Addiction (19 page)
Authors: G. H. Ephron
“Here you go,” Annie said, pinching the thread from which the spider hung. She gently lowered the creature to the floor. It rolled itself up into a ball for a moment, then scuttled away.
Annie tried the knob. “Locked,” she said. Then she paused, her ear to the door. “Listen,” she whispered, stepping aside.
I pressed my ear up against the door. Rock music. I shrugged. “Sometimes patients find their way down here. We haven't got time to check it out. I'll call Security as soon as we're finished.”
Annie took out a small flashlight, the size and shape of a pen. She flashed a surprisingly powerful beam along the edge of the door. “Still, it wouldn't be much of a job to jimmy this,” she said.
I opened the other door, and we continued on our way. “I should have brought bread crumbs,” Annie quipped after we turned one corner, then another.
“This is our in-house Alzheimer's test for the aging doctors,” I said. “We're definitely not lost. In fact, we're here.” The tunnel ended in a locked door. I inserted my key and the door to the Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Unit opened easily.
We found ourselves at the base of one of the two stairways at either end of the building. It was dark, the only light cast by the red EXIT signs. I groped my way forward until my foot came in contact with the riser of the first step. Annie turned on her flashlight. She shone the light up into the air shaft. I could just make out the skylight, all the way up at the roof.
I groped for a handrail but found, instead, the wall of closely set, turned wooden spindles running from steps to ceiling.
I listened. Nothing but silence.
“Let's go,” Annie whispered, and started up.
The sound of our climbing, even with our rubber soles, seemed deafening. The stairs themselves resonated. I ran my hand lightly along the wooden spindles.
Four long flights up and we pushed our way out into a corridor.
There was emergency lighting at either end. Annie put away her flashlight.
There was emergency lighting at either end. Annie put away her flashlight.
The rain was beating hard on the roof. Wind howled through the eaves. We padded down the hall, past several offices until we got to the one with the sign LIAM JENSEN, M.D. outside the door.
Annie tried the knob. It was locked. I tried my keyâit was worth a shot, though I knew it worked only on the doctors' offices on my unit. It wouldn't even fit in the lock.
Annie unzipped her bag and slipped out what looked like a leather pocket protector. She opened the flap and drew out one of the slender metal rods lined up neatly inside. She crouched and fiddled at the lock. Swore. Changed tools once, and again. “There we go,” she said. She pulled the door open. Then she tried the inner door. It wasn't locked.
We slipped inside and closed both doors behind us. The room was pitch black with only a sliver of light between what must have been curtains over a window.
“Peter?” Annie whispered.
“Right here,” I said, and took a step in the direction of her voice.
I felt her hand touch my shoulder, work its way down my arm, and hold my hand.
Annie turned on her flashlight. The beam lit up each corner of the room, in turn. There were chairs, a standing lamp, a potted plant. She ran the light over the top of Jensen's broad desk. It was cleared of all papers. The man was such an orderly soul. Even the pencils and pens on the desk blotter were lined up exactly perpendicular to the edge of the desk. The only element of disarray was a half-full Acu-Med mug. It still contained an inch of light coffee, the cream congealing at the edges in a tan circle.
Annie tugged at the curtains so they overlapped. Then she turned on a table lamp.
I went to Liam's desk chair, sat, and rolled myself closer to the file cabinet. It was unlocked. I reached for the drawer I'd seen open. In my mind's eye, I saw the jumble of purple file folders packed
into the drawer and Liam's foot trying to push it shut. I said a little prayer: Please tell me he hasn't destroyed her work. I pulled. The drawer opened too easily. I knew before my eyes confirmed it that the overflow of files had been removed. The drawer was now three quarters full of neatly ordered, manila file folders, the tabs marching from left to right and back again. I pulled out one and read the typed label. “8.3641. DX-200 trial.” It contained the records documenting the treatment of the DX-200 drug-trial participant who'd been assigned code number 8.3641. At the front of the drawer was a folder labeled “CRFs DX-200 Trial.” I pulled it out.
into the drawer and Liam's foot trying to push it shut. I said a little prayer: Please tell me he hasn't destroyed her work. I pulled. The drawer opened too easily. I knew before my eyes confirmed it that the overflow of files had been removed. The drawer was now three quarters full of neatly ordered, manila file folders, the tabs marching from left to right and back again. I pulled out one and read the typed label. “8.3641. DX-200 trial.” It contained the records documenting the treatment of the DX-200 drug-trial participant who'd been assigned code number 8.3641. At the front of the drawer was a folder labeled “CRFs DX-200 Trial.” I pulled it out.
