Lethal Practice (22 page)

He answered with a whistle. Then he showed the class that had always made me like him. “Earl, if you’ve no objections, I’ll move a few of my guys in with you until this is over, as a precaution. You know, mutual interests.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to.”

“Thanks, Doug.”

“Hey, wait until you see my bill. I gotta protect customers like you to get the kids through college.”

I told him he could pick up the keys from Mrs. Sharp. He said no problem, he was going to give us real locks this time, and hung up.

Janet and Bufort had finished the tour, and Janet was still sure that nothing appeared to have been taken. Bufort urged us not to stay too long, assured us he’d get added police surveillance right away, then left.

Janet started to compile a list of lamps, furniture, and electrical appliances that we’d need. Neither of us had time to shop, and since Doug had done two expansions on our home up north and some previous work on the city house, he’d come to expect to take on tasks for us that his other clients would do themselves. I think he secretly took pride in our complete trust.

I told Janet of Doug’s offer of protection, which made her look relieved. Bufort’s cops might be okay, but with Doug’s men around we knew we’d have the safest house in Buffalo.

The phone rang. I thought it would be the vet and braced myself. Instead, it was Carole. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

“Ambulance telegraph.”

I should have guessed. At least they’d think it was an accident.

“Are we going to see you today?” she asked.

I glanced at my watch. Only eleven. Less than four and a half hours since I’d stepped out the door, blissfully ignorant of what was in motion.

“Yeah, soon. Anything big on my desk?”

She didn’t answer. I suddenly felt a twinge of fear again. “Carole, what’s happened?” I snapped. “Tell me!”

She took a breath, then answered, “Your office here was broken into sometime last night. They smashed the window and came in from the parking lot, and made a hell of a mess, tossing around our files and drawers. Only one thing seems to be missing, though—our backup computer disks.”

I couldn’t talk. My throat had gone dry again. I had to try a couple of times before I could swallow. Janet, watching my reaction, started to look alarmed. She must have thought it was bad news about Muffy. “It’s my office,” I mouthed at her. Then I found my voice. “Carole, what was on those disks?”

“That’s the good news. Nothing I can’t replace. Only the backup of some minutes and ER lectures that are already on our hard drive. And they didn’t get at that.”

After repeated thefts, hospital security had mounted all computer terminals on sliding trays in heavy wall units that could be closed and locked at the end of the day. Anyone trying to break in would need a crowbar and a lot of time, and have to suffer the consequences of making quite a racket.

“Did security see anything?” I asked.

“No. After breaking the glass I guess the thief was in and out pretty quickly, probably afraid the noise would attract attention.”

“Did anyone in the ER hear anything?”

“It’s too closed off. I wouldn’t expect them to. But it was
Dr. Kradic who discovered the break-in.”

“What!”

“Yeah, he was out in the parking lot this morning around six-thirty to get some fresh air and saw your broken window. That’s when he reported it to security.”

I was unable to speak again.

“Dr. Garnet?” said Carole, obviously puzzled by my silence. But my mind was racing to the earlier doubts I’d had about Kradic back in Sophie’s waiting room.

That explained why I couldn’t reach him earlier this morning. A lot of ER doctors, myself included, went out in the parking lot at that time, especially if we’d been up all night. By then it was too late to go to bed, and the cool air made it easier to stay awake while waiting for the new shift to arrive. But Kradic could also have been out there doing the break-in and then reported it to take suspicion off himself. And not getting what he was after in the office, did he come after me in the alley?

“Dr. Garnet? Are you there?” asked Carole again.

I hesitated, not sure how much to tell her. She had to know at least enough to be careful. “Carole, my office at home—in fact all of my home—was ransacked this morning as well. They probably didn’t find what they wanted here either, because nothing seems to be missing, but I want you to keep our office there locked even if you step out for a minute. They may try again.”

“My God!” she gasped. “Who’s doing it?”

“I’ve no idea, but you also should warn security to be extra careful on their rounds. Nobody is to get in unless we say so, not even housekeeping. And I want you to make sure Detective Bufort knows about the break-in there. He left here a few minutes ago and should be back at the hospital pretty soon doing those interviews. If he isn’t, track him down.”

“Of course,” she said quickly, probably puzzled why someone from homicide had been at my house for a break-in, but she didn’t question it.

