by Leslie Leigh
Allie ran a hand through her hair. "I...listen, Tomlin..."
"Harry, please."
"Harry..." No words were forming in her brain. So Allie Griffin shrugged. "Oh well," she said.
"Yeah, oh well," Tomlin said with a good-natured smile on his face. "We're cool though, right?"
Allie sighed heavily. "We're cool."
"Alright. Listen, an attractive babe like yourself should have no trouble, you know? I mean, you'll look long and hard before you find something this good, you know what I mean?" He laughed heartily and then stopped abruptly. "Yeah, well, see you around, Allie."
"See you around, Harry."
17
The Verdenier Public Library was unusually crowded tonight. They were showing one of the X-Men movies for free, and a crowd was milling about the stacks, talking in loud voices, holding cell phone conversations, and reprimanding children for misbehaving. Allie swore she could smell fresh coffee brewing.
"They brew coffee now," said a voice.
She turned around and there was Richard Teller's drooping face and sad eyes staring at her.
"They think they need to keep up with the big bookstores. They think people expect coffee with their books. I don’t want coffee with my books. I don’t drink coffee."
Allie took a deep breath. "Richard, do you still have friends at the hospital?"
"Cass Hawkes herself canned me on the spot. Said my work had fallen off. Fifteen years at that hospital."
"Do you still have friends?"
He stared at her. "Yes, I still have friends there."
"Good. We need someone to let us into the tech room. We need to look at one of the POCs you had there."
Teller shook his head. "Nope. Not gonna happen. I'm done with that place."
He started to walk away.
"Richard!" she yelled.
He turned around, startled.
"Yes, I'll bet that got your attention. You can't stand to see people violate the sanctity of the library like that. Look around you, Richard. Look at the crowds, the noises they’re making. People are leaning on the shelves talking about sports and all sorts of nonsense, and no one's reading. Do you want to know why that's the case? Because years ago, someone got the idea to stop caring about things as they used to be. Only caring about what is and what’s coming. You know what happened then? That person's ideas infected their work and their livelihood. And it infected the ideas of those around them. You stopped caring too. Long ago. And now look. Look around you. Look what happens when someone who knows what's happening doesn’t speak up and fight. You watched this happen to your library and you said nothing. And now you're walking away from me, knowing that what I have to do is of dire importance. My husband died six years ago, Richard, and no one said anything, including you. No one said it didn’t need to happen. Well, it didn’t need to happen. There, I said it. And I'm saying now that you better not turn your back on me again."
When she was done, she felt the hot tears streaming down her face.
She wouldn’t have imagined it was possible for Richard Teller's face to look sadder or droopier, but here was the proof before her now.
"What do you need me to do?" he said.
#
Avery Hendrickson was the guy everyone knew and trusted. He was the guy who you went to when you were having problems in your marriage, and he was there for a quick pick-me-up in the form of a joke—dirty or clean, your choice—and everyone loved him. He'd worked there for longer than anyone realized. He was an innocuous presence, and often an invisible one, but he was indispensable.
Such is the nature of the hospital janitor.
Del Collins had dug into her enormous and impressive stockpile of theatrical wigs to find one that suited Richard Teller's face. And she found one. It made him look like a droopy George Clooney. She finished the makeover with a pair of dummy glasses, horn-rimmed, and the old adage that "simpler is better" paid off: Richard Teller was transformed.
So much so that Allie felt almost no nervousness about getting caught.
"Here we go," said Avery Hendrickson, a towering man with a smile that lit up the room. "Door's open. No one's gonna bother you. I got it covered."
"Are you sure?" said Richard Teller, tack-sized beads of sweat streaming down his face.
Avery leaned in. "As far as everyone's concerned, someone dropped something nasty in there and I'm on my way to clean it up."
"Something nasty?" asked Allie.
"Do you really want to know what I told them? It has to do with bedpans."
"We don’t want to know," said Richard. "Thanks, Avery, I owe you one."
