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  Joe blushed and, locking eyes with Dr. Herwitz, shrugged his shoulders. Dr. Bernard stubbed out his cigar. “Excuse me,” he said, “I have to get back to patients.”

  He paused in the doorway, his upper lip sweating profusely. He pointed his index finger at Karen. “You’ve been prying into a lot of things that are none of your concern. One way or another, it’s going to stop.” He turned and strode down the hall.

  Dr. Herwitz rose. “Joe, I’ll be running along now, too. I think we’d better give this MRI thing a little more thought. I’ll get back to you. Good day, Mrs. Hayes.”

  Karen headed for the door just behind Dr. Herwitz, intent on beating a quiet retreat now that she had undercut the physicians’ confidence in Joe’s MRI scheme.

  “Karen!” Joe shouted. “We’re not done. Close the door and take a seat.”

  Karen stopped and reluctantly returned. Joe stood up, walked around to the front of his desk, and sat on the corner, one foot on the floor and the other dangling, in his usual manner. He looked at her silently for several seconds.

  “You realize, Karen, you may have just demolished the most important deal I’ve put together all year. Now, I don’t believe in psychic powers, so I’ll have to deal with Dean Williams and his big mouth in due time. He’s seen his last piece of business from this hospital. But honest to God, I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately. You’re obviously under a lot of stress. Is it Larry’s death?”

  Karen’s feelings of triumph were fading quickly. She began to feel weary again. Joe was right. She was stressed.

  “It’s a lot of things,” she conceded, “but Larry’s death is the main thing.”

  “It was a real loss to the hospital,” said Joe. “He was an able CFO. He’ll be hard to replace.”

  Karen studied Joe’s face. He seemed sincere; he was a good actor. She looked into his eyes, hoping to learn something from them when she ambushed him with her suspicions.

  “Joe, I’ve been investigating Larry’s death, as you know, in connection with the defense of Ben McCormick’s lawsuit. The evidence I’ve collected thus far leads me to the conclusion that Larry was murdered.”

  Joe’s face remained impassive, but as he moved to push himself up from his perch on the desk corner, he jabbed himself in the hand with his desk pen. Whether he was rattled because he was involved and afraid of being unmasked, or was merely reacting to the idea that one of his executives had been murdered, Karen couldn’t tell. The ambush was a bust. Joe rubbed the sore spot on his palm and tilted his head slightly to one side. “You say you have theories for your ridiculous assertion?”

  “Several. Someone who works at the hospital was almost certainly involved. Either someone who worked in the cath lab the Saturday before Larry died, someone who was involved in Larry’s biopsy, or someone who had access to a key to the cath lab.”

  Karen continued to watch Joe’s face carefully. He looked unbelieving but concerned. Karen went on. “Someone who had some technical knowledge about catheters, what the effect of heat on one would be. A doctor, or someone familiar with medical supplies.” She paused, and looked Joe directly in the eye. “Or someone in administration.”

  Joe flushed, walked back around his desk, and sat down in his swivel chair. He pressed the tips of his fingers together and looked at his hands. He took a deep breath.

  “Karen, you apparently have no idea how bizarre this accusation sounds. The stress is taking more of a toll on you than I thought. I really think you’re coming unhinged. We can’t have that right now when there are so many important deals in the works. For the sake of the hospital and your own sake, you need to take some time off.”

  “I’ve used all my vacation time for this year, Joe, but Jake and I have a week planned in March.”

  “No, Karen,” said Joe with a bit more force. “I mean right away. You’re going to take some time off immediately.”

  Karen felt a sharp pang in her stomach as her adrenal glands discharged. It hadn’t occurred to her that Joe might freeze her out. She felt unprepared. “Like I said, Joe, I don’t have any vacation time accrued. Maybe after the first of the year I could take a few days off.”

