Critical Judgment (1996) (26 page)

“That’s from the Bible,” Lew said. “I can’t say precisely where.”

Abby moved forward and peered closely at the letters.

“Lew,” she said, “this is dried blood.”

T
he Patience Police Department was housed downtown in an elegant new building of cedar, redwood, and glass. The array of communication dishes and antennae on the roof suggested that, like the regional hospital, the station was state of the art. And to Abby that suggested Colstar.

She had driven alone to the station from Lew’s farm to report Josh’s disappearance and the frightening findings at the Sawicki place. The sergeant taking her report was a thick-necked moose of a man whose name tag identified him as Sullivan. His manner stopped just short of open contempt.

“I’d like to be of assistance to you, Miss Dolan, I really would,” Sullivan said in an unabashedly patronizing tone. “But, frankly, I don’t know what we can do about this situation.”

Abby began to simmer.

“The first thing you can do is call me Dr. Dolan. And the next is to let me speak to your captain.”

Sullivan reddened.

“Captain Gould is out,
Doctor
Dolan. He won’t be back until later this afternoon. But I know he’d tell you the same thing. If the Sawickis file vandalism charges
against this Wyler character, then we can get a warrant and put out a bulletin on him. But, otherwise, as far as we know at this point, the only crime that’s been committed is unlawful entry—by you.”

Just pray that you never get injured while I’m on duty
, Abby wanted to say. But she knew such a threat would only cause her more trouble. Besides, there was no way she would ever treat Sergeant Sullivan differently from any other patient … except, perhaps, to order a rectal temp.

Smiling inwardly at the notion, she signed the report and headed home. She was anxious to call Josh’s parents and a few of his friends to alert them to what was happening. The trick would be to do so without alarming them too much. But, then again, why shouldn’t they be alarmed? She certainly was.

Before she began making
those
calls, however, there was one that was even more important to her—Donna Tracy. The young record-room attendant had become a victim of Abby’s search for answers. An apology wouldn’t replace the woman’s job, but for today it would have to do.

Donna was furious at her boss, Joanne Ricci, but not at all angry with Abby.

“First of all, you saved Dad’s life,” she said. “You’d have to do something pretty horrible to offset that. But, second, as far as I was concerned, all we were trying to do was get some information on patients who were ill. That’s what I don’t understand. I don’t think you deserved to be spoken to the way Joanne did the other night, and I told her so.
That’s
why she fired me. Not for helping you, but for saying she was wrong, and for telling her that if you asked to check over some records again, I’d help you again.”

Suddenly Abby found herself debating whether or not to request just that. Lew or no Lew, there was still part of her that wanted to keep some distance between herself and the Alliance. But there was a much larger
part that wanted to learn the truth. And Donna Tracy
had
opened the door.

“Donna, I want you to feel free to say no to what I’m about to propose,” she said.

“Hey, that’s easy. I’m a ‘no’ kind of person to begin with.”

“Here’s what’s going on.”

Carefully, completely, Abby reviewed the sorts of cases that had led her to believe that toxic exposure might be at work in Patience.

“You need to get back into KarMen,” Donna said when she had finished.

“That’s the request you can refuse.”

“Do you have a computer with a modem?”

Abby considered whether she could return to Orchard Road and either take Josh’s computer or use it where it was. But she wasn’t even certain that the phone lines were working, and with the police now aware of the situation, she would not feel at ease hanging around the house. Bringing the computer to her place was a possibility, but she was worried about infuriating Josh should he return home, and fearful that her well-documented lack of mechanical aptitude would make it nearly impossible to set up the system at home.

“Is there anyplace you can think of where I could find one?” she asked.

“Of course. The bookstore at the community college has about a dozen of them for rent in back. Meet me there at, say, seven. That way we’ll be certain Joanne has gone home. I should be able to get you into the system. From there you’re on your own.”

“That’s as much as I could have ever hoped for, Donna. I’m very grateful, but remember—”

“I know, I know. I don’t have to help. But, Dr. Dolan, remember what my dad looked like lying there on that table in the ER with almost no heartbeat at all on his monitor?”