He shook the man's enormous hand. Allie shook it as well and melted slightly at the feather touch this giant had offered her.
The door shut behind them, and Allie flicked on her cell phone's flashlight.
She closed her eyes. I called my home the silver year of the fall of the wall. "I need serial number 5542589."
A few seconds of looking and Teller found it.
"How do we open this thing?"
"Open it?"
"Yes. That machine you sent back for Cass Hawkes, that wasn't the one she brought back to you. The one she brought back was this one. Don’t ask me how I know. Just get me a screwdriver…Philips head. I can see where the back panel comes off."
She accompanied Teller to his desk and held the light as he rummaged for a screwdriver, then held the light as he undid the back panel of the portable oxygen concentrator.
Inside was a maze of parts.
"Help me make sense if this," she said. "How does it work?"
"Air comes in through these vents here on the side." He pointed to two cylinders mounted side by side in the center of the machine. "You see these? These are molecular sieve beds. They filter all the nitrogen out of the air, leaving just pure oxygen. That then gets stored in this tank on the side here, the product tank, and from there empties out so that it can be breathed in by the patient."
"Let me see that," said Allie. "The product tank."
"See it?"
"Remove it."
Teller looked at her and huffed. "Something tells me we could get into a great deal of trouble here."
"The library, Richard. Remember?"
Without another word, the man undid a couple of wingnuts with his fingers and dislodged the product tank from its mooring. This he handed to Allie.
She turned it around and looked closely at it. It was a metal cylinder, about the length and width of a medium-sized flashlight. On the bottom end where the pure air entered into it was a compartment that looked as though it had been sloppily annexed to it with solder. She gave it a twist and it came apart in her hands. Another, smaller cylinder spilled out. Teller picked it up.
"It smells like rotten eggs," he said.
"Don't!" she said. "Put it over there. It's poison."
She looked inside the product tank she still held in her hands.
"Richard?" she said, still peering in, shining her light. "All hospitals have cotton swabs. Please tell me you have some in here."
"I use them for cleaning," he said. "Hold on."
He rummaged through his desk and came back with a handful of long cotton swabs.
"Perfect," she said, and swabbed the inside of the canister. "You still have friends here, you can tell them to analyze this for traces of any substance that deadens the olfactory sense. Can you do that for me?"
"I think so."
"Great," she said, "Now let's put this thing back together. Don’t breathe anything in. And one more thing, we're going to need our friend Avery to continue his little ruse for just a little bit longer. We can’t have anyone in this room for the next twenty-four hours. Do you think that can be done?"
"If anyone can do it, it's Avery."
"Good ol' Avery. Here," she handed him a gum wrapper with her number on it. "Text me when you get the results."
They closed up the machine and Teller texted Avery to let him know they were finished.
<
br /> A moment later, the door opened and Avery's enormous head peered in.
"Coast is clear," he said.
"I hope so," said Allie Griffin.
They left the hospital going in separate directions, Teller with his disguise in place, Allie with her head down low.
"Allie Griffin?"
She turned around, and there was a short man with a shock of red hair approaching.
Her heart began to thump in her chest. "Hi, can I help you?"
The man stopped a few feet away from her. He was panting, a worried look on his face.
"I'm Eddie Ganz," he said.
18
She agreed to follow him to the nearest out-of-the-way place.
Now she regretted it.
It was the third level of the hospital's parking garage. It was now officially after hours and the place was hollowed out. Only a few cars speckled the lot. They stood by a pillar near the elevator. It was the scene of every cliché mystery and horror movie. She would have laughed at it if she wasn't standing here now, keeping an eye out for where she would run if this man suddenly turned threatening.
But Eddie Ganz was anything but threatening. He was nervous and paranoid, plus he was scrawny and about five-foot-two. Allie thought about it and figured she could probably take him in a fight if she had to. Of course, provided he wasn't packing a weapon of some sort.
"I'm sorry," he said as he held his hand up and opened in a gesture of trust. "This thing got way out of hand. I don’t know what to do."
