Michael Palmer - Natural Causes

"A superstitious attorney who quotes Mark Twain and pitched major league baseball," Sarah said. "You certainly can't be called middle of the road."

"Neither can you," Matt said. "God, it's nearly eleven. I promised to have the sitter home by then."

"Sitter?"

Although their relationship was strictly professional, and Sarah knew Matt was ethically bound to keep it that way, she found the news that he was married disappointing.

"I have a twelve-year-old son, Harry. He lives with his mother most of the year."

"Oh, I see."

"Well, then, shall we meet tomorrow morning at Mr. Kwong's?"

"If you think you can find it."

"I've already driven past it. Like I said, I try to do my homework. I'm going over to Brookline. Do you need a ride?"

"Thanks, but I live in the North End, and I have my bike. Besides, the rain's stopped now, and riding just after a storm is something I really enjoy."

Matt reached across to shake her hand. Their gazes met and, for the briefest moment, connected. But just as quickly, he looked away.

"Don't you worry," he said. "We're going to do fine."

"I know. One last question, though. Before you arrived, that lawyer, Arnold Hayden, implied that most attorneys would have scheduled a preliminary meeting like this one in their office. Why didn't you?"

Matt slipped on his coat, took his briefcase in one hand and his umbrella in the other.

"Well, the truth is, I wanted to make a good impression-on Glenn Paris and his crew, but especially on you. And my current office is hardly the largest, most opulent in the city."

"I see," she said again.

"And to make matters even worse, that damn partner of mine, Mr. Goldstein, can't seem to keep the place neat. Next time maybe I'll chance letting you see it. Meanwhile, get some sleep. We have a big day ahead of us."

Sarah watched Matt shamble down the hall to the elevator. What apprehension she had about the next morning's gathering at Kwong Tian-Wen's shop was more than offset by the notion that in just nine and a half hours, she would be seeing her lawyer again.

"Are you all done in there?"

The stoop-shouldered cleaning lady had been patiently vacuuming and dusting in the corridor for most of an hour, waiting for the Milsap Room to empty.

"Oh, yes, I'm sorry," Sarah said.

"No problem, no problem. He's a fine-looking man, that one. A fine-looking man." The old woman's eyes were sparkling.

"You know," Sarah said, "I was thinking the very same thing myself. But I have a feeling you could tell that."

"Well, chile, I wasn't jes' watchin' him," the woman chided. "I was watchin' you."

Savoring the sweet, scrubbed summer air, Sarah left the medical building on the campus side and crossed to where she had chained her bicycle. The campus was fairly well lighted and patrolled. And although there were, from time to time, reports of women being harassed at night, and in one case mugged, Sarah did not find the broad mall particularly menacing.

The groundskeepers periodically posted notices requesting that bicycles be left only in designated areas. But since those areas were outside the campus, house officers and nurses who planned to be at the hospital after dark continued to secure their bikes to the wrought-iron railings leading up to the entrances of many of the buildings.

Sarah had chained her Fuji to a low, steel-pipe railing by the side entrance of the surgical building. It was a convenient site, and one she had used frequently with no problem. Now, as she rounded the corner, she was struck by the darkness of the spot. The light over the entrance was out, although she could never remember its being so before. She peered through the gloom and took one tentative step forward… then another. The man was pressed tightly against the wall to her left.

Sensing a presence, Sarah froze. She squinted and blinked, but her vision had not yet adjusted enough to pierce the blackness. The night was soundless. She strained to hear breathing or movement of any kind. Someone was there… close. She shifted her weight to her right foot, preparing to push off and sprint away.

"I know you're there. What do you want?" she suddenly heard herself saying.

Five endless seconds passed… ten.

"P-p-please d-don't r-r-run," the man said in a whispered stutter.

Sarah reflexively moved away from the voice even as she was turning toward it. The man, now a silhouette, stepped from the shielding darkness. He was not much taller than she, and very slightly built. Sarah could just make out the narrow contours of his face.

"Doctor B-B-Baldwin. I've been f-following you f-for days. I must s-speak with-"

"Sarah, is that you?"

Sarah whirled. Rosa Suarez was standing not ten feet away, angled so that she could see Sarah but not the man. At the sound of the intruder's voice, he bolted. Head down, he charged past Rosa, shoving her off balance and very nearly to the ground.

"Stop, please!" Sarah cried.

But the man was already crossing the lawn of the campus, heading full bore toward the front gate. Her pulse jackhammering, Sarah rushed to Rosa's side.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, I think." Rosa was breathing heavily as she stared across the deserted campus in the direction the man had run. She patted her chest. "Who was he?"

"I don't know. He called me by name and said he had to speak with me. Then when you called out, he ran."

"How strange."

"He stuttered terribly-worse than almost anyone I can remember. And he said that he had been following me. You know, now that I think about it, I believe I've noticed him, too. He drives a blue foreign car-maybe a Honda. God, was that weird just now. I can't believe I just stood there and didn't run. Now I can't stop shaking."

Rosa took Sarah's hands in hers. Almost instantly the shaking began to lessen. Sarah unlocked her bike. Slowly, the two women walked together toward the main gate, Sarah wheeling her bike along.

"I'm sorry I couldn't support you at that meeting tonight," Rosa said. "How did it go?"

"Pretty well, I think. Lisa's lawyer has a court order to inspect my herbalist's shop tomorrow morning and take samples."

"Are you worried about that?"

"Actually, I'm relieved it's happening. The sooner they check the samples, the sooner this lawyer will see I couldn't have been responsible."

Rosa stopped and looked at her. It was quite apparent to Sarah there was something on her mind-something she wanted to talk about.

"Sarah, I–I'd like it very much if you could walk me home," she said finally. "My bed and breakfast is just a few blocks from here. I'd like to explain why I chose not to discuss my findings and opinions at your meeting."

"There's no need to."

"The fact that you're being followed bothers me. I think that what I've discovered may be very important-especially if what just happened to you has something to do with this case."

"Go on."

"To begin with, in my native country, Cuba, I was a physician…"

Sarah listened, rapt, to Rosa Suarez's concise, eloquent sketch of her life. A political exile from Cuba, she found herself in a series of refugee camps with only minimal English, and the painful realization that there was no way she would ever be able to document her education or medical degree. Following a series of rather menial jobs, she managed to gain an entry-level, clerical position at the CDC. Her husband, a poet and educator in his homeland, worked in a book bindery, where he remained until his retirement a few years before.

Within a few years, Rosa's quick mind and medical expertise had landed her a place as a field epidemiologist. Some of her successes-a major role tracking down the source of the Legionnaire's disease outbreak in Philadelphia and tying a regional increase in leukemia deaths in one Texas county to a nuclear-contaminated stream-Sarah had actually heard of. Then, at the peak of what had been a valuable career, Rosa was sent to investigate reports of an unusual bacterial infection that had begun cropping up in geographic pockets throughout San Francisco. Already the uncommon germ had killed a number of immune-compromised and otherwise medically debilitated patients.