The Inquisitor (24 page)

"Don't worry. After I look in on a few patients, I'll sign out and go home to bed. Brendan will get another surprise treat when he comes back from school and finds me there, and we'll make the meal together."

"From what you said, I would have thought Thomas might want to be with J.S."

"There's that too. But seems he's more determined than ever to discover what's going on in Palliative Care. I got the impression he'd totally changed his mind about Stewart and wants to help clear his name, all because Stewart saved J.S. Ain't love grand?"

Earl frowned. "Wait a minute. He can't turn this into some damn personal crusade."

Janet got up to leave. "Don't worry. I'll keep Thomas in line. Besides, I already explained to him that a profile on Stewart's presence in the hospital wouldn't work. Trouble with a guy who has no life is that he's always here, so a cluster study on him wouldn't be valid."

Earl had an idea. "It might be if you look at when he's not here."

"What?"

Minutes later he stood leaning over her shoulder as she sat in front of her office computer screen and clicked up some of the Palliative Care statistics they'd been scrutinizing the last few days. "Locate the initial numbers that showed the first jump in the mortality rate six months ago, then go to the second increase, last

April, just after the SARS outbreak," he told her.

She brought them up on the screen. The first three columns showed a rise of eleven deaths a month that held steady, and the last three indicated the second increase of fourteen patients a month.

"Now break down the data so we see it by the week."

Six big columns of figures became twenty-six shorter lists. Within any given month, the numbers held steady week to week.

"Now," he said, "you remember those media junkets Stewart went off on?"

"Oh, my God, yes."

"One was at the beginning of the year. Believe me, I remember, because ER is always hell without his help."

"Then let's see…" She clicked up the mortality figures in Palliative Care for that period and broke them down according to days.

Sure enough, while Stewart had been in New York, Chicago, and LA gabbing with Connie, Larry, Letterman, Oprah, and Jay, the numbers of people dying in palliative care held more or less steady at the then new high of 25.6 patients a week, or 3.6 per twenty-four hours.

"At least we can forget about him having anything directly to do with the first overall rise," she said.

Earl thought a moment. "It doesn't rule out the possibility that he had an accomplice, and it sheds no light at all on whether he had anything to do with silencing five patients a few days ago."

7:56 a.m.

ICU, St. Paul's Hospital

Jane Simmons felt the darkness. It pressed into her nose, into her mouth, and down her throat, suffocating her the way black earth would if someone had buried her alive.

In a panic, she clawed her way to the surface, back aboveground, until a hand grabbed hers and pulled her toward the light. "Jimmy?" she tried to say, opening her eyes, but choked on what felt like a hose down her throat.

Thomas's dark brown gaze greeted her. "Hi, love," he said, his voice very soft. "Welcome back."

For an instant the sight of him confused her, and the beeping sounds from behind her head, though familiar, seemed totally out of place. It took a second more to realize she had a half dozen IVs sticking into her, a tube in the left part of her chest, and a respirator hooked up to her lungs.

Then she remembered.

The pain, the blood, ER… Jimmy holding her hand. His had been the last voice she'd heard. It felt odd to come to and find Thomas in his place.

Nevertheless, she was glad to see him.

"Jimmy had to leave but said he'd be back," he told her. Undoing his mask, he leaned over to give her a kiss. "The important thing is, you're doing fantastic and are going to be fine. Dr. Deloram found it amazing, but he thinks they'll get you off the respirator and extubate you by this afternoon. That's a powerful set of lungs you have."

His breath s me I led of toothpaste. Glancing at the drawn curtains around her cubicle as his lips pressed on her cheek, she could tell by the powder blue color that they were in ICU. Obviously he'd gotten over his being barely able to look at her in ER. You aren't afraid of someone catching us? she wanted to ask him, surprised at the intensity of her sudden annoyance with his behavior.

He must have sensed her anger, because he pulled back and studied her, a puzzled look creeping onto his face, only to be dispelled in the flash of a smile. "Hey, I wasn't about to stay away at a time like this, so our secret's out. But who cares? I've been silly about that. Now I want to shout from the rooftops that I love you."

