decided he'd better get this out of the way. He pulled a bill from a roll in his pocket and handed it to the bellman, who'd stood patiently by during this exchange. "I'm sorry I haven't had the opportunity to change any money into Euros. Please take my bags to my room."

  The bellman's confused expression told Ingersoll that he was dealing with one of the small minority of Germans not fluent in English. Unusual for a four-star hotel, but there it was.

  Gruber addressed the man. "Nimmst Du die Säcke zum Zimmer." The bellman nodded and trundled off.

  "Thank you," Ingersoll said. "I didn't think I'd need any German for my visit."

  "In most instances, you won't. I suspect he understands more English than he lets on." Gruber flashed a grin. "Bellmen and servants learn a great deal that way."

  "You said we needed to talk. Can we do it quickly? I'm really jet-lagged," Ingersoll said.

  "Of course." Gruber scanned the lobby and pointed toward a quiet corner. "I believe we will have some privacy there."

  Ingersoll dropped into an overstuffed chair and settled his briefcase on the floor beside him. "Now, what's so important that it can't wait?" He heard the impatience in his voice, but didn't really care. This was some German doctor doing grunt work for Jandra, and he probably wanted approval. Ingersoll hoped to give him a quick "attaboy" before heading for a welldeserved bath and nap.

  "As you may know, along with my colleague, Dr. Rohde, I have been carrying out the German arm of the study on Jandra's new antibiotic. We have been following the protocol they set up and forwarding the results to their American office as we accumulate data."

  This didn't seem to call for a response, so Ingersoll nodded and tried to look interested.

  "The drug was completely successful in treating infections with Staphylococcus luciferus, and we noted no side effects while patients were receiving it. But . . ." Gruber looked around and beckoned a waiter. "Zwei Kaffee bitte." He waited until the waiter hurried away to continue. "You seem a little unfocused. Perhaps some coffee would help. I believe you will find what I have to say important."

  Gruber seemed content to sit in silence until coffee was served. He dropped a few bills on the tray, added cream and sugar to his cup, and took a sip. He smacked his lips. "Good coffee is truly one of the forces that keeps doctors and scientists going, is that not true?"

  Ingersoll ignored his own cup. "Can we get to the point? I'm quite tired."

  "I apologize," Gruber said, while looking anything but sorry. "The point is that we have heard rumors, nothing certain but definite rumors, about . . . " He spread his hands. "Komplikationen?"

  "Complications, I suppose." Suddenly Ingersoll was alert. "What about these rumors?"

  "We are happy to carry out this research. The money supports much of our other work. But it is of concern when we learn that perhaps we are putting our patients at risk for troubles that come later." He leaned forward. "What can you tell me about these rumors?"

  Ingersoll remembered his conversation with Wolfe. Was this a trap? Had Jandra set this up to test him? Or was this a well-meaning researcher, simply seeking information? In either case, he knew what his answer would be, and he recited it, just as he'd recited it less than thirty-six hours earlier. "I know of no such effects."

  Gloria stuck her head into the dictation room and waggled the chart in her hand. Sara covered the phone mouthpiece and whispered, "One minute." She removed her hand and said, "What did you ask?"

  Mark repeated his question. "How did you sleep?"

  Sara thought she'd never heard a sillier question. She felt like she'd been put through a wringer. "I'm afraid I didn't sleep too well."

  "Oh." Mark's disappointment was obvious. "I was hoping that getting that digital recorder out of your attic would let you sleep through the night for a change."

  Didn't he realize that the cries that triggered her nightmares we
ren't the only thing disturbing her sleep? She had so much weighing on her that the removal of one factor didn't make everything all well. "Mark, I have to get back to patients. Can we talk later?"

  "Sure. How about lunch?"

  This was going much too fast. She'd thought dinner would be a nice change, but dinner had turned into a time of sharing for which Sara wasn't ready. Better slow it down. "Not today, Mark. Why don't I call you?"

  The disappointment in Mark's voice was obvious. "Sure. And if you don't call—"

  "I'll call. Now I have to go."

  Sara noticed that the phone receiver was damp when she cradled it. Wasn't a phone conversation with a good-looking man who was interested in you supposed to be an enjoyable experience? She should be thrilled that Mark was obviously interested in her. Instead, she was a little afraid.