“Of course I do. I’ll never forget that.”

“Well, he just left with my mom for Hawaii.”

It was nearing ten in the evening—one more hour before the Patience Community College Bookstore closed for the night. Abby was one of four still using the computers in the back room. She had yet to uncover any clear connections among the patients she had reviewed, but she
was
amassing information. She sensed that, sooner or later, a pattern would emerge.

Donna Tracy had tapped into the KarMen record-keeping system with no trouble whatsoever. When Abby asked her whose password she had used, all Donna would say was, “I have friends.”

After Abby assured herself that she could find her way around the system, she insisted Donna return home. There were a dozen or so years separating them, but Abby enjoyed the younger woman’s sarcastic humor and quickly felt comfortable around her. She had no wish to cause Donna more trouble.

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you’ve done tonight,” Abby said, “and also how sad I am about your losing your job.”

“There are more important things. The message to me was that I was working in the wrong place to begin with. I need to go back for some more schooling.”

“Almost never a bad idea,” Abby said. “Are you going to be all right?” she asked, uncertain how to approach the subject of money.

Donna made a theatrical show of looking at the data sheets and the screen.

“I don’t know,” she said. “You tell me.”

She patted Abby fondly on the shoulder and left.

Now, almost three hours later, Abby summoned up the twentieth record to be examined, a forty-five-year-old father of three, named Henry Post. Post worked for
the city as a groundskeeper/maintenance man in Colstar Park.

Name … Age … Birth Date … Address …

Abby logged each fact onto her data sheets. Then she referred to the map of the valley she had constructed and divided arbitrarily into a grid of twenty-five equal segments. She located the man’s residence and work address with dots of colored pencil—segment eight for the house and twenty-two for the park. There seemed to be a slight clustering of dots in the southwestern part of the valley—the area farthest from the plant itself. But the grouping was not at all striking.

Status: Outpatient. Physician: G. Oleander. Admitting diagnosis: chronic cough. Discharge diagnosis: chronic bronchitis. Physical findings: none. Laboratory findings: CBC normal, Chest X ray normal, MRI unremarkable …

Abby dutifully recorded every available piece of information on the man. As she worked, she again became aware that something about the data was bothering her—something even beyond the fact that a predominance of the patients had George Oleander as their primary physician. The workups were, in most cases, simply
too
thorough. There were too many patients getting CT scans and way, way too many having MRIs, a sophisticated scan that was the diagnostic court of last resort—incredibly accurate, but very expensive. The patient was inserted into a total-body cylinder and had to lie motionless for nearly an hour while a three-dimensional picture of the body was generated—an unnerving experience for many people. But there were also an excessive number of blood counts, chemistry profiles, and standard X rays. In an age of medical-cost containment, peer review, and managed care, such overuse of the laboratory was almost unheard-of.

The finding did nothing to explain the NIWWs, but it did seem too close to universal to be considered coincidence, a fluke. An insurance scam of some sort—fee
splitting with the radiologist or laboratory director—seemed possible. But it was hard to believe that a prosperous and patrician man like George Oleander would risk his reputation and career for that level of larceny.

Struggling to ignore the tightness in her back from three hours of work without a break, Abby finished with Henry Post and moved on to the next NIWW, a thirty-three-year-old teacher named Mildred Moore.

 … Admitting diagnosis: chronic skin abscesses. Discharge diagnosis: same. Physician: G. Oleander …

The pile of data was growing. And with each additional fact Abby sensed there was something already there that she was overlooking—a pattern in those hundreds of pieces of information she had missed. But what?

She rubbed at her eyes, then stood and stretched. One more hour. She could do it. Tomorrow she wasn’t on in the ER until the evening. That would leave her time to check on Ives’s leg, and then to return to the bookstore computers for another go-round inside KarMen. And somewhere during that time, Sandy Stuart would be calling.

