Jordan studied the image a moment, and felt his pulse tick up when he heard footsteps headed toward the office. He retook his seat just before Lucy reappeared. She looked a little frazzled as she hurriedly collected the patient file from her desk.
“Silly me,” Lucy said. “I went to give the doctor the pathology report, and what did I forget? The pathology report, of course. Can you wait another minute, Jordan? I just have to give the patient the good news.”
Lucy headed to the door, but Jordan looked at her uneasily. Lucy paused.
“Well, can you wait?”
“Um-um-”
“Yes or no? Not a hard question.”
“Um-”
“Jordan, is there something you want to say to me? The doctor is waiting. His patient will want to know that he’s cancer free.”
“Yeah-um-Dr. Abruzzo.”
Lucy set the folder down on her desk and crossed her arms. She gave Jordan a disapproving stare.
“Jordan, I’m in a hurry here. What is it?”
“Yeah, um-well-I was walking around the office, you know, waiting for you to come back and all, and well, I saw the file open on your desk.”
Lucy’s frown seemed to deepen. “Jordan, did you read a patient’s confidential file?” Her tone was serious.
“I didn’t mean nothing by it. Just caught my eye, is all.”
“Well, it’s my fault for leaving it out in plain sight, I suppose.”
Jordan shifted his weight from foot to foot, eyes to the floor. “Yeah, well, I just noticed that you wrote he was negative for dysplasia.”
Lucy glowered. “That’s none of your business. And do you even know what that means?”
Jordan shifted again. “Well, you know, you work here long enough, you pick up the lingo. But I was just wondering if maybe you were in a hurry or something and you wrote the wrong word.”
“Now why would you say that?”
Jordan gave this some thought. “Forget it.”
Lucy glared at him hard. “No. No, Jordan. I won’t just forget it. Why would you question me on this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay. Well, that was an odd little exchange we just had there. Wait right here. Let me deliver the good news and I’ll be right back.”
Lucy gathered up the folder. She made it to the door when Jordan called out her name. Her face almost a scowl, Lucy turned and shot Jordan an impatient glance.
“That patient is high-grade positive for dysplasia,” Jordan said in a breathless voice. “You tell him he’s clean and he’s gonna die.”
Lucy returned a quizzical look. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying the picture of the stain shows an awful lot of cancer.”
“Are you suggesting that I’ve diagnosed this patient incorrectly?”
Lucy’s tone bordered on wrathful, as she got right up into Jordan’s face. It did not matter that Jordan towered over her and outweighed her by more than a hundred pounds; he still shrank back. His eyes blinked rapidly.
“The cells look messed up.”
“Messed up? Can you be a little bit more specific? I mean, you seem to absorb the language just fine.”
“No-it’s just messed up.”
“Tell me exactly how it’s messed up.”
Jordan stayed quiet.
“You saw something. You have a point to make. Now make it.”
“There’s variability in the size, shape, and staining of the cells.”
“Variability? You noticed that?”
“Yeah-the cells, they look, um…”
“Look like what, Jordan? Tell me, or I might have to find your replacement.”
“The nuclei in the luminal half of the cells are stratified and show pleomorphism. That means there’s a lot of distortion in the cells.”
Lucy exhaled a loud breath. “Well, now. That is quite a lot of our nomenclature you’ve absorbed.”
“Pleomorphism.” Jordan’s voice was barely audible. “That’s a characteristic of malignant neoplasms.”
Lucy stood with her arms akimbo. “I know what pleomorphism means,” she said through clenched teeth.
Jordan bowed his head. “I’m sorry, Dr. Abruzzo. I shouldn’t have said anything. I just-I just messed up, that’s all. I’ll wait right here while you deliver that report. But you shouldn’t do it. This guy has lots of cancer. That’s all I’m gonna say.”
“Funny, I thought I was the doctor and you were the diener.”
Lucy opened the report and studied it carefully. Instead of leaving, she took the top page of the report, and with a roguish expression ripped it in half.
“Well, lucky for us this patient doesn’t actually exist,” Lucy said with a smile.
Jordan was dumbfounded. “What?”
“I’ve noticed things around here. Relevant Web sites open to cases we happen to be reviewing, journal articles of certain importance left in the break room. But when you happened to stumble upon a mysterious lab report-one that seemed to have fallen out of the sky-and correctly diagnosed cobalt poisoning, well, let’s just say my suspicions were roused,” Lucy said. “But I couldn’t prove it. I looked, but whoever used our medical records system to run that lab was a shadow. Even the IT folks couldn’t find you.”
“I didn’t-I-”
“Jordan, please. I’m smart enough to know this fictional patient I baited you with was riddled with cancer. I’m also smart enough to know that you’re a hell of a lot more than a diener. What I don’t know, and what you’re going to tell me right now, is why you sent Brandon Stahl the EKG and echocardiogram of Donald Colchester.”
CHAPTER 29
The state police barracks in the town of Russell was a two-story redbrick building located a few miles from where a stranger accosted Julie. After navigating the curved driveway, Julie brought her car to a stop in a mostly empty parking lot and got out in a hurry. The man and his motorcycle could not have gone very far. They still had a chance of tracking him down.
Caught up in the urgency of the situation, Julie was having trouble settling down. She had never experienced fear like this. It transcended the emotional and became something physical, leaving her utterly drained. Whoever this man was, his presence lingered. If she closed her eyes, Julie could see that featureless mask and haunting black eyes staring back at her.
My client doesn’t appreciate your efforts to free a killer.
Who could that client be? Julie had a good idea, and she planned to share those feelings with the state police.
In no time, Julie was seated in a cramped waiting area, facing a Plexiglas window through which she could see patrol officers and dispatchers at work. A police officer eventually emerged from behind a steel door and introduced himself as Trooper Sean O’Mara.
He greeted Julie with a firm handshake. O’Mara wore the uniform of the Massachusetts State Police-blue shirt, dark blue tie, and dark pants with yellow stripes running down the legs. He was short and stocky, and seemed well suited for this type of work.
O’Mara had a stern face that Julie found slightly unnerving. She had expected someone older-a seasoned detective to hunt down an experienced predator. This stranger had known when to approach her, how to conceal his identity, and most important of all, how to get away.
“We’ll go to the interview room,” O’Mara said.
A small smile and a sympathetic look lessened Julie’s anxiety. She had come here voluntarily and under duress, and she needed a dose of empathy.
O’Mara carried a clipboard with a police report attached into a small, windowless interview room. He invited Julie to take a seat across from him at a metal table. There was nothing on the gray-painted concrete walls. She provided all the requisite information, including her driver’s license. O’Mara filled in the form, while Julie sipped from a bottle of water he had supplied.
“So in your words, tell me exactly what happened.”