Michael Crichton - A Case of Need

Her brother knew how to do the procedure, but he was on duty at the time. I could check that, and might, later on, but for the moment, there was no reason to disbelieve him.

Peter Randall and J. D. were both possibilities, technically speaking. But somehow I couldn’t imagine either of them doing it.

That left Art, or one of Karen’s Beacon Hill friends, or somebody I hadn’t met yet and didn’t even know existed.

I stared at the list for a while, and then called the Mallory Building at the City. Alice wasn’t there; I talked with another secretary.

“Have you got the path diagnosis on Karen Randall?”

“What’s the case number?”

“I don’t know the case number.”

Very irritably, she said, “It would help if you did.”

“Please check it anyway,” I said.

I knew perfectly well that the secretary had a filecard system right in front of her, with all the finished posts for a month arranged alphabetically and by number. It would be no trouble for her.

After a long pause, she said, “Here it is. Vaginal hemorrhage secondary to uterine perforation and lacerations, following attempted dilation and curettage for three-month pregnancy. The secondary diagnosis is systemic anaphylaxis.”

“I see,” I said, frowning. “Are you sure?”

“I’m just reading what it says,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said.

I hung up, feeling odd. Judith gave me a cup of coffee and said, “What happened?”

“The autopsy report says Karen Randall was pregnant.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.”

“Wasn’t she?”

“I never thought so,” I said.

I knew I could be wrong. It might have been proven in the micro exam, where the gross had shown nothing. But somehow it didn’t seem likely.

I called Murph’s lab to see if he had finished with the blood-hormone assay, but he hadn’t; it wouldn’t be finished until after noon. I said I’d call him back.

Then I opened the phone book and looked up the address of Angela Harding. She was living on Chestnut Street, a very good address.

I went over to see her.

CHESTNUT STREET IS OFF CHARLES, near the bottom of the Hill. It’s a very quiet area of town houses, antique shops, quaint restaurants, and small grocery stores; most of the people who live here are young professionals—doctors and lawyers and bankers—who want a good address but can’t yet afford to move out to Newton or Wellesley. The other people who live here are old professionals, men in their fifties and sixties whose children are grown and married, permitting them to move back to the city. If you are going to live anywhere in Boston, you have to live on Beacon Hill. There were, of course, some students living here, but usually they were stacked three or four deep in small apartments; it was the only way they could afford the rents. Older residents seemed to like the students; they added a little color and youth to the neighborhood. That is, they liked the students so long as the students looked clean and behaved themselves.

Angela Harding lived on the second floor of a walk-up; I knocked on the door. It was answered by a slim, dark-haired girl wearing a miniskirt and a sweater. She had a flower painted on her cheek, and large, blue-tinted granny glasses.

“Angela Harding?”

“No,” said the girl. “You’re too late. She’s already gone. But maybe she’ll call back.”

I said, “My name is Dr. Berry. I’m a pathologist.”

“Oh.”

The girl bit her lip and stared at me uncertainly.

“Are you Bubbles?”

“Yes,” she said. “How did you know?” And then she snapped her fingers. “Of course. You were the one with Superhead last night.”

“Yes.”

“I heard you’d been around.”

“Yes.”

She stepped back from the door. “Come in.” The apartment had almost no furniture at all. A single couch in the living room, and a couple of pillows on the floor; through an open door, I saw an unmade bed.

“I’m trying to find out about Karen Randall,” I said.

“I heard.”

“Is this where you all lived last summer?”

“Yeah.”

“When did you last see Karen?”

“I haven’t seen her for months. Neither has Angela,” she said.

“Did Angela tell you that?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“When did she say that to you?”

“Last night. We were talking about Karen last night. You see, we’d just found out about her, uh, accident.”

“Who told you?”

She shrugged. “The word got around.”

“What word?”

“That she got a bad scrape.”

“Do you know who did it?”

She said, “They’ve picked up some doctor. But you know that.”

“Yes,” I said.

“He probably did it,” she said, with a shrug. She brushed her long black hair away from her face. She had very pale skin. “But I don’t know.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, Karen was no fool. She knew the score. Like, she’d been through the routine before. Including last summer.”

“An abortion?”

“Yeah. That’s right. And afterward she was real depressed. She took a couple of down-trips, real freaks, and it shook her up. She had this thing about babies, and she knew it was rotten because it gave her freak trips. We didn’t want her to fly for a while after the abortion, but she insisted, and it was bad. Real bad.”

I said, “How do you mean?”

“One time she became the knife. She was scraping out the room and screaming the whole time that it was bloody, that all the walls were covered with blood. And she thought the windows were babies and that they were turning black and dying. Really bad news.”

“What did you do?”

“We took care of her.” Bubbles shrugged. “What else could we do?”

She reached over to a table and picked up a jar and a small wire loop. She swung the loop in the air and a stream of bubbles floated out and drifted gently downward. She watched them. One after another, they fell to the floor and popped.

“Real bad.”

“Last summer,” I said, “who did the abortion?”

Bubbles laughed. “I don’t know.”

“What happened?”

“Well, she got knocked up. So she announces that she’s going to get rid of it, and she takes off for a day, and then comes back all smiling and happy.”

“No problems?”

“None.” She swung out another stream of bubbles and watched them. “None at all. Excuse me a minute.”

She went into the kitchen, poured a glass of water, and swallowed it with a pill.

“I was coming down,” she said, “you know?”

“What was it?”

“Bombs.”

“Bombs?”

“Sure. You know.” She waved her hand impatiently. “Speed. Lifts. Jets. Bennies.”

“Amphetamine?”

“Methedrene.”

“You on it all the time?”

“Just like a doctor.” She brushed her hair back again. “Always asking questions.”

“Where do you get the stuff?”

I had seen the capsule. It was at least five milligrams. Most of the black-market material is one milligram.

“Forget it,” she said. “All right? Just forget it.”

“If you wanted me to forget it,” I said, “why did you let me see you take it?”

“A shrink, too.”

“Just curious.”

“I was showing off,” she said.

“Maybe you were.”

“Maybe I was.” She laughed.

“Was Karen on speed, too?”

“Karen was on everything.” Bubbles sighed. “She used to shoot speed.”

I must have looked puzzled, because she made jabbing motions at her elbow with her finger, imitating intravenous injection.

“Nobody else shoots it,” Bubbles said. “But Karen went all out.”

I said, “Her trips…”

“Acid. Once, DMT.”