  “No,” he blared. “Not after the first of the year. Now. Forget about accruing vacation time. You’re taking a leave of absence until the end of the month. Frankly, right now I can’t afford to have you running around blowing up important deals and pissing off the doctors. And now you’re going to start getting everybody stirred up about an imaginary murder plot? Go home and enjoy the holidays, and forget about us down here. Have Margaret box up any files you’re working on and send them over to me. I’ll have Emerson Knowles pick up anything that can’t wait until you get back.”

  Karen’s mind scrambled for something to bargain with. She was surprised to discover how important it was not to be shut out before she finished her investigation into Larry’s death.

  “Margaret isn’t familiar with the files I’m working on right now. I’ll need some time to straighten a few things up.” She sounded desperate to herself.

  Joe waved his hand. “Okay, you can finish out the week, but that’s all.”

  “It’s Thursday, Joe,” she pleaded. “I need more than one day.”

  Joe stood and walked the forty-foot length of his office. He held the door open, dismissing her.

  CHAPTER

  20

  “Security. Schumacher.”

  Karen could hear Max munching on something. She had worked into the lunch hour on her letter to the Deputy Inspector General about the clinic fraud. Time was running out simultaneously on her investigation into Larry’s murder and her search for file number 3, the file she hoped would tell her whether she could ever send her letter. She fought the impulse to rush her work. If she hurried, she might miss something.

  “Max. Karen Hayes. I need a favor.”

  “Sure, Mrs. Hayes,” said Max. “You name it.”

  Karen listened for any hint of snideness in Max’s voice, but failed to detect any. Apparently, he was going to let the episode in Joe’s office pass without comment. Amazing what a couple of tickets to a basketball game could accomplish.

  Karen explained that she wanted Max to check the safe deposit to make sure the extra key to the cath lab was there. If it was, she wanted him to take the key out of the safe and call her back. He called back in ten minutes.

  “It was there all right. Got it with me. What next?”

  Verifying that Max now had both copies of the cath lab key on him, she asked the security chief to meet her at the cath lab. They arrived at the door to the lab simultaneously.

  “What’s this about, Mrs. Hayes?” Karen observed that Max’s gray crew-cut maintained perfect verticality on top. Although the hairstyle was enjoying a resurgence, she guessed Max’s crew-cut dated back to the days of Southern Rose pomade. The dark circles under his eyes made his large, bulbous nose look like it was carrying saddlebags.

  “Just a little experiment, Max.” Karen had checked earlier to make sure the cath lab would not be in use from noon to 1:00 P.M. Now she asked Max to lock the door to the cath lab and try both keys on it. Both worked. Then Karen tried the large steel key she had found in Larry’s “Little Walter” mug. It didn’t work. Karen thanked Max for his help.

  “What did the experiment prove, Mrs. Hayes?”

  “Nothing, Max,” Karen allowed. “But it eliminated a few possibilities.” The possibility that someone had stolen the cath lab key from safe deposit and replaced it with a dummy had been eliminated, but not the possibility that someone had borrowed the key from safe deposit and returned it. Karen had also eliminated one possible answer to the question of where Larry’s second key fit, admittedly a long shot. Mostly, Karen figured, the experiment was just a failure. A waste of time she couldn’t afford.

  She took a few minutes to report the theft of her car battery to Max, who said he would write it up. She then returned to her office to brown-bag her lunch.

  Twenty minutes later,
Karen called Anne Delaney. She asked Anne to get the manifest from the medical waste disposal company for the waste collection immediately following Larry’s biopsy. Medical waste disposal was expensive, and one of the reasons was that all the used junk had to be catalogued before it was carted away. Anne was to check how many catheters of the type used in Larry’s biopsy were listed on the manifest; then, compare the manifest to the number of those catheters used in the cath lab that day, according to the schedule and the patient operative reports. Karen asked Anne to report on the results within twenty-four hours.

  Anne was her usual cooperative self. “Be glad to, Karen, but why am I doing this?”