“Anything else important?” I asked, trying to control my fears while forcing my attention onto routine business.

“No, the usual,” Carole answered. “Did you forget you asked me to get the staff together again for tonight at
five?”

Forget? Hell, it sounded like someone else’s agenda. “Let’s just say it hasn’t been in the front of my mind this morning, Carole. I’ll be there. Anything else?”

“Nothing much. Voyzchek wants our copy of last summer’s psych coverage. Can I give it to her?”

Funny. Voyzchek was in charge of emergency for psychiatry, but Gil Fernandez drew up their schedule. I knew they didn’t get along, though it would have been easier just to ask him.

“Sure,” I agreed, wondering why she’d want a five-month-old roster. “Anything else?”

“Yes, Hurst’s called a staff meeting with Bufort for tomorrow morning.”

After what I’d been through, it’d be anticlimactic. “That’s it?”

“Want to know the place is a mess?”

“Not really. Tell Susanne I’ll be there in an hour.”

I hung up thinking of Muff. She had to be out of surgery by now, or dead. While I was on the phone with Carole, Janet had gone upstairs. I guessed she was packing some things for the stay at her parents’ place in Lackawanna, a small town nearby. When she finally came back down, I measured her optimism by the size of the bag. It was a bit too big for my liking.

“You looked upset by your phone call,” she commented without asking outright what was wrong now.

Oh, God, I thought, I don’t want to tell her, not after all this. “Just office crap,” I lied, and immediately felt like an adulterer for keeping stuff from her again.

We were in what was left of our kitchen. She stood by the counter picking at an edge of raised linoleum and readying herself for the news as I dialed Sophie’s number.

“Hi. It’s Dr. Garnet calling about my dog Muff?”

“Oh, yes. Dr. Garnet, Dr. Sophie was trying to reach you. I’ll get her.” Silence, absurd Muzak on hold. It was bad. Otherwise, the receptionist surely would have said Muffy was all right. Then I remembered the surly treatment from her earlier. Maybe the woman was cruelly perverse. No, I thought, they reserved the bad news for Sophie to give herself. Just like it was in my job.

“I’m on hold,” I told Janet. She turned to stare out the back window. She was unknowingly looking at where it had happened.

The phone clicked off hold. “She’s alive but gone septic.” Sophie got right to the point. She knew the agony of not knowing. “Low blood pressure, lousy urine output, and fever. Same picture as with two-legged sickies, and the same lousy outcome.”

Eighty percent mortality in humans. Muff was in bad trouble. “What antibiotics are you using?”

“Usual triple therapy. Amp and Genta, with metronidazole for the chance of anaerobes. The only good news is when we explored her gut, there were no gross perforations we could see.”

Again, left unsaid was the possibility of a microscopic hole. The lethality of bacteria from feces was the fear of even modern medicine. Their names raised the specter of horrific Greek gods.
Proteus, Clostridium, Pseudomonas.
Vengeful creatures. If allowed outside the confines of tough intestinal walls, they would marshal their armies and sweep through the bloodstream to infest heart, lungs, kidneys, and brain.

The antibiotics Sophie had chosen were correct but, by human standards, outmoded. They would guarantee the eighty percent mortality.

“Do you want me to get some Triaxone?” This was a new fourth-generation cephalosporin that killed everything with little side effects except to the wallet. The residents called it “gorillacillin.”

“It would be a good idea—but it’ll be on your card. My patients don’t rate that stuff.” What Sophie meant was Triaxone had been tested and found to be safe for humans but was unproven for dogs. A bizarre reaction was always possible, and she was merely letting me know the risk was mine.

“I’ll send it over.”

I hung up, then realized I hadn’t thanked her.

Janet knew from my end of the conversation what Muff was up against. She came up, put her arms around me, and kissed me fiercely on the lips. A flash of longing, completely sudden and out of place, surged up and then had to be put down in each of us. Being near death always made me want to make love. We held each other, letting the mutual hunger ebb. Janet put her mouth close to my ear. “Save that for me, and you take care!” she whispered.

* * * *

I called the pharmacist next door to my private office.

“Carlo, I need a favor. My dog got hit by a car. She’s alive but septic, and I want to get Triaxone for her.”

