creating a huddle of corpses, a tangle of frozen extremities.
Susan let go of the track, dropping to the floor. Then she ran for the open door. D’Ambrosio was trying to pull the bodies off himself. But he was in pain and had little leverage. The reek of embalming fluid was choking him. As Susan passed he tried to grab her. He struggled to free his gun and aim but it caught in the gnarled hand of a corpse.
“Fuck!” shouted D’Ambrosio as he used all of his might against oppressive weight of dead flesh.
But Susan was through the door.
D’Ambrosio was upright now. Pushing the toppled bodies right and left, he flung himself at the closing door. But outside it Susan was pushing with all her might, and the momentum of the insulated door carried it home. The latch clicked. Susan fumbled with the stainless steel pin.
Inside, D’Ambrosio was grabbing for the latch release. Susan beat him by a fraction of a second as the pin dropped home.
Susan backed up, her heart pounding. She heard a muffled cry. Then there was a thud. D’Ambrosio was shooting into the door. But it was twelve inches thick. There were several more ineffectual thuds.
Susan turned and ran. She finally understood the reality of the danger she had been in. Trembling uncontrollably, she fought back tears. She had to find help, real help.
Thursday, February 26, 2:11 A.M.
Beacon Hill was definitely asleep. As the cab turned off Charles Street onto Mount Vernon and drove up into the residential area, there were no people, no cars, not even any dogs. The lights in the windows were few; only the gas lamps suggested that the area was populated, not deserted.
Susan paid the cab driver, then looked up and down the street to see if anyone was following her.
After escaping from D’Ambrosio in the freezer, Susan was terrified and decided not to return to her room. She had no idea if D’Ambrosio was working alone or with an accomplice, but she was in no mood to find out. She had run out of the Anatomy Building, crossed in front of the Administration Building and had reached Huntington Avenue by passing the School of Public Health. At that hour it had taken fifteen minutes to find a cab.
Bellows. Susan thought that he was the only person she could turn to at two A.M. who would understand her present plight. But she was worried about being followed, and she did not want to involve Bellows in any danger. So as she entered the foyer of Bellows’s building she determined to wait five minutes before ringing his apartment, to be certain she had not been followed.
The foyer was not heated and Susan ran in place for a few minutes to keep warm. Becoming rational again after the experience with D’Ambrosio, she tried to understand why D’Ambrosio had returned so quickly. As far as she knew, no one had followed her when she went back to the Memorial to get the charts and explore the ORs. No one even knew that she was there.
She stopped running and looked out at Mount Vernon Street through the glass door. Bellows! He had seen her in the lounge. He was the only one who knew that she had not given up her search. She had shown him the charts. She started running in place again, cursing her own paranoia.
Then she stopped as she remembered about Bellows being involved with the drugs that were found in the locker room, about Bellows being the one who found Walters, after Walters had committed suicide.
Susan turned her head and looked through the glass of the locked inner door. The stairway rose upward, its steps covered with a red runner.
Could Bellows be involved? The possibility penetrated Susan’s overworked brain and fatigued body. She was beginning to suspect everyone. She shook her head and laughed; the paranoia was too obvious. Yet it started her thinking, and the thoughts troubled her.
Her watch said two-seventeen. Bellows was going to be in for a surprise, having a caller at such an hour. At least Susan thought he’d be surprised.
What if he were surprised only because he expected her to be quite occupied elsewhere—that he knew all about D’Ambrosio. Susan decided impulsively that was nonsense. She pushed the buzzer with determination. She had to push it again and hold it before Bellows responded.
Susan started up the stairs. She was midway up the second flight when Bellows appeared above in his bathrobe.
“I might have known. Susan, it’s after two A.M.”
“You asked me if I wanted a drink. I’ve changed my mind. I want one.”
“But that was at eleven.” Bellows disappeared into his apartment, leaving the door ajar.
Susan reached Bellows’s floor and entered his apartment. He was nowhere to be seen. She closed the door and locked it, throwing both bolts. She found Bellows already back in bed, the covers up under his chin, his eyes closed.
“Some hospitality,” said Susan sitting on the edge- of the bed. She looked at Bellows. God, she was glad to see him. She wanted to throw herself onto him, feel his arms around her. She wanted to tell him about D’Ambrosio, about the freezer. She wanted to scream; she wanted to cry. But instead she did nothing. She sat there just looking at Bellows, her mind vacillating.
Bellows didn’t budge, not at first Finally the right eye opened, then the left. Then he sat up. “Damn, I can’t sleep with you sitting here.”
“How about that drink, then? I need it!” Susan forced herself to be calm, analytical. But it was hard. Her pulse was still over one hundred fifty per minute.
Bellows eyed Susan. “You’re really too much!” He got up and put his robe back on. “OK, what will you have?”
“Bourbon, if you have it. Bourbon and soda, light on the soda.” Susan looked forward to the fiery fluid. Her hands were still visibly trembling.
She followed Bellows into the kitchen.
“I had to come over, Mark. I was attacked again.” Susan’s voice reflected her forced calmness. She watched Bellows’s reaction to the information. He stopped with his hands in the freezer, taking out an ice tray.
“Are you serious?”
“I’ve never been more serious.”
“Same person?”
“Same person.”
Bellows went back to the ice tray, chipping at it with a fork. Finally it came away. Susan felt that he was surprised at the news but not overly surprised, and not terribly concerned. Susan felt uneasy.
She tried another tack.
“I found something else out when I visited the OR. Something very interesting.” She waited for a response.
Bellows poured the bourbon, then opened a bottle of soda and poured it over the ice. The ice snapped in the glass. “OK, I believe you. Are you going to tell me or not?” Bellows handed Susan her drink. She took a slug.
“I traced the oxygen line from room No. 8 up in the ceiling space. Just before it turns down the main chase there is a valve in it.”
Bellows took a sip from his drink, motioning for them to return to the living room. The dock over the fireplace chimed. It was two-thirty.
“Gas lines have valves,” said Bellows at length.
“The others didn’t have them.”
“You mean a type of valve which would allow gas to be introduced into the line?”
“I think so. I don’t know much about valves and the like.”
“Did you trace the others to each room to be sure?”
“No, but room eight was the only line with a valve at the main chase.”
“Simply having a valve doesn’t surprise me. Maybe they all have one someplace in their lines. I wouldn’t use that valve to draw my conclusions, at least not until I had traced all the lines.”
“It’s too much of a coincidence, Mark. All these cases apparently happened in room No. 8, and room No. 8