"Let's start with your explaining to me what we're doing here. Certainly it's not so that you can apologize to me."
"I'm terrible at my job. I admit it. The industry, it's so impersonal, you just don’t know who you're affecting in the long run. Yes, I let those parts go. Yes, they were defective. I don’t know how to apologize. I've been living with this thing all these years and I just can’t take the guilt anymore."
The man was now breaking down and it was getting awkward and pathetic.
"Eddie," Allie said calmly, "Calm down. I'm not here to take you to task for your role in that generator failure. It sounds like you've done enough of that on your own. I need to know what's going on with you and Cass Hawkes."
The mere mention of the name caused a change in the man's demeanor. Suddenly there was a dead coldness in his eyes that made Allie shudder.
"She used me. I was in love with her and she used me."
"Talk to me, Eddie."
"Don’t you want to know how I found out about you?"
"The thought did cross my mind."
"My stupid debit card, that's how. The bank forgot to issue me a new pin. I tried to pay the concierge at the Tree Top Inn and the card was rejected. She knew me, I'd been there a number of times with Cass, so she let me run a tab. I went to settle it this morning, and that's when she told me about you. The great Allie Griffin was looking for yours truly. I have to admit, I got pretty desperate. I knew what you were looking for. The same thing everyone is on my case about. That damned generator failure."
"You were in love with Cass, Eddie. Talk to me about that."
He chuckled and shrugged. "What is there to say? The oldest story in the book. Look at me. I was an idiot to think a woman like Cassandra Hawkes would go for a guy like me. And yet, I went along with it. I liked the attention. Until..."
"Until what?"
Eddie looked around. The blood seemed to drain from his face. His voice became a raspy whisper. "Did you hear that?"
Allie shook her head. "Hear what?"
"Allie, you better get out of here."
She heard it now as well: Soft footsteps reverberating throughout the garage.
"The stairs," he said, staring off into the shadowed areas of the lot. "Take the stairs. Behind you."
Allie ran, literally for her life, toward the stairwell. Darting down one flight, two, three flights...
She heard the gunshot.
19
Soon she was back at her house, panting, and wishing it were all a dream.
Dinah the cat was mewling and doing figure eights around her legs.
"Oh, kitty," she said. "I can’t pet you now."
A sudden text alert scared the life out of her.
It was from Edward Teller: swab results zinc gluconate
It was a couple of minutes before she could feel her heart begin to settle down to a somewhat normal pace. Her laptop was still on. She did a search for zinc gluconate. One word jumped out of the article like it was on fire: anosmia.
She went into her bedroom to lie down. She had everything she needed. It was time to call Sgt. Beauchenne.
She dialed his private number. This was no time to be hiding. No swordfish texts. A man was lying dead in the hospital parking lot.
Dinah came scurrying in and shimmied her flabby body underneath the bed.
Allie didn’t remember locking the front door behind her.
She walked out into the living room. There was the tall man with the mustache, the slicked-back hair, and the air of importance.
And there was the gun that had just killed Eddie Ganz.
"Mr. DuBarry, I presume?" she said.
20
The car ride was silent. DuBarry was in the back seat, jabbing a gun in Allie's side. And in the front seat, Cassandra Hawkes served as driver. No one said a word.
Allie recognized where they were going. This worried her. Why would they not blindfold her? The answer was obvious: She would never get a chance to tell anyone about this trip.
They were headed toward a ritzy part of the town on the southwest side. They turned onto Verona Avenue and the car slowed. The houses here were few and far between. Vast stretches of farmland separated residences, and where there were no farmers, there were wealthy businessmen clinging to the solitude that only this part of Verdenier could bring them.
They stopped at a bland house that looked like every other house on this road. DuBarry instructed Cass to park the car on the street.
He pointed the gun into Allie's face. "Get out."
Cass stayed behind and Allie and DuBarry walked toward the house. The air was thick and silent, and the single street light cast a sickly hue over the wet blacktop, concentrated here and there, filling potholes with amber pools.
