Terminal (A Medical Thriller)

March 4

Thursday, 6:30 A.M.

Janet was up, dressed in her white uniform, and out of the apartment early since her shift ran from seven to three. At that time of the morning there was very little traffic on 195, especially northbound. She and Sean had discussed driving together but in the end decided it would be better if each had their own wheels.

Janet felt a little queasy entering the Forbes Hospital that morning. Her anxiety went beyond the usual nervousness associated with starting a new job. The prospect of breaking rules was what had her on edge and tense. She already felt guilty to a degree; it was guilt by intent.

Janet made it to the fourth floor with time to spare. She poured herself a cup of coffee and proceeded to familiarize herself with the locations of the charts, the pharmacy locker, and the supply closet: areas she would need to be familiar with to carry out her job as a floor nurse. By the time she sat down for report with the night shift going off duty and the day shift coming on, she was significantly calmer than she had been when she first arrived. Marjorie’s cheerful presence no doubt helped put her at ease.

Report was routine except for Helen Cabot’s deteriorating condition. The poor woman had had several seizures during the night, and the doctors said that her intracranial pressure was rising.

“Do they think the problem is related to the CAT scan–driven biopsy yesterday?” Marjorie asked.

“No,” Juanita Montgomery, the night shift supervisor, said. “Dr. Mason was in at three A.M. when she seized again, and he said the problem was probably related to the treatment.”

“She’s started treatment already?” Janet asked.

“Absolutely,” Juanita said. “Her treatment started Tuesday, the night she got here.”

“But she just had her biopsy yesterday,” Janet said.

“That’s for the cellular aspect of her treatment,” Marjorie chimed in. “She’ll be pheresed today to harvest T lymphocytes which will be grown and sensitized to her tumor. But the humoral aspect of her treatment was started immediately.”

“They used mannitol to bring down her intracranial pressure,” Juanita added. “It seemed to work. She hasn’t seized again. They want to avoid steroids and a shunt if possible. At any rate, she’s got to be monitored carefully, especially with the pheresis.”

As soon as report was over and the bleary-eyed night shift had departed, the day’s work began in earnest. Janet found herself extremely busy. There were a lot of sick patients on the floor, representing a wide range of cancers, and each was on an individual treatment protocol. The most heartrending for Janet was an angelic boy of nine who was on reverse precautions while they waited for a bone marrow transplant to re-populate his marrow with blood-forming cells. He’d been given a strong dose of chemotherapy and radiation to wipe out completely his own leukemic marrow. At the moment he was completely vulnerable to any microorganisms, even those normally not pathogenic for humans.

By mid-morning, Janet finally had a chance to catch her breath. Most of the nurses took their coffee breaks in the utility room off the nurses’ station where they could put up their tired feet. Janet decided to take advantage of the time to have Tim Katzenburg show her how to access the Forbes computer. Every patient had a traditional chart and a computer file. Janet wasn’t intimidated by computers, having minored in computer science in college. But it still helped to have someone familiar with the Forbes system get her started.

When Tim was distracted for a moment by a phone call from the lab, Janet called up Helen Cabot’s file. Since Helen had been there less than forty-eight hours, the file was not extensive. There was a computer graphic showing which of her three tumors they had biopsied and the location of the trephination of the skull just above the right ear. The biopsy specimen was grossly described as firm, white, and of an adequate amount. It said that the specimen had been immediately packed in ice and sent to Basic Diagnostics. In the treatment section it said that she’d begun on MB-300C and MB-303C at a dosage of 100mg/Kg/day of body weight administered at 0.05 ml/Kg/minute.

Janet glanced over at Tim who was still busy on the phone. On a scrap of paper, she wrote down the treatment information. She also wrote down the alpha numeric designator, T-9872, that was listed as the diagnosis along with the descriptive term: medulloblastoma, multiple.

Using the diagnostic designator, Janet next called up the names of the patients with medulloblastoma who were currently in the hospital. There were a total of five including the three on the fourth floor. The other two were Margaret Demars on the third floor, and Luke Kinsman, an eight-year-old, in the pediatric wings of the fifth floor. Janet wrote down the names.

“Having trouble?” Tim asked over Janet’s shoulder.

“Not at all,” Janet said. She quickly cleared the screen so that Tim wouldn’t see what she’d been up to. She couldn’t afford to arouse suspicion on her very first day.

“I’ve got to enter these lab values,” Tim told her. “It will only take a sec.”

While Tim was absorbed with the computer terminal, Janet scanned the chart rack for Cabot, Martin, or Sharenburg. To her chagrin, none of those charts was there.

Marjorie breezed into the station to get some narcotics from the pharmacy locker. “You’re supposed to be on your coffee break,” she called to Janet.

“I am,” Janet said, holding up her plastic foam cup. She mentally made a note to bring a mug into work. Everyone else had his or her own.

“I’m already impressed with you,” Marjorie teased from inside the pharmacy. “You needn’t work through your break. Kick back, girl, and take a load off your feet.”

Janet smiled and said that she’d be taking that kind of break after she was fully acclimated to the ward’s routine. When Tim was finished with the computer terminal, Janet asked him about the missing charts.

“They’re all down on the second floor,” Tim said. “Cabot’s getting pheresed while Martin and Scharenburg are being biopsied. Naturally the charts are with them.”

“Naturally,” Janet repeated. It seemed tough luck that not one of those charts could have been there when she had the chance to look at them. She began to suspect that the clinical espionage she’d committed herself to might not be quite as easy as she’d thought when she suggested her plan to Sean.

Giving up on the charts for the moment, Janet waited for one of the other shift nurses, Dolores Hodges, to finish up in the pharmacy closet. Once Dolores had headed down the hall, Janet made sure no one was watching before slipping into the tiny room. Each patient had an assigned cubbyhole containing his or her prescribed medications. The drugs had come up from the central pharmacy on the first floor.

Finding Helen’s cubbyhole, Janet quickly scanned the plethora of vials, bottles, and tubes that contained anti-seizure medication, general tranquilizers, anti-nausea pills, and non-narcotic pain pills. There were no containers designated MB300C or MB303C. On the chance that these medications were secured with the narcotics, Janet checked the narcotics locker, but she found only narcotics there.

Next Janet located Louis Martin’s cubbyhole. His was a low one, close to the floor. Janet had to squat down to search through it, but first she had to close the lower half of the Dutch door to make room. As with Helen’s cubby, Janet could find no drug containers with special MB code designations on the label.

“My goodness, you startled me,” Dolores exclaimed. She had returned in haste and had practically tripped headlong over Janet crouched before Louis Martin’s cubbyhole. “I’m so sorry,” Dolores said. “I didn’t think anyone was in here.”

“My fault,” Janet said, feeling herself blush. She was instantly afraid she was giving herself away and that Dolores would wonder what she’d been up to. Yet Dolores showed no signs of being suspicious. Instead, once Janet stepped back and out of the way, she came in to get what she needed. In a moment she was gone.

Janet left the pharmacy closet visibly trembling. This was only her first day and though nothing terrible had happened, she wasn’t sure she had the nerves for the furtive behavior espionage demanded.

When Janet reached Helen Cabot’s room, she paused. The door was propped open by a rubber stopper. Stepping inside, Janet gazed around. She didn’t expect to find any drugs there, but she wanted to check just the same. As she’d expected, there weren’t any.

Having recovered her composure, Janet headed back toward the nurses’ station, passing Gloria D’Amataglio’s room on the way. Taking a moment, Janet stuck her head through the open door. Gloria was sitting up in her armchair with a stainless steel kidney dish clutched in her hand. Her IV was still running.

When they’d chatted the day before Janet had learned that Gloria had gone to Wellesley College just as she herself had. Janet had been in the class a year ahead. After thinking about it overnight, Janet had decided to ask Gloria if she’d known a friend of hers who’d been in Gloria’s class. Getting Gloria’s attention, she posed her question.

“You knew Laura Lowell!” Gloria said with forced enthusiasm. “Amazing! I was great friends with her. I loved her parents.” It was painfully obvious to Janet that Gloria was making an effort to be sociable. Her chemotherapy was no doubt leaving her nauseous.

“I thought you might,” Janet said. “Everybody knew Laura.”

Janet was about to excuse herself and allow Gloria to rest when she heard a rattle behind her. She turned in time to see the housekeeping man appear at the door, then immediately disappear. Fearing her presence had interrupted his schedule, Janet told Gloria she’d stop by later and went out into the hall to tell the housekeeper the room was all his. But the man had disappeared. She looked up and down the corridor. She even checked a couple of the neighboring rooms. It was as if he’d simply vanished into thin air.

Janet headed back to the nurses’ station. Noticing she still had a bit of break time left, she took the elevator down to the second floor in hopes of getting a glimpse at one or more of the missing charts. Helen Cabot was still undergoing pheresis and would be for some time. Her chart was unavailable. Kathleen Sharenburg was undergoing a biopsy at that moment, and her chart was in the radiology office. With Louis Martin, Janet lucked out. His biopsy was scheduled to follow Kathleen Sharenburg’s. Janet discovered him on a gurney in the hallway. He was heavily tranquilized and soundly sleeping. His chart was tucked under the gurney pad.

After checking with a technician and learning that Louis would not be biopsied for at least an hour, Janet took a chance and pulled out his chart. Walking quickly as if leaving the scene of a crime with the evidence in hand, she carried the chart into medical records. It was all she could do not to break into a full sprint. Janet admitted to herself that she was probably the worst person in the world to be involved in this kind of thing. The anxiety she’d felt in the pharmacy locker came back in a flash.

“Of course you can use the copy machine,” one of the medical record librarians told her when she asked. “That’s what it’s here for. Just indicate nursing on the log.”

Janet wondered if this librarian was the mother of the woman in public relations who’d been in Sean’s apartment on the night of her arrival. She’d have to be careful. As she walked over to the copy machine, she glanced over her shoulder. The woman had gone back to the task she’d been doing when Janet had entered, paying no attention to Janet whatsoever.

Janet quickly copied Louis’s entire chart. There were more pages than she would have expected, particularly since he had only been hospitalized for one day. Glancing at some of them, Janet could tell that most of the chart consisted of referral material that had come from Boston Memorial.

Finished at last, Janet hurried the chart back to the gurney. She was relieved to see that Louis had not been moved. Janet slipped the chart under the pad, positioning it exactly as she’d found it. Louis didn’t stir.

Returning to the fourth floor, Janet panicked. She hadn’t given any thought to what she would do with the copy of the chart. It was too big to fit into her purse, and she couldn’t leave it lying about. She had to find a temporary hiding place, somewhere the other nurses and nursing assistants would not be likely to go.

With no break time left, Janet had to think fast. The last thing she wanted to do on her first day of work was take more time off than she was due. Frantically, Janet tried to think. She considered the patient lounge, but it was currently occupied. She thought of one of the lower cabinets in the pharmacy closet, but dismissed that idea as too risky. Finally she thought of the housekeeping closet.

Janet looked up and down the corridor. There were plenty of people around, but they all seemed absorbed by what they were doing. She saw the housekeeper’s cart parked outside a nearby patient room, suggesting the man was busy cleaning within. Taking a breath, Janet slipped into the closet. The door with its automatic closer shut behind her instantly, plunging her into darkness. She groped for the light switch and turned it on.

The tiny room was dominated by a generous slop sink. On the wall opposite was a countertop with undercounter cabinets, a bank of shallow overcounter wall cabinets, and a broom closet. She opened the broom closet. There were a few shelves above the compartment that held the brooms and mops, but they were too exposed. Then she looked at the overcounter cabinets and her eyes kept rising.