Abby twisted her neck until it cracked loudly, a habit that felt wonderful but used to irritate Josh beyond words. One of the remaining students looked up, startled. Abby grinned sheepishly and mouthed an apology. When she sat down at the computer again, the screen was blank. She dialed the access number for KarMen again. Nothing. There was trouble. She felt certain of it.

Quickly, she gathered her notes and hurried to the desk.

“I just lost my line,” she said. “Are there any problems?”

“None that I know of.”

“How much do I owe you?”

“Four hours—sixteen dollars.”

Abby dropped a twenty on the counter and left without waiting for change.

About a hundred yards down the road a cruiser sped past her, lights flashing, headed toward the bookstore. She pulled over and watched through her rearview mirror until it turned into the parking lot.

“Sorry, Donna,” she murmured.

Then she swung back onto the road and hurried home. There were plenty of places where her data sheets would be reasonably safe. She wondered if the same could be said for Abby Dolan.

A
bby was suturing a child in the ER when she heard the screams from outside, followed moments later by the horrible screech of tires and brakes. She cut the fine nylon thread and had just set her instruments down when Josh’s Wrangler exploded through the doors of the ambulance bay into the center of the ER, showering the floor with glass and debris and striking the nurse, Mary Wilder, head-on. Her body flew through the air and hit the wall at eye level with a sickening thud. In an instant there was chaos, with patients and staff screaming, running, and diving for cover.

The Jeep hurtled forward through the central examining area, slamming into a gurney in bay six with an elderly woman lying on it. The stretcher compressed like an accordion. The woman’s body flew twenty feet across the room, limp as a rag doll. Then the Jeep struck the wall. The hood folded backward, shattering the windshield. Flames instantly leaped out from the engine.

Abby raced forward into the billowing black smoke. Through the cobwebbed windshield she could see Josh struggling with the door. His head and face were bloodied. She shouted his name, once, then again, but her cries were lost in the shrieks of others. She raced forward,
stumbling over the body of Mary Wilder. The nurse’s head was twisted at a repulsive angle. Blood trickled down from the corner of her mouth. She stared up at Abby with the vacant look of death.

Abby scrambled to her feet just as Josh stumbled from the Jeep. He was an apparition—the devil. His teeth were bared in a snarling rictus of hate. Blood was cascading over his face. But even through the crimson she could see his eyes, glowing like hot coals.

“Josh!” she screamed as he raised a pistol and aimed it point-blank at a nurse. “Josh, no!”

He heard her voice and lowered the gun a fraction. Then slowly, deliberately, he swung it around and pointed it at her face. She tried to call to him, to beg him, but there was no sound. All around her the scene blurred. Movement slowed. The panicked cries of others became muted. The swirling smoke hung motionless. And, finally, there was only the yawning maw of the revolver muzzle, and above it, Josh’s eyes, flashing out searing laser streaks of gold. Suddenly, from somewhere far in the distance, a telephone began ringing. Abby struggled to locate the sound. The gun barrel expanded, then disappeared. The hideous eyes sparked, then dimmed, then vanished altogether. The smoke and the screams faded. Now there was only the ringing.

Shaken, disoriented, and struggling for air, Abby rolled over and slapped her hand down on the receiver. She rarely remembered dreams of any kind and had never experienced one with such horrible vividness. Her mouth was gravel and sand. The T-shirt she had been sleeping in was unpleasantly damp.

“Hello?” she croaked.

“Abby Dolan?”

Abby cleared her throat and worked herself up on one elbow. The images from her nightmare refused to be banished.

“Yes.”

“Abby, I’m sorry if I woke you. It’s Joe Henderson.”

In an instant she was sitting up and forcing herself to concentrate. The hospital president had never called her at home before. It had to be trouble. She glanced at the alarm clock—almost nine-thirty, the latest she had slept in months.

“Just give me a second to get sorted out, Joe. I was up late last night.”

“I know.”

Uh-oh
.

Abby took a sip of water from a half-filled glass on her night table, then dipped her fingers in it and rubbed them across her eyes. The Josh nightmare was just too goddamn real. Now, it seemed, reality was about to become a nightmare.