Capitol Reflections (12 page)
“Henry Broome,” he said in a formal manner reserved for very few.
“Good morning, Henry.”
“Good morning, sir.”
“How are you? All is well, I presume?”
“I’m fine, thank you, and yes—operations are completely nominal.”
“I heard we had a visitor.”
Henry was nonplussed. “Visitor?”
“Tropical Storm Beverly. It’s in the Pacific and is expected to reach hurricane force by tonight. Projected landfall is anywhere from Costa Rica to Panama.”
Henry breathed a sigh of relief. His caller was sometimes terse and often enigmatic. “Yes, sir. I’ve been in touch with the manager of operations for Central America. We’ve doubled shipments over the past week in case we experience any downtime.”
“Very good, Henry. Have a pleasant day.”
The call ended abruptly, which always irritated the hell out of Henry.
He also hated having to call anyone “sir,” but protocol demanded that he treat the gentleman on the other end of the line with utmost politeness. Indeed, Henry was a member of what was commonly regarded as the most exclusive and powerful club in the world, the United States Senate, but his caller wielded a good deal of power himself.
And if he chose, he could have Henry killed in a heartbeat.
17
Gwen retested Marci’s blood upon returning from New York, and the results matched those of Dave Dardenoff. The sample contained chemicals found in cigarettes, plus aspirin, caffeine, and trace amounts of the carcinogens that humans in industrialized areas are exposed to on a daily basis: pesticides, herbicides, household cleansers, and a dozen others that most people other than environmentalists and vegans wouldn’t recognize. None should have been responsible for seizure or premature death. As for Marci’s mitral valve prolapse, it was fairly common in the general population, and most people who had the condition were unaware of it. They were either asymptomatic or experienced transient dizziness and arrhythmias that they ignored or attributed to stress. Even if diagnosed, MVP was not always treated with medication. Physicians often opted for a regimen of diet, exercise, and stress reduction.
Maybe Dardenoff was right. Marci was an underweight workaholic with unbalanced electrolytes. Add smoking, poor nutrition, and mitral valve prolapse, and she became the one in ten thousand who suddenly dies. Perhaps it was synergy, a combination of factors that, taken together, shouldn’t surprise anyone, least of all an epidemiologist.
Except it didn’t make any sense.
“Dammit!” Gwen said, throwing the folder with Marci’s lab results on her desk. It was ten minutes after five, time to head home and throw some stir-fry into the wok, but she wasn’t in the mood to talk with Jack this evening. A confrontation was looming, and she already knew what the methodical Mr. Maulder was going to say: “It’s time to let Marci go, honey. We need to move on, do the things we’ve been talking about doing.” “The things we’ve been talking about doing” was code for starting a family. Jack thought his little thing with the baseball glove was clever—and she had to admit it had some charm—but since Marci died, the glove seemed like a taunt of sorts, a way of nagging Gwen to let go of Marci, to seek psychiatric help if necessary, and get on with their lives. She couldn’t do that. Not now. Not until she knew what really happened to Marci.
Gwen took a deep breath. She was torn. A good epidemiologist looked at patterns, made connections, examined trends. If the case of Marci Newman had come across her desk under some other name, her professional opinion would have been that the deceased was an unfortunate statistic, one well within predictable parameters, all variables taken into consideration. But she was approaching the case not as a public health officer, but as Gwen McBean, Marci Newman’s college roommate and best friend. Her dad taught her to look past reports and charts and to trust her instincts. Fitz Rule Number One: Textbooks and lab procedures are only starting points. The human part of the equation couldn’t be denied in medicine, and Gwen felt certain beyond any reasonable doubt that Marci shouldn’t be dead because … well, because Marci wasn’t ready to die. If that wasn’t scientific, so be it.
The human equation. Terminally ill patients with an optimistic, feisty attitude almost always lived longer than those who picked out a casket, closed the drapes, and waited to die. Like Fitz, Gwen believed in the mind-body connection. A person’s health was affected to a large degree by what he or she believed. The mind produced endless peptides that could cause disease or work miracles, and the plain fact of the matter was that Marci Elizabeth Newman was high on life and loved her job.
Underweight? Yes. Minor heart defect? Yes.
Waiting to die? No way.
As far as Gwen was concerned, Marci should still be alive. She accepted Jack for what he was: a rational man who gathered facts and then chose the most logical explanation that fit existing data. She couldn’t fault him for that, and yet they had gone out at a time when he relentlessly pursued the truth, even playing the occasional hunch when following a lead in the course of a baffling murder investigation. Had he grown into a boring conservative? If so, could she blame him? Hadn’t she wanted him to quit the cops and robbers routine so they could have a shot at a “normal life?” Wasn’t she being hypocritical?
Yes, but that didn’t change her intuition about Marci, and what her gut was telling her. She couldn’t go home yet. She needed to be here and she wasn’t sure what to do if she was there.
She picked up a copy of the
Washington Post
.
Washington Post
.
“Holy shit,” she said under her breath.
Unfolding the paper and spreading the pages wide, she saw that the
Post
was running a new column by an old pro.
Post
was running a new column by an old pro.
“Confessions of an Iconoclast” by Mark Stern.
Hadn’t he moved from the
Times
to the
Journal
? What was he doing in D.C.?
Times
to the
Journal
? What was he doing in D.C.?