Placing a foot on the edge of the slop sink, she climbed up atop the counter. Reaching up, she groped the area above the wall cabinets. As she’d guessed, there was a narrow depressed space between the top of the cabinets and the ceiling. Confident she’d found what she’d been looking for, she slipped the chart copy over the front lip and let it drop down. A bit of dust rose up in a cloud.

Satisfied, Janet climbed down, rinsed her hands in the sink, then emerged into the hall. If anybody had wondered what she’d been up to, they didn’t give any indication. One of the other nurses passed her and smiled cheerfully.

Returning to the nurses’ station, Janet threw herself into her work. After five minutes she began to calm down. After ten minutes even her pulse had returned to normal. When Marjorie appeared a few minutes later, Janet was calm enough to inquire about Helen Cabot’s coded medication.

“I’ve been going over each of the patients’ treatments,” Janet said. “I want to familiarize myself with their medications so I’ll be prepared for whomever I’m assigned to for the day. I saw reference to MB300C and MB303C. What are they, and where would I find them?”

Marjorie straightened up from bending over the desk. She grasped a key strung around her neck on a silver-colored chain and pulled it out in front of her. “MB medicine you get from me,” she said. “We keep it in a refrigerated lockup right here in the nursing station.” She pulled open a cabinet to expose a small refrigerator. “It’s up to the head nurse on each shift to dispense it. We control the MBs somewhat like narcotics only a bit stricter.”

“Well that explains why I couldn’t find it in the pharmacy,” Janet said, forcing a smile. All at once she realized that getting samples of the medicine was going to be a hundred times more difficult than she’d envisioned. In fact, she wondered if it was possible at all.

TOM WIDDICOMB was trying to calm down. He’d never felt so wired in his life. Usually his mother was able to calm him down, but now she wouldn’t even talk to him.

He’d made it a point to arrive extra early that morning. He’d kept an eye on that new nurse, Janet Reardon, from the moment she’d arrived. He’d trailed her carefully, watching her every move. After tracking her for an hour, he’d decided his concerns had been unjustified. She’d acted like any other nurse so Tom had felt relieved.

But then she’d ended up in Gloria’s room again! Tom could not believe it. Just when he’d let his guard down, she’d reappeared. That the same woman would thwart his attempt to relieve Gloria’s suffering not once but twice went past coincidence. “Two days in a row!” Tom had hissed in the solitude of his housekeeping closet. “She’s gotta be a spy!”

His only consolation was that this time he’d walked in on her rather than vice versa. Actually, it was even better than that. He’d almost walked in on her. He didn’t know whether she’d seen him or not, although she probably had.

From then on he’d followed her again. With her every step he became more and more convinced she was there to get him. She was not acting like a regular nurse, no way. Not with the sneaking around she was doing. The worst was when she’d sneaked into his housekeeping closet and started opening cabinets. He could hear her from the hall. He knew what she had been looking for, and he’d been sick with worry that she’d find his stuff. As soon as she’d left, he’d stepped inside. Climbing up on the counter, he’d blindly reached up on top of the wall cabinet at the very far end in the corner to feel for his succinylcholine and syringes. Thankfully they were there and hadn’t been disturbed.

After climbing down from the cabinet, Tom struggled to calm himself. He kept telling himself he was safe since the succinylcholine was still there. At least he was safe for the moment. But there was no doubt that he would have to deal with Janet Reardon, just as he’d had to deal with Sheila Arnold. He couldn’t let her stop his crusade. If he did, he might risk losing Alice.

“Don’t worry, Mother,” Tom said aloud. “Everything will be all right.”

But Alice wouldn’t listen. She was scared.

After fifteen minutes, Tom felt calm enough to face the world. Taking a fortifying breath, he pulled open the door and stepped into the hall. His housekeeping cart was to his right pushed against the wall. He grabbed it and started pushing.

He kept his eyes directed at the floor as he headed toward the elevators. As he passed the nurses’ station he heard Marjorie yell to him about cleaning a room.

“I’ve been called to administration,” Tom said without looking up. Every so often if there’d been an accident, like spilled coffee, he’d be called up there to clean it up. Regular cleaning of the administration floor was handled by the night crew.

“Well, get back here on the double,” Marjorie yelled.

Tom swore under his breath.

When he got to the administration floor, Tom pushed his cleaning cart directly into the main secretarial area. It was always busy there, no one ever looking at him twice. He parked his cart directly in front of the wall chart of the floor plan of the Forbes residence in southeast Miami.

There were ten apartments on each floor, and each had a little slot for a name. Tom quickly found Janet Reardon’s name in the slot marked 207. Even more handy was a key box attached to the wall just below the chart. Inside were multiple sets of keys, all carefully labeled. The box was supposed to be locked, but the key to open it was always in the lock. Since the box was obscured by his cart, Tom calmly helped himself to a set for apartment 207.

To justify his presence Tom emptied a few wastebaskets before pushing his cart back to the elevators.

As he waited for an elevator to arrive he felt a wave of relief. Even Alice was willing to talk to him now. She told him how proud of him she was now that he would be able to take care of things. She told him that she’d been worried about this new nurse, Janet Reardon.

“I told you that you didn’t have to worry,” Tom said. “Nobody will ever bother us.”

STERLING ROMBAUER had always liked the adage that his schoolteacher mother had espoused: Chance favors the prepared mind. Figuring there were only a limited number of hotels in Boston that Tanaka Yamaguchi would find acceptable, Sterling had decided to try calling some of the hotel employee contacts he’d cultivated over the years. His efforts had been rewarded with immediate success. Sterling smiled when he learned that not only did he and Tanaka share the same profession, they shared the same taste in hotels.

This was a felicitous turn of events. Thanks to his frequent stays at Boston’s Ritz Carlton, Sterling’s contacts in the hotel were simply sterling. A few discreet inquiries revealed some helpful information. First, Tanaka had hired the same livery company Sterling himself used, which wasn’t surprising since it was by far the best. Second, he was scheduled to remain in the hotel at least another night. Finally, he’d made a lunch reservation in the Ritz Café for two people.

Sterling went right to work. A call to the maître d’ in the café, a rattier crowded, intimate environment, produced a promise that Mr. Yamaguchi’s party would be seated at the far banquette. The neighboring corner table, literally inches away, would be reserved for Mr. Sterling Rombauer. A call to the owner of the livery company resulted in a promise of the name of Mr. Yamaguchi’s driver as well as a transcript of his stops.

“This Jap is well connected,” the owner of the livery company said when Sterling phoned him. “We picked him up from general aviation. He came in on a private jet, and it wasn’t one of those dinky ones either.”

A call to the airport confirmed the presence of the Sushita Gulfstream III and gave Sterling its call number. Phoning his contact at the FAA in Washington and providing the call numbers, Sterling obtained a promise to keep him informed of the jet’s movements.

With so much accomplished without even leaving his hotel room and a bit of time to spare before the luncheon rendezvous, Sterling walked across Newbury Street to Burberry’s to treat himself to several new shirts.

WITH HIS legs crossed and stretched out in front of him, Sean sat in one of the molded plastic chairs in the hospital cafeteria. His left elbow was resting on the table, cradling his chin; his right arm dangled over the back of the chair. Mood-wise, he was in approximately the same state of mind as he’d been the night before when Janet had come through his living-room slider. The morning had been an aggravating rerun of the previous day, confirming his belief that the Forbes was a bizarre and largely unfriendly place to work. Hiroshi was still trailing him like a bad detective. Practically every time Sean turned around when he was up on the sixth floor using some equipment not available on the fifth, he’d see the Japanese fellow. And the moment Sean looked at him, Hiroshi would quickly look away as if Sean were a moron and wouldn’t know that Hiroshi had been watching him.

Sean checked his watch. The agreement had been that he’d meet Janet at twelve-thirty. It was already twelve-thirty-five, and although a steady stream of hospital personnel continued to pour by, Janet had yet to appear. Sean began to fantasize about going down to the parking lot, getting into his Isuzu, and hitting the road. But then Janet came through the door, and just seeing her lightened his mood.

Although Janet was still pale by Florida standards, her few days in Miami had already given a distinctively rosy cast to her skin. Sean thought she’d never looked better. As he admiringly watched her sensuous movements as she weaved through the tables, he hoped that he’d be able to talk her out of whatever it was that was keeping her in her own apartment and out of his.

She took the seat across from him, barely saying hello. Under her arm she clutched an unfolded Miami newspaper. He could tell she was nervous, the way she continually scanned the room like some wary, vulnerable bird.

“Janet, we’re not in some spy movie,” Sean said. “Calm down!”

“But I feel like I am,” Janet said. “I’ve been sneaking around, going behind people’s backs, trying not to arouse suspicion. But I feel like everyone knows what I’m doing.”

Sean rolled his eyes. “What an amateur I have for an accomplice,” he joked. Then, more seriously, he added, “I don’t know whether this is going to work if you’re stressed out now, Janet. This is only the beginning. You haven’t even done anything yet compared to what’s coming. But, to tell you the truth, I’m jealous. At least you’re doing something. I, on the other hand, have spent a good part of the morning in the bowels of the earth injecting mice with the Forbes protein plus Freund’s adjuvant. There’s been no intrigue and certainly no excitement. This place is still driving me nuts.”

“What about your crystals?” Janet asked.

“I’m deliberately slowing down on that,” Sean said. “I was doing too well. I won’t let them know how far I’ve gotten. That way, when I need some time for some investigative work, I’ll take it and still be able to have results to show as a cover. So how’d you do?”

“Not great,” Janet admitted. “But I made a start. I copied one chart.”

“Just one?” Sean questioned with obvious disappointment. “You’re this nervous about one chart?”

“Don’t give me a hard time,” Janet warned. “This isn’t easy for me.”

“And I’d never say I told you so,” Sean quipped. “Never. Not me. That’s not my style.”

“Oh, shut up,” Janet said as she handed the newspaper to Sean under the table. “I’m doing the best I can.”

Sean lifted the newspaper and placed it on top of the table. He spread it out and opened it, exposing the copied pages which he immediately removed. He pushed the newspaper aside.

“Sean!” Janet gasped, as she furtively scanned the crowded room. “Can’t you be a little more subtle?”

“I’m tired of being subtle,” he said. He started going through the chart.

“Even for my benefit?” Janet asked. “There might be some people from my floor here. They might have seen me give these copies to you.”

“You give people too much credit,” Sean said distractedly. “People aren’t as observant as you might think.” Then, referring to the copies Janet had brought, he said, “Louis Martin’s chart is nothing but referral material from the Memorial. This history and physical is mine. That lazy ass on neurology just copied my workup.”

“How can you tell?” Janet asked.

“The wording,” Sean said. “Listen to this: the patient ‘suffered through’ a prostatectomy three months ago. I use expressions like ‘suffered through’ just to see who reads my workups and who doesn’t. It’s a little game I play with myself. No one else uses that kind of phraseology in a medical workup. You’re supposed to just give facts, not judgments.”

“Imitation is the highest form of flattery, so I guess you should be flattered,” Janet said.

“The only thing of interest here is in the orders,” Sean said. “He’s being given two coded drugs: MB300M and MB305M.”

“That code is comparable to the one I saw in Helen Cabot’s computer file,” Janet said. She handed him the paper on which she’d written the treatment information she’d gotten from the computer.

Sean glanced at the dosage and the administration rate.

“What do you think it is?” Janet asked.

“No idea,” Sean said. “Did you get any of it?”

“Not yet,” Janet admitted. “But I finally located the supply. It’s kept in a special locker, and the shift supervisor has the only key.”

“This is interesting,” Sean said, still studying the chart. “From the date and time of the order they started treatment as soon as he got here.”

“Same with Helen Cabot.” Janet said. She told him what Marjorie had explained to her, namely that they started the humoral aspect of the treatment immediately whereas the cellular aspect didn’t begin until after the biopsy and T-cell harvesting.

