a husky female voice said, 'Can I help you?'
I straightened. A woman in her late sixties was looking at me. She had on the whitest white coat I'd ever seen, worn buttoned over a black dress. Her face was deeply tanned, wrinkled, and pinch-featured under a helmet of straight white hair. Her posture would have made a marine correct his own.She saw my badge and said, 'Oh, excuse me, Doctor.' Her accent was Marlene Dietrich infused with London. Her eyes were small, green-blue, electrically alert. A gold pen was clipped to her breast pocket. She wore a thin gold chain from which a single pearl dangled, set in a golden nest like a nacreous egg.
'Dr. Kohler,' I said. Alex Delaware.'
We shook hands and she read my badge. Confusion didn't suit her.
'I used to be on the staff,' I said. 'We worked together on some cases. Crohn's disease. Adaptation to the ostomy?'
Ah, of course.' Her smile was warm and it made the lie inoffensive.
She'd always had that smile, wore it even while cutting down a resident's faulty diagnosis. Charm planted by an upper-class Prague childhood cut short by Hitler, then fertilized by marriage to The Famous Conductor. I remembered how she'd offered to use her connections to bring funds to the hospital. How the board had turned her down , calling that kind of fund-raising unethical.
'Looking for Stephanie?' she said.
'I need to talk to her about a patient.'
The smile hung there but her eyes iced over. 'I happen to be looking for her myself. She's scheduled to be here. But I suppose our future division head must be busy.'
I feigned surprise.
'Oh, yes,' she said. 'Those in the know say her promotion Is imminent.'
The smile got wider and took on a hungry cast. 'Well, all the best to her... though I hope she learns to anticipate events a bit better.
One of her teenage patients just showed up without an appointment and is creating a scene out in the waiting room. And Stephanie left without checking out.'
'Doesn't sound like her,' I said.
'Really? Lately, it's become like her. Perhaps she sees herself as having already ascended.'
A nurse passed by. Kohler said, 'Juanita?'
'Yes, Dr. Kohler?'
'Have you seen Stephanie?'
'I think she went out.'
'Out of the hospital?'
'I think so, Doctor. She had her purse.'
'Thank you, Juanita.'
When the nurse had gone, Kohler pulled a set of keys out of a pocket.
'Here,' she said, jamming one of the keys into Stephanie's lock and turning. Just as I caught the door, she yanked the key out sharply and walked away.
The espresso machine was off but a half-full demitasse sat on the desk, next to Stephanie's stethoscope. The smell of fresh roast overpowered the alcohol bite seeping in from the examining rooms. Also on the desk were a pile of charts and a memo pad stuffed with drug company stationery. As I slipped my note under it I noticed writing on the top sheet.
Dosages, journal references, hospital extensions. Below that, a solitary notation, scrawled hastily, barely legible.
B. Browsers
