Deficiency (16 page)

I'm alive, he thought.

And I'm on the prowl.

Terri nearly turned to run back to the hospital entrance when the car door of the vehicle beside hers opened and a man stood up. The car had been parked beside hers a while. She had seen it as she had left the hospital after completing her rounds. None of the car lights were on. She had not expected to see anyone still in it. He was obviously sitting and waiting for someone or something and here she was.

He moved into the rim of illumination spread by the parking lot lights and her heart did stop and start with a pounding that made her feel her very bones vibrate. It was the blond-haired man, the man who had come to the office impersonating a BCI investigator.

"Dr. Barnard," he said.

She backed up a few steps and looked toward the hospital entrance. There was no one in sight. She could run for it, but there was too much parking lot to cross. He should be able to catch up to her and out here, alone, she would be relatively defenseless. A shout might bring some help, but too late.

He continued around the rear of her vehicle, walking toward her. He was dressed the way he had been the day she had seen him. He smiled.

"Remember me?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "What do you want?"

"I have just a few more questions," he said.

The question in her mind was should she confront him with what she knew or should she pretend not to know he wasn't a BCI investigator? If she did the latter, would he come at her? Would he come at her anyway?

Sometimes, being a doctor, especially a family physician who confronted not only the patient, but the parents of the patient or the children of the patient, required her to utilize psychological skills as much as medical. It was important to relieve anxiety, calm people down — in short, have a good bedside manner. That was still a raging debate in medical school: How important was it to treat the patient as a person, treat the whole person, and not just the ailment? Mental turmoil could prevent healing or complicate it. Doing this required her to be a little bit of a liar at times or at minimum having a convincingly confident demeanor without crossing the line into what Hyman called medical arrogance.

"Oh," she said struggling to give off a sense of relaxation. "Detective Clark Kent. I'm sorry. I didn't recognize you in the poor lighting."

He stared at her without softening his lips into a friendly smile.

"Yes, well, I'm sorry about that. I called your office and was told you were at the hospital. I didn't mean to startle you. I just thought it was more convenient if I met you out here and left you to your duties and responsibilities in there. I'm sure you had enough to capture your full attention and concentration with your patients' problems."

"No question about that," she said, holding her smile and moving slowly toward her car. "So? What brings you to see me so urgently? I really don't have any more information about Paige Thorndyke than anyone else, especially the police."

"I'm not here to talk about Paige. I wanted to ask you about Kristin Martin."

"Oh?"

She stood at her driver's side door. Her left hand was in her bag, fumbling for the key. When she found it, she held it.

"What a remarkable and yet unfortunate coincidence that you had to confront another, shall we say, unusual fatality involving a young woman," he said smiling now.

"Please, don't remind me. Even doctors get nightmares," she said and inserted the car key into the door.

He stepped closer, close enough to prevent her from opening the door and getting into the car. It was a very subtle threatening gesture.

"What I really wanted to know is, did the young woman say anything to you?" he asked. "Was she able to describe what happened to her, give you any information at all?" he added, his normally calm sounding, friendly voice turning impatient.

She started to shake her head.

"A name of a man, anything?"

"No, you don't understand," she said. "By the time I had arrived, she was too far gone. She was barely conscious."

"So she was conscious," he said leaping on her words.

"Yes, but…"

He moved closer.

"It's important you tell me everything, very important. I might be the only one who can prevent this from happening to anyone else," he said, his voice now full of desperation.

"Oh?" She battled the panic that was trying to take hold inside her. "Well, why is that, Detective? You weren't even sure any crime had been committed in relation to Paige Thorndyke."

He stared coldly at her.

"Another death complicates the matter," he said.

"Surely there are more investigators on this then."

"I'm the most familiar with the M.O.," he said. "Who else have you spoken to about it?"

He's going to find out I know he's not who he says he is, she thought.

"Actually," she said now opening her car door and forcing him to step back, "I was surprised that no one has contacted me. I couldn't do much for the poor woman and I gave as much medical information as I had to the paramedics, but she was gone by the time they arrived. My first concern was I hadn't correctly diagnosed a serious reaction to bee stings. Many people are highly allergic to that, you know."