“Starting treatment so soon seems odd,” Sean said. “Unless these drugs are merely lymphokines or some other general immunologic stimulant. It can’t be some new drug, like a new type of chemo agent.”

“Why not?” Janet asked.

“Because the FDA would have had to approve it,” Sean said. “It has to be a drug that’s already been approved. How come you only got Louis Martin’s chart? What about Helen Cabot’s?”

“I was lucky to get Martin’s,” Janet said. “Cabot is getting pheresed as we speak, and the other young woman, Kathleen Sharenburg, is being biopsied. Martin was a ‘to follow’ for his biopsy so his chart was available.”

“So these people are on the second floor right now?” Sean asked. “Right above us?”

“I believe so,” Janet said.

“Maybe I’ll skip lunch and take a walk up there,” Sean said. “With all the usual commotion in most diagnostic and treatment areas, the charts are usually just kicking around. I could probably get a look at them.”

“Better you than me,” Janet said. “I’m sure you’re better at this than I.”

“I’m not taking over your job,” Sean said. “I’ll still want copies of the other two charts as well as daily updates. Plus I want a list of all the patients they’ve treated to date who have had medulloblastoma. I’m particularly interested in their outcomes. Plus I want samples of the coded medicine. That should be your priority. I have to have that medicine; the sooner the better.”

“I’ll do my best,” Janet said. Knowing how much trouble it had been merely to copy Martin’s chart, she had misgivings about getting everything Sean wanted with the kind of speed he was implying. Not that she was about to voice those concerns to Sean. She was afraid he’d give up and leave for Boston.

Sean stood up. He gripped Janet’s shoulder. “I know this isn’t easy for you,” he said. “But remember, it was your idea.”

Janet put a hand on Sean’s. “We can do it,” she said.

“I’ll see you at the Cow Palace,” he said. “I suppose you’ll be there around four. I’ll try to get back about the same time.”

“See you then,” Janet said.

Sean left the cafeteria and used the stairs to get to the second floor. He emerged at the south end of the building. The second floor was a center of activity and as bustling as he’d expected. All the radiation therapy as well as diagnostic radiology was done there; so was all the surgery and any treatment that could not be done at the bedside.

With all the confusion Sean had to squeeze between gurneys carrying people to and from their procedures. A number of the gurneys with their human passengers were parked along the walls. Other patients sat on benches dressed in hospital robes.

Sean excused himself and pushed through the tumult, bumping into hospital personnel as well as ambulatory patients. With a modicum of difficulty he proceeded down the central corridor, checking each door as he went. Radiology and chemistry were on the left, treatment rooms, ICU, and the surgical suites were on the right. Knowing that the pheresis was a long procedure and not labor-intensive, Sean decided to try to find Helen Cabot. Besides looking at her chart, he wanted to say hello.

Spotting a hematology technician sporting rubber tourniquets attached to her belt loops, Sean asked her where pheresis was done. The woman guided Sean through a side corridor and pointed toward two rooms. Sean thanked her and checked the first. A male patient was on the gurney. Sean closed the door and opened the other. Even from the threshold he recognized the patient: it was Helen Cabot.

She was the only one there. Outflow and inflow lines were attached to her left arm as her blood was being passed through a machine that separated the elements, isolating the lymphocytes and returning the rest of the blood to her body.

Helen turned her bandaged head in Sean’s direction. She recognized him immediately and tried to smile. Instead, tears formed in her large green eyes.

From her color and general appearance Sean could see that her condition had dramatically worsened. The seizures she’d been suffering had been taking a heavy toll.

“It’s good to see you,” Sean said as he bent down to bring his face close to hers. He resisted an urge to hold and comfort her. “How are you doing?”

“It’s been difficult,” Helen managed to say. “I had another biopsy yesterday. It wasn’t fun. They also warned me I might get worse when they started the treatment, and I have. They told me I was not to lose faith. But it’s been hard. My headaches have been unbearable. It even hurts to talk.”

“You have to hold on,” Sean said. “Keep remembering that they have put every medulloblastoma patient into remission.”

“That’s what I keep reminding myself,” Helen said.

“I’ll try to come to see you every day,” Sean said. “Meanwhile, where’s your chart?”

“I think it’s out in the waiting room,” Helen said, pointing with her free hand toward a second door.

Sean gave her a warm smile. He squeezed her shoulder, then stepped into the small waiting room that connected to the corridor. On a counter was what he was searching for: Helen’s chart.

Sean picked it up and flipped to the order sheets. Drugs similar to those he’d seen in Martin’s chart were duly noted: MB300C and MB303C. He then turned to the beginning of the chart and saw a copy of his own workup which had been sent as part of the referral package.

Flipping the pages quickly, Sean came to the progress note section, and he read the entry for the biopsy that had been taken the day before, indicating they had gone in over the right ear. The note went on to say that the patient had tolerated the procedure well.

Sean had just begun to scan for the laboratory section to see if a frozen section had been done when he was interrupted. The door to the hallway crashed open and slammed against the wall with such force that the doorknob dented the plaster.

The sudden crash startled Sean. He dropped the chart onto the plastic laminate countertop. In front of him and filling the entire doorway was the formidable figure of Margaret Richmond. Sean recognized her immediately as the nursing director who’d burst into Dr. Mason’s office. Apparently the woman made a habit of such dramatic entries.

“What are you doing in here?” she demanded. “And what are you doing with that chart?” Her broad, round face was distorted with outrage.

Sean toyed with the idea of giving her a flip answer, but he thought better of it.

“I’m looking in on a friend,” Sean said. “Miss Cabot was a patient of mine in Boston.”

“You have no right to her chart,” Ms. Richmond blustered. “Patients’ charts are confidential documents, available only to the patient and his doctors. We view our responsibility in this regard very seriously.”

“I’m confident the patient would be willing to give me access,” Sean said. “Perhaps we should step into the next room and ask her.”

“You are not here as a clinical fellow,” Ms. Richmond shouted, ignoring Sean’s suggestion. “You are here in a research capacity only. Your arrogance in thinking that you have a right to invade this hospital is inexcusable.”

Sean saw a familiar face appear over Ms. Richmond’s intimidating shoulder. It was the puffy, smug countenance of the frustrated Marine, Robert Harris. Sean suddenly guessed what had happened. Undoubtedly he’d been picked up by one of the surveillance cameras, probably one in the second-floor corridor. Harris had called Richmond and then had come over to watch the slaughter.

Knowing that Robert Harris was involved, Sean could no longer resist the urge to lash back, particularly since Ms. Richmond wasn’t responding to his attempts to be reasonable.

“Since you people aren’t in the mood to discuss this like adults,” Sean said, “I think I’ll wander back to the research building.”

“Your impertinence only makes matters worse,” Ms. Richmond sputtered. “You’re trespassing, invading privacy, and showing no remorse. I’m surprised the governors of Harvard University would let someone like you into their institution.”

“I’ll let you in on a secret,” Sean said. “They weren’t all that impressed with my manners. They liked my facility with a puck. Now, I’d really like to stay and chat with you people, but I’ve got to get back to my murine friends who, by the way, have more pleasant personalities than most of the staff here at Forbes.”

Sean watched as Ms. Richmond’s face empurpled. This was just one more of a series of ridiculous episodes that had him fed up. Consequently he derived perverse pleasure out of goading and angering this woman who could easily have played linebacker for the Miami Dolphins.

“Get out of here before I call the police,” Ms. Richmond yelled.

Sean thought that calling the police would be interesting. He could just imagine some poor uniformed rookie trying to figure out how to categorize Sean’s offense. Sean could see it in the paper: Harvard extern actually looks into his patient’s chart!

Sean stepped forward, literally eye to eye with Ms. Richmond. He smiled, pouring on his old charm. “I know you’ll miss me,” he said, “but I really must go.”

Born Ms. Richmond and Harris followed him all the way to the pedestrian bridge that spanned the gulf between the hospital and the research building. The whole time they maintained a loud dialogue about the degeneracy of current-day youth. Sean had the feeling he was being run out of town.

As Sean walked across the bridge he recognized how much he would have to depend on Janet for clinical material pertaining to the medulloblastoma study, provided, of course, he stayed.

Returning to his fifth-floor lab, Sean tried to lose himself in his work to repress the anger and frustration he felt toward the ridiculous situation he found himself in. Like the empty room upstairs, Helen’s chart didn’t have anything in it to get upset about. But as he cooled down, Sean was able to acknowledge that Ms. Richmond did have a point. As much as he hated to admit it, the Forbes was a private hospital. It wasn’t a teaching hospital like the Boston Memorial, where teaching and patient care went hand in hand. Here, Helen’s chart was confidential. Yet even if it was, Ms. Richmond’s fury was hardly appropriate for his infraction.

In spite of himself, within an hour Sean became engrossed in his crystal-growing attempts. Then, as he held a flask up against the overhead light, he caught a bit of movement out of the corner of his eye. It was a rerun of the incident on his first day. Once again the movement had come from the direction of the stairwell.

Without so much as looking in the direction of the stairwell, Sean calmly got off his stool and walked into the storeroom as if he needed some supplies. Since the storeroom was connected to the central corridor, Sean was able to dash the length of the building to the stairwell opposite the one where he’d seen the movement.

Racing down a flight, he ran the length of the fourth floor to enter the opposite stairwell. Moving as silently as possible, he climbed the stairs until the fifth-floor landing came into view. As he’d suspected, Hiroshi was there furtively looking through the glass of the door, obviously baffled as to why Sean had not returned from the storeroom.

Sean tiptoed up the remaining stairs until he was standing directly behind Hiroshi. Then he screamed as loud as he was able. Within the confines of the stairwell, Sean was impressed with the amount of noise he was capable of generating.

Having seen a few Chuck Norris martial arts movies, Sean had been a little concerned that Hiroshi might turn into a karate demon by reflex. But instead Hiroshi practically collapsed. Conveniently he’d had one hand on the door handle. It was that support which kept him standing.

When Hiroshi recovered enough to comprehend what had happened, he stepped away from the door and started to mumble an explanation. But he was backing up at the same time, and when his foot hit the riser of the first stair, he turned and fled up, disappearing from view.

Disgusted, Sean followed, not to pursue Hiroshi, but rather to seek out Deborah Levy. Sean had had enough of Hiroshi’s spying. He thought Dr. Levy would be the best person to discuss the matter with since she ran the lab.

Going directly to the seventh floor, Sean walked down to Dr. Levy’s office. The door was ajar. He looked in. The office was empty.

The pool secretaries did not have any idea of her whereabouts but suggested Sean have her paged. Instead, Sean went down to the sixth floor and sought out Mark Halpern, who was dressed as nattily as ever in his spotless white apron. Sean guessed he washed and ironed the apron every day.

“I’m looking for Dr. Levy,” Sean said irritably.

“She’s not here today,” Mark said. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Will she be here later?” Sean asked.

“Not today,” Mark said. “She had to go to Atlanta. She travels a lot for work.”

“When will she be back?”

“I’m not sure,” Mark said. “Probably tomorrow late. She said something about going to our Key West facility on her way back.”

“Does she spend much time there?” Sean asked.

“Fair amount,” Mark said. “Several Ph.D.s who’d originally been here at Forbes were supposed to go to Key West, but they left instead. Their absence left Dr. Levy with a burden. She’s had to pick up the slack. I think Forbes is having trouble replacing them.”

“Tell her I’d like to talk to her when she comes back,” Sean said. He wasn’t interested in the Forbes’s recruiting problems.

“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do?” Mark said.

For a second Sean toyed with the idea of talking with Mark about Hiroshi’s behavior, but decided against it. He had to speak to someone in authority. There wasn’t anything Mark would be able to do.

Frustrated that he could get no satisfaction for his anger, Sean started back toward his lab. He was almost to the stairwell door when he thought of another question for Mark.