  "What's going on?" Rip Pearson stood in the doorway, a quizzical expression on his face. "Whatever the problem is, you can tell me. I'm a pretty good listener, and you look like you could use a friend."

  "That's my problem," she said. "Maybe I don't really have any friends—at least, any I can trust."

  "Whoa!" Rip held up his hand. "You and I've known each other for . . ." He counted silently. "For eight years. We've been friends all that time, although admittedly after you married Jack you didn't seem to have time for anyone else. But I've never stopped being your friend." He eased into the chair beside her. "Want to tell me about it?"

  Gloria appeared in the doorway, but Sara motioned her away. "Give me five minutes, please. And close the door. Thank you."

  She took a deep breath, then launched into her tale of finding the digital recorder in her attic. Rip, to his credit, listened without interruption, although the expression on his face when she mentioned her evening with Mark reminded Sara of someone who'd bitten into a lemon.

  When she finished, Rip said, "So who do you think left it there? And why?"

  "I've thought about this. Matter of fact, I was up all night thinking about it. I thought about the when, and the who, and the why."

  "So what did you come up with?"

  "It started a few months after the baby died—about the time Jack moved out and announced he wanted a divorce. At first I thought it was just another manifestation of my guilt. My baby was dead. Therefore I had to be a bad mother."

  "But now that you know about the recorder, you think—"

  "I think Jack left it in the attic."

  "Why would he do that?"

  "I have no doubt he did it to torture me. It was simply a gesture of pure evil."

  "What can you do about it?" Rip asked.

  "That's the problem. I have no proof. He'd deny it and accuse me of being paranoid."

  There was a tap on the door. Without opening it, Sara called, "Okay, Gloria. I'll be right there."

  "So what do you intend to do?" Rip asked.

  "Nothing—except be very careful around Jack Ingersoll." She paused with her hand on the doorknob. "And I'd advise you to do the same."

  14

  JOHN, HOW'S THAT HAND DOING?" RIP PEARSON MOTIONED JOHN Ramsey to a seat on the edge of the exam table.

  "That's what I wanted to ask you. It's getting pretty sore," John said. "Do you think I should be on an antibiotic?"

  "Let's take a look." Rip swung a lamp away from the wall on its hinged arm and focused the light on John's hand. "If that's your primary question today, at least you don't seem to be worrying about HIV with every breath."

  If you only knew. "Oh, I'm worried about that, too. I'm just trying to live with it." John winced as Rip pressed on the soft tissue at the base of his right thumb.

  "Well, this looks like it's getting a bit red. Feels warm. It's swollen, and I think there's a little fluctuance here."

  John knew what that meant. For years he'd taught medical students the four cardinal signs of inflammation. Calor, dolor, rubor, and tumor. Heat, pain, redness, and swelling. "So where do we go from here?"

  Rip was already reaching for a pair of latex gloves. "I think I'd better stick a needle into that area and see if I can aspirate some pus for a culture." He opened a cabinet and extracted a large syringe, a needle, and several sealed foil packets containing antiseptic swabs. Rip's hand stopped and hovered over a rubber-stoppered vial. "Want a local anesthetic?"

  "No, I'll be fine. Besides, the fewer times you stick a needle into that area, the less chance of spreading the infection."

  "Right, of course. You haven't lost a step, have you?" Rip said.

  "Maybe one or two, but I think I can still remember a few things." John tried to relax as he felt the cool antiseptic on his skin.

  "Little stick."

  John thought about what a total misrepresentation those two words were. They could mean anything from the mosquito bite of an immunization to the searing pain he was currently feeling in his hand. He hazarded a look and saw that Rip was moving the needle around, looking for a pocket of pus. John winced as he felt the grinding of needle tip against bone.

  "We may not have any—Oh, there you are. Come to Daddy." Rip pulled back on the plunger of the syringe and a tiny amount of reddish-yellow pus oozed into the tip of the barrel. "Not much, but it should be enough to culture." He pulled the needle out and applied a sterile gauze pad to the puncture wound. "Hold pressure on that for a minute, will you?"

  "I don't like the looks of what you got," John said.

