thoughtfully and without comment. When Eric finished describing Laura's break-in at the Gates of Heaven, and the conclusions suggested by Devine's notes and the basement intensive-care room, Dave whistled softly through his teeth.
'You have gotten yourself into some shit, my man,' he said. 'I will say that.'
'Laura's in even deeper than I am. Some organized-crime types think she's a threat to unearth this video showing them in a drug deal.
Apparently her brother did the filming while he was undercover.
Yesterday the bastards tried to run her down. They actually killed a guy in the process.'
'She doesn't know anything about the video?'
'Nothing.
'Like I said, you are really into some shit.
Subarsky crumpled a sheet of paper and lofted it into the wastebasket ten feet away. 'So,' he said, 'where do you want to start?'
'Look at this list, Dave. If we can find WMH patients whose names correspond to these initials, we'll have at least forged the link from Devine to the hospital.
'And you think one of the three bigwigs on that search committee is part of this Caduceus thing, and whoever that is tried to recruit you and may be at the bottom of this whole business?'
Eric shrugged. 'Maybe. At this point I'm only guessing.'
'Well, then, Don Quixote,' Subarsky said, booting up his terminal,
'let's have at it.'
Using the FILE-RITE password, Dave quickly worked his way into the main menu of the recordroom computerized data system. As Eric had suspected, White Memorial had gone into electronic data in the most comprehensive way. The menu of available functions and maneuvers was exhaustive.
Subarsky retrieved from his desk a manual describing in detail the hospital's computer capabilities and codes.
'Here,' he said, handing the manual over, 'you do the brain work; I'll do the grunt work.'
Eric studied the screen, and then the book. 'Type RETRIEVE,' he said.
With Eric issuing the commands, they moved like mice in a maze from one menu to the next, into dead-end alleys and then back out again. Their goal, the reward waiting at the far side of the maze, was a list-a compilation of those patients seen in the emergency room on February 25, the first date noted beside the initials PT 'twenty minutes passed.
'We could always just call the record room and ask them what we're doing wrong,' Subarsky said.
'Not unless we absolutely have to. I don't know for sure if Caduceus is behind this, but if they are, there's no telling who's with them. And if someone from the record room just happens to be, and we alert them, we've lost everything.'
'Pardon me for saying so, laddie, but you're startin' to sound just a wee bit paranoid.'
Eric held up his bandaged wrists.
'Make that a whole bunch paranoid,' he said.
'Please, Dave, just bear with me a little longer.'
'It's your dime,' Subarsky said, polishin off a custard-filled doughnut in three bites. 'It's a good thing vm spent all those late nights together locking horns over the laser, 'cause I can always fall back on those one or two times when you were actually right.'
'Try SYNTHESIZE again,' Eric offered.
'We're-just gonna end up the same place as last time.'
'No, I don't think so, Dave. The command's coming aftey- the date this time. Just try it.'
Subarsky typed in the word and then hit the return key.
ALPHABETIZED OR SEQUENTIAL? the screen asked.
'We've got it,' Eric cried. 'We're in!' He hunched over the biochemist's broad shoulders. 'Tell the beast to alphabetize our list.'
Seconds after the command was typed in, a list appeared, headed by the date 25 February, and set in computer-perfect alphabetical order.
The name Trainor, Phillip was on the screen with his birthdate s ll al and hospital number. Was he Scott Enders?
They scanned 27 February, the day of the actual resuscitation, but could not find a Phflhp Trainor.
'Don't worry,' Eric said. 'He probably was entered as John Doe.'
He wrote the name Phillip Trainor next to the initials PT and then had Dave call up an image of Trainor's E.R. sheet.
'Near drowning, hypothermia, contusions…
David, this was Laura's brother. I just know it was. He was here two days before I pronounced him dead. Can you print that sheet?'
'Given half an hour, maybe.'
'Never mind,' Eric said excitedly. 'I'll take notes.
We're onto something, Dave. Just watch.'
Eric noted down all the information he could, and then began searching for the other initials on Devine's list. In minutes, the pattern began to come clear. Over the past two-plus years, certain patients were seen in the White Memorial emergency room for problems varying from colds to broken bones. Within forty-eight hours those same patients were brought back to the hospital essentially dead on arrival.
Every one of them was signed out as acute heart failure secondary to myocardial infarction, and every one of them was transferred to the Gates of Heaven Funeral Home pending examination by the medical examiner. And in every case, that medical examiner was Thaddeus Bushnell.
'Why didn't someone ever pick up on this?' Eric asked. 'Sooner or later, a nurse or doctor-' He stopped in mid-sentence and began flipping rapidly through his notes.
'What is it, pal?' Subarsky asked.
'What it is, David,' Eric said grimly, — 'is the answer to my question.
Look, look here. Except for the last three cases, Craig Worrell and Norma CuBinet were involved with every one. That's MbrreU as in W and Cullinet as in C.-the abbreviations in Donald Devine's record book. The reason MbrreH wasn't part of the last three cases is that he got arrested and then disappeared.'
'I'm impressed,' Subarsky said. 'I really am. But we still don't have the answer to the sixty-four-dollar question. Why?
What would anybody want with a bunch of corpses?'
'That's the point. They weren't corpses. They looked dead enough to get pronounced dead with no one raising an eyebrow, but- Dave, don't you see?
That's the tie-in! That's the goddam tie-in with everything!'
'What?'
Eric paced across the room and back.
'Can I take over there for a second?' he asked.
'The E.K.G department records are totally computerized. We call up tracings all the time.'
'Help yourself,' Subarsky said, pushing himself up. 'Listen, I've got a little experiment going on in the lab next door that I need to rerun with some new reagents. Give a holler if you need me. Otherwise, I'll be back in ten or fifteen minutes. By then, I expect you to have all the answers for me.'
'David, keep all this between us, okay?'
'That goes without saying, my friend. Congratulations on unearthing all this.'
'Nice choice of words, Subarsky,' Eric said, summoning up an E.K.G.
'Real nice.'
Subarsky lumbered off as the first tracing appeared on the screen.
It was the E.K.G taken during the resuscitation of patient RE-a forty-eight-year-old woman Erie now felt certain was named Pamela Fitzgerald. The pattern was one Eric knew all too well: broad, slow complexes at the rate of six to eight per minute. Checks of two other cases showed the same.
Eric set the keyboard aside. On a sheet of paper he wrote the questions: How?