Too little, too late, she would have said if she could, just to make the goof suffer. Even Daisy Mae had her limits.

Then she felt empty inside.

Probably all the drugs they'd given her and everything she'd been through.

He squeezed her hand.

She tried to smile in return, a tough feat around a tube, and drifted back to sleep.

8:35 a.m.

Before SARS hit, at the start of each day Earl had routinely sipped a cappuccino in the privacy of his office and glanced through the morning's New York Herald.

Thanks to his own rules that banned the removal of masks anywhere in ER but the designated lunchroom, he had only the paper now. Without a hit of caffeine to propel him through the headlines, more often than not he leaned back in his chair and stared at his window, the opaque light a reminder that sun and fresh air still existed.

What Janet had said about Stewart hiding in his work bugged him. She hadn't revealed anything the whole hospital didn't already know, but what could be dismissed for over a decade as the quirk of a gifted physician, as long as he performed his daily high-wire act in ICU, had become a flaw demanding a harder look.

Hiding from what? Earl wondered.

An old evasion suggested where the answer might lie.

He leaned forward, picked up his phone, and dialed a 212 exchange that had branded itself on his brain nearly three decades ago.

"New York City Hospital."

"Yes, I wonder if I could speak to the director of clinical research."

"That would be Dr. Cheryl Branagh. One moment please."

The name didn't ring any bells. Good, he thought. NYCH and he had history, big time. He'd probably get further with someone who didn't know him.

Ten minutes later, after talking with a dozen secretaries, an officious female voice said, "Dr. Branagh here."

"Dr. Branagh, my name is Earl Garnet. I'm calling from St. Paul's-"

"I know who you are, Dr. Garnet. There's hardly anyone around here who doesn't. You turned this place inside out a few years back."

Oh, boy, Earl thought. She was referring to a nest of dark secrets he'd uncovered at NYCH while investigating the death of a former classmate. uUh, yes, well, this is entirely another matter-"

Her hearty chuckle interrupted him. "Hey, it needed doing. That makes you a good guy in my book. How can I help today?"

Well, that's a break, he thought. "I don't know if you can. This involves ancient history as well, and has to be kept completely confidential."

"Now I am intrigued."

"We may have a problem with one of our staff members. He's a clinical researcher who came to us in eighty-nine, highly regarded, but I never got a good answer from him as to why he left NYCH."

"You're talking about Stewart."

"Yes. Do you know him?"

That chuckle again.

He liked the sound of it. She came across as open, friendly, straightforward, and cooperative.

"You might say that. I was his second wife."

Oh, Jesus.

More chuckling. "Hey, it took him five years to drive me crazy. Of course, two people working in the same lab should never have married in the first place, but I'm surprised you've lasted this long with him. What's he done?"

Earl wondered if there were ethical proprieties to discussing a physician under investigation with that physician's ex-wife.

After a second's consideration, he decided no, not if he didn't reveal anything, and she did all the talking. "What I need to know is why he left NYCH in the first place. I mean, his credentials were good, but he's always been rather evasive about it, and I wondered if anything irregular had happened there."

No chuckles rolled across the line this time, only the sound of her breathing.

"Look, if you don't feel comfortable talking about this," he said, "perhaps I should speak with someone else."

"It's not that. I may be his ex, but I don't want to hurt him. Is he in trouble?"

Earl weighed his answer. "In a word, yes."

"And what's your part in it?"

"I'm trying to find out if he deserves the trouble he's in."

"Is this to do with some of the chatter I saw on the Internet yesterday about his near-death research? There are rumors going around that he may have been staging events with patients."

"That's part of what I want to find out."

More breathing.

"I know your reputation," she said after a few seconds, "and not just from recent events here. Stewart spoke about you before he left. We were already divorced, yet the guy had no one else to confide in. By then I'd stopped being mad at him all the time, at least enough to feel sorry for him, and we had a young daughter. So for her sake we tried to be civil."

Earl remembered a dark-haired teenage girl who had shown up in Buffalo a few times. Stewart had proudly introduced her around the hospital, but then the visits seemed to peter out. "Yes, I think I met her. Very pretty."