Returning to his tiny office, Sean asked the tech if the pathologists over in the hospital cooperated with the research staff.

“On occasion,” Mark said. “Dr. Barton Friedburg has coauthored a number of research papers that require a pathologic interpretation.”

“What kind of guy is he?” Sean asked. “Friendly or unfriendly? Seems to me that people fall into one camp or the other around here.”

“Definitely friendly,” Mark said. “Besides, I think you might be confusing unfriendly with being serious and preoccupied.”

“You think I could call him up and ask him a few questions?” Sean asked. “Is he that friendly?”

“Absolutely,” Mark said.

Sean went down to his lab, and using the phone in the glass-enclosed office so he could sit at a desk, he phoned Dr. Friedburg. He took it as an auspicious sign when the pathologist came on the line directly.

Sean explained who he was and that he was interested in the findings of a biopsy done the day before on Helen Cabot.

“Hold the line,” Dr. Friedburg said. Sean could hear him talking with someone else in the lab. “We didn’t get any biopsy from a Helen Cabot,” he said, coming back.

“But I know she had it done yesterday,” Sean said.

“It went south to Basic Diagnostics,” Dr. Friedburg said. “You’ll have to call there if you want any information on it. That sort of thing doesn’t come through this lab at all.”

“Who should I ask for?” Sean asked.

“Dr. Levy,” Dr. Friedburg said. “Ever since Paul and Roger left, she’s been running the show down there. I don’t know who she has reading the specimens now, but it’s not us.”

Sean hung up the phone. Nothing about Forbes seemed to be easy. He certainly wasn’t about to ask Dr. Levy about Helen Cabot. She’d know what he was up to in a flash, especially after she heard from Ms. Richmond about his looking at Helen’s chart.

Sean sighed as he looked down at the work he was doing trying to grow crystals with the Forbes protein. He felt like throwing it all into the sink.

FOR JANET, the afternoon seemed to pass quickly. With patients coming and going for therapy and diagnostic tests, there was the constant tactical problem of organizing it all. In addition, there were complicated treatment protocols that required precise timing and dosage. But during this feverish activity Janet was able to observe the way patients were divided among the staff. Without much finagling she was able to arrange to be the nurse assigned to take care of Helen Cabot, Louis Martin, and Kathleen Sharenburg the following day.

Although she didn’t handle them herself, she did get to see the containers the coded drugs came in when the nurses in charge of the medulloblastoma patients for the day got the vials from Marjorie. Once they’d received them, the nurses took them into the pharmacy closet to load the respective syringes. The MB300 drug was in a 10cc injectable bottle while the MB303 was in a smaller 5cc bottle. There was nothing special about these containers. They were the same containers many other injectable drugs were packaged in.

It was customary for everyone to have a mid-afternoon as well as a mid-morning break. Janet used hers to go back down to medical records. Once there she used the same ploy she’d used with Tim. She told one of the librarians, a young woman by the name of Melanie Brock, that she was new on the staff and that she was interested in learning the Forbes system. She said she was familiar with computers, but she could use some help. The librarian was impressed with Janet’s interest and was more than happy to show her their filing format, using the medical records’ access code.

Left on her own after Melanie’s introduction, Janet called up all patients with the T-9872 designator which she’d used to pull up current medulloblastoma cases on the ward’s work station. This time, Janet got a different list. Here there were thirty-eight cases on record over the last ten years. This list did not include the five cases currently in the hospital.

Sensing a recent increase, Janet asked the computer to graph the number of cases against the years. In a graph form, the results were rather striking.

LOOKING AT the graph, Janet noted that over the first eight years there had been five medulloblastoma cases, whereas during the last two years there had been thirty-three. She found the increase curious until she remembered that it had been in the last two years that the Forbes had had such success with its treatment. Success sparked referrals. Surely that accounted for the influx.

Curious about the demographics, Janet called up a breakdown by age and sex. Sex showed a preponderance of males in the last thirty-three cases: twenty-six males and seven females. In the earlier five cases there had been three females and two males.

When she looked at ages, Janet noted that in the first five cases there was one twenty-year-old. The other four were below the age of ten. Among the recent thirty-three cases Janet saw that seven cases were below the age of ten, two between the ages of ten and twenty, and the remaining twenty-four were over twenty years of age.

Concerning outcome, Janet noted that all of the original five had died within two years of diagnosis. Three had died within months. In the most recent thirty-three, the impact of the new therapy was dramatically apparent. All thirty-three patients were currently alive, although only three of them were nearing two years after diagnosis.

Hastily, Janet wrote all this information down to give to Sean.

Next Janet randomly picked out a name from the list. The name was Donald Maxwell. She called up his file. As she went through the information, she saw that it was rather abbreviated. She even found a notation that said: Consult physical chart if further information is needed.

Janet had become so absorbed in her investigative work, she was shocked when she glanced at her watch. She’d used up her coffee break and then some, just as she had that morning.

Quickly she had the computer print out a list of the thirty-eight cases with their ages, sexes, and hospital numbers. Nervously, she went over to the laser printer as the sheet emerged. Turning from the printer, she half expected to find someone standing behind her, demanding an explanation. But no one seemed to have taken notice of her activities.

Before heading back to her floor, Janet sought out Melanie for one quick and final question. She found her at the copy machine.

“How do I go about getting the hospital chart of a discharged patient?” Janet asked.

“You ask one of us,” Melanie said. “All you have to do is provide us with a copy of your authorization, which in your case would come from the nursing department. Then it takes about ten minutes. We keep the charts in the basement in a storage vault that runs beneath both buildings. It’s an efficient system. We need access to them for patient care purposes, like when the patients come for outpatient care. Over in administration they need access to them for billing and actuarial purposes. The charts come up on dumbwaiters.” Melanie pointed to the small glass-fronted elevator set into the wall.

Janet thanked Melanie, then hurried out to the elevator. She was disappointed about the authorization issue. She couldn’t imagine how she would arrange that without completely giving herself away. She hoped Sean would have an idea.

As she pressed the elevator button impatiently, Janet wondered if she would have to apologize for again extending her break. She knew she couldn’t keep doing it. It wasn’t fair, and Marjorie was bound to complain.

STERLING WAS extremely pleased with the way the day was proceeding. He had to smile to himself as he rose up in the paneled elevator of the Franklin Bank’s home office on Federal Street in Boston. It had been a sublime day with minimal effort and maximum gain. And the fact that he was being handsomely compensated for enjoying himself made it all that much more rewarding.

The luncheon at the Ritz had been heavenly, especially since the maître d’ had been accommodating enough to bring a white Meursault down from the main dining room wine cellar. Sitting as close as he had to Tanaka and his guest, Sterling had been able to hear most of their conversation from behind his Wall Street Journal.

Tanaka’s guest was a personnel executive from Immunotherapy. Since the buyout, Genentech had left the company largely intact. Sterling did not know how much money was in the plain white envelope that Tanaka had placed on the table, but he did notice that the personnel executive had slipped it into his jacket in the blink of an eye.

The information Sterling overheard was interesting. Sean and the other founding partners had sold Immunotherapy in order to raise capital for a totally new venture. Tanaka’s informer wasn’t one hundred percent certain, but it was his understanding that the new company would also be a biotechnology firm. He couldn’t tell Tanaka its name or its proposed product line.

The gentleman knew there had been a holdup in forming the new company when Sean and his partners realized they would be undercapitalized. The reason he knew this was because he’d been approached to move to the new company and he’d agreed, only to be informed that there would be a delay until sufficient funds could be raised. From the sound of the gentleman’s voice at this juncture, Sterling understood that the delay had engendered significant ill will between him and the new management.

The final bit of information that the gentleman had delivered was the name of the bank executive at the Franklin who was in charge of the negotiation of the loan for additional start-up capital. Sterling was acquainted with a number of people at the Franklin, but Herbert Devonshire was not one of them. But that was soon to change since it was Herbert whom Sterling was presently on his way to see.

The luncheon had also afforded Sterling an opportunity to observe Tanaka up close. Knowing a considerable amount about the Japanese character and culture, particularly in relation to business, Sterling was fascinated by Tanaka’s performance. Flawlessly deferential and respectful, it would have been impossible for an uninitiated American to pick up the clues that suggested Tanaka clearly despised his lunch companion. But Sterling immediately discerned the subtle signs.

There’d been no way for Sterling to eavesdrop on Tanaka’s meeting with Herbert Devonshire. Sterling had not even considered it. But he wanted to know its location so that he would be able to suggest he did know the content when he spoke to Mr. Devonshire. Accordingly, Sterling had the limousine company’s president order Tanaka’s driver to call it in to him. The president had then relayed the information to Sterling’s driver.

After being tipped off. Sterling had entered City Side, a popular bar in the south building of Faneuil Hall Market. There’d been a chance Tanaka might recognize him from lunch, but Sterling had decided to risk it. He wouldn’t be getting too close. He’d observed Tanaka and Devonshire from afar, noting their location in the bar and what they ordered. He also noted the time Tanaka had excused himself to make a call.

Armed with this information, Sterling had felt confident confronting Devonshire. He’d been able to get an appointment for that afternoon.

After a brief wait that he judged was designed to impress him with Mr. Devonshire’s busy schedule, Sterling was shown into the banker’s imposing office. The view was to the north and east, commanding a spectacular vista over the Boston Harbor as well as Logan International Airport in East Boston and the Mystic River Bridge arching over to Chelsea.

Mr. Devonshire was a small man with a shiny bald pate, wire-rimmed glasses, and conservative dress. He stood up behind his antique partner’s desk to shake hands with Sterling. He couldn’t have been over five feet five by Sterling’s estimation.

Sterling handed the man one of his business cards. They both sat down. Mr. Devonshire positioned the card in the center of his blotter and aligned it perfectly parallel with the blotter’s borders. Then he folded his hands.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Rombauer,” Herbert said, leveling his beady eyes at Sterling. “What can the Franklin do for you today?”

“It’s not the Franklin I’m interested in,” Sterling said. “It’s you, Mr. Devonshire. I’d like to establish a business relationship with you.”

“Our motto has always been persona) service,” Herbert said.

“I shall come directly to the point,” Sterling said. “I’m willing to form a confidential partnership with you for our mutual benefit. There is information I need and information your superiors should not know.”

Herbert Devonshire swallowed. Otherwise, he didn’t move.

Sterling leaned forward to bring his eyes to bear on Herbert. “The facts are simple. You met with a Mr. Tanaka Yamaguchi this afternoon at the City Side Bar, not the usual business location, I’d venture to say. You ordered a vodka gimlet and then gave Mr. Yamaguchi some information, a service that while not illegal, is of questionable ethics. A short time later a sizable portion of the monies Sushita Industries keeps on deposit at the Bank of Boston was wire-transferred to the Franklin with you designated as the private banker involved.”

Herbert’s face blanched at Sterling’s words.

“I have an extensive network of contacts throughout the business world,” Sterling said. He settled back in his chair. “I’d very much like to add you to this intimate, very anonymous, but stellar network. I’m certain we can provide each other with useful information as time goes by. So the question is, would you care to join? The only obligation is that you never, ever, disclose the source of any information I pass on to you.”

“And if I choose not to join?” Herbert asked, his voice raspy.

“I will pass on the information about you and Mr. Yamaguchi to people here at the Franklin who have some minor say in your future.”

“This is blackmail,” Herbert said.

“I call it free trade,” Sterling said. “And as for your initiation fee, I would like to hear exactly what you told Mr. Yamaguchi about a mutual acquaintance, Sean Murphy.”

“This is outrageous,” Herbert said.

“Please,” Sterling warned. “Let’s not allow this conversation to dissolve into mere posturing. The fact is, your behavior was outrageous, Mr. Devonshire. What I am asking is a small price to pay for the benefits you will accrue from landing such a customer as Sushita Industries. And I can guarantee I will be useful to you in the future.”

