'Yesterday?'
'Wait, now. Let me check. Nope, only Mcdonald, Lacey, Briggs, and Ca..
Capez… Capezio. No one named… what did you say the name was?'
'Never mind, Marvin. Don't worry about it.'
As she replaced the receiver, Sheila tried to estimate the time it would take the technicians in Special Chemistries to complete a stat screen for drugs of abuse. 'Curiouser and curiouser and curiouser, ' she said.
The dozen or so buildings at Metropolitan Hospital were connected by a series of tunnels, so tortuous and poorly lit that the hospital had recommended that its employees avoid them if walking alone. Several assaults and the crash of a laundry train into a patient's stretcher only enhanced the grisly reputation of the tunnel, as did the now classic Harvard Medical School senior show, Rats. Kate, unmindful of the legends and tales, had used the tunnels freely since her medical student days, and except for once coming upon the hours-old corpse of a drunk, nestled peacefully in a small concrete alcove by his half-empty bottle of Thunderbird, she had encountered little to add to the lore. The single greatest threat she faced each time she traveled underground from one building to another was that of getting lost by forgetting a twist or a turn or by missing the crack shaped like Italy that signaled to her the turnoff to the administration building. At various times over the years, she had headed for the surgical building and ended up in the massive boiler room, or headed for a conference in the amphitheater, only to dead end at the huge steam pressers of the laundry building.
Concentrating on not overlooking the landmarks and grimedimmed signs, Kate made her way through the beige-painted maze toward the computer suite and Marco Sebastian. Nurses in twos and threes passed by in each direction, heralding the approach of the three o'clock change in shift.
Kate wondered how many thousands of nurses had over the years walked these tunnels on the way to their charges. The Metro tradition, nurses, professors of surgery, medical school deans, country practitioners, even Nobel laureates. Now, in her own way and through her own abilities, she was becoming part of that tradition. Jared had to know how important that was to her. She had shared with him the ugly secrets of her prior marriage and stifling, often futile life. Surely he knew what all this meant. In typically efficient Metro fashion, the computer facilities were situated on the top floor of the pediatrics building, as far as possible from the administrative offices that used them the most. Kate paused by the elevator and thought about tackling the six flights of stairs instead. The day, not yet nearly over, had her feeling at once exhausted and exhilarated. Three difficult surgical cases had followed the Geary autopsy. Just as she was completing the last of them, a Special Chemistries technician had dropped off the results of Geary's blood test. The Amphetamine level in his body was enormous, quite enough to have thrown him into pulmonary edema. Before she could call Stan Willoughby with the results, she was summoned to his office. The meeting there, with Willoughby and the detective, Martin Finn, had been brief.
Evidence found on a careful search of Bobby Geary's condominium had yielded strong evidence that the man was a heavy amphetamine user. It was information known only to the three of them. Finn — was adamant-barring any findings suggesting that Geary's death was not an accidental overdose, there seemed little to be gained and much to be lost by making the revelation public. The official story would be of a heart attack, secondary to an anomaly of one coronary artery. The elevator arrived at the moment Kate had decided on the stairs. ISM She changed her mind in time to slip between the closing doors. Marco Sebastian, expansive in his white lab coat and as jovial as ever, met her with a bear hug. She had been a favorite of his since their first meeting, nearly seven years before. In fact, he and his wife had once made a concerted effort to fix her up with his brother-in-law, a caterer from East Boston. After a rapid-fire series of questions to bring himself up to date on Jared, the job, Willoughby, and the results of their collaborative study, the engineer led her into his office and sat her down next to him, facing the terminal display screen on his desk.
'Now then, Dr. Bennett, ' he said in a voice with the deep smoothness of an operatic baritone, 'what tidbits can I resurrect for you this time from the depths of our electronic jungle? Do you wish the hat size of our first chief of medicine? We have it. The number of syringes syringed in the last calendar year? Can do. The number of warts on the derriere of our esteemed administrator? You have merely to ask.'
'Actually, Marco, I wasn't after anything nearly so exotic. Just a name.'
'The first baby born here was He punched a set of keys and then another.
Jessica Peerless, February eighteenth, eighteen forty-three.'
'Marco, that wasn't the name I had in mind.'
'How about the two hundredth appendectomy?'
'Nope. 'The twenty-eight past directors of nursing?'
'Uh-uh. I'm sorry, Marco.'
'All this data, and nobody wants any of it.' The man was genuinely crestfallen. 'I keep telling our beloved administrator that we are being under-used, but I don't think he has the imagination to know what questions to ask. Periodically, I send him tables showing that the cafeteria is overspending on pasta or that ten percent of our patients have ninety percent of our serious diseases, just to pique his interest, remind him that we're still here.'
'My name?'
'Oh, yes. I'm sorry. It's been a little slow here. I guess you can tell that.'
'It's Rittenhouse, Ginger Rittenhouse. Here's her address, birthplace, and birthdate. That's all I have. I need to know if she's ever been a patient of this hospital, in or out.' 64 Keep your eyes on the screen,'
Sebastian said dramatically. Thirty seconds later, he shook his head.
'Nada. A Shirley Rittenhouse in nineteen fifty-six, but no others.'
'Are you sure?
' Sebastian gave her a look that might have been anticipated from a judge who had been asked, 'Do you really think your decision is fair?'
'Sorry, ' she said. 'Of course, she still could have been a patient of the Omnicenter.'
Kate stiffened. 'What do you mean?'
'Well, the Omnicenter is sort of a separate entity from the rest of Metro. This system here handles records and billing for the Ashburton inpatient service, but the Omnicenter is totally self-contained. Has been since the day they put the units in-what is it? — nine, ten years ago.'
'Isn't that strange?'
'Strange is normal around this place, ' Sebastian said. 'Can't you even plug this system into the one over there?'
'Nope. Don't know the access codes. Carl Horner, the engineer who runs the electronics there, plays things pretty close to the vest.
You know Horner?'
'No, I don't think so.' Kate tried to remember if, during any of her visits to the Omnicenter as a patient, she had even seen the man. 'Why do you suppose they're so secretive? '
'Not secretive so much as careful. I play around with numbers here, Horner and the Omnicenter people live and die by them. Every bit of that place is computerized, records, appointments, billing, even the prescriptions.'
'I know. I go there for my own care.'
'Then you can imagine what would happen if even a small fly got dropped into their ointment. Homer is a genius, let me tell you, but he is a bit eccentric. He was writing advanced programs when the rest of us were still trying to spell IBM. From what I've heard, complete independence from the rest of the system is one of the conditions he insisted upon before taking the Omnicenter job in the first place.', So how do I find out if Ginger Rittenhouse has ever been a patient there? It's important, Marco. Maybe very important.'
'Well, Paleolithic as it may sound, we call and ask.'
'The phone?'
Marco Sebastian shrugged sheepishly and nodded. DEAD END. Alone in her office, Kate doodled the words on a yellow legal pad, first in block print, then in script, and finally in a variety of calligraphies, learned through one of several 'self-enrichment' courses she had taken during her two years with Art. According to Carl Horner, Marco Sebastian's counterpart at the Omnicenter, Ginger Rittenhouse had never been a patient there. Tom Engleson had succeeded in contacting the woman's roommate, but her acquaintance and living arrangement with Giilger were recent ones. Aside from a prior address, Engleson had gleaned no new information. Connections thus far between the woman and Beverly Vitale, zero. Outside, the daylong dusting of snow had given way to thick, wet flakes that