“For your dog?”

“Yeah. She’s in bad shape.”

“Gee, I’m sorry. Listen, the best way is I list it to your office, then what you do with it is your business. Where do I send it?”

I gave him Sophie’s address and the daily dose calculated on Muffy’s weight, then phoned Mrs. Sharp to warn her that Doug’s crew would show up soon, and asked her please to give them the spare key I always left with her. She’d be miffed not to be kept up-to-date anyway. I figured her life was sniffing out neighborhood news and secrets, so why ruin her day?

Soon she’d be out prowling the back lane, trying to engineer a chance meeting with anyone who might have a tidbit of gossip for her. Two steps behind would follow her thin, stooped husband, the curve of his back and nose giving him an odd pecking look, like a heron foraging in grass. In the prewinter light the old couple might be cave dwellers, except millennia of marital training had finally got the man where he belonged.

After I replaced the phone receiver, I hesitated about the next call I had to make. Even thinking about it made my throat go dry again.

I needed to confront Kradic. If he was the monster behind this, I wanted to flush him out now. But I had nothing specific to do it with. I knew he was mad at me, but he was mad at a lot of people. I didn’t even have an inkling of what might motivate the man. And I certainly had no evidence that he was the maniac behind the hit-and-run attack this morning. I had to have something if I was going to voice any suspicions to Bufort.

I decided I’d call Kradic about the break-in and ask him if he had seen anything. Or I’d ask him to speak with me before our meeting tonight about practicing with cardiac needles on DOAs. Either way, I’d look for some giveaway, some shred of the hatred behind the attacks on me. If it was him, I figured I might at least sense it.

I called the hospital, got his number, and had them connect me to his home. Busy. I tried again but got the same annoying sound.

I wasn’t going to be put off, so I called the city operator.

“This is Dr. Earl Garnet, chief of emergency at St. Paul’s. I’ve been trying to reach Dr. Albert Kradic, but his line’s busy. Could you please interrupt the conversation and advise him I have to talk to him?”

“Of course,” she replied. I gave her Kradic’s number and waited. My hands were getting sweaty as I psyched myself to sound official while being shrewd as hell.

“I’m sorry, sir, but that phone seems to be off the hook.”

Shit! He was probably sleeping. I’d have to psych myself all over again tonight.

I cleaned up, found some fresh clothes, and got ready to go. When I went to lock up before leaving by the back way, I found a cop car parked in front of the house. Already? I marveled at the effect Janet had on people like Bufort. I went out and walked over to the driver’s side, where a very bored cop was reading a magazine. He barely looked up as I introduced myself. My protection. I advised him about Doug arriving later.

“How will I know him?” he asked without much interest.

“Big, very big.” Thank God.

* * * *

The only sign that my usual predawn excursion to the hospital was now occurring at high noon was a lighter shade of gray and a hundred times more traffic. Buffalo drivers are an ornery lot after three weeks of rotten weather. Ten minutes of the snarl-up in the streets and I was giving the finger and lipping off with the rest of them. By the time I pulled into the sodden parking lot, I felt warmer than I’d been in weeks. The weary attendant signaled me to the special spot he kept for a few of us when we were late and otherwise out of luck. It was the emergency fire lane outside the staff entry to the outpatient department, where we held all our clinics. Since I was also chairman of the Safety and Emergency Measures Committee, it was a slick move. Who was I going to report myself to?

I parked, got out of the car, and opened the trunk to retrieve the computer printouts and disks I’d been working on at the cabin. Then I paused. I hadn’t put them there for any specific reason. I was in the habit of lugging a small office around with me, and rather than cart it inside each time I parked, I just locked my briefcase and any other stacks of paperwork in the trunk as a matter of routine.

Could the quality assurance data be why I was suddenly a target? Was that what the night visitor had been after at the cabin? And this morning in my office and at my home? The thought seemed absurd. Yeah, most of the physicians were nervous about their visibility in the study, but that was tempered, I thought, by their curiosity to have their competence measured. The sniff of competition had been irresistible when we’d voted on whether we would enter the QA program. It was the implicit challenge of a rivalry among old friends and colleagues whose job every day meant putting their skills on the line. The vote had been nearly unanimous; only one of the secret ballots had been left blank.