wood hung pleasantly in the air. In the center of the main room next to the ladder was a wooden rolling workbench, underneath and on top of which were an assortment of tools, including a circular saw and cordless drill.
Noreen Siliski was a pleasant-looking brunette, slightly on the muscular side, with her dark hair pulled back in a sizeable ponytail. Nick sensed that her jeans and white denim work shirt might be the central elements of her wardrobe.
“It’s wonderful that you’re doing this all yourself, Noreen,” Jillian said.
“It’s sort of learn as you go, but I’ve always been able to handle most tools.”
Finally, Mollender stepped forward.
“I like what you’re doing here, Noreen,” he said, seeming somewhat cowed.
“That’s nice of you to say, Saul.”
“So you have the recording?” Jillian asked, anxious to break the negative vibes she sensed were building between the two.
“I believe I do. Saul told me the date. I digitize and archive all the video files he sends me, so it was easy to find. I burned it to DVD so we can watch it here in the office. Can you pull the shades over there?”
Noreen went to the back room and quickly returned, struggling some to push a steel AV cart over the threshold and into a free corner of the room, in front of a quartet of folding chairs. On the top of the cart was a forty-inch HD television set with a DVD player on the shelf beneath it. As the door she came through began closing, Nick caught a glimpse of the work space that lay behind it-one with a raised floor, similar to the call center at Don Reese’s precinct headquarters, and racks that he figured were used to house her computer equipment.
Nick proceeded over to the wall housing three double-hung windows. The chute to the Dumpster, an absolute marvel of practical engineering, opened at the center one. The chute was constructed of large, heavy rubber trash barrels with the bottoms cut out, stacked one just inside another, and held in place by chains looped through the handles and bolted above the inside of the window. The three-story drop to the Dumpster was a modest arc rather than a straight shot, and the overall appearance of the green barrels was that of a giant caterpillar.
“Remarkable,” Nick said, calling Jillian over to see.
“How did you know how to do this?” she asked, amazed.
“How else?” Noreen replied. “The Internet. I just drop that canvas flap down over the window when I leave. It took a few trips to a few hardware and Home Depot stores to get enough barrels, but it wasn’t that expensive or that hard to build.”
Nick closed the blinds and dropped the canvas over the window opening. With the room sufficiently dark they gathered in front of the television. Nick and Jillian were both feeling too anxious to sit.
“Well, I hope this disc is holding what you’re looking for.”
“We hope so too,” Nick said.
“In that case, I think we should get on with this.” Noreen slipped the DVD into the slot and with a nod of understanding to her guests, pressed Play.
CHAPTER 40
“You ready for this?” Nick asked as the screen lit up with static.
“Dunno,” Jillian said grimly. “Are you?”
“I’m not sure. We’ve come so far.”
“I can’t believe I’m going to see Belle alive.”
“Want me to stop it?” Nick asked, holding up the remote, given to him by Noreen.
“No, but I want to sit down, I think.”
Jillian inhaled deeply and took Nick’s hand in the darkness. They were six feet from the screen, about to watch a video that included the death of a patient. It also was probably going to include shots of Jillian’s younger sister, subsequently murdered in a manner that every policeman involved with the case believed was suicide.
Saul Mollender and Noreen Siliski sat next to each other, behind and to the right of the others. The tension in the room was high.
In half a minute, the static gave way to a set of standard legal notices, yellow on black, that included a summary of the HIPAA laws surrounding patient confidentiality, an outline of who was allowed to view the recording and for what purposes, and the name of the editor, Annette Furst, Department of Medical records. Finally came the hospital name, date, and operating room number. Jillian was rigid in her seat, squeezing blood from Nick’s hand.
The introductory information was in the same yellow print.
PATIENT: Aleem Syed Mohammad
Hospital ID: 881-83-7782-Karachi, Pakistan
Condition: Cardiac rhabdomyoma
Procedure: Cardiopulmonary bypass; excision of rhabdomyoma; cardiac reconstruction
Present in the Operating Room:
Surgeon: Abigail Spielmann, M.D.
Asst. Surgeon: Lewis Leonard, M.D.
Cardiac Surgical Resident: Yasmin Dasari-Olan, M.D.
Anesthesiologist: Thomas Landrew, M.D.
Perfusionist: Roger Pendleton, CCP, Cert. ABCP
Scrub Nurse: Kimberly Fox
Circulating Nurse: Cassandra Browning-Leavitt
Medical Student: Yu Jiang
Nursing Student: Belle Coates
Nick felt the energy in Jillian’s grip increase at the sight of her sister’s name. He froze the picture.
“Do we know who Dr. Abigail Spielmann is?” he asked.
“I think she was brought in from another hospital,” the Mole replied. “Probably an expert in cardiac tumors like this one.”
“She must be big stuff if the cardiac surgical chief would allow it,” Jillian said.
Nick undid the pause.
The printing gave way to a gleaming operating room. Three cameras, according to Mollender-one of them straight down into where the patient would be placed on the now empty table; one up from the foot; and the other giving a wide-angle shot of the entire operating room. The video editor’s job, Mollender explained, was to mix the various camera angles into a cohesive and useful presentation.
The opening sequence was shot from the wide-angle camera and showed the perfusionist, wearing scrubs, a mask, and hair cover, but set back from the sterile field where the surgeons would be working. Seated behind the long heart-lung bypass machine, he looked like a concert pianist preparing for a performance. He was chatting with the scrub nurse.
“Need anything?” the perfusionist said. “Cassandra’s right outside.”
The audio and visual feeds were excellent.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” the scrub nurse replied. “The only thing from Dr. Spielmann’s instrument list that I don’t have here is a Loc-Ness tissue stabilizer. Could you ask Cassandra to get one for me, please?”
“Will do. Have you met Spielmann?”
“She came by to see me a little while ago. She seems terrific.”
“I thought the same thing. Be right back.”
The scrub nurse was positioned just above and behind where Dr. Abigail Spielmann would be working. She
