were beginning to cover. The homeward commute was going to be a bear. Kate tried to ignore the prospect and reflect instead on what her next move might be in evaluating the microsclerosis cases, perhaps an attempt to find a friend or family member who knew Ginger Rittenhouse better than her new roommate. She might present the two women's pathologies at a regional conference of some sort, hoping to luck into yet a third case. She looked at the uncompleted work on her desk. Face it, she realized, with the amount of spare time she had to run around playing epidemiologist, the mystery of the ovarian microsclerosis seemed destined to remain just that. For a time, her dread of the drive home did battle with the need to get there in order to grocery shop and set out some sort of dinner for the two of them.
Originally, they had tried to eschew traditional roles in setting up and maintaining their household, but both rapidly realized that their traditional upbringings made that arrangement impractical if not impossible. The shopping and food preparation had reverted to her, the maintenance of their physical plant to Jared. Day-to-day finances, they agreed, were beyond either of their abilities and therefore to be shared. Again she checked out the window. Then after a final hesitation, a final thought about calling home and leaving a message on their machine that she was going to work late, she pushed herself away from the desk. As she stood up, she decided, if it was going to be dinner, then dammit, it was going to be a special dinner. In medical school and residency, she had always been able to find an extra gear, a reserve jet of energy, when she needed it. Perhaps tonight her marriage could use a romantic, gourmet dinner more than it could her moaning about the exhausting day she had endured. Spinach salad, shrimp curry, candles, Grgich Hills Chardonnay, maybe even a chocolate souffle. She ticked off a mental shopping list as she slipped a few scientific reprints into her briefcase, bundled herself against the rush-hour snow, and hurried from her office, pleased to sense the beginnings of a surge. It was good to know she still had one. + In the quiet of his windowless office, Carl Horner spoke through his fingertips to the information storage and retrieval system in the next room. He had implicit faith in his machines, in their perfection.
If there was a problem, as it now seemed there was, the source, he felt certain, was human-either himself or someone at the company. Again and again his fingers asked. Again and again the answers were the same.
Finally, he turned from his console to one of two black phones on his desk. A series of seven numbers opened a connection in Buffalo, New York, four numbers more activated the line to a 'dead box' in Atlanta, and a final three completed an untraceable connection to Darlington, Kentucky. Cyrus Redding answered on the first ring. 'Carl?'
'Orange red, Cyrus.' Had the colors been reversed, Redding would have been warned either that someone was monitoring Horner's call or that the possibility of a tap existed. 'I can talk, ' Redding said. 'Cyrus, a woman named Kate Bennett, a pathologist at Metro, just called asking for information on two women who died from the same unusual bleeding disorder.'
'Patients of ours?'
'That is affirmative, although Dr. Bennett is only aware that one of them is. Both women had autopsies that showed, in addition to the blood problems, a rare condition of their ovaries.'
'Have you asked the Monkeys about them?'
'Affirmative. The Monkeys say there is no connection here.'
'Does that make sense to you, Carl?'
'Negative.'
'Keep looking into matters. I want a sheet about this Doctor Bennett 'I'll learn what I can and teletype it tomorrow.'
'Tonight.'
'Tonight, then.'
'Be well, old friend.'
'And you, Cyrus. You'll hear from me later.'
Wednesday 12 December
Coronary strikes out Bobby. Kate cringed at the Boston Herald headline on her office desk. The story was one of the rare events that managed to make the front page in both that paper and the Boston Globe. Though the Globe's treatment was more detailed, the lead and side articles said essentially the same thing in the two papers.
Bobby Geary, beloved son of Albert and Maureen Geary, son of the city itself, had been taken without warning by a clot as thin as the stitching on a baseball. The stories, many of them by sportswriters, were the heart-rending stuff of which Pulitzers are made, the only problem being that they weren't true. The storm, which had begun the evening before, had dumped a quick eight inches of snow on the city before skulking off over the North Atlantic. However, neither the columns of journalistic half-truths. nor the painful drive into the city could dampen the warmth left by the C talking and the sharing that had followed the candlelight meal Kate had i prepared for her husband.
For the first time in years, Jared had talked about his disastrous first marriage and the daughter he would, in all likelihood, never see again.
'Gone to find something better' was all the note from his wife had said.
The trail of the woman and her daughter had grown cold in New York and finally vanished in a morass of evanescent religious cults throughout southern and central California. 'Gone, to find something better.'
Jared had cried as he spoke of the Vermont years, of his need then to break clear of his father's expectations and build a life for himself.
Kate had dried his tears with her lips and listened to the confusion and pain of a marriage that was far more an act of rebellion than one of love. Kate was finishing the last of the Globe stories when, with a soft knock, a ponderous woman entered carrying a paper bag. The woman's overcoat was unbuttoned, exposing a nurse's uniform, pin, and name tag.
Kate read the name as the woman spoke it. 'Dr. Bennett, I'm Sandra Tucker. Ginger Rittenhouse was my roommate.'
'Of course. Please sit down. Coffee?'
'No, thank you. I'm doing private-duty work, and I'm expected at my patient's house in Weston in half an hour. Dr. Engleson said that if I remembered anything or found anything that might help you understand Ginger's death I could bring it to you.'
'Yes, that's true. I'm sorry about Ginger.'
'Did you know her?'
'No. No, I didn't.'
'We had shared the house only for a few months.'
'I know.'
'A week after she moved in, Ginger baked a cake and cooked up a lasagna for my birthday.'
'That was very nice, ' Kate said, wishing she had thought twice about engaging the woman in small talk. There was a sad aura about her-a loneliness that made Kate suspect she would talk on indefinitely if given the chance, patient or no patient. 'We went to the movies together twice, and to the Pops, but we were only just getting to be friends and …'
'It's good of you to come all the way down here in the snow, ' Kate said in as gentle an interruption as she could manage. 'Oh, well, it's the least I could do. Ginger was a very nice person. Very quiet and very nice. She was thinking about trying for the marathon next spring.'
'What do you have in the bag? Is that something of hers? ' A frontal assault seemed the only way. 'Bag? Oh, yes. I'm sorry. Dr. Engleson, what a nice man he is, asked me to go through her things looking for medicines or letters or doctors' appointments or anything that might give you a clue about why she… why she…'
'I know it was a hard thing for you to do, Miss Tucker, and I'm grateful for any help.'
'It's Mrs. Tucker. I'm divorced.'
Kate nodded. 'The bag?'
'My God, I apologize again.' She passed her parcel across the desk.
'Sometimes I talk too much, I'm afraid.'
