'My patient's welfare may be at stake.'
'Charles Jones's sister?'
I nodded, surprised that Huenengarth had revealed that much 'Is some type of child abuse suspected?' she said. 'Something Dawn found out about and tried to profit from?'
Swallowing my amazement, I managed to shrug and run a finger across my lips.
She smiled. 'I'm no Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Delaware. But Mr. Huenengarth's visit made me very curious-all that pressure. I've studied health-care systems too long to believe anyone would go to that kind of effort for an average patient. So I asked my husband to make inquiries about the Jones boy. He's a vascular surgeon, has privileges at Western Peds, though he hasn't operated there in years.
So I know who the Joneses are and the role the grandfather's playing in the turmoil the hospital's going through. I also know that the boy died of SIDS and another child keeps getting sick. Rumors are floating. Put that together with the fact that Dawn stole the first child's chart and went from abject student poverty to being quite cavalier about money, add two separate visits from professionals personally looking for that chart, and one doesn't need to be a detective.'
'I'm still impressed.'
Are you and Mr. Huenengarth working at cross-purposes?'
'We're not working together.'
'Whose side are you on?'
'The little girl's.'
Who's paying your fee?'
'Officially, the parents.'
'Don't you consider that a conflict of interest?'
'If it turns out to be, I won't submit a bill.'
She studied me for several moments. 'I do believe you might mean that.
Now tell me this: Does possession of the disks put me in any danger?'
'I doubt it, but it can't be ruled out.'
'Not a very comforting answer.'
'I don't want to mislead you.'
'I appreciate that. I survived the Russian tanks in Budapest in 56, and my survival instincts have been well developed ever since.
What do you suspect might be the importance of the disks?'
'They may contain some kind of coded data,' I said, 'imbedded in the random number table.'
'I must say I thought of the same thing-there really was no logical reason for her to have generated that table at such an early stage of her research. So I scanned it, ran a few basic programs, and no obvious algorithms jumped out. Do you have any cryptographic skills?'
'None whatsoever.'
'Neither do I, though good decoding programs do exist, so one no longer needs to be an expert. However, why don't we take a look right now, and see if our combined wisdom produces anything. After that, I'll hand the disks over to you and be rid of them. I'll also be sending a letter to Huenengarth and the police, carbon-copied to my dean, stating that I passed the disks along to you and have no interest in them.'
'How about just to the police? I can give you a detectives name.'
'No.' She walked back to the desk, picked up the designer purse and unclasped it. Removing a small key, she fit it into the lock of the top desk drawer.