He studied her.

He knows I'm fudging it, she thought.

"I see. What did you learn about the cause of death?"

"I didn't learn everything. As I said, I merely happened onto the scene and…"

"You're a very intelligent woman, a scientist. You know this is far from an ordinary medical situation. I'm a specialist in these matters, too. If you confide in me

"I told you. I don't know anything more."

"This is a mistake. It's not being handled correctly. You're going to regret it," he said. "Let's begin with…"

A car came into the parking lot, its headlights washing over them. To her surprise and delight, she recognized it to be Curt. He pulled up right behind her.

"Oh, my fianc�," she declared, seeing the concerned, truly angry look in the man's face. "I'm afraid he's having a hard time adjusting to a doctor's schedule," she added to lighten the moment.

Curt got out of his car.

"Terri?"

"Yes, I'm here," she said.

"I'll catch you another time," the so-called Detective Clark Kent said. "Think about what I said to you and how important all this could be," he added and moved quickly to his own vehicle as Curt came around the front of his car and approached Terri. He watched the man get in and start his engine.

"Who's that?"

Everything Will Dennis had told her earlier came rushing back in like a dam that had collapsed. As a doctor she was used to making decisions on the instant, of course, and it didn't escape her that this one could be just as life or death.

"A state police detective," she decided to say. Something told her to keep Curt as away from all this as she could.

Clark Kent, as it were, backed out and pulled away quickly, his tires squealing.

"He's in a hurry. What did you tell him?"

"Actually nothing he probably didn't already know," she replied, the possible irony of that answer not lost on her. "What are you doing here?" she asked Curt.

He smirked and leaned against her car.

"I thought we might go somewhere and have a drink," he said.

"Oh. Well, why didn't you just call or page me?"

"I was nearby," he said, "and took a chance I might catch you coming out of the hospital. I knew you were coming out about now. See, I do pay attention to your horrific work schedule," he added.

She smiled.

"Okay."

"First, I have something to ask."

"Oh?"

"When you and I spoke this morning and you told me about Kristin Martin, you already knew she had died of some bizarre vitamin deficiency, just like Paige Thorndyke, didn't you? You knew it wasn't just a heart attack," he followed with a cross-examiner's speed and intensity.

"I don't understand, Curt. What if I did? Why are you so upset?"

"Why am I so upset? The whole world knows something weird is going on and my
fianc�e, who is right in the middle of it, doesn't tell me. I have to learn it from that schmuck Bill Kleckner. I told you how he's been looking over my shoulder, gloating over every one of his successes or any one of my failures."

"That's what this is about?" she said, astonished. "Competition with your partner?"

"No, that's not what it's about, Terri. It's about trust, about confiding in each other."

"First," she said, "I wasn't sure about this diagnosis, Curt. There are other tests that have to be run. Even as of now, I don't know the full extent of the woman's illness. I knew she had died of heart failure. That was certain, but there are a number of possible causes for it. Besides, I have to have some concern about patient confidentiality. You do for your clients, don't you?"

"Some confidentiality. Bill Kleckner gets to know it all before I do."

He sounded like a little boy whining, and after what she had just experienced and the things she had seen in the hospital during her rounds, she had little patience for it.

"I don't believe this, Curt. I don't believe you're complaining about this. Look, I'm really very tired. I had a day and a half. I think I'll just go home, take a hot bath, and go to bed."

"I think we should talk more," he insisted.

"Get over it," she snapped and got into her car. He stepped back in surprise as she started the engine and began to back out of her spot.

"Hey!" he yelled.

She hit the brake and had the window roll down.

"What?"

"That's it? I'm dismissed?"

"I'm tired, Curt. You're overreacting to everything. You need a good night's rest too."

"Is that the doctor talking or my fiancée?" he asked disdainfully.