Reading the column, she couldn’t suppress a smile. Mark’s premier piece for the
Post
was pure, unadulterated Stern, the quintessential observer of human foibles. His debut column was titled “Franchising the Full Moon.” It claimed that incidents of public madness were on the rise—a lady on a New York subway train screaming that Jesus was returning any day now, a man at the Guggenheim taking off his clothes and exhibiting himself as freestanding art, a seventy-year-old woman jogging around the reflecting pool in Washington wearing nothing but an American flag. According to Stern, aberrant behavior was spreading like a virus and was a natural response to a political administration that courted madness. “The country is ruled by paranoia,” the columnist wrote in the last paragraph. “Acts of lunacy are being produced by a climate of fear and uncertainty that the administration uses to maintain its Orwellian hold over the population.”
Post
was pure, unadulterated Stern, the quintessential observer of human foibles. His debut column was titled “Franchising the Full Moon.” It claimed that incidents of public madness were on the rise—a lady on a New York subway train screaming that Jesus was returning any day now, a man at the Guggenheim taking off his clothes and exhibiting himself as freestanding art, a seventy-year-old woman jogging around the reflecting pool in Washington wearing nothing but an American flag. According to Stern, aberrant behavior was spreading like a virus and was a natural response to a political administration that courted madness. “The country is ruled by paranoia,” the columnist wrote in the last paragraph. “Acts of lunacy are being produced by a climate of fear and uncertainty that the administration uses to maintain its Orwellian hold over the population.”
Gwen looked at the ceiling and laughed. How simplistic Mark could be … and how endearing. Though she’d grown a bit more politically moderate over the years, she admired her former beau’s boyish passion and naiveté. In Gwen’s estimation, even now, however, these qualities alone could not sustain a long-term commitment. She decided long ago that he was never going to grow up, and their relationship, despite some enjoyable times, had nowhere left to go.
Gwen got up, stretched, and grabbed her purse. Sooner or later she’d have to make that stir-fry. Maybe a bottle of Merlot would keep the dinner discussion from heading down the wrong road.
She turned off the overhead lights and smiled. “Nature Boy working right here in Washington. Interesting.”
A million bucks hadn’t changed Mark Stern’s spartan lifestyle one iota. He stood in his one-bedroom apartment carved from a once-grand townhouse on the corner of 31st and R Streets in Georgetown, staring at the four cork bulletin boards on his living room wall. He didn’t store much info on computers in the preliminary stages of working up a story. He made notes in nearly illegible longhand on yellow legal pads and pinned interesting newspaper articles to the bulletin boards. Staring at a computer screen didn’t cut it. He needed to feel the muscles in his fingers grip a Paper Mate, needed to see the words drip from the pen onto the yellow paper. That was journalism—real writing, raw and fresh.
Likewise, when it came to weighing facts, scrolling down a list on a PC monitor simply didn’t engage his gray matter. He needed to stand, pace the floor, rearrange articles, look from one board to the other. Blood had to pump and muscles had to move in order for the right idea to poke its head from some sleeping synapse and say, “This is what’s important.”
His first column for the
Post
had been well-received despite the fact that more than a few conservatives thought he should pack up and go back to New York. Stern welcomed such criticism, for when people started to attack, he knew he had drawn blood. Over the years, he’d learned that there were two kinds of criticism: valid and malicious. When readers turned nasty, it was because they saw the truth and didn’t want to deal with it. They’d been exposed. Game, set, and match to Mark Stern. He hadn’t gotten into the field to make people feel comfortable.
Post
had been well-received despite the fact that more than a few conservatives thought he should pack up and go back to New York. Stern welcomed such criticism, for when people started to attack, he knew he had drawn blood. Over the years, he’d learned that there were two kinds of criticism: valid and malicious. When readers turned nasty, it was because they saw the truth and didn’t want to deal with it. They’d been exposed. Game, set, and match to Mark Stern. He hadn’t gotten into the field to make people feel comfortable.
He glanced from one board to the other. On the top left, six articles chronicled people going a little wacko, four in New York and two in D.C. He had seen several more, but these were the ones that most interested him. But did they mean anything? On the bottom right were ten articles, all from obit sections in New York and Washington papers. Young adults dying from unexplained or natural causes. They were aggressive young professionals and politicians. The ten thousand dollar question was this: Was there some kind of connection between people acting loony and the premature deaths?
The trend in New York had begun in early May and then ceased by the first week in June. The same kinds of articles were now appearing in Washington during the month of July. Was there some kind of full-moon madness hovering over parts of the country? Had someone spiked the water supply?
Perhaps there was no connection at all. Going postal certainly wasn’t a new phenomenon. He knew it might just be a statistical anomaly that more people were freaking out in New York and D.C. Mark’s stock in trade, however, was charting patterns in the general population. He always believed that a good reporter was a good sociologist.
He paced the floor, scratched his head, and halted in front of the clippings. He stared at them for a while and shook his head. “There’s definitely a disturbance in the force.”
Dinner with Jack was not the somber proposition that Gwen had anticipated. When she stepped through the door, Jack’s face wore that “Let’s talk—let’s really communicate” expression on his face. Gwen was determined to elude confrontation. She simply gave her husband a long, sensuous kiss, opened a bottle of Merlot, and started the stir-fry. As soon as Jack began his litany of reasons for Gwen to abandon her investigation and start breeding little Maulders, Gwen launched a preemptive strike.
“You know, Jack, I don’t think the guest room would be a good choice for a nursery. My upstairs office would probably work better since its closer to the master bedroom. I think we should renovate the basement and move my office down there. Whatya think, Mr. Secret Service Agent?” Despite her relaxed demeanor, Gwen employed her ceramic-bladed Japanese chef’s knife with lightning speed, reducing whole vegetables to small piles of perfectly symmetrical cubes in moments.
Completely flummoxed, Jack could barely stammer, “Fine by me. I’ll take a look at the basement and see what might be involved. I think I could do most of the work myself.”
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