“I gave very little information,” Herbert said. “Entirely inconsequential.”

“If it makes you more comfortable to believe that, that’s fine,” Sterling said.

There was a pause. The two men stared at each other across the expanse of antique mahogany. Sterling was happy to wait.

“All I said was that Mr. Murphy and a few associates were borrowing money to start a new company,” Herbert said. “I gave no figures whatsoever.”

“The name of the new company?” Sterling asked.

“Oncogen,” Herbert said.

“And the proposed product line?” Sterling asked.

“Cancer-related health products,” Herbert said. “Both diagnostic and therapeutic.”

“Time frame?”

“Imminent,” Herbert said. “Within the next few months.”

“Anything else?” Sterling asked. “I should add that I have ways of checking this information.”

“No,” Herbert said. His voice had developed an edge.

“If I learn you’ve deliberately prevaricated,” Sterling warned, “the result will be as if you refused to cooperate.”

“I have more appointments,” Herbert said tersely.

Sterling stood up. “I know it is irritating to have your hand forced,” he said. “But remember, I feel indebted and I always repay. Call me.”

Sterling took the elevator down to the ground floor and hurried over to his sedan. The driver had locked the doors and had fallen asleep. Sterling had to thump on the window to get him to release the rear locks. Once inside, Sterling called his contact at the FAA. “I’m on a portable phone,” he warned his friend.

“The bird’s scheduled to leave in the morning,” the man said.

“What destination?”

“Miami,” the man said. Then he added: “I sure wish I was going.”

“WELL, WHAT do you think?” Janet asked as Sean poked his head into the bedroom. Janet had brought Sean out to Miami Beach to see the apartment she’d rented.

“I think it’s perfect,” he said, looking back into the living room. “I’m not sure I could take these colors for long, but it does look like Florida.” The walls were bright yellow, the rug was kelly green. The furniture was white wicker with tropical floral print cushions.

“It’s only for a couple of months,” Janet said. “Come in the bathroom and look at the ocean.”

“There it is!” Sean said as he peered through the slats of the jalousie window. “At least I can say I’ve seen it.” A narrow wedge of ocean was visible between two buildings. Since it was after seven and the sun had already set, the water looked more gray than blue in the gathering darkness.

“The kitchen’s not bad either,” Janet said.

Sean followed her, then watched as she opened cabinets and showed him the dishes and glassware. She’d changed out of her nurse’s uniform and had on her tank top and shorts. Sean found Janet incredibly sexy, particularly when she was so scantily clad. Sean felt himself at a distinct disadvantage with the way she was dressed, especially as she bent over showing him the pots and pans. It was difficult to think.

“I’ll be able to cook,” she said, straightening up.

“Wonderful,” Sean said, but his mind was concerned with other basic appetites.

They moved back into the living room.

“Hey, I’m ready to move in tonight,” Sean said. “I love it.”

“Hold on,” Janet said. “I hope I haven’t given you the impression we’re moving in together just like that. We’ve got some serious talking to do. That’s the whole reason I came down here.”

“Well, first we have to get going on this medulloblastoma thing,” Sean said.

“I didn’t think the two issues would be mutually exclusive,” Janet said.

“I didn’t mean to imply that they were,” Sean said. “It’s just that it’s hard for me at the moment to think about much beyond my role here at Forbes and whether I should stay. The situation is kind of dominating my mind. I think it’s pretty understandable.”

Janet rolled her eyes.

“Besides, I’m starved,” Sean said. He smiled. “You know I can never talk when I’m hungry.”

“I’ll be patient to a point,” Janet conceded. “But I don’t want you to forget I need some serious communicating. Now, as far as dinner is concerned, the real estate person told me there’s a popular Cuban restaurant just up Collins Avenue.”

“Cuban?” Sean questioned.

“I know you rarely venture from your meat and potatoes,” Janet said. “But while we’re in Miami we can be a bit more adventuresome.”

“Groan,” Sean murmured.

The restaurant was close enough to walk so they left Sean’s 4×4 where they’d found a parking spot across from the apartment. Walking hand in hand, they wandered north up Collins Avenue beneath huge silver- and gold-tipped clouds that reflected the reddened sky over the distant Everglades. They couldn’t see the ocean, but they could hear the waves hit against the beach on the other side of a block of recently renovated and refurbished Miami art deco buildings.

The entire beach neighborhood was alive with people strolling up and down the streets, sitting on steps or porches, roller blading, or cruising in their cars. Some of the car stereos had the bass pumped up to a point that Sean and Janet could feel the vibration in their chests as the cars thumped past.

“Those guys aren’t going to have functional middle ears by the time they’re thirty,” Sean commented.

The restaurant gave the impression of frenzied disorganization with tables and people crammed everywhere. The waiters and waitresses were dressed in black pants or skirts and white shirts or blouses. Each had on a soiled apron. They ranged in age from twenty to sixty. Shouting back and forth, they communicated among themselves and to the steam table in expressive bursts of Spanish while they ran and weaved among the tables. Over the entire tumult hung a succulent aroma of roast pork, garlic, and dark roasted coffee.

Carried along by a current of people, Sean and Janet found themselves squeezed among other diners at a large table. Frosted bottles of Corona with lime wedges stuck in their mourns appeared as if by magic.

“There’s nothing on here for me to eat,” Sean complained after studying the menu for a few minutes. Janet was right; he rarely varied his diet.

“Nonsense,” Janet said. She did the ordering.

Sean was pleasantly surprised when their food came. The marinated and heavily garlic-flavored roast pork was delicious, as was the yellow rice and the black beans covered with chopped onions. The only thing he didn’t care for was the yucca.

“This stuff tastes like potato covered with mucoid exudate,” Sean yelled.

“Gross!” Janet exclaimed. “Stop sounding so much like a medical student.”

Conversation was almost impossible in the raucous restaurant, so after dinner they wandered over to Ocean Drive and ventured into Lummus Park where they could talk. They sat under a broad banyan tree and gazed out at the dark ocean dotted with the lights of merchant ships and pleasure boats.

“Hard to believe it’s still winter in Boston,” Sean said.

“It makes me wonder why we put up with slush and freezing rain,” Janet said. “But enough small talk. If, as you said, you can’t talk about us for the moment, then let’s talk about the Forbes situation. Was your afternoon any better than your morning?”

Sean gave a short, mirthless laugh. “It was worse,” he said. “I wasn’t on the second floor for five minutes before the director of nursing burst into the room like a raging bull, yelling and screaming because I was looking at Helen’s chart.”

“Margaret Richmond was mad?” Janet asked.

Sean nodded. “All two hundred and fifty snarling pounds of her. She was out of control.”

“She’s always been civil with me,” Janet said.

“I’ve only seen her twice,” Sean said. “Neither time would I describe her as civil.”

“How did she know you were there?” Janet asked.

“The Marine commando was with her,” Sean said. “They must have picked me up on a surveillance camera.”

“Oh, great!” Janet said. “Something else I have to worry about. I never thought of surveillance cameras.”

“You don’t have to worry,” Sean said. “I’m the one who the head of security can’t abide. Besides, the cameras are most likely only in the common areas, not patient floors.”

“Did you get to talk with Helen Cabot?” Janet asked.

“For a moment,” Sean said. “She doesn’t look good at all.”

“Her condition’s been deteriorating,” Janet said. “There’s talk of doing a shunt. Did you learn anything from her chart?”

“No,” Sean said. “I didn’t have time. They literally chased me back over the bridge to the research building. Then, as if to cap off the afternoon, that Japanese guy appeared again, sneaking around, watching me in the lab from the stairwell. I don’t know what his story is, but this time I got him. I scared the living willies out of him by sneaking up behind him and letting out this bloodcurdling yell. He nearly dropped his pants.”

“The poor fellow,” Janet said.

“Poor fellow nothing!” Sean said. “This guy’s been watching me since I arrived.”

“Well, I’ve had some luck,” Janet said.

Sean brightened. “Really! Great! Did you get some of the miracle medicine?”

“No, no medicine,” Janet said. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the computer printout and the sheet with her hastily scribbled notes. “But here’s the list of all the medulloblastoma patients for the last ten years: thirty-eight in all; thirty-three in the past two years. I’ve summarized the data on the sheet.”

Sean eagerly took the papers. But to read them he had to hold it over his head to catch the light coming from the street-lights along Ocean Drive. As he looked it over, Janet explained what she’d learned about the sex and age distribution. She also told him that the computer files were abridged and that there had been a notation to consult the charts themselves for more information. Finally, she told him what Melanie had said about obtaining those charts in as little as ten minutes providing, of course, you had the proper authorization.

“I’ll need the charts,” Sean said. “Are they right there in medical records?”

“No.” Janet explained what Melanie had said about the chart storage vaults extending beneath both buildings.

“No kidding,” Sean said. “That might be rather handy.”

“What do you mean?” Janet asked.

“It means that I might be able to get to them from the research building,” Sean said. “After the episode today, it’s pretty clear I’m persona non grata in the hospital. This way I can attempt to get at those charts without running afoul of Ms. Richmond and company.”

“You’re thinking of breaking into the storage vault?” Janet asked with alarm.

“I kinda doubt they’d leave the door open for me,” Sean said.

“But that’s going too far,” Janet said. “If you did that, you’d be breaking the law, not just a hospital rule.”

“I warned you about this,” Sean said.

“You said we’d have to break rules, not the law,” Janet reminded him.

“Let’s not get into semantics,” Sean said with exasperation.

“But there’s a big difference,” Janet said.

“Laws are codified rules,” Sean said. “I knew we’d get around to breaking the law in some form or fashion, and I thought you did too. But, be that as it may, don’t you think we’re justified? These Forbes people have obviously developed a very effective treatment for medulloblastoma. Unfortunately, they have chosen to be secretive about it, obviously so they can patent their treatment before anyone else catches on. You know, this is what bugs me about the private funding of medical research. The goal becomes a return on investment instead of the public interest. The public weal is in second place if it is considered at all. This treatment for medulloblastoma undoubtedly has implications for all cancers, but the public is being denied that information. Never mind that most of the basic science these private labs base their work on was obtained through public funds at academic institutions. These private places just take. They don’t give. The public gets cheated in the process.”

“Ends never justify means,” Janet said.

“Go ahead and be self-righteous,” Sean said. “Meanwhile, you’re forgetting this whole thing was your idea. Well, maybe we should give up, and maybe I should go back to Boston and get something done on my dissertation.”

“All right!” Janet said with frustration. “All right, we’ll do what we have to do.”

“We need the charts and we need the miracle medicine,” Sean said. He stood up and stretched. “So let’s go.”

“Now?” Janet questioned with alarm. “It’s nearly nine at night.”

“First rule of breaking and entering,” Sean said. “You do it when no one is at home. This is a perfect time. Besides, I have a legitimate cover: I should inject more of my mice with the primary dose of the glycoprotein.”

“Heaven help me,” Janet said as she allowed Sean to pull her up from the bench.

TOM WIDDICOMB guided his car into the slot at the extreme end of the parking area for the Forbes residence. He inched forward until the wheels touched the curb restraint. He had pulled up under the protective branches of a large gumbolimbo tree. Alice had told him to park there just in case someone noticed the car. It was Alice’s car, a lime green 1969 Cadillac convertible.

Tom opened the car door and stepped out after making certain no one was in sight. He pulled on a pair of latex surgical gloves. Then he reached under the front seat and grasped the chef’s knife he’d brought from home. Light glinted off its polished surface. At first he’d planned on bringing the gun. But then thinking about noise and the thinness of the residence walls, he’d settled on the knife instead. Its only drawback was that it could be messy.

