True Evil

Chris looked back at his mentor, realizing perhaps for the first time how much older Tom Cage really was. Tom had started practicing medicine in 1958. He'd grown up in an era when antibiotics did not exist, yet he'd lived to practice in the era of the PET scan and gene therapy.

'I need you to do me a favor, Tom. No questions asked.'

The older man nodded soberly. 'Name it.'

'I want you to examine me. My whole body.'

'What am I looking for? Are you having symptoms?'

Tom was thinking what Chris would be thinking in the same situation. Most doctors at some time in their life suspect that they're dying of a terminal illness. They know too much, see too much, and even the slightest symptom can bring on fears of fatal disease.

'I've got a severe headache,' Chris said, 'but that's not really the problem. I have reason to suspect… something. I want you to go over every inch of my body with a light. Even a magnifying glass, if you need it.'

'What am I looking for?'

'Anything abnormal. A needle mark, a bruise, a lesion, a small incision. I want you to start inside my mouth.'

Tom stared at him for a long time. Chris could almost see the questions turning inside his mind. But in the end Tom only said, 'You'd better strip and get on the table.'

While Chris removed his clothes, Tom donned a leather headpiece with a light mounted on it. Chris climbed onto the examining table and lay on his back.

'My eyes aren't what they used to be,' said Tom. 'But I found a melanoma yesterday, so tiny you wouldn't believe it. Start in your mouth, you say?'

Chris opened wide.

Tom took a tongue depressor from a jar and used it to expose Chris's gums and mucosa. Then he took a small mirror from a drawer and, cursing quietly, began to check Chris's mouth.

'Goddamn it,' Tom muttered. 'This is like spelunking.'

Chris made a guttural sound of acknowledgment.

'Looks clear to me.' Tom withdrew the tongue depressor. 'Remember to floss after every meal.'

Chris was in no mood for levity, but Tom gave him a wry look anyway.

'Okay, what now?'

'Look under my hair,' Chris said, flashing back to Gregory Peck in The Omen.

As Tom carefully worked his way across Chris's scalp, he said, 'I don't see anything but incipient male- pattern baldness.'

'Good. Now my skin. Every inch of it.'

Tom started at Chris's neck and moved down his trunk. 'I'm glad you're not a hairy bastard,' he said, moving the light across Chris's sternum. 'Okay…getting to the family jewels now.'

'Every crack and crevice.' Chris felt Tom's gloved hands lift his testicles, then check his penis. 'The hole, too.'

'Jesus.'

Tom checked him there, then moved back to his shoulders. He checked both underarms, then the extremities.

'Between my toes, too.'

'This reminds me of my internship,' Tom said. 'I worked several months in the Orleans Parish Prison. The cops used to have me check between suspects' toes for needle marks.'

'Same deal,' Chris said, turning onto his stomach.

'Let's get the worst over first,' Tom said, and Chris felt cold hands pulling his cheeks apart. He expected Tom to release them immediately, but he didn't.

'What do you see?'

'I'm not sure,' Tom murmured. 'Looks like maybe an injection site.'

Chris's breath died in his throat. 'Are you serious?'

'Afraid so. Looks like somebody stuck in a needle and you tried to jerk away. Like a scared toddler, you know? There's definite bruising.'

'Outside the anus or in?'

'Right at the opening. This is weird, Chris. Are you going to tell me what's going on?'

Chris got off the table and pulled on his pants. 'We need to check Ben, too.'

Tom's eyes went wide. 'What?'

'I'm dead serious. He's in the front office now. Ben has the same headache I do. I'll tell him we're checking for pinworms.'

Tom stared at Chris as though worried he might be drunk.

'I'm not crazy, Tom. I wish I was. Will you stay in here with me while I check Ben?'

I'm sure as hell not leaving you alone with him, said Tom's eyes.

Chris skidded into the driveway at the Elgin house, his heart pounding with anger and fear. On the passenger seat beside him was a wooden case he'd borrowed from the radiologist at St. Catherine's Hospital. The image of Ben lying on his back on the exam table haunted him even more than the video of Thora on the hotel balcony. What are you looking for? Ben had asked. Chris had lied, and Tom had lied to cover for him. But there was no banishing the look of disapproval on the older physician's face. Tom Cage suspected something seriously irregular, and in the same situation Chris probably would have, too. He would have to rely on the goodwill he had built up over nine months of practicing with Tom to carry the day.

After checking Ben for marks and not finding them, Chris had put the boy back in his receptionist's care and shut himself in his office. He had no idea what might have been injected into him, but the thing that kept coming back to him was Alex's revelation that Shane Lansing had access to radioactive materials. Added to this was Pete Connolly's assertion that radiation would be the easiest method of intentionally causing cancer in a human being. Given those two facts, what did the needle mark near his rectum mean? Had a radioactive liquid been injected into him? Or could pellets small enough to pass through a needle have been shot into his bloodstream? He tried to recall what Connolly had said about irradiated thallium being used to assassinate someone, but it was difficult to concentrate with fear ballooning in his chest.

Forcing himself under control, Chris walked down the hall to the X-ray room and asked Nancy Somers, their tech, to shoot an X-ray of his midsection. Nancy looked nonplussed by this request, but she wasn't about to refuse her employer. Chris grabbed a paper gown, stripped beside the big machine, then donned the oversize napkin and climbed onto the cold table. Nancy adjusted the voltage, then shot the picture. Two minutes later, Chris was jamming the X-ray into the clip of the light-box in the viewing room.

'What are you looking for?' Tom asked from behind him.

'Overexposure.'

Chris could hardly speak as he scanned the X-ray. He was terrified of seeing black spots caused by radioactive emissions overexposing the film. Yet though he squinted at every inch of the film, he saw nothing abnormal.

'Looks fine to me,' Tom said. 'Does this have to do with the needle mark?'

Chris nodded. Then he felt Tom's hand on his shoulder.

'What's going on, son? Talk to me.'

There was no hiding it anymore. Chris turned to his partner and said, 'Somebody's trying to kill me, Tom.'

After a shocked silence, Tom said, 'Who?'

'Thora.'

The older man's eyes narrowed. 'Can you substantiate that?'

'No. But I'm working with an FBI agent to prove it.'

Tom nodded slowly. 'Is Shane Lansing tied up in this somehow?'

'I believe so. Did you know that he owns part of a radiation oncology center in Meridian?'