“Find what you're looking for?” Annie asked.
“No. Those file folders I saw in here are gone. But hang on a minute. Here's something else. The reports of adverse drug reactions from the DX-200 trial.”
God bless Liam's orderly little brain. There were about two dozen sheets of paper, each with a date, a patient number, and the description of an adverse event. Nausea. Dizziness. A depression with suicidal thoughts. Fatigue. I kept going. A minor heart attack was the closest thing to a death.
These were all subjects who'd completed the trial. What about the ones who hadn't? In the back of the drawer, I found the folder I was looking for. It contained the records of patients who'd dropped out of the trial. There were only three. Two had dropped out for “personal reasons.” A third because of car trouble. I wondered if one of them was the dead man Channing was urging Jensen to report.
“Annie, is it hard to find out if somebody is dead?”
“Depends. With a Social Security number, takes about thirty seconds.”
Two of the dropouts were female. Couldn't be either of them. The dropout with car trouble was a man. I read Annie his Social Security number, and she wrote it down in her little black book.
“How we doing for time?” she asked.
I checked my watch. It was 2:40. “We're fine. Security starts its sweep in twenty minutes.”
I put the files away, straightened them, and closed the drawer. I checked that the room was the way we'd found it. The only thing out of place was that Acu-Med mug. There it was on the desk, when it needed to be washed and put back into the A position in the lineup of mugs on top of the file cabinet.
“Everything okay?” Annie asked.
“Just a little déjà vu. When I found Channing's body, there was an Acu-Med mug on her desk, too. The police claim there wasn't one when they examined the room.”
“Is that unusual?” Annie asked.
“No,” I admitted. After all, they give them to all the docs. “Still. I can't help wondering if this is the one that was on Channing's desk and then disappeared by the time the police took crime scene photos.”
I was about to turn off the desk lamp when I noticed Jensen's briefcase, standing alongside the desk. It was open. Just like I keep my briefcase, open beside me while I'm working in my office. I might easily leave a dirty coffee cup on my desk or forget my briefcase if I left the office in a hurry. Liam Jensen seemed a lot less likely to do such a thingâunless he was only off to the men's room or checking on a patient.
Suddenly, I was anxious to get out of there. I turned off the desk lamp, and we left. I closed the office doors quietly behind us.
We hurried past Channing's office. The door was still padlocked. Now there was a square of pink paint on the wall where the plaque with her name on it had been removed.
Annie froze in front of Daphne's office. The door was open a crack. There was a light on inside. Was she working late? Maybe Jensen was here, working with her.
Instinct pushed me to get away quickly before one of them heard us. Then, common sense took over. Annie and I hadn't been that quiet. With the door open, anyone inside surely would have heard us by now.
I put my hand on the knob. If Channing had entrusted her research results to anyone, Daphne was the most likely personâif
the files had, in fact, been entrusted to someone, as opposed to having been taken from Channing's office after her death. If Jensen had taken them, I could easily see Daphne confronting him, removing the files from his office, and putting them away safely in her own. Then, perhaps out of some misguided sense of loyalty to the institute, she wasn't letting on that she had them. It would take only a minute to check.
the files had, in fact, been entrusted to someone, as opposed to having been taken from Channing's office after her death. If Jensen had taken them, I could easily see Daphne confronting him, removing the files from his office, and putting them away safely in her own. Then, perhaps out of some misguided sense of loyalty to the institute, she wasn't letting on that she had them. It would take only a minute to check.
I pulled the outer door open and paused. I listened. I pushed the inner door open. The room exhaled stale cigarettes. The desk light was on.
“Peter?”
I jumped at the sound of Annie's voice. I told her, “This is the office of the woman who's now head of clinical trials for the institute. Daphne Smythe-Gooding. You met her at Channing's party. She was Channing's mentor and had Channing's research report. I wonder ⦔
“Well, if you're going in, you'd better make it snappy.”
I was beyond caution. “Right. Just a quick look.”