"Your psychiatrist," she replied, rolled up the window, and drove away. She didn't look into the rearview mirror. She was afraid of what she would see.

But the moment she was off the hospital grounds, she reached for her phone and fumbled for the card Will Dennis had given her. She read his number and called as she drove. She could see Curt's headlights closing behind her.

"Will Dennis," she heard.

"Mr. Dennis," she began, but it was his way of starting his answering machine.

"I'm not available at the moment, but please leave a message and it will get to me immediately."

"It's Terri Barnard," she said. "He was there in the parking lot waiting for me, the infamous Detective Clark Kent. I didn't let on what I knew about him, and my
fianc� appeared. Our detective left quickly, but I have the feeling, not for good," she said. "I'm on my way home."

She hung up and continued driving. Watching Curt's headlights in her mirror now, she expected he was going to follow her home. A part of her wanted him, too. She didn't like parting the way they had. Everyone was on edge these days. When she came to a traffic light and it turned red, she stopped and thought she would step out and say something soft to him, perhaps even invite him to her house for the night.

She glanced into the side mirror as she put her hand on the door handle and then she stopped cold.

It wasn't Curt.

It was Clark Kent.

Darlene Stone lifted the glass of beer up and swiped under it with her bar-top rag. Jimmy Hummel not only had spilled more than half of his glass, he dropped half his roll-your-own cigarette tobacco into the puddle of foam, and if there was one thing that Darlene couldn't stand, it was a messy bar counter when she was working the Old Hasbrouck Inn. It was her five nights a week job to support herself and her two children and compensate for marrying and divorcing Jack Stone, poster boy for deadbeat dads.

"Can't you watch what the hell you're doin'?" she snapped at Jimmy. "I don't need extra work."

The forty-nine-year-old mechanic raised his untrimmed, bushy eyebrows under the heavy folds of rust-spotted skin hanging on his forehead and wiped his thick, bruised lips with the back of his grease- and oil-laden hand. His lower lip was still bruised from the ten-second fight he had with Charlie Weinberg in the parking lot three days ago. The 240-pound hotel chef barely had extended his Popeye-like arm, but it was enough to catch Jimmy in the middle of another insult, driving him back into the front entrance and cracking the window pane with Jimmy's balding head. He shuddered and then slid down to a sitting position. It brought the whole crowd of barflies to the doorway where they teased Jimmy and gave reviews of the short-lived event that at least added some iota of excitement to their otherwise routine existence.

At least, that was the way Darlene thought of it. The truth was she had little or no respect for any of the inn's regular customers. They were almost all blue collar laborers who alternated unemployment checks with temporary work projects. To Darlene most of them were monotonous, boring, and uninspired people who had almost no ambition. Their sole objective seemed to be to meet the week's basic needs and have money to piss away at a place like the Old Hasbrouck Inn.

Tonight, a weekend evening, they had a local trio to entertain them, two men and a woman who called themselves the Outlaws. The woman, Paula Gilbert, was only twenty-four. Darlene knew this for a fact because she knew Paula from her high school days at Tri-Valley. She was in the ninth grade when Darlene was a senior. However, Paula looked like a woman in her forties. More than fourteen years of smoking gave her a hard, dark complexion, especially around her eyes. She wasn't really overweight, but her body was already shifting, putting more than it had to into her thighs and around her waist. Her once button nose, soft mouth, and crystal turquoise-green eyes framed in long auburn hair could no longer provide that innocent, sweetness to compensate for her used-furniture look. Her voice was throaty, hoarse at times, and the whiskey and drugs she used to keep herself going were stapling shadows into her face. However, there was still just enough sexiness about her, most of it hovering in the well-exposed cleavage of her Dolly Parton bosom, to keep the goats and monkeys howling when she turned a shoulder or batted her eyelashes. Someone somewhere taught her how to work the microphone stand in a suggestive manner, too, and that was really what gave the Outlaws its cachet, for the voices of the two men, Jack Dawkins and Tag Counsel, were just a shade more than ordinary, as was their guitar, harmonica, and electric keyboard playing.