'Rosa, what do you mean you've been taken off the investigation?'
Seated on a maple rocker by the foot of the bed in Rosa Suarez's room, Sarah stared at the older woman incredulously.
'I told you before that my supervisor and I don't see eye to eye much of the time.'
'That study you did in San Francisco.'
'Precisely.'
'But your data were altered.'
'He doesn't believe that. Anyhow, he's cited my lack of progress and the absence of any further cases of DIG, and he's sent me back to the library until my retirement in four months. For the time being, I will not be replaced on the project.'
'That's terrible.' Sarah felt a knot of panic in her chest. She had hoped, believed, that the impressive, diligent little woman would somehow solve the mystery that was threatening her career. 'After the things you told me, I really had high hopes for some sort of breakthrough. Now you're leaving. I just-'
Rosa Suarez stopped her with a raised hand. She then sat down on the edge of the bed, her gaze leveled at Sarah.
'There has been a breakthrough, Sarah,' she said. 'And I am most assuredly not leaving.'
'But-'
'I had about six weeks' worth of unused sick time. So as of today, I am on medical leave, recuperating from a slipped disk. An orthopedic friend of ours who owed me a favor has kindly supplied the official documentation of my plight.'
Sarah's emotional roller coaster began another upward swing.
'Thank you,' she said hoarsely. 'Thank you for not giving up. But I don't understand. How can your department head stop the investigation if there's been a breakthrough?'
'Because,' Rosa said grinning, 'he doesn't know about it. And he won't know about it until it is airtight and backed up twice over. I sense that while the U.S. military doesn't seem to be involved here as it was in San Francisco, some very powerful and resourceful folks might be.'
'Tell me.'
'The problem you have faced is two-pronged. First, there have been no DIC cases found that are unrelated to you. And second, the three DIC cases from your hospital have no major risk factors in common other than your herbal supplement.'
'Yes, I understand that.'
'Well, after many dead ends, I have unearthed another, most significant factor that our three DIC cases had in common.'
'Namely?' Sarah asked excitedly.
'Namely, their weight.'
It took no more than fifteen minutes for Rosa to describe the efforts that culminated with her discovery of Constanza Hidalgo's diary and the revelation of the girl's incredible weight loss, achieved with some sort of powder from a 'foreign' MCB doctor, referred to in the diary only as 'Dr. S.'
'Armed with that information,' she explained, 'I retraced my steps through Alethea Worthington's past and finally through Lisa Summer's. It has taken a lot more time than I would have liked, because Alethea's family is just about nonexistent. And Lisa and her father have been out of the country for much of the past month. But what I've learned is more than intriguing. Alethea once had a horrific weight problem. Two hundred and forty pounds, one of her neighbors told me. Here are a couple of photocopies I made from her high school yearbook. This is Alethea, here. As you can see, she was quite large.'
'Do we know if she took the same diet powder as Connie Hidalgo?' Sarah asked.
'Not exactly. But I have been able to ascertain that her weight loss occurred about four and one-half years ago-the same approximate time as Connie's. And the pages covering that time have been torn from her MCB chart as well.'
'And you haven't told anyone about this?'
Rosa shook her head.
'After what happened in San Francisco, it's not even easy for me to share this information with you,' she said. 'But I know how much you've suffered. And although I hardly consider myself an expert on the subject of who to trust, I do trust you.'
'Thank you,' Sarah said. 'Oh, God, thank you so much.'
Blankenship was right. A break was imminent.
'There's more,' Rosa said as if reading her thoughts. 'Much more.'
'Lisa?'
'Exactly. I haven't spoken to her directly, but I did make several visits to her Boston home. Her housemates were most suspicious of me, especially in view of the lawsuit against you. But finally they came around. Here are some pictures they gave me of her. The top few are from when she first moved into the group house. The last couple are more recent.'
'She must be fifty pounds lighter in these later photos!'
'Seventy, actually,' Rosa said. 'Only one of the people in the house was there four and a half years ago when she lost the weight, but he's sure she did it with a powder of some sort. The same time, probably the same powder. Sarah, we are not dealing with coincidence here. I promise you we're not.'
'Did you check Lisa's hospital record for missing pages?'
'There's no physical evidence that pages were removed, but that means nothing. There are no pages from that whole year.'
'Rosa, this is a breakthrough. Do you have any idea who this Dr. S. might be?'
'Some. The clues provided in Constanza Hidalgo's diary suggested a male, possibly foreign. I added to that equation the time frame over which this fascinating powder was dispensed, and the initial 'S.' Then I checked through the records at personnel.' She searched through her portfolio and withdrew a spiral bound notebook. 'Assuming the parameters I chose are all correct, there are three good candidates. I wasn't quite certain what to do with her impression that the man was foreign. She did not seem that sure. The first name of the three is still on the staff at MCB. The other two haven't been for several years.'
She passed the notebook over to Sarah.
'Gilberto Santiago, M.D… Sun Soon, M.D., Ph.D… Pramod Singh, D.Med. (Ayurv.),' Sarah read. 'No bells for any of them. Not even Santiago.'
'What does that mean?' Rosa asked. 'That last man's degree?'
'Probably Doctor of Ayurvedic Medicine. It's an ancient Indian healing system-' Her voice fell away.
'What is it, Sarah? You look like you've just seen a ghost.'
Slowly Sarah's eyes came up to meet hers. 'What I may have just seen, Rosa, is the truth. I need to make a call.'
'Use that phone right there. If the call is long distance, just use this credit card. I'll be long retired before anyone realizes that a woman on sick leave in Atlanta made this call from Boston.'
The best Sarah could do to reach Annalee Ettinger was to leave an urgent message with the operator at Xanadu. She gave Rosa's name rather than her own and stressed several times the importance of the situation.
'Now,' Rosa said after Sarah had hung up, 'it seems that it is your turn for explanations.'
Sarah shared what little she knew of Pramod Singh and the Ayurvedic Herbal Weight Loss System. She had sketched Peter Ettinger as fairly as she could, but Rosa quickly picked up on the tension the man brought to her voice.
'He sounds to me like a textbook megalomaniac,' Rosa observed.
'I always knew he was prideful. But I considered him very much a visionary.'
'My experience is that both are often stepping-stones on the road to megalomania.'
When the phone rang Sarah reached instantly for the receiver.
'Dr. Rosa Suarez, please?'
Sarah recognized Annalee's rich alto. 'Annalee, it's Sarah. How are you doing?'