I stepped inside. The office seemed a bit more chaotic than it was the last time I'd been there. Yellow Post-its lined the wall above the desk. Only a single nut was left in the candy bowl, along with a pile of empty foil wrapping and miniature Hershey's Kisses streamers. The African violet looked tired, its leaves spread out and limp, the flowers curled and brown. There was no sweater on the back of her chair. No open briefcase alongside the desk.
On top of other papers on her desk was a scale drawing on blue paper. It was of an engraved tablet, over five feet tall. Along the side, on some lines labeled Inscription:, Daphne had written her husband's name, his dates of birth and death, “Revered scholar, beloved husband, brother, uncle,” and the words “Called back before his time.”
The monument was impressive, far more massive than most gravestones in modern cemeteries. With its fussy floral carving surrounding the inscription, it felt Victorian.
I hadn't had to pick out a gravestone for Kate. I knew she'd have
been horrified at the thought of her bones taking up eternal space on a crowded earth. Instead, I made a pilgrimage to Martha's Vineyard and scattered her ashes from our favorite picnic spot, a bluff along the Moshup Trail overlooking the ocean.
been horrified at the thought of her bones taking up eternal space on a crowded earth. Instead, I made a pilgrimage to Martha's Vineyard and scattered her ashes from our favorite picnic spot, a bluff along the Moshup Trail overlooking the ocean.
I left the drawing where it was and quickly checked Daphne's four file cabinets. They were all unlocked. I was on the final drawer of the last one, having found nothing that resembled Channing's research, when Annie whistled. “Does everyone around here operate a little pharmacy out of their office?”
She was peering into an open bottom desk drawer. Inside were boxes of drug samples. Zoloft. Prozac. Valium.
“Pretty typical,” I said. “The hospital has a policy that drug samples are supposed to be locked up, but it doesn't always happen.” Then I spotted a blister pack of Ativan on the desk. Some of the pills were gone. That wasn't so typical. “Maybe she left in a hurry. After all, she left the light on.”
The window rattled as a gust of wind pelted rain against it.
“We should get going,” Annie said.
We had ten minutes. I closed up the file drawers and left the light on, the desk drawer open, and the doors ajar as we'd found them. We hurried to the nearest stairsâthey were at the opposite end of the building from the ones we'd come up.
I followed Annie into the darkness. With all the amenities in this building, why the hell wasn't there any emergency lighting in the stairways?
“Annie, where are you?” I whispered.
“I'm here, just ahead of you,” she answered, shushing me as the door shut to the hallway, making the dark even darker.
I groped for a something to hold onto. I connected with the wall of wooden spindles, like the one that ran up and down along the inside of the other staircase we'd come up.
I heard Annie starting down the stairs.
“Where's your flashlight,” I said as I stumbled forward, pushing myself to move quickly, using the wooden spindles along the inside of the staircase to guide me along.
“I'm looking for it,” Annie said. She unzipped her pack. We were almost down to the next landing. “Where the hell did I ⦠Should be in here somewhere ⦠. Aha!” The flashlight went on. Annie flashed it up at me, then on the floor in front of her. The beam reflected off the landing. It was coated with what looked like a light powder, streaked with scuff marks. “Looks like ⦔ Annie said as she stepped forward. “Whoa!” Her foot slid. She skidded and landed with a thud. The flashlight somersaulted out of Annie's hand and bounced on the floor. I lunged for it.
“Watch out, Peter, don't,” Annie cried out, but it was too late. The flashlight had rolled off the edge of the step and disappeared into the air shaft. I grabbed for the wooden spindles to keep from falling over. But where the wall of spindles was supposed to be, it wasn't. I bellowed as I fell forward, flailing, knowing that if I kept going, I'd follow the flashlight down to the basement.
Annie grabbed me from behind, just in time.
“Holy shit,” I muttered, as I regained my footing.
I stood there on the stairs, gasping for breath. My heart felt as if it were trying to hammer its way out of my chest. My shirt was sticking to my back. My eyes had adjusted to the dark, and I could see that there was a wide gap in the wall of wooden spindles. I groped for where they should have been, swung my arm one way, then the other. “What in the hell?” I said. There was about a three-foot-wide gap in the spindles. I reached up. I touched what felt like jagged edges where the spindles had been broken off overhead.
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