Andrew Neiderman - Deficiency

Curt nodded.

"Maybe."

"And here's our Terri right in the middle of it all or unfortunately at the wrong places at the wrong time, huh?"

"Unfortunately. I don't think we need to lose any sleep over it," Curt said. "I've got to get back to this," he said tapping the brief. "I'm in court this afternoon."

"Right. Just thought you'd like to know. You going to Roary's for lunch?"

"I'm not going to have time," he said.

"Don't work harder than I do. It makes me look bad," Bill joked, pretended to flip a basketball at a net, and left the office.

Curt stared after him.

Trust, he thought.

Trust is more important than love in a relationship.

The fist beating in his heart thumped on.

"Am I a suspect of some kind?" Terri asked Will Dennis, who was waiting for her at the nurse's station. She had gotten to the hospital a little early and had seen Sally Peters, a fifty-four-year-old widow who suffered serious hypertension.

Will Dennis raised his eyebrows in surprise. She had barely acknowledged him before asking. Perhaps it was her medical training or just being under the sign of Sagittarius that made Terri the type of person who was so direct and to the point. It was to think about all of this while she was attending patients, but all day at the office she found herself slipping into it. Her eyes drifted from charts and her thoughts fell back to the bizarre deaths of both young women, especially Kristin Martin because, as short as it was, she did attempt some therapy.

"Why would you think that, Doctor?" Will responded. She looked at the nurse on duty and then started away without answering him. Will Dennis walked alongside her. She paused at the elevator and turned to him.

"I don't have any satisfactory medical explanations for you. I told you that you would have to seek out more learned people," she began. Although Will Dennis's eyes were full of interest and curiosity, he didn't really look at her with suspicion and accusation. Of course, she attributed most of that to his skills at questioning witnesses and suspects, but she also wondered about her own paranoia, something she could lay at Curt's feet for sure.

"We are doing just that, and we're not getting answers that help us along. No one we've spoken with yet, and we've even gone to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, can offer anything that even comes close to a logical, noncriminal cause for all this. It's possible that something you saw, something you remember, might just lead us in a sensible direction." The elevator door opened.

She nodded.

"You're right. I'm sorry," she said. "It's been a long day and especially made longer by a horrid night."

"I understand," Will said after they stepped into the elevator.

"Well," she began. "As I said, I tried to get her to speak, to tell me if the cause of her difficulties might be an allergy, perhaps to a bee sting. She mouthed something that sounded like 'he.'"

" He? That's it? He?"

"And I can't even swear to that," she added quickly. "Don't hold me to it."

"No, no, of course not," he said thoughtfully.

"I'm sure pathology has already told you about any suspicious-looking traumas." Will nodded. The elevator door opened and they walked out and toward the cafeteria.

"What is especially puzzling to me," Terri continued, "is the selectivity of the deficiency. One woman lacking vitamin C and another lacking B and of course the speed with which they each went into the deficiency ailments."

"Yes," Will said. "I had detectives question Kristin Martin's grandmother last night and according to her, the girl showed no signs of illness, and today, questioning her employer, fellow employees, we've come up with the same sort of puzzling description we had when we spoke to the people who knew Paige Thorndyke: she was full of energy, healthy looking, no complaints of pains or any of the other symptoms."

Terri listened and nodded. They went to the counter and began to choose their dinner.

"Let me get this," he offered at the cashier. "Expense budget." She smiled and went to a table far enough away from nurses and doctors having their dinners. Some recognized the district attorney immediately. Will Dennis sat across from her.

"Someone has already suggested terrorism, you know," he mentioned as he shook his lemonade container.

"Terrorism? Here? Why?"

He shrugged.

"They've got to start somewhere and make an example so they can throw the country into a panic like they did with anthrax."

Terri smirked.

"We've become a nation of paranoids." She started to eat and then thought of something. "Do you know if Paige Thorndyke knew Kristin Martin?"

"We're working on that, but at the moment it appears they did not have any sort of friendship or relationship, nor did they frequent the same places, although Kristin did go to the dance club Paige went to the night she died. Kristin was there more frequently."

"I see. I would hope you might find something, some connection that would help us all understand any of this. Nothing at either crime scene?" she asked.

"No, nothing yet."

"I even feel funny calling them crime scenes. You haven't established any crime was committed, right? I mean, it looks like Kristin Martin might have been raped, I suppose, but unless Paige Thorndyke was kidnapped and brought to that motel forcibly, a woman having sex is not a crime in this country, at least not yet," she added.

Will Dennis smiled and began to eat. She pecked at her own food.

"Once this comes out, you will probably see a run on vitamins," Terri said.

"Maybe the vitamin companies or a company is behind it then, huh?" She paused and looked at him. He was half serious, she thought. Talk about rampant paranoia.

"Look," she said leaning back, a little more frustrated and confused by this meeting. "I'm like what's-her-name in Silence of the Lambs here, practically a trainee called upon to help solve something experts are struggling to understand."

"Well," Dennis said, holding his smile, "maybe you'll have the same success she did."

"That was a novel, Mr. Dennis. This is real life."

"Doesn't feel like it," he said gazing around.

Terri stopped eating and studied the district attorney a little harder.

"You didn't come here to see if there was some little tidbit I had left out of my report, did you, Mr. Dennis? You have something else in mind, don't you?" she asked him.

For a moment it looked like he wasn't going to reply. He even looked like he might just get up and walk away, Terri thought. There was a debate raging in his own mind. He smiled and leaned forward.

"There is some information no one else has in this county, in your township especially," he said, "and very few have within the state, in fact."

"Am I going to be told this information?"

"I've been deciding that as we speak," he said. "It's not that I don't trust you with it; it's what I want to ask you to do about it."

"I see," she said. "Actually, I don't see," she continued, shaking her head and holding a smile of confusion.

"What would you say if I told you that the two young women who died so unusually here were two of now ten across eight states who have died in similar fashion?"

She shook her head.

"I wouldn't know what to say."

"When we had the diagnosis on Paige Thorndyke, it sent up a flare. The FBI contacted me and we all sort of stepped back and waited to see if the second shoe would drop. It did with Kristin Martin.

"This FBI investigation is a little over a year old, and they have not made any significant headway. They are excited about our situation because this is the first time a second death of similar causes has occurred within the same area. The previous deaths, which we will now call murders, were spread over considerable distance. Whoever is causing these deaths was careful about proximity. This doesn't seem to be a concern any longer and because of that, they believe whoever is doing this is still here. In short, they are expecting another fatality to occur within our county.