Being careful of the knife’s cutting edge, Tom slipped the blade up inside the right sleeve of his shirt, cupping the handle in the palm of his hand. In his other hand he carried the keys to 207.

He made his way along the rear of the building, counting the sliders until he was below 207. There were no lights on in the apartment. Either that nurse was already in bed or she was out. Tom didn’t care. Either way had its benefits and disadvantages.

Walking around to the front of the building, Tom had to pause while one of the tenants came out and headed for his car. After the man had driven away, Tom used one of the keys to enter the building. Once inside, he moved quickly. He preferred not to be seen. Arriving outside of 207, he inserted the key, opened the door, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him in one swift, fluid motion.

For several minutes he stood by the door without moving, listening for the slightest sound. He could hear several distant TVs, but they were from other apartments. Pocketing the keys, he allowed the long-bladed chef’s knife to slide out from his sleeve. He clutched its handle as if it were a dagger.

Slowly he inched forward. By the light coming from the parking area he could see the outline of the furniture and the doorway into the bedroom. The bedroom door was open.

Looking into the gloom of the bedroom, which was darker than the living room due to the closed drapes, Tom could not tell if the bed was occupied or empty. Again he listened. Aside from the muffled sound of the distant TVs plus the hum of the refrigerator which had just kicked on, he heard nothing. There was no steady breathing of someone asleep.

Advancing into the room a half step at a time, Tom bumped gently against the edge of the bed. Reaching out with his free hand, he groped for a body. Only then did he know for sure: the bed was empty.

Not realizing he’d been holding his breath, Tom straightened up and breathed out. He felt relief of tension on the one hand, yet profound disappointment on the other. The anticipation of violence had aroused him and satisfaction would be delayed.

Moving more by feel than by sight, he managed to find his way to the bathroom. Reaching in, he ran his free hand up and down the wall until he found the light switch. Turning it on, he had to squint in the brightness, but he liked what he saw. Hanging over the tub were a pair of lacy pastel panties and a bra.

Tom placed the chef’s knife down on the edge of the sink and picked up the panties. They were nothing like the ones Alice wore. He had no idea why such objects fascinated him, but they did. Sitting on the edge of the tub, he fingered the silky material. For the moment he was content, knowing that he’d be entertained while he waited, keeping the light switch and the knife close at hand.

“WHAT IF we get caught?” Janet asked nervously as they headed toward the Forbes Center. They’d just come from the Home Depot hardware store where Sean had bought tools that he said should work almost as well as a locksmith’s tension bar and double ball pick.

“We’re not going to get caught,” Sean said. “That’s why we’re going there now when no one will be there. Well, we don’t know that for sure, but we’ll check.”

“There will be plenty of people on the hospital side,” Janet warned.

“And that’s the reason why we stay away from the hospital,” Sean said.

“What about security?” Janet asked. “Have you thought about that?”

“Piece of cake,” Sean said. “Except for the frustrated Marine, I haven’t been impressed. They’re certainly lax at the front door.”

“I’m not good at this,” Janet admitted.

“Tell me something I didn’t know!” Sean said.

“And how are you so acquainted with locks and picks and alarms?” Janet asked.

“When I grew up in Charlestown, it was a pure-blooded working-class neighborhood,” Sean said. “The gentrification hadn’t started. Each of our fathers was in a different trade. My father was a plumber. Timothy O’Brien’s father was a locksmith. Old man O’Brien taught his son some of the tricks of the trade, and Timmy showed us. At first it was a game; kind of a competition. We liked to believe there weren’t any locks in the neighborhood we couldn’t open. And Charlie Sullivan’s father was a master electrician. He put in fancy alarm systems in Boston, mostly on Beacon Hill. He often made Charlie come along. So Charlie started telling us about alarms.”

“That’s dangerous information for kids to have,” Janet said. Her own childhood couldn’t have been further from Sean’s, among the private schools, music lessons, and summers on the Cape.

“You bet,” Sean agreed. “But we never stole anything from our own neighborhood. We’d just open up locks and then leave them open as a practical joke. But then it changed. We started going out to the ‘burbs like Swampscott or Marblehead with one of the older kids who could drive. We’d watch a house for a while, then break in and help ourselves to the liquor and some of the electronics. You know, stereos, TVs.”

“You stole?” Janet questioned with shock.

Sean glanced at her for a second before looking back at the road. “Of course we stole,” he said. “It was thrilling at the time and we used to think all the people who lived on the North Shore were millionaires.” Sean went on to tell how he and his buddies would sell the goods in Boston, pay off the driver, buy beer, and give the rest to a fellow raising money for the Irish Republican Army. “We even deluded ourselves into thinking we were youthful political activists even though we didn’t have the faintest idea of what was going on in Northern Ireland.”

“My God! I had no idea,” Janet said. She’d known about Sean’s adolescent fights and even about the joy rides, but this burglary was something else entirely.

“Let’s not get carried away with value judgments,” Sean said. “My youth and yours were completely different.”

“I’m just a little concerned you learned to justify any type of behavior,” Janet said. “I would imagine it could become a habit.”

“The last time I did any of that stuff was when I was fifteen,” Sean said. “There’s been a lot of water over the dam since then.”

They pulled into the Forbes parking lot and drove to the research building. Sean cut the engine and turned out the lights. For a moment neither moved.

“You want to go ahead with this or not?” Sean asked, finally breaking the silence. “I don’t mean to pressure you, but I can’t waste two months down here screwing around with busywork. Either I get to look into the medulloblastoma protocol or I go back to Boston. Unfortunately, I can’t do it by myself; that was made apparent by the run-in with hefty Margaret Richmond. Either you help, or we cancel. But let me say this: we’re going in here to get information, not to steal TV sets. And it’s for a damn good cause.”

Janet stared ahead for a moment. She didn’t have the luxury of indecision, yet her mind was a jumble of confusing thoughts. She looked at Sean. She thought she loved him.

“Okay!” Janet said finally. “Let’s do it.”

They got out of the car and walked to the entrance. Sean carried the tools he’d gotten at the Home Depot in a paper bag.

“Evening,” Sean said to the security guard who blinked repeatedly as he stared at Sean’s ID card. He was a swarthy Hispanic with a pencil-line mustache. He seemed to appreciate Janet’s shorts.

“Got to inject my rats,” Sean said.

The security guard motioned for them to enter. He didn’t speak, nor did he take his eyes off Janet’s lower half. As Sean and Janet passed through the turnstile they could see he had a miniature portable TV wedged on top of the bank of security monitors. It was tuned to a soccer match.

“See what I mean about the guards?” Sean said as they used the stairs to descend to the basement. “He was more interested in your legs than my ID card. I could have had Charlie Manson’s photo on it and he wouldn’t have noticed.”

“How come you said rats instead of mice?” Janet asked.

“People hate rats,” Sean said. “I didn’t want him deciding to come down and watch.”

“You do think of everything,” Janet said.

The basement was a warren of corridors and locked doors, but at least it was adequately lighted. Sean had made many trips to the animal room and was generally familiar with that area, but he hadn’t gone beyond it. As they walked, the sound of their heels echoed off the bare concrete.

“Do you have any idea where we’re going?” Janet asked.

“Vaguely,” Sean said.

They walked down the central corridor taking several twists and turns before coming to a T intersection.

“This must be the way to the hospital,” Sean said.

“How can you tell?”

Sean pointed to the tangle of pipes lining the ceiling. “The power plant is in the hospital,” he said. “These lines are coming over to feed the research building. Now we have to figure out which side has the chart vault.”

They proceeded down the corridor toward the hospital. Fifty feet down there was a door on either side of the narrow hall. Sean tried each. Both were locked.

“Let’s give these a try,” he said. He set down his bag and removed some tools, including a slender jeweler-like alien wrench and several short pieces of heavy wire. Holding the alien wrench in one hand and one of the pieces of heavy wire in the other, he inserted both into the lock.

“This is the tricky part,” he said. “It’s called raking the pins.”

Sean closed his eyes and proceeded by feel.

“What do you think?” Janet asked as she looked up and down the corridor, expecting someone to appear at any moment.

“Piece of cake,” Sean said. There was a click and the door opened. Finding a light, Sean turned it on. They had broken into an electrical room with huge wall-sized electrical buses facing each other.

Sean turned out the light and closed the door. Next he went to work on the door across the corridor. He had it open in less time than the first.

“These tools make a decent tension bar and pick,” he said. “Nothing like the real thing, but not bad.”

Switching on a light, he and Janet found themselves in a long, narrow room filled with metal shelving. Arranged on the shelves were hospital charts. There was a lot of empty space.

“This is it,” Sean said.

“A lot of room to expand,” Janet commented.

“Don’t move for a couple of minutes,” Sean said. “Let me make sure there are no alarms.”

“Good grief!” Janet said. “Why don’t you tell me these things in advance.”

Sean took a quick turn around the room looking for infrared sensors or motion detectors. He found nothing. Rejoining Janet and taking out the computer printout sheet he said: “Let’s divide these charts up between us. I only want the ones from the last two years. They’ll reflect the successful treatment.”

Janet took the top half of the list and Sean took the lower. In ten minutes they had a stack of thirty-three charts.

“It’s easy to tell this isn’t a teaching hospital,” Sean said. “In a teaching hospital you’d be lucky to find one chart, much less all thirty-three.”

“What do you want to do with them?” Janet asked.

“Copy them,” Sean said. “There’s a copy machine in the library. The question is, is the library open? I don’t want the guard seeing me pick that lock. There’s probably a camera there.”

“Let’s check,” Janet said. She wanted to get this over with.

“Wait,” Sean said. “I think I have a better idea.” He started toward the research building end of the chart vault. Janet struggled to keep up. Rounding the last bank of metal shelves, they came to the end wall. In the center of the wall was a glass door. To the right of the door was a panel with two buttons. When Sean pushed the lower of the two, a deep whirring noise broke the silence.

“Maybe we’re in luck,” he said.

Within several minutes the dumbwaiter appeared. Sean opened the door and began removing the shelves.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“A little experiment,” Sean said. When he had enough of the racks removed, he climbed inside. He had to double up with his knees near his chin.

“Close the door and push the button,” he said.

“Are you sure?” Janet asked.

“Come on!” Sean said. “But after the motor stops, wait for a couple of beats, then be sure to push the ‘down’ button to get me back.”

Janet did as she was told. Sean ascended with a wave and disappeared from view.

With Sean gone, Janet’s anxiety grew. The gravity of their actions hadn’t sunk in when Sean had been with her. But in the eerie silence the reality of where she was and what she was doing hit her: she was burglarizing the Forbes Cancer Center.

When the whirring stopped, Janet counted to ten, then pressed the down button. Thankfully, Sean quickly reappeared. She opened the door.

“Works like a charm,” Sean said. “It goes right up to finance in administration. Best of all, they’ve got one of the world’s best copy machines.”

It took them only a few minutes to carry the charts over to the electric dumbwaiter.

“You first,” Sean said.

“I don’t know whether I want to do this,” Janet said.

“Fine,” Sean said. “Then you wait here while I copy the charts. It’ll probably take about a half hour.” He started to climb back in the dumbwaiter.

Janet grabbed his arm. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to wait here by myself, either.”

Sean rolled his eyes and got out of the dumbwaiter. Janet climbed into the hoist. Sean handed her most of the charts, closed the door, and pushed the button. When the motor stopped, he pressed again and the dumbwaiter reappeared. With the remaining charts in hand, he piled into the dumbwaiter a second time and waited a few uncomfortable minutes until Janet pushed the button upstairs in administration.

When Janet opened the door for him, he could tell she was becoming frantic.

“What’s the matter now?” he asked as he struggled out of the dumbwaiter.

“All the lights are on up here,” she said nervously. “Did you turn them on?”