The woman let out an industrial-strength sigh. "I'm not surprised you never heard what happened in eighty-nine. Both the hospital and the medical school hushed it up." She sighed again, the sound more leaden than before, almost closer to a moan.

Earl leaned back in his chair and said nothing. The art of medicine is first and foremost to get people to tell you what's wrong, even when it's painful for them to do so, and his years in ER had made him good at it. He could tell when to prod and when to just listen. Over the phone, unable to see a face, he couldn't be as certain, but what he'd heard conveyed the kind of heavy-layered regret over long-lost dreams that could build up forever. In other words, she might be ripe to unburden herself.

"He left NYCH because a colleague of ours, Jerome Wilcher, committed suicide, and Stewart blamed himself." Another deep breath sounded, ingoing this time. "I wish I could say unjustly so, but I can't. They'd been longtime rivals in the department, and both were after the position of chairman. In the lab, they were equally brilliant, but Stewart outmaneuvered Jerome politically, a combination of being smarter, faster, and more ruthless at that game.

"Also, rumors began to circulate about the integrity of Jerome's experimental data. No hard accusations, just whispers- yet you know how devastating that can be to a scientist's credibility. Jerome had been in charge of research trials at academic centers all over the United States- visited them repeatedly- yet one by one they revoked his appointments and grants. After Stewart became chairman, Jerome lodged several formal complaints against him with the dean, claiming sabotage, but got nowhere. He published less and less, until in the fall of eighty-nine they found him swinging from the water pipes in his lab."

"Good God!"

"In a way, he finally got his accusations against Stewart to stick. Though nobody could prove anything, the dean didn't want Stewart around, in case the story leaked to the press. In exchange for a voluntary resignation, glowing letters of reference would be provided to anyplace that was interested in him."

Son of a bitch. "Is that when you took over the department?" Earl sounded more angry than he intended. But even though it had happened long ago, he despised the kind of smarmy moves by which hospitals passed their problem staff on to other unsuspecting institutions. Would it have changed his own recommendation that St. Paul's take the man? Maybe not. But he didn't like being lied to, not by Stewart, not by a whole administration, and especially not by his alma mater. What made his resentment feel so fresh? That kind of game still went on today, particularly at teaching hospitals, where they valued academic reputations more than truth.

"Down, boy," she said. "Not only didn't I benefit, but I got tarred by his brush, despite the divorce and the fact I'd been publishing before we ever met. They couldn't kick me out, but they made it clear with pointed hints that I could also leave. Nobody likes seeing faces around that remind everyone of how dirty their own research games got. But you know how it is in a center like NYCH: publish enough, and eventually anything can be forgiven, including having married the wrong man. I've been chair for five years."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to take what happened out on you."

"Don't worry. That's all water under a long-ago bridge."

If you say so, he thought, still getting the distinct impression he'd probed old scars that could still hurt. "Why didn't you leave?"

"The best reason in the world- Carol, the daughter you met. A teenager in high school with friends doesn't want to move away."

He couldn't think of anything else to ask and was ready to say goodbye when she added, "I don't think he could do what they're suggesting on the Internet."

"Pardon?"

"Tamper with data."

"Oh? Why?"

"He may be a son of a bitch when it comes to people, but science is like a religion to him. He wouldn't desecrate it."

She had a point. But his original question remained: would Stewart commit murder to save his reputation within that religion? Then, knowing the passions involved, Earl wondered what someone close to a wrongfully disgraced researcher might be willing to do. "This Jerome Wilcher- did he have any family?"

"All I ever knew about him is that he'd been divorced almost a decade earlier- apparently the guy was a womanizer- and his ex-wife didn't come to the funeral. No surprise there. She took him to the cleaners and, from what I heard, kept coming back for more, to the point that he apparently started hiding his assets. They never had kids, his parents were dead, and he had no siblings. There were a few red-eyed women at the service, and from the suspicious way they were eyeing each other I figured they might all have been his former girlfriends. Word had it that one of them actually went home after the service and tried to hang herself as well."