  "No, but let's wait until we see what the culture shows." He put a few drops of pus on two swabs and plunged them into tubes containing culture medium. "I'll get an aerobic and anaerobic culture, and . . . " Rip forced the last drop from the tip of the syringe onto a clean slide, then used the edge of another slide to create a thin film of pus on the glass. "Let's get someone to stain this so we can have a look."

  Soon the two men watched a lab tech put the stained slide on the stage of a binocular microscope, apply a drop of oil to one of the lenses, and rack the assembly down until the lens barely touched the slide. John remembered how many slides he'd cracked before he mastered the technique of using the oil immersion lens. For the tech it appeared to be old hat, though. He brought everything into focus, stepped back, and gestured for Rip and John to have a look. Rip bent over the 'scope, and after a few seconds of moving the slide back and forth, his face tightened. He stood up and gestured for John to take his place.

  John removed his glasses and applied his eyes to the scope. He fiddled with the knobs to bring the field into focus, and when he did, he knew why Rip's expression had changed. Amidst the debris of dead white blood cells he saw round blue organisms. Most were single or in pairs, but many formed chains and grapelike clusters. A second-year medical student could have made the diagnosis: Staphylococcus.

  John straightened. "It's Staph, all right. Think it's Staph luciferus?"

  "Too soon to tell. Could simply be a coagulase-negative Staph, a non-pathogen. We'll have to wait for the culture results."

  "So what do we do?"

  "I don't think we need to get out the big guns until we have confirmation. Why don't I just put you on a broad-spectrum antibiotic now? We can change it later if we need to."

  John tried to keep his expression neutral, but his insides were churning. What else, Lord? And why me?

  The man's nametag said he was Wes, the owner of this gun store. He looked pointedly at his watch. Five o'clock, time to close. But he couldn't ignore a potential sale.

  "This one?" Wes reached into the glass-topped case. His hand hovered in midair over the rows of handguns displayed there and settled on a small revolver.

  "Yes, that one," Sara said.

  "You know, you don't want to just pick one that's pretty," Wes said. "I mean, this one's nice—blued steel, rubber grips and all. But—"

  "May I see it, please?" Sara held out a hand that was rocksteady. Wes handed her the revolver butt-first.

  She balanced it in her hand, snapped the cylinder out and checked that the gun was unloaded, snapped it back into place and dry-fired t
he weapon four times rapidly. "Trigger pull's not too bad. Good balance. I like the weight—about a pound, isn't it?"

  Sara enjoyed seeing the startled look on Wes's face. She was a woman. Women weren't supposed to know about guns. Well, she did. She knew that the Taurus Ultra-Lite weighed seventeen ounces, had a two-inch barrel, held five .38 caliber bullets, and was a favorite among off-duty policemen. After a couple of phone calls to the policewoman she'd met after the shooting incident, followed by a little research on the computer, Sara knew just what she wanted.

  "How much?" she asked.

  Wes scratched his head. "That one's four hundred and eighty dollars, but I might be able to do better than that."

  Sara waved the pistol back and forth in a "no you don't" gesture, enjoying the look on the man's face as she used the weapon to make her point. "You will definitely do better than that, since this tag hanging from the trigger guard says four hundred thirty."

  "Oh, I must have misremembered," Wes said. "I guess that's the price, then."

  "Do you really want this sale? I can go to any of the stores around here, drop a credit card on the counter, and buy this gun for that price with a box of .38 caliber cartridges thrown in." With the revolver still in her right hand, she opened her purse and reached in with her left, coming out with four crisp one hundred dollar bills. She put them on the counter, but kept her hand on them. "I'll give you four hundred cash, and I want the Taurus, a box of ammunition, and a cleaning kit."

  Wes was silent for a moment, but she could tell by the expression on his face that she'd won. "Okay, I guess I can do that. And I'll be glad to keep it for you until you get your concealed handgun license. I've got the forms here somewhere."

  Sara put the gun on the counter, opened her wallet, and produced a laminated card about the size of a driver's license. The upper left portion carried the word Texas in flowing script, with the words Concealed Handgun License centered along the top. Sara's picture smiled out from the left side of the license. Wes checked the expiration date and said, "Okay, looks like this is good for another year."