that unprofessional, just desperate. She was asking him to take advantage of her. There was strong reason for his wanting to get a printout of those whose blood had been drawn for tissue-typing. Finding Lonnie Durkin on that list would mean that Marilyn Christiansen, for all of her kindly, concerned ways, would have some serious explaining to do. Still…
'Listen, Shirley,' he heard his voice saying, 'that's really kind of you to offer, but I'll be okay just taking a look around the lab. And about getting together later, I'd love to take you out for dinner and some conversation, but I need to tell you that I've just gotten into a relationship with someone back home that's starting to get pretty serious, so conversation is all I can do.'
All right, that's it! If you're going to succeed in this private detective business, no more Rockford reruns or Travis McGee books for you.
Shirley Murphy's expression reflected something other than disappointment. Oddly enough, Ben thought it might be relief.
'Thank you, Ben,' she said. 'Thank you for being honest with me. Come, let me show you the lab.'
As he followed the director around the busy operation, a surprisingly vivid scenario began running through his mind. He was in an ornate courtroom of some sort, pacing back and forth as he cross-examined a fidgeting woman his mind's eye could not see clearly. He felt certain, though, that the woman was Shirley.
Let's assume, he was saying, that Lonnie Durkin would never have been used as the donor in a bone marrow transplant unless his blood had been tissue-typed. And yet…and yet, we must start with the reality that such a transplant did, in fact, take place. Could blood have been drawn on Mr. Durkin without his understanding that it was being done? After all, the man has been acknowledged by his parents and his physician to have been somewhat slow. Perhaps someone drew his blood, then threatened to harm him or his parents if he told anyone it had been done. Does that make sense to you? It sure doesn't to me. Why would they have chosen him in the first place? No, ma'am, it really couldn't have happened that way. The only place it could have happened was right here in -
Ben's imagined rhetoric was cut off abruptly. He was standing behind Shirley as she was extolling the virtues of a new machine, whose name and function he had missed completely. Over her shoulder, he could see a young technician, slightly built, with a strawberry blond ponytail. She was removing a large number of tubes of blood from a freezer and gingerly placing them into racks in several Styrofoam shipping coolers filled with dry ice.
'That's a wonderful machine, Shirley,' he said, hoping she wouldn't ask even the most elementary question about it. 'Tell me, what percent of the tests that are ordered do you actually do here, and how much do you end up sending out?'
'Good question. Actually, the equipment has gotten so sophisticated, accurate, and efficient that just a couple of techs can run virtually all the chemistries and hematology we get. We still send the more obscure and difficult to run tests out to the larger, more regional Whitestone labs, and also to specialty labs like yours. But on the whole, what we get in, we run here.'
'Excellent. Those tubes that are being handled over there. Are they being sent out for a specific test?'
Murphy laughed.
'When I told you we send some things out, I wasn't talking about that sort of volume.'
She took him gently by the arm and guided him over to the tech.
'Sissy, this is Mr. Ben Callahan from Chicago. He owns a lab that does tissue-typing for transplants.'
'Hazardous duty,' Sissy said, motioning to the bruises still enveloping his eyes.
'Hey,' Ben replied with candor he hadn't planned, 'you should see the other guy.'
'Sissy,' Shirley went on, 'Mr. Callahan is interested in these vials you're packing up.'
'These? They're backups.'
'Backups?'
'In case a sample gets contaminated or the results get questioned. Or in case we need to do a retest for any legal reason.'
'As far as we know,' Murphy added proudly, 'Whitestone is the only lab that takes such precautions. Perhaps that's why we're number one by such a wide margin. I'm sure it adds some to the expense of the tests, but from what I've been told, Whitestone covers that and doesn't pass it on to the consumer or their insurance company.'
Ben's mind was whirling.
'So every patient you draw has extra tubes of blood frozen and put in storage?'
'Just a green top,' Murphy said. 'We've been told that thanks to new technology, that's all they need. We draw an average of four vials of blood on each of our clients — red tops, gray tops, purple tops, black tops. The colors of the rubber stoppers refer to the chemicals that are inside the vials. We refer to the green top as the fifth vial, even if we only draw two on a given patient.'
'But you have to ship those green tops out?'
'Oh, yes,' Sissy said. 'We'd run out of room in no time if we didn't. They're flown to a storage facility in Texas.'
'And kept there for a year,' Shirley added.
'Amazing,' Ben muttered, wondering if it was even legal to draw such a tube without the patient's knowledge, and deciding in the same moment that it probably was — so long as the blood was only used for quality control.
Casually, he glanced down at the FedEx shipping label. Whitestone Laboratory, John Hamman Highway, Fadiman, Texas 79249. It was so simple, yet it fit the facts of the case so powerfully. At a lab, possibly in a place called Fadiman, Texas, Lonnie Durkin's tissue type had been run and undoubtedly recorded. Ben wondered if a tube containing his own blood had also made the trip to Fadiman. If so, it seemed quite possible that his and Lonnie Durkin's tissue types were two items in the same database — a very massive database at that.
It took a while, and the promise of dinner on his next visit, for Ben to extricate himself from Shirley Murphy, but when he finally had, he hurried to a phone and called Alice Gustafson with a summary of the news from Soda Springs, and a single question.
'What kind of vial is drawn to do a tissue typing on someone?'
Her reply, though made in a second, seemed to him to take an hour. 'That would be a green top,' she said.
CHAPTER 14
No physician, in so far as he is a physician, considers his own good in what he prescribes, but the good of his patient.
Unbelievable!'
The physical therapist and pulmonary therapist stood back from the treadmill and watched in absolute amazement as Natalie passed thirty minutes of brisk uphill walking — 4.5 miles per hour with an elevation of four.
Gradually, Natalie had felt her breathing becoming more strained, and a burning beneath her sternum, but she was determined to hang on for another few minutes. It was little more than two weeks since her medevac return from Brazil, and little more than three since her right lung had been removed at Santa Teresa Hospital in Rio. She had spent the first three days out of the hospital at her mother's, and might have stayed longer were it not for the pervasive odor of cigarettes — present even though, out of respect for her daughter, Hermina was limiting her smoking to the porch and bathroom.
Jenny delighted in having her aunt around, and especially in having the chance to be the caregiver for a change. The two of them spent hours talking about life and standing tall against adversity, as well as about books (Jenny had reluctantly tried the first Harry Potter, and was now devouring the series), movie stars, opportunities in medicine, and even boys.