“Nope,” Sean said, gathering up an armload of the charts. “They were on when I came up. Probably the cleaning service.”

“I never thought of that,” Janet said. “How can you be so calm through all this?” She sounded almost angry.

Sean shrugged. “Must have been all that practice I had as a kid.”

They quickly fell into a system at the copy machine. By taking each chart apart, they could load it into the automatic feed. Using a stapler they found on a nearby desk, they kept the copies organized and reassembled the originals as soon as they’d been copied.

“Did you notice that computer in the glass enclosure?” Janet asked.

“I saw it on my tour on day one,” Sean said.

“It’s running some kind of program,” Janet said. “When I was waiting for you to come up, I glanced in. It’s connected to several modems and automatic dialers. It must be doing some kind of survey.”

Sean looked at Janet with surprise. “I didn’t know you knew so much about computers. That’s rather odd for an English lit major.”

“At Wellesley I majored in English literature but computers fascinated me,” she explained. “I took a lot of computer courses. At one point I almost changed majors.”

After loading more sets of charts into the copy machine, Sean and Janet walked over to the glass enclosure and looked in. The monitor screen was flashing digits. Sean tried the door. It was open. They went inside.

“Wonder why this is in a glass room?” he asked.

“To protect it,” Janet said. “Big machines like this can be affected by cigarette smoke. There’s probably a handful of smokers in the office.”

They looked at the figures flashing on the screen. They were nine-digit numbers.

“What do you think it’s doing?” Sean asked.

“No idea,” Janet said. “They’re not phone numbers. If they were, there’d be seven or ten digits, not nine. Besides, there’s no way it can be calling phone numbers that rapidly.”

The screen suddenly went blank, then a ten-digit number appeared. Instantly an automatic dialer went into motion, its tones audible above the hum of the air-conditioning fans.

“Now that’s a phone number,” Janet said. “I even recognize the area code. It’s Connecticut.”

The screen went blank again, then resumed flashing more nine-digit numbers. After a minute the list of numbers froze at a specific number and the computer printout device activated. Both Sean and Janet glanced over to the printer in time to see the nine-digit number print out followed by: Peter Ziegler, age 55, Valley Hospital, Charlotte, North Carolina, Achilles tendon repair, March 11.

Suddenly, an alarm sounded. As the computer reverted to flashing its nine-digit numbers, Sean and Janet looked at each other, Sean with confusion, Janet with panic.

“What’s happening?” she demanded. The alarm kept ringing.

“I don’t know,” Sean admitted. “But it isn’t a burglar alarm.” He turned to look out into the office just in time to see the door to the hallway opening.

“Down!” he said to Janet, forcing her to her hands and knees. Sean figured that whoever was coming into the room was coming to check the computer. He frantically motioned to Janet to crawl behind the console. In utter terror, Janet did as she was told, fumbling over coiled computer cables. Sean was right behind her. Hardly had they gotten out of sight when the door to the glass enclosure was opened.

From where they were huddled, they could see a pair of legs enter the room. Whoever it was, it was a woman. The alarm that initiated the episode was turned off. The woman picked up a phone and dialed.

“We have another potential donor.” she said. “North Carolina.”

At that moment, the laser printer began printing yet again, and again the alarm sounded for a brief moment.

“Did you hear that?” the woman asked. “What a coincidence. We’re getting another, as we speak.” She paused, waiting for the printer. “Patricia Southerland, age forty-seven, San Jose General, San Jose, California, breast biopsy, March 14. Also sounds good. What do you think?”

There was a pause before she spoke again: “I know the team’s out. But there’s time. Trust me. This is my department.”

The woman hung up. Sean and Janet heard her tear off the sheet that had just printed. Then the woman turned and left.

For a few minutes neither Sean nor Janet spoke.

“What the hell did she mean, a potential donor?” Sean whispered at last.

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” Janet whispered back. “I want out of here.”

“Donor?” Sean murmured. “That sounds creepy to me. What do we have here? A clearinghouse for body parts? Reminds me of a movie I saw once. I tell you, this place is nuts.”

“Is she gone?” Janet asked.

“I’ll check,” Sean said. Slowly he backed out from their hiding place, then peeked over the countertop. The room was empty. “She seems to be gone,” Sean said. “I wonder why she ignored the copy machine.”

Janet backed out and gingerly raised her head. She scanned the room as well.

“Coming in, the computer alarm must have shielded the sound,” Sean said. “But going out, she had to have heard it.”

“Maybe she was too preoccupied,” Janet offered.

Sean nodded. “I think you’re probably right.”

The computer screen that had been flashing the innumerable nine-digit numbers suddenly went blank.

“The program seems to be over,” Sean said.

“Let’s get away from here,” Janet said, her voice quavering.

They ventured out into the room. The copy machine had finished the latest stack of charts and was silent.

“Now we know why she didn’t hear it,” Sean said, going up to the machine and checking it. He loaded the last of the charts.

“I want out of here!” Janet said.

“Not until I have my charts,” Sean said. He pushed the copy button and the copier roared to life. Then he began removing the originals and the copies already done, stapling the copies and reassembling the charts.

At first, Janet watched, terrified that any moment the same woman would reappear. But after she recognized the faster they were finished, the sooner they would leave, she pitched in. With no further interruptions they had all the charts copied and stapled in short order.

Returning to the small elevator, Sean discovered that it was possible to push the button with the door ajar. Then, when the door was closed, the dumbwaiter operated. “Now I don’t have to worry about you forgetting to bring me down,” he said teasingly.

“I’m in no mood for humor,” Janet remarked as she climbed into the hoist. She held out her arms to take as many charts and copies as possible.

Repeating the procedure that had brought them up to the seventh floor, they returned the charts to the vault. To Janet’s chagrin, Sean insisted they take the time to return the charts to their original locations. With that accomplished, they carried the chart copies to the animal room where Sean hid them beneath the cages of his mice.

“I should inject these guys,” Sean said, “but to tell you the truth, I don’t much feel like it.”

Janet was pleased to leave but didn’t start to relax until they were driving out of the parking lot.

“That has to have been one of the worst experiences of my life,” she said as they traversed Little Havana. “I can’t believe that you stayed so calm.”

“My heart rate was up,” Sean admitted. “But it went smoothly except for that little episode in the computer room. And now that it’s over, wasn’t it exciting? Just a little?”

“No!” Janet said emphatically.

They drove in silence until Sean spoke again: “I still can’t figure out what that computer was doing. And I can’t figure out what it has to do with organ donation. They certainly don’t use organs from deceased cancer patients. It’s too risky in relation to transplanting the cancer as well as the organ. Any ideas?”

“I can’t think about anything at this point,” Janet said.

They pulled into the Forbes residence.

“Geez, look at that old Caddy convertible,” Sean said. “What a boat. Barry Dunhegan had one just like it when I was a kid, except his was pink. He was a bookmaker and all us kids thought he was cool.”

Janet cast a cursory glance at the finned monster parked within the shadow of an exotic tree. She marveled how Sean could go through such a wrenching experience, then think about cars.

Sean pulled to a stop and yanked on the emergency brake. They got out of the car and entered the building in silence. Sean was thinking about how nice it would be to spend the night with Janet. He couldn’t blame the security guard for ogling her. As Sean climbed the stairs behind Janet, he was reminded how fabulous her legs were.

As they came abreast of his door he reached out and drew her to him, enveloping her in his arms. For a moment they merely hugged.

“What about staying together tonight?” Sean forced himself to ask. His voice was hesitant; he feared rejection. Janet didn’t answer immediately, and the longer she delayed, the more optimistic he became. Finally he used his left hand to take out his keys.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” she said.

“Come on,” Sean urged. He could smell her fragrance from having held her close.

“No!” Janet said with finality after another pause. Although she’d been wavering, she’d made a decision. “I know it would be nice, and I could use the sense of security after this evening, but we have to talk first.”

Sean rolled his eyes in frustration. She could be so impossibly stubborn. “Okay,” he said petulantly, trying another tack. “Have it your way.” He let go of her, opened his door, and stepped inside. Before shutting the door, he glanced at her face. What he wanted to see was sudden concern that he was miffed. Instead he saw irritation. Janet turned and walked away.

After closing his door, Sean felt guilty. He went to his slider, opened it, and stepped out on the balcony. A few doors down he saw Janet’s light in her living room go on. Sean hesitated, not sure what to do.

“MEN,” JANET said aloud with ire and exasperation. She hesitated inside her door, going over the conversation outside Sean’s door. There was no reason for him to get angry with her. Hadn’t she gone along with his risky plan? Didn’t she generally defer to his wishes? Why couldn’t he ever even try to understand hers?

Knowing that nothing would be solved that evening, Janet walked into the bedroom and turned on the light. Although she would later remember it, it didn’t completely register that her bathroom door was closed. When Janet was by herself she never closed doors. It had been a habit developed as a child.

Pulling off her tank top and unhooking her bra, Janet tossed them on the armchair by the bed. She undid the clip on the top of her head and shook her hair free. She felt exhausted, irritable, and as one of her roommates at college used to say, fried. Picking up the hair dryer she’d tossed on her bed in haste that morning, Janet opened the bathroom and entered. The moment she turned on the light, she became aware of a hulking presence to her left. Reacting instinctively, Janet’s hand shot out as if to fend off the intruder.

A scream started in Janet’s throat but was stalled before it could get out by the hideousness of the image that confronted her. A man was in her bathroom dressed in baggy dark clothes. A knotted segment of nylon stocking had been drawn over his head so that his features were grotesquely compressed. At shoulder height he clutched a butcher’s knife menacingly.

For an instant, neither of them moved. Janet quiveringly aimed the ineffectual hair dryer at the ghoulish face as if it were a magnum revolver. The intruder stared down the barrel in shocked surprise until he realized he was looking at heating coils, not the innards of a handgun.

He was the first to react, reaching out and snatching the hair dryer from Janet’s hand. In a burst of rage he threw the apparatus aside; it smashed the mirror of the medicine cabinet. The shattering of the glass jolted Janet from her paralysis, and she bolted from the bathroom.

Tom reacted swiftly and managed to grab Janet’s arm, but Janet’s momentum pulled them stumbling into the bedroom. His original intent had been to stab her in the bathroom. The hair dryer had thrown him off guard. He hadn’t planned on her getting out of the bathroom. And he didn’t want her to scream, but she did.

Janet’s first scream had been stifled by shock, but she more than made up for it with a second scream that reverberated in the confines of her small apartment and penetrated the cheaply built walls. It was probably heard in every apartment in the building, and it sent a shiver of fear down Tom’s spine. As angry as he was, he knew that he was in trouble.

Still holding onto Janet’s arm, Tom whipped her around so that she careened off the wall before falling crossways on the bed. Tom could have killed her there and then, but he didn’t dare take the time. Instead he rushed to the slider. Fumbling with the curtains and then the lock, he yanked the door open and disappeared into the night.

SEAN HAD been loitering on the balcony outside Janet’s open living room slider, trying to build up the courage to go in and apologize for trying to make Janet feel guilty. He was embarrassed at his behavior, but since apologies weren’t his strong suit, he was having difficulty motivating himself.

Sean’s hesitation dissolved in an instant at the sound of the shattering mirror. For a moment he struggled with the screen, trying to slide it open. When he heard Janet’s bloodcurdling scream followed by a loud thud, he gave up opening the screen properly and threw himself through it. He ended up on the shag carpet, his legs still bound in the mesh. Struggling to his feet he launched himself through the doorway into the bedroom. He found Janet on the bed, wide-eyed with terror.

“What’s the matter?” Sean demanded.

Janet sat up. Choking back tears, she said, “There was a man with a knife in my bathroom.” Then she pointed to the open bedroom slider. “He went that way.”