  “I’m trying to determine whether good catheters were removed from the cart before Larry’s biopsy, and then disposed of inside the hospital. It would narrow the field.” Karen spoke rapidly. “I doubt that anyone would have planted the bum catheter on the cart, then put the good catheters in a waste disposal container right there in the cath lab. They would just have walked out with the good ones. Except perhaps Dr. Bernard, who could not have risked smuggling the good catheters out of the cath lab, not with the nurses and techs showing up five minutes after he got there. He would just have dumped them in the waste container. If either Grimes or Paula’s friend Lisa Fuller planted the bad catheter, they could have disposed of the good catheters either inside or outside the hospital.”

  “Whoa, Seabiscuit!” ordered Anne. “You’re way ahead of me. You’re taking this murder thing seriously, aren’t you?”

  “I sure as hell am.”

  “Okay. I understand the reason Bernard is on your list of suspects. Paula, too, I guess. The estranged spouse has to be on the list. But Grimes?”

  “It’s a little complicated, Annie, so bear with me. I’m certain that Larry believed he had kept his fraud investigation into the Jefferson Clinic a secret. Otherwise he never would have allowed Bernard to do his biopsy. But somehow Herwitz found out about it, and I think Bernard knows, too. If two doctors at the clinic know about Larry’s investigation, there’s no telling how many people know. Grimes, almost certainly.”

  Anne brushed some dandruff from her dark wool skirt. “All right,” she said, “I’ll get the disposal manifest and the cath lab schedule and compare numbers. But what’s the big hurry?”

  “Grimes is kicking me out,” explained Karen. “After tomorrow, I’m on an involuntary leave of absence for the rest of the year. I won’t have access to my office, to you, to Max, to anybody here. I won’t be able to work on Larry’s case, the report to the Inspector General on the clinic billing fraud or any other hospital business.”

  “I can’t believe Joe would do this. We can’t get along without you for a month.”

  “You’ll survive, Annie. But I have the feeling a month from now any evidence bearing upon Larry’s murder will be buried, or fouled up beyond all recognition. I hate to ask this of you, Annie, but I need you to do one more thing on this.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Review the main hall security camera tape for the entire time from when Max locked up the cath lab the Saturday afternoon before Larry’s biopsy until Dr. Bernard arrived Monday morning. See if anybody goes in the lab at all. You can view it on fast forward, but even that way it will take hours.”

  With characteristic unselfishness, Anne agreed to perform the tedious task. She asked, “Have you thought about going to the police?” Karen had, but sidestepped the question by insisting that she had too little to go on, and that it would be irresponsible to bring a lot of bad publicity down on the hospital on the basis of mere speculation.

  Karen didn’t tell Anne that she was afraid—afraid of what she did not know and how it might hurt her or someone else. She did not tell Anne that an hour earlier, she had tried a key she had found in Larry’s office in the door of the cath lab, because she thought that Larry could have committed suicide in a manner that would leave his life insurance benefits intact for his family. She did not tell Anne that she had by no means completely eliminated the possibility that some nurse or tech had resterilized the catheter and lied about it afterward. Karen didn’t want to sic the police on someone who had merely made a mistake. Nor did she tell Anne that inviting in the authorities might start a chain reaction that would end in the demise of the hospital.

  She didn’t want to be the bull in a china shop. She wanted to do her job so as not to hurt anybody. Right Livelihood. Jake and his damn Eightfold Path. He was right; it was harder than it sounded.

  CHAPTER

  21

  In early December darkness cloaked the city of Jefferson before the end of the business day. Karen turned off the lights in her office and looked out into the cold night. A lone streetlamp glistened from hundreds of tiny icicles clinging to the branches of the sugar maple outside her window. The evening was frigid, but still. The smoke from a nearby factory rose straight up, while a light snow fell straight down, as if in reply. Hospital employees who could not afford spaces in the parking garage filed out the front door, bundled in coats and scarves and parkas, cursing the long walk to their street-parked cars and praying that their door locks and gas lines would not be as frozen as their toes.

  Since her aborted visit to Larry’s apartment in the Traymont across the street, Karen had figured out which window belonged to Unit 207, and she had checked it for light each evening. The apartment had been dark since she left it on Monday. Apparently, whoever was in Larry’s apartment had been as surprised as she was and had not returned. She still had to take her best shot at locating file number 3, and Larry’s apartment was the most likely location. She removed from the center drawer of her desk the large steel key she had found in Larry’s office and put it in her coat pocket. Then she picked up the receiver of her telephone and dialed.

