Since she was behind schedule after doubling her workout routine, Jazz showered and dressed hurriedly. Emerging from the locker room, she looked back into the lobby area where her father had been sitting, and was relieved that he'd taken the hint and left.
As she approached her car, she couldn't help but remember the previous night, and after opening the door, the first thing she did was check the backseat. She wasn't happy about Mr. Bob and Mr. Dave surprising her the way they did. She liked to think of herself as being wary and observant.
Climbing into the Hummer and buckling herself in, Jazz was looking forward to some fun on the way to the hospital. Dueling with taxicabs was a good way to deal with the remnant of anxiety that her father's surprise visit had aroused. Waiting in the short line to get out of the garage, she got out her Blackberry. After three names in the last two nights, she wasn't optimistic, but she wanted to check just the same.
At the first red light, she logged on for messages. To her delight, there was one from Mr. Bob. Hastily, she opened it. "Yes!" she cried out. There was another name on her LCD screen. It was Patricia Pruit.
A smile spread across Jazz's face. All was well. By that time the following night, her account balance would be more than sixty thousand dollars.
When the light changed, Jazz bolted ahead of the pack of cars and taxis. No one seemed to want to challenge her. Settling back into the seat, she thought about how her father had found her. She was a little surprised. Although she spent a lot of time in chat rooms on the Internet, she thought she had been careful about her identity and whereabouts, except for the few times she "hooked up." She decided she'd better be more careful, because she liked chat rooms and wasn't about to give up the pleasure. It was only online that she found people of like mind to whom she could truly relate, respect, and even love. It was such a far cry from the assholes she had to deal with in real life.
Roger's dinner with Rosalyn turned out to be an unqualified success. The fact that she had been aloof when they first met was more than adequately made up by her behavior during dinner, particularly after she'd had a few glasses of wine. Following the meal, Roger tried to put her in a taxi to take her home, but she insisted that they share one. Outside her Kew Gardens apartment, she mounted a hard-to-resist argument for Roger to come in for a nightcap, a term Roger hadn't heard since college.
Ultimately, Roger did resist, even after a sustained and passionate kiss on the sidewalk. Roger had kept one hand on the open taxi door. Despite being severely tempted to take advantage of her hospitality and whatever else her newly expressed physicality implied, Roger kept reminding himself about the work he planned to do in his office. He felt he was on a roll, and even if he couldn't have anything that evening to present to Laurie, the weekend was just beginning.
After a promise to keep in touch, Roger climbed back into the cab and waved out the back window. Rosalyn stood nailed to the spot, waving until she disappeared from view. Roger was pleased. The venture to Queens had been rewarding. Not only did he get most of the information he wanted, he'd met a woman who was a strong candidate for some interesting future encounters.
By the time he had gotten back to the Manhattan General, it was nearly eleven o'clock. The first thing he did was visit the coffee shop and have a cup of real coffee. By the time he got up to his office, he was wired, and he dove into his work with alacrity. By two A.M., he'd developed quite a bit of data. Laurie's idea, coupled with his decisions of how to expand it, had proved to be strikingly fertile. In fact, it appeared to be too fertile. When he had started, he'd wondered if he'd come up with any suspects. Now he had too many.
Roger rocked back in his chair and picked up the first sheet he'd printed, a list of five doctors with admitting privileges at both Manhattan General and St. Francis, and who had actually exercised those privileges at both institutions over the previous four months. The original list of the doctors with dual privileges was far too long to be workable. That was when he decided to restrict it.
As chief of the medical staff, Roger had unfettered access to the credentialing information and records of all physicians associated with the Manhattan General. Three of the five doctors on his list had disciplinary problems. Two of the doctors were euphemistically called "impaired" because of addiction problems to which Roger could surely relate. They were on probation, with some minor limitations in respect to their privileges, after having gone through drug rehab six months ago. The other individual, Dr. Pakt Tam, was involved in multiple malpractice suits that were still pending, all of which involved untimely deaths, although not the ones in Laurie's series. The hospital had tried to revoke his privileges, but he had sued, and his privileges were reinstated by court order pending the trial.
Dr. Tarn's case had stimulated Roger to look up all the doctors whose privileges had been either eliminated or curtailed over the previous six months, with the idea that they could be angry, vengeful, and deranged, or any combination. That inquiry had led to eight doctors. The problem was that he had no way of knowing if any of them had had an association with St. Francis. Quickly, he scribbled a note to himself to call and ask Rosalyn on Monday. He attached the note to the page with the eight doctors and put it off to the side.
The thought about an angry doctor had made Roger think about any disgruntled current or former employee of the hospital, particularly a nurse or someone else who had direct access to patients. If he was going to think about doctors, he had to think about everyone else in the hospital as well, so he'd made a note to talk to Bruce to get a list of employees terminated prior to the mid-November cutoff date, maybe even going back a year. He'd taped the note to the edge of his desk lamp so he'd be sure to see it. At that point, he had begun to get discouraged, but he had pressed on.
The next group Roger had considered was the anesthesiologists. As he had voiced to Laurie, and for the reasons Laurie had concisely specified, he felt their expertise made them prime suspects, and his intuition had paid off with a couple of interesting possibilities. Two had immediately jumped out at him. Both worked the night shift exclusively, and presumably by choice. One was Dr. José Cabreo, who had a history of impairment with OxyContin, as well as several malpractice suits. The other was Dr. Motilal Najah, a recent addition to the professional staff from St. Francis. Roger had printed out copies of both doctors' records and had drawn stars next to their names. Those papers were directly in front of him just off the central blotter. As far as he was concerned, they were his chief suspects, with Najah ahead of Cabreo. Although Najah's credentialing record was clean, the timing of his transfer was just too perfect.
The last group Roger had looked into was the rest of the hospital employees. Comparing the list of people leaving St. Francis after mid-November with the list of new employees at the Manhattan General during the same period, Roger had come up with a group of more than twenty people. At first, the number shocked him, but then, when he thought about it, it made a certain amount of sense. The Manhattan General was the flagship of the AmeriCare fleet, and if there was active recruiting going on, as Rosalyn suggested, it would be natural for most professionals and support personnel to prefer to be at the name institution.
Recognizing his limitations as an amateur sleuth, Roger had known immediately that twenty-three suspects were too many for him to consider. To narrow the group, he had used Laurie's suggestion of considering only those people who worked the night shift at St. Francis and moved to the night shift at Manhattan General. With such narrow parameters, he had no idea if he'd get any hits, but to his surprise, he did. He had gotten seven. The names were Herman Epstein from pharmacy, David Jefferson from security, Jasmine Rakoczi from nursing, Kathleen Chaudhry and Joe Linton from the laboratory, Brenda Ho from housekeeping, and Warren Williams from maintenance.