Michael Palmer - The fifth vial

"Oh, yes. I'm sorry for being so inconsiderate."

"Nonsense. You're a fine man. There's nothing you can do about what's happened except to get to the bottom of things, and that's what you're doing."

Ben sat quietly for a time, looking at the woman and her husband — trying to comprehend their inestimable emptiness. Could there possibly be anything worse than the loss of one's child? In that moment, studying their strained, worn faces, he sensed something else as well — something that he now acknowledged had been percolating within him over the weeks since he first met Alice Gustafson. He cared. He cared about this couple, now without their son for the rest of their lives. He cared about a frightened, confused, ridiculed motel housekeeper in Maine, whom he had never met. He cared about bringing some sort of justice to a remorseless killer, who was responsible, at least partly, for so much pain and suffering.

"So, is there a hospital in Soda Springs?" he asked finally.

"Caribou Memorial Hospital. It isn't very big, but folks say it's a terrific place. Thankfully, we haven't any need for it. What I mean is — "

In spite of herself, Karen Durkin began to cry.

Ben sat quietly, sipping absently at his coffee, swallowing against the fullness in his throat. He had always thought he'd be a father — two or three times over, in fact. Since the breakup of his marriage, and his gradual dc scent into ennui and detachment, he hadn't cared much about the time that was slipping past. Now, despite the anguish of his hosts, he found himself wondering what it might be like to have kids.

"I'm staying at a bed-and-breakfast in Soda Springs," he said. "Why don't I go there now and we can talk about things tomorrow."

"No, no," Karen said, regaining her composure. "I'm okay. Let's call Dr. Christiansen now."

"If you're sure you're up to it. Caribou Memorial, is that where Lonnie's blood test was done?"

"I suppose so," she said.

"No t'wasn't," Ray cut in. "That new lab had just opened right by the pharmacy. I took him there myself."

"New lab?"

"That's right. Brand-new building. It opened maybe six months, maybe a year before we went there. I can't remember its name."

"I don't think I ever knew it," Karen said. "Let me call Dr. Christiansen to see if she'll meet with you, Ben. She's gonna be very sad about Lonnie. Even though he never had to see her all that much, he was one of her favorites."

She made the call from a phone on the built-in desk while Ray and Ben sat in silence, both staring down at their coffee.

"No problem, Ben," Karen announced when she had finished. "The doctor will see you in her office at ten tomorrow morning. That'll give you time for a good breakfast, and maybe to see the geyser in Hooper Springs Park."

"I'll do that," Ben said, rising and shaking their hands.

He turned, patted Joshua, and was reaching for the door when Karen said, "Oh, by the way, it's the Whitestone Laboratory."

"Pardon?"

"The lab where Lonnie had his blood drawn, it's called the Whitestone Laboratory. I think it may be part of a chain." "Only the largest chain in the world," Ben said.

There was blood everywhere — splattered across a roadway, exploding from the ground, flowing down his own face. Ben seldom remembered dreams, but he awoke at four thirty in the morning knowing that his fitful night of sleep at the Hooper Springs bed-and-breakfast had been full of very violent ones — a string of macabre scenarios held together by a blood-drenched Winnebago. Sometimes, he was driving, other times it was Vincent, the wrestler-sized denizen of the now extinct Laurel Way garage. Twice during the night Ben woke up in a panic from something in his nightmare, then quickly forgot what it was. Both times, he used the small bathroom and returned to bed, only to immediately become immersed once more in the dream and the blood and the terror.

Finally, he willed the images to be over, turned on the bedside lamp, and propped an old Travis McGee paperback on his chest, trying to make some sense of the lurid dream. When he felt himself drifting off again, he took a long shower and left the bed-and-breakfast for a walk around the still-sleeping town.

How big? he wondered, as he wandered past the sleeping shops and paused briefly by the Soda Springs Apothecary. Assuming that the Winnebago Adventurer was the means by which unwilling donors were brought to anxiously awaiting recipients, how big was the scope of the business?

Just a few more steps brought him to the front of the modest redbrick building that housed the Whitestone Laboratory. In Chicago, it seemed that there was a Whitestone lab on almost every corner. Some of them, like the one he had gone to a few years ago, were no more than phlebotomy centers — blood-drawing offices. The vials of blood were then brought by courier to an area lab where most of the tests were run. The Whitestone lab in Chicago, where he had had his blood taken, was a storefront not five blocks from his office. He remembered Dr. Banks remarking on the speed, efficiency, and dependability of the lab, and also the military like precision with which they had transitioned from a small, little-known operation to, perhaps, the number one clinical laboratory in the world.

Soda Springs, according to the sign west of town, had a population of just more than thirty-three hundred. Apparently that was more than enough for Whitestone. At the moment, the room beyond the plate-glass street-side window was dark, but peering inside, Ben could make out a warm waiting area with several large plants. A police cruiser rolled up the street and slowed enough for the lone occupant to check him over, then smile and wave, before driving on. Ben wondered if someone might have called in about the odd-looking stranger making his way up Main Street through the gloom, in no particular hurry. Welcome to small-town America.

With several hours still to kill before his appointment, he wandered back to his bed-and-breakfast, had a better-than-average breakfast of poached eggs and homemade corned beef hash, and then checked in with his office answering machine.

"Mr. Callahan," a man's deep voice said. "I have been referred to you by Judge Caleb Johnson, who says you're the best detective in the city…"

If Johnson knows who I am, Ben thought, then he's afar better detective than l am.

The voice went on to say that his was a case of possible spousal infidelity, and that there would be millions of dollars hinging on the results of Ben's discreet investigation. Whatever Ben's usual rate, he would triple it in exchange for having this matter be made his top priority.

Triple. Ben did some quick mental math and realized that even if the stalk-and-gawk case resolved quicker than usual, and he suspected that it might not, he would be able to make up several times over for the Organ Guard check he had already nearly spent, or the money he had turned down in the Katherine de Souci case. Triple. The rich bass voice was a ladder out of the deep red hole he was in. Ben hummed a chorus of Prine's "Fish and Whistle."

Father forgive us for what we must do…

For the immediate future, there would be no wolf at his door.

What goes around comes around, he thought, smiling. Bad or good, what goes around comes around.

Dr. Marilyn Christiansen, an osteopathic general practitioner, was a kindly woman in her mid-forties, practicing out of an old Victorian house on the east edge of the town. The antithesis of the always rushed and harried Dr. Banks, she was bereft at learning of the death of Lonnie Durkin, and stunned at the notion of his being used as an unwilling bone marrow donor.