"So?"
"You know she works at Community General."
"I know all this, Bill. Is there a point?"
He sat, folded his hands and pressed them against his long, flat chest upon which he wore a loose white shirt and an out of style wide tie.
"She works for Dr. Stern in pathology."
"I love it when you come in here and interrupt me and give me pages and pages of information I know. It reinforces my belief in tape replays in sports."
"She told Melanie something a few minutes ago."
"Why didn't you say she told your wife Melanie? You left out something I know."
"Which," Bill said ignoring him, "she claimed no one knows yet, but soon will, about the Martin woman whom Terri tried to save last night." Curt stopped smiling. He put the pages down on his desk and sat back in his chair.
"And what would that be, Bill?"
"She said she died of an extreme case of beriberi, which is a disease caused by a vitamin deficiency. One of the B's, I think."
Curt stared at him.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Bill asked. "I mean, why is it a secret?" Curt swallowed.
That fist of anger was opening and closing again, growing, too. He put his right palm over his chest as if he thought Bill would soon be able to see it palpitating.
"I didn't know. She didn't tell me that," he said. Bill nodded and then shrugged.
"Maybe she didn't know either. Anyway, it's going to cause a stir around here, don't you think? Two young women die of vitamin deficiency diseases within a week of each other?"
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.
TEN
"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."