Robin Cook - Marker

"He fooled you then," José said. He sat back and then gestured around the room. "Ask anybody if you don't believe me."

Roger's eyes scanned the room. The people had gone back to their reading or conversation. Roger looked back at José. Roger was beginning to feel pessimistic about winnowing down his potential suspect list with what he was hearing about Motilal and the way José was acting.

"What about his professional skills?" Roger asked. "Is he a good anesthesiologist?"

"I suppose," José said. "But one of the nurse anesthetists would be better at evaluating that, since they have to work directly with the lazy bum. The problem that I have with him is that he is never here. He's always out wandering around the hospital."

"What's he doing when he's wandering around?"

"How should I know? All I know is I end up doing all the work. Like ten minutes ago, I had to page him to get his ass up here, since it was his turn to do a case. Hell, I had already done two tonight."

"Where was he when you paged him?"

"Down on the OB-GYN floor. At least, that's what he said when I asked him. But he could have been in one of the local bars, for all I know."

"So he's doing a case at the moment?"

"He better be, or our chief, Ronald Havermeyer, is going to hear about it. I'm tired of covering for that guy."

"Tell me something," Roger said, settling back into his seat. "Have you been aware that in the last couple of months there have been seven unexpected and unexplained deaths of healthy, relatively young people in our hospital within twenty-four hours of surgery?"

"No," José said-a bit too quickly, in Roger's estimation. José held his hand out toward Roger as if to quiet him. A wall speaker had crackled to life.

"Code red in 703," a disembodied voice announced. "Code red in 703."

José heaved himself to his feet, tossing his newspaper aside. "Wouldn't you know it? The second I get a chance to sit down, there's a cardiac code. Sorry to break this off so abruptly, but when we're not on a case, we're supposed to show up for a code. I urge you to talk with Motilal. If you're trying to head off problems, he's your man."

José rushed from the room with his stethoscope clasped in his hand. From out in the hall, Roger could hear the double doors leading to the elevator lobby bang open and noisily swing shut. Roger exhaled uneasily and glanced around the room. No one had reacted to their strange conversation, to the code announcement, or José's sudden departure, until his eyes reconnected with Cindy Delgada's. She smiled again and made a questioning gesture with her shoulders. Roger got up and walked back to her.

"Don't mind Dr. Cabreo," she said with a laugh. "He's a hopeless pessimist and our resident prophet of doom."

"He seemed a bit defensive."

"Ha! That's the understatement of the year. He's out-and-out paranoid, with a touch of misanthropy, but you know something? We give him some slack because he's a damn good anesthesiologist, and I should know, since I work with him almost every night."

"That's reassuring," Roger said, although he was hardly convinced. "Did you happen to hear what he said about Dr. Najah?"

"I got the gist."

"Is that the general feeling up here in the OR?"

"I suppose," Cindy said with a shrug. "It's true Dr. Najah doesn't socialize and hang around with us, but no one minds except José. I mean, this is the graveyard shift, after all."

"What does that mean?"

"We all have our quirks, which is why we work this shift. Maybe we're all a little misanthropic in our own ways. I know I like the fact that there's less supervision and a lot less bureaucratic crap. Why Motilal prefers this shift, I don't know. Maybe it's as simple as just being shy. He's hard to read since he's so quiet, but I'll tell you, he's definitely a good anesthesiologist, and don't get me wrong because I said it about José, because I don't say that about everybody."

"So you wouldn't say Dr. Najah is antisocial."

"Certainly not in the psychiatric sense. At least, I don't think so, but to be honest, I really don't know. I've probably only spoken ten words to him."

"José complained about him wandering around in the hospital. Do you have any idea where he goes?"

"I believe so. I think he visits all the in-house preops scheduled for morning. Why I think so is because he's always carrying around the next day's surgery schedule."

Roger nodded while silently reaffirming his opinion about his deficiencies as a detective. After chatting with José, hearing a little about the loner Motilal, and learning about the night shift in general, he wasn't eliminating anyone as a suspect, but he pressed on. "Did you hear what José said when I asked him if he was aware of the seven deaths we've seen over the last couple of months?"

"Yeah, I heard," Cindy said with a derisive chuckle and a dismissive wave of her hand. "I don't know what was going on in his mind, because he knows about them. We all know about them, particularly the anesthesiologists. I mean, we haven't exactly been dwelling on the issue, but it's been the topic of conversation on occasion, especially as the cases mount."

"Why would he tell me he was unaware of them?"

"Beats me. Maybe you should ask him when he comes back. The anesthesiologists never stay long on codes. They just pop in if they happen to be available to intubate the patient or, if the patient was already intubated, to make sure the patient was intubated properly."

"Thanks for chatting with me," Roger said. He then glanced around the room a final time. "I have to say, no one else seems particularly friendly."

"As I said, we have our quirks, but if you came up here on a regular basis, you'd find people friendly enough."

With a final wave and appreciative smile, Roger walked out to the elevator. His finger went toward the call button, but stalled in midair. His visit to the OR hadn't been particularly helpful. He had two anesthesiologists who were potential suspects before he arrived, and he still had two after he left.

The choices were simple. He could stay on the third floor and visit the pharmacy and try to find out something about Herman Epstein, who'd transferred from the night shift at St. Francis to the night shift at the General. He could go down to the second floor and visit the lab to find out what he could about the two lab technicians who were on the same list. He could go back down to the first floor and visit security or even to the basement to visit housekeeping and maintenance, where there were two more similar transferees. Yet something told him he wasn't going to learn anything, thanks to his total lack of investigative experience. His little chat with José had made it clear that he didn't even know what questions to ask, short of "Are you a serial killer who's been knocking off patients during the night shift?" Laurie's idea was good in theory, but in reality, there were just too many potential suspects. All the transferees had access to the hospital in general by virtue of their respective job descriptions.

The thought of directly asking people if they were a serial killer brought a smile to Roger's face. It wasn't hard to guess what would happen to his reputation and job if he started asking such a question. Roger sighed and looked at his watch. It was now after three a.m. Although some of the caffeine euphoria was wearing off, the feeling of being wired hadn't. There was no way he would fall asleep if he went back to his apartment.

Impulsively, Roger pressed the up button on the elevator. He decided he'd pay a visit to the surgical floor, whose charge nurse had been mugged and killed and where four of the seven unexpected deaths had taken place. He also decided to take a quick tour through the fifth floor, which housed orthopedics and neurosurgery, where there had been two deaths. He reasoned that he'd never been in the hospital during the night shift, particularly on the patient floors, and having a sense of the ambience and locale might be helpful in his thinking.