Robin Cook - Blindsight

“If ethylene is so volatile,” Laurie said, “why don’t you look for it in the samples from Robert Evans? Since you determined he’d died so quickly, maybe there would be more of a chance to find it if it had been involved.”

“That’s a good idea,” Peter said. “I’ll give it a whirl.”

Laurie kept her eyes on the empty doorway for a moment after Peter had left. Ethylene was hardly the kind of contaminant she’d expected. She thought that they might find some exotic central-nervous-system stimulant like strychnine or nicotine. Laurie wasn’t familiar with ethylene. She’d have to do a little research.

Glancing through the pharmacology book she and Riva kept in the office, Laurie didn’t find much on the gas. She decided to check the office library upstairs. There she found a long article on ethylene in an old pharmacology book. Ethylene was featured more prominently in the older book because it had been used as an anesthetic agent a number of years ago. It had ultimately been abandoned because it was lighter than air and flammable. Those two qualities made the gas too dangerous for use in operating rooms.

In another book Laurie found that ethylene had been noted around the turn of the century to prevent carnations in Chicago greenhouses from opening. The ethylene had been in the greenhouse illuminating gas. On a more positive note she read that the gas was used to hasten the ripening of fruit and in the manufacture of certain plastics like polyethylene and Styrofoam.

Although this background information was interesting, Laurie still didn’t see why ethylene would turn up in cocaine overdose/toxicity cases. Feeling discouraged, she replaced the books on their respective shelves and returned to her office, hoping she hadn’t missed Bingham’s call. Maybe Peter was right: his finding of ethylene had resulted from a laboratory error.

When Lou got back to police headquarters, he was handed a stack of urgent messages from his captain, the area commander, and the police commissioner. Clearly all of officialdom was in an uproar.

Going into his office, he was surprised to find a newly appointed detective sitting patiently by his desk. His suit was new, suggesting he’d only recently become a plainclothesman.

“Who are you?” Lou asked.

“Officer O’Brian,” the policeman said.

“You have a first name?”

“Yes, sir! It’s Patrick.”

“Nice Italian name,” Lou said.

Patrick laughed.

“What can I do for you?” Lou asked, trying to decide on the order in which to return his messages.

“Sergeant Norman Carver asked me to come by to try to collate the medical information you have relating to those gangland killings. You know, all those people who were also patients of Dr. Jordan Scheffield. He thought I might be good at it because I’d been premed for a while in college and had worked in a hospital summers before switching to law enforcement.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Lou said.

“I came up with something that might be important,” Patrick said.

“Uh huh,” Lou said. He stared at the messages to call the police commissioner. That was the one that was the most disturbing. He’d never gotten a message to call the police commissioner. It was like a parish priest getting a call from the pope.

“All the patients had different diagnoses,” Patrick continued, “but they did have one feature in common.”

Lou looked up. “Oh?”

Patrick nodded. “They were all scheduled to have surgery. They were all going to have operations on their corneas.”

“No kidding?” Lou said.

“No kidding,” Patrick said.

After Patrick had left, Lou tried to make sense of it. He’d been disappointed when he’d failed to find a common link between the murder victims besides the fact they’d been patients of Jordan Scheffield. But now there might be something after all. It couldn’t be simple coincidence.

Looking at his stack of phone messages, Lou decided to postpone returning the calls. He’d be better off following up on this new information. After all, he already knew what his higher-ups were calling him about. They wanted to complain about his lack of progress in the gangland murders and probably give him an earful about Laurie’s overdose series to boot. If there was a chance he could start to break the case with this cornea stuff, he’d be better off pursuing it now before he spoke to them.

Lou decided to start with the doctor himself. He figured he’d get the usual runaround, but he was determined to speak with the man, patients or no.

But when Lou asked for Jordan, Scheffield’s receptionist told him that Jordan was in surgery over at Manhattan General and that he had many cases scheduled. He wouldn’t be back in the office until late in the day.

Lou pondered his options. Returning his urgent messages still wasn’t his next choice. He decided persistence was the virtue of the day; he’d pay the eye doc another visit even if it meant barging in the operating room. He’d witnessed about a dozen autopsies that week; could surgery be much worse?

“What the hell happened?” Paul bellowed. Angelo, Tony, and Dr. Louis Travino had been hauled on the carpet. They stood like errant pupils before the school principal. Paul Cerino was seated behind his massive partners desk. He was not happy.

Dr. Travino wiped his forehead nervously with a handkerchief. He was a balding, overweight man with a vague resemblance to Cerino.

“Isn’t somebody going to answer me? What’s the matter with you people? I asked a simple question. How’d this story get into the papers?” He swatted the newspaper on his desk in front of him. “All right,” Paul said when it was clear no one was about to volunteer anything. “Let’s start from the beginning. Louie, you told me this “fruit gas’ would not be detectable.”

“That’s right,” Louie said. “It’s not. It’s too volatile. Nothing was said about the gas in the papers.”

“True,” Paul said. “But then why are they describing these overdoses as murders?”

“I don’t know,” Louie replied. “But it wasn’t because they detected the gas.”

“You’d better be right,” Paul said. “I don’t think I have to remind you I’ve been covering your sizable gambling debts. The Vaccarro family would be very unhappy with you if I suddenly wasn’t good for the money.”

“It wasn’t the gas,” Louie reiterated.

“So what was it? I’m telling you, this article has given me a very bad feeling. If someone’s screwed up, heads are going to roll.”

“This is the first suggestion of trouble,” Louie said. “Otherwise everything has been doing fine. And look at you, you’re doing great.”

“Then how did this female doc come up with the real story?” Paul asked. “This Laurie Montgomery is the same broad who blabbed to Lou Soldano about the acid being tossed in my face. Who is this chick?”

“She’s one of the medical examiners in the Manhattan office,” Louie said.

“You mean like that character Quincy that used to be on TV?” Paul asked.

“Well, it’s a little different in real life,” Louie said. “But basically the same.”

“So how did she suspect something?” Paul asked. “I thought you said there’d be no figuring this. How did this Laurie Montgomery guess what was going on?”

“I don’t know,” Louie said. “Maybe this is something we should ask Dr. Montgomery.”

Cerino considered the suggestion for a moment. “To tell you the truth,” he said, “I’d been thinking the same thing. Besides, this Laurie Montgomery could become a big pain in the ass if she keeps up the detective work. Angelo, you think you might arrange a little, er, interview with the little lady?”

“No problem,” Angelo said. “You want her, I’ll get her.”