Sean flew to the sliding glass door and whipped back the curtain. Instead of one man, there were two. They came through the door in tandem, roughly shoving Sean back into the room prior to everyone recognizing each other. The new-comers were Gary Engels and another resident who’d responded to Janet’s scream just as Sean had.

Frantically explaining that an intruder had just left, Sean led the two men back out onto the balcony. As they reached the handrail they heard the screech of tires coming from the parking lot behind the building. While Gary and his companion ran for the stairs, Sean returned to Janet.

Janet had recovered to a degree. She’d slipped on a sweatshirt. When Sean entered she was sitting on the edge of the bed finishing an emergency call to the police. Replacing the receiver, she looked up at Sean who was standing above her.

“You okay?” he asked gently.

“I think so,” she said. She was visibly shaking. “God, what a day!”

“I told you you should have stayed with me.” Sean sat next to her and put his arms around her.

In spite of herself, Janet gave a short laugh. Leave it to Sean to try to smooth over any situation with humor. It did feel wonderful to be in his arms.

“I’d heard Miami was a lively city,” she said, taking his lead, “but this is too much.”

“Any idea how the guy got in here?” Sean asked.

“I left the slider in the living room open,” Janet admitted.

“This is learning the hard way,” Sean said.

“In Boston the worst thing that ever happened to me was an obscene phone call,” Janet said.

“Yeah, and I apologized,” Sean said.

Janet smiled and threw her pillow at him.

It took the police twenty minutes to arrive. They pulled up in a squad car with lights flashing but no siren. Two uniformed officers from the Miami police department came up to the apartment. One was a huge bearded black man, the other was a slim Hispanic with a mustache. Their names were Peter Jefferson and Juan Torres. They were solicitous, respectful, and professional as they spent an unhurried half hour going over Janet’s story. When she mentioned that the man was wearing latex rubber gloves, they canceled a crime scene technician who was scheduled to come over after finishing a homicide case.

“The fact that nobody got hurt puts this incident into a different category,” Juan said. “Obviously homicides get more attention.”

“But this could have been a homicide,” Sean protested.

“Hey, we do the best we can with the manpower we got,” Peter said.

While the policemen were still there gathering facts, someone else showed up: Robert Harris.

ROBERT HARRIS had carefully cultivated and nurtured a relationship with the Miami police department. Although he decried their lack of discipline and their poor physical shape, characteristics that set in approximately a year subsequent to their graduation from the police academy, Harris was enough of a pragmatist to understand that he needed to be on their good side. And this attack on a nurse at the Forbes residence was a case in point. Had he not developed the connections he had, he probably wouldn’t have heard about the incident until the following morning. As far as Robert was concerned, such a situation would be unacceptable for the head of security.

The call had come from the duty commander while Harris was using his Soloflex machine in front of his TV at home. Unfortunately, there’d been a delay of nearly half an hour following the dispatch of the patrol car, but Harris was not in a position to complain. Arriving late was better than not arriving at all. Harris just didn’t want the case to be cold by the time he got involved.

As Harris had driven to the residence, he thought back to the rape and murder of Sheila Arnold. He couldn’t shake the suspicion—improbable though it might seem—that Arnold’s death was somehow related to the deaths of the breast cancer patients. Harris wasn’t a doctor so he had to go on what Dr. Mason had told him a few months ago, namely that it was his belief that the breast cancer patients were being murdered. The tip-off was the fact that these patients’ faces were blue, a sign they were being somehow smothered.

Dr. Mason had made it clear that getting to the bottom of this situation should be Harris’s primary task. If word leaked to the press, the damage to the Forbes might be irreparable. In fact, Dr. Mason had made it sound like Harris’s tenure depended on a quick and unobtrusive resolution of this potentially embarrassing problem. The quicker that resolution came about, the better for everyone.

But Harris had not made any progress over the last few months. Dr. Mason’s suggestion that the perpetrator was probably a doctor or a nurse had not panned out. Extensive background checks on the professional staff had failed to uncover any suspicious discrepancies or irregularities. Harris’s attempts at keeping an unobtrusive eye on the Forbes breast cancer patients hadn’t turned anything up. Not that he’d been able to keep watch over all of them.

Harris’s suspicion that Miss Arnold’s death was related to the breast cancer patient deaths had hit him the day after her murder while he’d been driving to work. It was then he’d remembered that the day before she was killed a breast cancer patient on her floor had died and turned blue.

What if Sheila Arnold had seen something, Harris wondered. What if she’d witnessed or overheard something whose significance she hadn’t appreciated—something that made the perpetrator feel threatened nonetheless. The idea had seemed reasonable to Harris, although he did wonder if it were the product of a desperate mind.

In any case, Harris’s suspicion hadn’t left him with much to go on. He had learned from the police that a witness had seen a man leaving Miss Arnold’s apartment the night of the murder, but the description had been hopelessly vague: a male of medium height and medium build with brown hair. The witness had not seen the man’s face. In an institution the size of the Forbes Cancer Center, such a description had been of limited use.

So when Harris was told of yet another attack on a Forbes nurse, he again considered a possible connection to the breast cancer deaths. There had been another suspicious blue death on Tuesday.

Harris entered Janet’s apartment eager to talk with her. He was extremely chagrined to find her in the company of the wiseass medical student, Sean Murphy.

Since the police were still questioning the nurse, Harris took a quick look around. He saw the shattered mirror in the bathroom along with the broken hair dryer. He also noticed the panties amid the debris on the floor. Wandering into the living room, he noted the large hole in the screen. It was obvious the screen had been a point of entry, not escape.

“Your witness,” Peter Jefferson joked, coming into the living room. His partner followed in his shadow. Harris had met Peter on several occasions in the past.

“Anything you can tell me?” Harris asked.

“Not a whole lot,” Peter said. “Perp was wearing a nylon stocking over his face. Medium build, medium height. Apparently didn’t say a word. Girl’s lucky. The guy had a knife.”

“What are you going to do?” Harris asked.

Peter shrugged. “The usual,” he said. “We’ll file a report. We’ll see what the sarge says. One way or another it’ll get turned over to an investigative unit. Who knows what they’ll do.” Peter lowered his voice. “No injury, no robbery. It’s not likely this will become a number-one priority. If she’d gotten whacked it’d be a different story.”

Harris nodded. He thanked the officers and they left. Harris stepped into the bedroom. Janet was packing a bag; Sean was in the bathroom collecting her toiletries.

“On behalf of Forbes, I want to tell you I’m terribly sorry about this,” he said.

“Thank you,” Janet said.

“We’ve never felt the need for security here,” Harris added.

“I understand,” Janet said. “It could have happened anyplace. I did leave the door open.”

“The police told me you had difficulty describing the guy,” Harris said.

“He had a stocking over his head,” Janet said. “And it all happened so fast.”

“Is it possible that you might have seen him before?” Harris asked.

“I don’t think so,” Janet said. “But it really is impossible to say for sure.”

“I want to ask you a question,” Harris said. “But I want you to think for a minute before answering. Has anything unusual happened to you recently at Forbes?”

Janet’s mouth went instantly dry.

Overhearing this exchange, Sean immediately guessed what was going through Janet’s mind: she was thinking about their break-in into the chart room.

“Janet has had a rather difficult experience,” Sean said, stepping into the room.

Harris turned. “I’m not talking to you, boy,” he said menacingly.

“Listen, jughead,” Sean said. “We didn’t call the Marines. Janet has spoken to the police. You can get your information from them. She doesn’t have to talk to you, and I think she’s been through enough tonight. She doesn’t need you pestering her.”

The two men faced off, glaring at each other.

“Please!” Janet shouted. Fresh tears welled in her eyes. “I can’t stand any tension just now,” she told them.

Sean sat down on the bed, put his arm around her, and leaned his forehead against hers.

“I’m sorry, Miss Reardon,” Harris said. “I understand. But it is important for me to ask you if you’ve seen anything unusual while you worked today. I know it was your first day.”

Janet shook her head. Sean glanced up at Harris and with his eyes motioned for him to leave.

Harris fought hard to keep himself from slapping the kid around. He even fantasized about sitting on him and shaving his head. But instead he turned and left.

AS THE night advanced toward dawn Tom Widdicomb’s anxiety gradually increased. He was in the storeroom off the garage huddled in the corner beside the freezer. He had his arms around himself and his knees drawn up as if he were cold. He even intermittently shivered as his mind constantly tortured him by replaying over and over the disastrous events at the Forbes residence.

Now he was a total failure. Not only had he failed to put Gloria D’Amataglio to sleep, he’d failed to get rid of the nurse who’d prevented him from doing so. And despite the nylon stocking he’d worn, she’d seen him up close. Maybe she could recognize him. More than anything, Tom was mortified to have mistaken that stupid hair dryer for a gun.

Because of his idiocy, Alice wasn’t speaking to him. He’d tried to talk with her, but she wouldn’t even listen. He’d disappointed her. He wasn’t “her little man” anymore. He deserved to be laughed at by the other children. Tom had tried to reason with her, promising that he would help Gloria that morning, and that as soon as he could he’d rid them of the meddlesome nurse. He promised and cried, but to no avail. Alice could be stubborn.

Getting stiffly to his feet, Tom stretched his cramped muscles. He’d been crouched in the corner without moving for hours, thinking his mother would eventually feel sorry for him. But it hadn’t worked. She’d ignored him. So he thought he’d try talking to her directly.

Moving in front of the chest freezer he snapped open the lock and raised the lid. The frozen mist inside the freezer swirled as it mixed with a draft of moist, warm Miami air. Gradually the mist dissipated, and out of the fog emerged the desiccated face of Alice Widdicomb. Her dyed red hair was frozen into icy tangles. The skin of her face was sunken, blotchy, and blue. Crystals had formed along the edges of her open eyelids. Her eyeballs had contracted slightly, dimpling the surface of her corneas which were opaque with winter-like frost. Her yellow teeth were exposed by the retraction of her lips, forming a horrid grimace.

Since Tom and his mother had lived such isolated lives, Tom had little difficulty after he’d put her to sleep. His only mistake had been that he’d not thought of the freezer soon enough, and after a couple of days she’d started to smell. One of the few neighbors with whom they occasionally spoke had even mentioned it, throwing Tom into a panic. That was when he’d thought of the freezer.

Since then nothing had changed. Even Alice’s social security checks continued to arrive on schedule. The only close call had been when the freezer compressor conked out one hot Friday night. Tom hadn’t been able to get someone to come to fix it until Monday. He had been terrified the guy would need to open the freezer, but he didn’t. The man did tell Tom that he thought he might have some bad meat in there.

Supporting the lid, Tom gazed at his mother. But she still refused to say a word. She was understandably scared.

“I’ll do it today,” Tom said pleadingly. “Gloria will still be on IVs. If not, I’ll think of something. And the nurse. I’ll get rid of her. There’s not going to be any problem. No one is going to come to take you away. You’re safe with me. Please!”

Alice Widdicomb said nothing.

Slowly Tom lowered the lid. He waited for a moment in case she changed her mind, but she didn’t. Reluctantly he left her and went through to the kitchen into the bedroom they’d shared for so many years. Opening the bedside table he took out Alice’s gun. It had been his father’s originally, but after he’d died, Alice had taken it over, frequently showing it to Tom, saying that if anyone ever tried to come between them, she’d use it. Tom had learned to love the sight of the mother-of-pearl handle.

“Nobody’s ever coming between us, Alice,” Tom said. So far he’d only used the gun once, and that was when the Arnold girl tried to interfere by taking him aside to say she’d seen him take some medicine off the anesthesia cart. Now he’d have to use it again for this Janet Reardon before she caused more trouble than she already had.

“I’ll prove to you that I’m your little man,” Tom said. He slipped the cold gun into his pocket and went into the bathroom to shave.