“Shamus hasn’t seen the doctor in months. We moved recently. We’ve been taking care of him on our own. We’ve already been to one pet hospital, up the road a ways… They got mad. It’s so early, and we’ve been up all night. They turned me down flat.” She wrung her hands. “I was hoping you could help.”
Betsy’s eyes glinted with the merest shade of suspicion. “We can’t supply narcotics or pain killers,” she warned.
“Nothing like that,” Kaye said, her heart thumping. She smiled and drew a breath. “Oh, forgive me, I’m so worried about the poor thing. We’ll need Lactated Ringer’s, four or five liters, if you have it, with butterfly clamp, and as many sets of tubes and needles—twenty-five-gauge needles.”
“That’s a little thin for a cat. Take forever to fill her up.”
“It’s a he,” Kaye said. “It’s all he’ll put up with.”
“All right,” Betsy said doubtfully.
“Methyl prednisone,” Kaye said. “To calm him while he’s traveling.”
“We have Depo-Medrol.”
“That’s fine. Do you have vidarabine?”
“Not for cats,” the young woman said, frowning. “I’ll have to check all this with the doctor.”
“He’s at the cabin—our cat. He’s doing poorly, and it’s all my fault. I should have known better.”
“You’ve handled this before… haven’t you?”
“I’m an expert,” Kaye said, and put on a brave, tearful grin.
The young woman entered the list onto a flat-screen monitor. “I’m not sure I even know what vidarabine is.”
Kaye searched her memory, trying to remember the long hours she had spent searching PediaServe, MediSHEVA, and a hundred other sites and databases, years ago, preparing for some unknown disaster. “There’s a new one we use sometimes. It’s called picornavene, enterovene, something like that?”
“We have equine picornavene. Surely that’s not what you’re looking for.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“It comes in quite large doses.”
“Fine. Famicyclovir?”
“No,” Betsy said, very suspicious now. “Drugstore might have that. What kind of life has your cat lived?”
“He was a wild one,” Kaye said.
“If he’s that sick…”
“He means so much to us.”
“You should wait for the vet. He’ll be back in an hour.”
“I’m not sure we have that long,” Kaye said, looking at her watch with a desperate expression she did not have to fake.
“You’re positive you’ve done all this before, you know how it works?”
“We’ve kept him alive for a year. I’ve had him for eighteen years. He’s a brave old tom. I don’t know what I’d do without him.”
The assistant shook her head, dubious but sympathetic. “I could get in trouble.”
Kaye felt no guilt whatsoever. If she had had a gun, she would have held them up, right now, for everything she needed. “I wouldn’t want that,” she said, staring right at the woman.
The assistant waggled her head. “What the hell,” she said. “Old cats. Pain in the butt, huh?”
“You know it,” Kaye said.
“And it’s not like we’re in the big city. Five liters Ringer’s, two hundred mils equine picornavene—that’s the smallest we’ve got—and the Depo-Medrol—” Betsy picked up the printed list. “Credit or debit?”
“Cash,” Kaye said.
39
OHIO
Yolanda Middleton followed Dicken through the school trailers to the old farm buildings. She caught up with him easily and shook out a ring of keys. “We ransacked Trask’s office,” she said. “Found master keys to all the buildings. There’s a tag from when this was a prison. Some of the nurses say there could still be supplies out here, but nobody knows.”
“Great. Did Kelson ever come out here?”
“I don’t think so. This was Dr. Jurie’s lab,” Middleton said. “Dr. Pickman was his assistant. Both were authorized to do research. They stayed away from the rest of us.”
“What sort of research?” Dicken asked.
Middleton shook her head.
Dicken stood on the asphalt path and tapped his shoe lightly on the curb, thinking. He looked over his shoulder at the converted barn, the old business education building, and the three blank-faced concrete cubes between. Then he set off. Middleton followed.
A double steel door marked one side of the closest cube. This was labeled “no admittance” in white letters on the door’s blue enamel.
“What’s in here?”
“Well, among other things, a temporary morgue,” she said. “That’s what they told me. I don’t know that it was ever used.”
“Why here?”
“Dr. Jurie told us we had to keep the bodies of any children who died. The county coroner wouldn’t take them, even though she was supposed to.”
“Were the parents notified?”
“We tried,” Middleton said. “Sometimes they move without giving any forwarding address. They just leave the children behind.”
“Is there a graveyard for the school?”
“Not that I ever heard of. Honestly, Dr. Jurie took care of all that.” Middleton looked distinctly uncomfortable. “We assumed they went to a potter’s field somewhere outside of town. There weren’t that many, really. Two or three, maybe, since the school opened, and only one since I’ve been here. Trask didn’t let word about deaths circulate very far. He called it a private matter.”
Dicken rubbed his fingers together. “Key?”
Middleton looked for a newer key on the ring, and held one up for his inspection. It was labeled R1-F, F for Front, presumably—and R for what, Research? They agreed with a look that this was the best choice. As she pushed the key into the lock, Dicken turned his gaze up the face of concrete, pale gray in the morning light. He narrowed his eye, as he had learned over the years, to help the fogged lens focus on the vent covers near the top, a few pipes sticking out, a thick power line going to a pole and across to the junction box near the old barn.
Middleton pulled the door open. Inside, it was cool enough to make him shiver.
“The air-conditioner works here, at least,” he said.
“It’s separate from the main plant,” Middleton said. “This building’s newer than the rest.”
Dicken took a deep breath. He felt as if he were on a wild goose chase. There might be medicine in these buildings, but he doubted it. More likely they would find laboratory supplies—unless Trask had conspired with the doctors to sell those, too. Still, the lab might be better equipped than the small medical facility adjacent to the infirmary. But these were just excuses.
Something else was bringing him here, an instinctive suspicion that had come to him as he walked among the cots in the special treatment center. We’re curious monkeys, he thought. We never miss opportunities.
He found a light switch on the wall inside the door and pushed it. Fluorescents bathed the interior in a cool, sterile glow. The north wall of the room was covered by stainless steel refrigerators, huge lab units equipped with tiny blue temperature displays. Expensive, and very unlike the small, hump-shouldered units outside the infirmary.
“When did Jurie and Pickman leave?” he asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Did they take anything?”
Middleton shrugged. “I didn’t see them go. I can’t be everywhere.”
“Of course not,” Dicken said. The mask itched. He reached up to rub his nose, then thought better of it.
“How long will this take?” Middleton asked.
Dicken ignored her. The refrigerators were locked and equipped with push-button keypads. He ran his fingers across one of the pads and shook his head.