nothing had prepared him for the evil he and Laura were confronting.
He shuffled to the bathroom and studied.himself in the mirror-the bruises, the tension in his jaw, the strange metallic anger in his eyes.
It was like looking at a total stranger. He had been battered and pushed beyond the limits of his tolerance by faceless men and women who seemed ready to kill and maim without hesitation. And now he knew that if he was to survive, if he was to spend his life in the profession he had chosen and with the woman he was growing to love, he had to be ready to fight by their rules.
Laura and Bernard Nelson had taken the first steps toward reprisal. Now it was his Turn. And waiting for him in Dave Subarsky's lab was the weapon he Kould use to begin his counterattack against the faceless ones-a computer. Leaving a note in case Laura awoke, he slipped from the apartment and made copies of the ledger pages at an all-night convenience store on Berkeley.
He returned to find her up and cooking breakfast.
She was wearing only a man's dress shirt, and the sight of the full length of her wonderful legs immediately began diverting Eric's thoughts from the task at hand.
'Bernard said to make full use of the place,' she said. 'You don't think he'll mind that I borrowed one of his shirts, do you?'
'If he learns where it's been, I don't think he'll ever wash it again.'
'You got the copies?'
'Uh-huh. I'm going to wait another fifteen minutes and then call Dave.
With luck, we'll be able to screen the E.R. visits on the days listed here, looking for people with these initials.'
'I want to come.'
Eric shook his head.
'I know waiting here's going to be harder than what I have to do,' he said, 'but you can't take the chance of someone's recognizing you.'
'But what if they recognize you?' she asked.
'If they wanted me dead, they could have done it.
No, they want people thinking I'm crazy so no one will pay any attention to what I have to say. There's no way they could know how many people I've spoken to about my tetrodotoxin theories, so their best approach is simply to discredit me altogether. Killing me would only add weight to the possibility that I was onto something.'
'I hope you're right. I just keep wondering how that woman knew to be at the medical library.'
He looked at her, startled.
'You know,' he said, 'with all that's happened, I hadn't thought about that at all.
'Well, go. And please be careful.'
He kissed her on the back of the neck.
'I will. I have too much to live for to cash out now.
'Okay, then,' she said reluctantly. 'I'll stay here and catch up on the soaps. It's only been two or three Years, so I shouldn't have much trouble. Damn! I don't like being made helpless.'
'I know. But after what happened yesterday, we should try at least to pick and choose when we take chances-'
'just do me one favor, then. Start with that PT person.'
'You think that was Scott?'
'The dates match.'
'Okay, I will. But, Laura, please don't hold out too much hope.'
'When I see his body, I'll stop hoping,' she said, setting Spanish omelets and a dish of hash-browns on the table. 'And when I see you back in this apartment in one piece, I'll stop worrying.'
Eric broke from their meal to call Dave Subarsky.
Five minutes later he was back.
'We're in luck,' he said excitedly, helping himself to seconds.
'Dave feels there's a good chance we can get into the record-room system.'
'Just be careful,' she said again.
He flexed his muscle.
'Does a man with these biceps need to worry?'
'Eric, I'm serious.' Eric pulled her to her feet, slipped his hands beneath her shirttail, and held her tightly.
'Damn right,' he said.
Eric took the river walk to the hospital. The flat gray morning was chffled by a steady wind that whipped at him from behind and sent a heavy chop across the dark water. An occasional bundled jogger chugged past, but otherwise he was alone. He tried to focus on the computer search he was about to attempt, but his thoughts were continually sidetracked by the question Laura had raised. Just how did Anna Deoix come to find me at the county library?
He had assumed that her interest in him had been triggered by his interest in teotoxin, and that her perception of him as a threat to her cult had subsequently arisen as a result of the information he had shared with her about the White Memorial cases.
But what if she had been at the county because Of him? What if her people had already known of his growing suspicion of the arcane poison?
How could they have found that out when I didn't really speak to anyone outside the hospital?
He turned the questions over and over in his mind, considering first the likelihood that Anna or someone connected with her had been following him all along, and then the possibility of whether the death's-head priest could have purposely sent her to make contact with him while they were arranging the whole Sproul Court nightmare.
The questions were still gnawing at him as Eric entered the hospital through the outpatient department and quickly took the stairway down to the tunnel connecting all the WMH buildings. He passed no one who showed any particular notice of him along the way.
Dave Subarsky was waiting in his office with coffee and doughnuts.
'So,' he said, 'public enemy number one surfaces. Man who kill our women, rape our buffalo.' He set his beefy hands on Eric's shoulders.
'You holding up okay?' There was no mistaking the concern in his eyes.
'.'ve been better.'
'I should hope so. Here, have a chocolate-covered.
I understand they're a special favorite of the criminal element.'
'I'm about as much of a criminal as you ri are 'Careful what company you put yourself in. I've been known to pull a few labels off mattresses in my day.' Subarsky hoisted his size thirteens onto the corner of the desk and tugged absently at his beard 'I take it, then, that every phantasmagoric thing you've been telling the press and the police is true.'
'Everything.'
And the cocaine?'
'Do you know a straighter arrow about that stuff than I am?' Eric asked.
'But why would someone set you up like that?'
'That, my furry friend, is what I was hoping you might help me figure out.'
'Well, then, that being the case, my computer is at your disposal, along with my somewhat limited knowledge of its applications.
But first, how about telling me what we're looking for,?' Eric set the copies of Donald Devine's ledger on the desk.
'Settle back, big fella,' he said. 'This ain't gonna be pretty.'
Starting from the day in February when he failed to resuscitate the man named John Doe, Eric took the biochemist step-by-step through his initial meeting with Laura, their encounters with Thaddeus Bushnell and Donald Devine, and finally to the tie-in with the horrible events surrounding the death of Loretta Leone. Subarsky listened
