myself.'
Blankenship studied her scalp with a penlight and then shook his head. 'Nothing.'
'It was a tiny needle. A twenty-nine gauge or smaller. Shave my hair off if you need to,' Sarah pleaded. 'You'll find it.'
'Sarah, please. Just be patient with us and let us do our jobs. Alma says that your lungs are clear and your vital signs are stable. Within an hour or two, when we're sure your larynx isn't going to go into spasm, I'd like you transferred out of here to Dr. Goldschmidt's service. Apparently, they're going to be very tight on beds here when the surgical schedule starts.'
'Where am I going?'
'The only place you can go and stay in this hospital is Underwood Six.'
'Matt, please. That's a locked ward. Don't let them do this.'
'Sarah, it won't be for long. Besides, with what happened last night, I'd worry if you were anywhere else. I've got things to do and people to see today to try and sort out this powder business. Just go for today, and then we'll see what we can do.'
'I'm telling you, there's a needle puncture mark someplace under my hair where the man who tried to kill me injected something.'
'Please, Dr. Baldwin,' Goldschmidt said, 'I'm sorry if you have something against psychiatrists, or don't trust me in particular. I do want to help you. But it's six-thirty in the morning. I've been up most of the night, and I have a full day of patients and consultations ahead of me. Try not to make this situation any more difficult than it is.'
'Sarah, listen,' Blankenship said, 'my gut tells me that you're okay, and that you're telling the truth. But there really is nothing else we can do right now. I'll tell you what. Twenty-four hours of observation and I'll do everything in my power to convince Dr. Goldschmidt and the staff to send you home. I promise.'
Sarah studied the determined expressions on the three men's faces and then reluctantly agreed to the transfer. The psychiatrist wrote a brief note in her chart and promised to be by to see her on Underwood Six as soon as he had a break in his schedule. One of the psych residents would be by to do her intake history and physical.
'I can hardly wait,' Sarah said.
The yellow vinyl police ribbons across the doorway of room 512 on Thayer Five were not unlike those that had been used on Kwong Tian-Wen's shop. The door itself, with its shattered center panel, was shut. Matt checked to be sure he was unobserved, then loosened the ribbon and slipped inside. The IV pole was still there, but the infusion bag was gone, as was Sarah's lacquered box. There was no evidence that the room had been dusted for fingerprints. There was no closet, and no room for concealment except under the bed. Someone had found a way to get out and lock the door behind him.
Matt inspected the lock, which seemed no different from others on the floor. Certainly whoever it was could have called in a locksmith and had a key made. But for the killer to purposely create such a witness hardly seemed likely. He walked to the only windowed wall. The two ancient double-hung windows were nearly opaque with months, if not years, of outside grime. Through them, he could see the next building, some hundred or hundred and fifty feet away. Screw holes told him that at one time in the remote past the windows had had latches. Replacing them had undoubtedly been a low item on the MCB maintenance list. At five stories above the ground, there was hardly any need for outside security. Then Matt glanced down.
Not three feet below the sill, running the length of the building, was the tattered slate roof of some sort of porch on the fourth floor. The slight pitch of the roof was, to all intents, negligible. Matt opened the window and carefully stepped outside. Forcing himself not to look down, he eased his way along, peering into the other rooms on the fifth floor until he saw one that was empty. The window, like the one in room 512, was not latched. Moments later he was standing in the deserted hall once again.
'So much for that mystery,' he muttered.
It was possible that his discovery, coupled with Sarah's protestations, would be enough to get her discharged. But Matt knew that it was in her best interests to spend at least this one day someplace safe. And this was hardly the day he wanted to be worrying about her. He still had few answers to the mystery of the Ayurvedic Herbal Weight Loss System. But at least now, he had the questions. And he had a short list of those he felt could fill in the blanks-beginning with hospital comptroller Colin Smith.
He closed the door behind the yellow ribbons and hurried down the hall.
CHAPTER 38
'Sarah, you're sure Paris told you about the McGrath Foundation?' Matt asked.
'I'm positive. He's known about a possible grant from the foundation for a year or more. He told me that himself. He said he was counting on the money to help get MCB out of the hole. In fact, I think Colin Smith mentioned it, too. If that much money is coming in, it seems to me the chief financial officer's got to know about it. Maybe he and Glenn and Peter are in it together somehow. Maybe he's skimming off the top before the hospital gets its share.'
'I'll ask him. He's numero uno on my list for today.'
'Matt, please listen to me. I'm fine and I can take care of myself. I don't want to get shipped off to the damn nut ward. Besides, Peter's in all of this right up to his righteous, self-centered eyebrows, and I want to help nail him.'
It was nearly nine-thirty in the morning. Sarah had just been notified that transportation-and security-were on their way to transfer her from the surgical intensive care unit to the locked psychiatric ward on Underwood Six.
'Sarah, I know this isn't what you want,' Matt said, 'but the truth is, you've been through hell. You're just a couple of hours off a ventilator, and I've never seen you look so tired. If you don't go to the psych service freely, Goldschmidt's going to have you committed. As long as he believes you tried to commit suicide, he doesn't really have much choice. And there's something else we shouldn't forget. Since we both know you didn't try to commit suicide, we also know that someone out there tried to kill you.'
'Correction,' Sarah said, her voice still quite hoarse. 'Someone out there tried to make it look like I killed myself. That's what administering that venom to Annalee was all about, Matt. Don't you see? It had to look like I attempted suicide because I was guilty of causing those other DIC cases as well as trying to create one in her. Killing me in any other way would have said just the opposite. We're hitting somebody's raw nerve. Maybe Peter, maybe Glenn, maybe this Dr. Singh. Maybe some combination of those. I don't know. But we're getting close to the truth. Trying to set me up was a very desperate move. We've got to get to the bottom of this before whoever did it tries something else. I can help, Matt. Really I can.'
'I know. But please, there isn't anything I can do. I hate the idea of your being on a locked ward as much as you do. But for the next day we've got to go along with it. Even if we could somehow get you discharged, which we can't, I'd be worried about you every minute we weren't together. I talked to Rosa and Eli before I went to your apartment to get your things. We're going to be working like hell to find out who's behind all this. And today we've got a lot of moving around to do. Hang in there for just this one day. Then I promise we'll do whatever we have to to get you sprung.'
The brief meeting with Blankenship had been fruitful. Matt had shared the details of his encounter with Jeremy Mallon, and Mallon's belief that Peter Ettinger and Glenn Paris were somehow connected through the McGrath Foundation and the Ayurvedic Weight Loss System.
Blankenship knew the McGrath Foundation was based in New York City and that the heads of the philanthropic organization had made initial contact with Glenn Paris and Colin Smith some four or five years before. He had never seen the application Paris had submitted to the agency, nor the actual terms of the grant. But he did know that millions of dollars were involved. He took on the job of trying to locate and penetrate the foundation. He also would arrange for the car he had promised Rosa.