DuBarry led her into the house through a side entrance, and she found herself in a high-ceilinged foyer, beyond which was a sort of receiving room. Its languid postmodern decor left her anatomically fatigued, as if she were kicking rubber limbs through waves of honey. Then a few more steps and the room suddenly transformed into a Technicolor cartoon which vibrated at every turn with playful contradictions and self-deprecating humor. Here, a static web of iron grids jutted out close to the ceiling—painted virgin white—like a catwalk for some pristine steelworker. There she saw a painting of mostly blues and reds depicting, after some coaxing of the cerebrum, a sweaty saxophone player mid-solo dissolving into the smoky surroundings of a jazz club populated by cats and dogs; and the whole thing was lit with soft-orange bulbs in miniature plastic sconces obviously painted to look wooden. Arrows on the floor led in one direction and then curved and reversed themselves as if they'd changed their mind. Off to the side was a golden piece, thoroughly futuristic, though not so much as to be totally unidentifiable: a dwarf-sized commode.
Then the house just ended. And Allie was led through empty rooms devoid of furnishings and even of color. Then, gradually, there was a resurgence of décor: wallpaper, paintings, sconces, and objects d'art. Then they passed through a door that opened to stairs leading to a basement.
More rooms, and then a single narrow hallway, one-eighty-degree turns round corners, the ceiling here only inches from her head. Here and there were other rooms, empty, and devoid of life signs. But they were immaculate, as if they were maintained daily for public display. And she was always returning to that maddening, winding hallway. The air down there was cool and rocky. The floor beneath her was obviously concrete, padded over with a thin carpet th
at absorbed footfalls completely and did nothing to alleviate the sense that she was being led into the lair of a demon in some underworld space, a boundary of sorts on the edge of reality.
Their walk terminated in a room off the hallway. It too was barren, save for a single metal chair facing the door, and a barstool in the corner. With a threatening gesture, DuBarry made Allie sit in the chair and then handcuffed her left hand to the bottom of it. The chair was bolted to the floor. He then shut the door.
"Charming place you've got here."
"I have eclectic tastes, I know." He stared at her for a moment. The sound of their breathing was like thunder in that tiny room. "You're too smart for your own good, Ms. Griffin."
"You're pretty clever yourself. Although I suppose it's a little easier having an affair with a woman with such close ties to a hospital. You can get anything you want. Well, almost anything."
"Keep talking," the man said with a malicious smile. "I want to hear this."
"You were missing one thing: Stibine gas. Made from antimony. Hard stuff to obtain. But they do use it in the semiconductor industry. Poor Eddie Ganz had access to a treasure chest's worth of the stuff. I suppose it was pretty easy to manipulate him into doing what needed to be done: Outfitting that POC with the canister of the gas so that Hawkes would take a dose, get that fatigue and those flu-like symptoms, facilitating the need to go back and take more oxygen, getting another dose of the poison. All you had to do was to get Cass to convince Ganz that he was one hospital memo away from a prison sentence for conspiracy."
"This is absolutely fascinating."
"May I continue?"
"I insist."
"There was only one thing standing in your way. Stibine gas has a terrible smell. Sulfuric. Like rotten eggs. How to get rid of that smell? How to mask it? That was your problem. A little research is all it took. Zinc gluconate. Used for a short time in homeopathic nasal sprays. Recalled from the market for causing anosmia—the loss of the sense of smell. Anyone with access to a well-equipped hospital would have no problem mixing up a batch of zinc gluconate gel. Then all you had to do was to smear it on the inside of the product tank of the POC. The air would pass through the stibine canister, and then the stibine gas would flood the product tank and mix with the zinc gluconate. The one thing you didn’t count on was the fact that Robert Hawkes, for all his administrative despotism, was no idiot. He was a doctor, and a pretty good one. And he probably had the idea that something was up, even if it was too late. But it wasn't too late for him to scratch out a note for yours truly. Marsh test: It's what forensic toxicologists use to detect the presence of arsenic. It can also detect the presence of antimony."