  “Y-y-yello.”

  Karen could hear John Coltrane riffing in the background, playing a song she loved, but couldn’t remember the name of. “Hi, honey, it’s me. I’ve got an errand to run, I’ll be a little late. Can supper wait?”

  “Sure, no problema,” said Jake. “We’re just having leftover bean soup and fresh-baked bread.”

  “You baked bread?”

  “No. Bartlein’s Bakery baked it. What time do you want me to come and rescue you? And where—Grimes’s office or the parking garage?”

  “That’s hilarious, sweetheart,” Karen retorted. “I’ll only be a half hour late. And after tomorrow, you’ll have me home twenty-four hours a day for a month. Grimes gave me the hook. I’m on an involuntary leave of absence for the rest of the year.”

  “Paid?”

  “Fat chance. I’ve got no union here, and no contract. Joe wasn’t in a charitable mood.”

  “Bummer. But what the hey, it’ll be a gas to have the break. We’re getting good snow this year, we can get in some skiing.”

  “Sure. By the way. Jake, have you noticed that absolutely no one with an intact brain says ‘bummer’ anymore?”

  “Yeah, I have. Bummer.”

  The click of Karen’s heels on the terrazzo floor echoed down the dark, high-ceilinged hallway of the Traymont’s second floor. The musty odor of the hallway was partially masked by the smell of Italian cooking emanating from one of the units. Karen checked the peephole of Unit 207 and put her ear to the door. Seeing no light and hearing no sound, she put the steel key from Larry’s office in the lock and turned.

  It opened.

  Feeling furtive, Karen entered and flipped a light switch. She closed the door behind her quietly.

  The apartment was a small efficiency unit, just one room about fifteen by twenty. It had thick, dark oak moldings, dull hardwood floors without rugs, and outdated white appliances. The furniture looked like it came with the place. Although the room was less cluttered than Larry’s office, in front of the mullioned window was a folding table holding an elaborate assemblage of computer components. One area of the folding table, which was cleared of computer components, had a solitaire hand laid out on it. Someone had left in too
much of a hurry to finish the game. Karen noticed a red Queen that could be moved to an open black King heading one of the columns of cards. She resisted the urge to intervene.

  There were no file cabinets in the room. Karen hurriedly checked the chest of drawers, the kitchen cabinets, and the pull-out drawers of the end tables. No file folders. She checked the closet, which was half-empty. No folders.

  “I’m going too far,” she said aloud as she pulled the cushions off the convertible sofa.

  After fifteen minutes of searching the small room, she concluded that file number 3 was not there. On her way out, she noticed a key chain with two identical brass keys hanging from a hook in the kitchen area, directly below a wall-mounted shelf holding coffee mugs. The mugs were adorned with the logos of various prescription medicines—the sort of thing pharmaceutical companies gave away to doctors to promote brand-name drugs. The keys were the type used for interior door lock sets, the kind people had on their bathrooms.

  Remembering what Lisa Fuller had said about Larry having a locked room at his house—a possible location of file number 3—Karen removed the keys from the hook and put them in her coat pocket. As she did so, she observed a curled bank check standing up in one of the coffee mugs on the wall shelf above the hook. She took the check out of the mug. It was drawn on an account of the Jefferson Clinic and made payable to Emergency Medical Services Corporation. She returned the check to the coffee mug, turned out the light and left.

  Returning to the hospital parking garage, Karen could see from thirty feet away that the driver’s side window of her Volvo had been smashed. She started to run toward the car, then stopped as a jolt of apprehension passed through her. She looked around and listened. She saw no one, heard nothing. She skulked toward the car, glancing from side to side. When she got to the Volvo, she could see that the front seats were covered with broken glass. The driver’s door was unlocked. She opened it. On the driver’s seat was a frozen lump of what appeared to be human excrement.