The call had come from the duty commander while Harris was using his Soloflex machine in front of his TV at home. Unfortunately, there’d been a delay of nearly half an hour following the dispatch of the patrol car, but Harris was not in a position to complain. Arriving late was better than not arriving at all. Harris just didn’t want the case to be cold by the time he got involved.
As Harris had driven to the residence, he thought back to the rape and murder of Sheila Arnold. He couldn’t shake the suspicion — improbable though it might seem — that Arnold’s death was somehow related to the deaths of the breast cancer patients. Harris wasn’t a doctor so he had to go on what Dr. Mason had told him a few months ago, namely that it was his belief that the breast cancer patients were being murdered. The tip-off was the fact that these patients’ faces were blue, a sign they were being somehow smothered.
Dr. Mason had made it clear that getting to the bottom of this situation should be Harris’s primary task. If word leaked to the press, the damage to the Forbes might be irreparable. In fact, Dr. Mason had made it sound like Harris’s tenure depended on a quick and unobtrusive resolution of this potentially embarrassing problem. The quicker that resolution came about, the better for everyone.
But Harris had not made any progress over the last few months. Dr. Mason’s suggestion that the perpetrator was probably a doctor or a nurse had not panned out. Extensive background checks on the professional staff had failed to uncover any suspicious discrepancies or irregularities. Harris’s attempts at keeping an unobtrusive eye on the Forbes breast cancer patients hadn’t turned anything up. Not that he’d been able to keep watch over all of them.
Harris’s suspicion that Miss Arnold’s death was related to the breast cancer patient deaths had hit him the day after her murder while he’d been driving to work. It was then he’d remembered that the day before she was killed a breast cancer patient on her floor had died and turned blue.
What if Sheila Arnold had seen something, Harris wondered. What if she’d witnessed or overheard something whose significance she hadn’t appreciated — something that made the perpetrator feel threatened nonetheless. The idea had seemed reasonable to Harris, although he did wonder if it were the product of a desperate mind.
In any case, Harris’s suspicion hadn’t left him with much to go on. He had learned from the police that a witness had seen a man leaving Miss Arnold’s apartment the night of the murder, but the description had been hopelessly vague: a male of medium height and medium build with brown hair. The witness had not seen the man’s face. In an institution the size of the Forbes Cancer Center, such a description had been of limited use.
So when Harris was told of yet another attack on a Forbes nurse, he again considered a possible connection to the breast cancer deaths. There had been another suspicious blue death on Tuesday.
Harris entered Janet’s apartment eager to talk with her. He was extremely chagrined to find her in the company of the wiseass medical student, Sean Murphy.
Since the police were still questioning the nurse, Harris took a quick look around. He saw the shattered mirror in the bathroom along with the broken hair dryer. He also noticed the panties amid the debris on the floor. Wandering into the living room, he noted the large hole in the screen. It was obvious the screen had been a point of entry, not escape.
“Your witness,” Peter Jefferson joked, coming into the living room. His partner followed in his shadow. Harris had met Peter on several occasions in the past.
“Anything you can tell me?” Harris asked.
“Not a whole lot,” Peter said. “Perp was wearing a nylon stocking over his face. Medium build, medium height. Apparently didn’t say a word. Girl’s lucky. The guy had a knife.”
“What are you going to do?” Harris asked.
Peter shrugged. “The usual,” he said. “We’ll file a report. We’ll see what the sarge says. One way or another it’ll get turned over to an investigative unit. Who knows what they’ll do.” Peter lowered his voice. “No injury, no robbery. It’s not likely this will become a number-one priority. If she’d gotten whacked it’d be a different story.”
Harris nodded. He thanked the officers and they left. Harris stepped into the bedroom. Janet was packing a bag; Sean was in the bathroom collecting her toiletries.
“On behalf of Forbes, I want to tell you I’m terribly sorry about this,” he said.
“Thank you,” Janet said.
“We’ve never felt the need for security here,” Harris added.
“I understand,” Janet said. “It could have happened anyplace. I did leave the door open.”
“The police told me you had difficulty describing the guy,” Harris said.
“He had a stocking over his head,” Janet said. “And it all happened so fast.”
“Is it possible that you might have seen him before?” Harris asked.
“I don’t think so,” Janet said. “But it really is impossible to say for sure.”
“I want to ask you a question,” Harris said. “But I want you to think for a minute before answering. Has anything unusual happened to you recently at Forbes?”
Janet’s mouth went instantly dry.
Overhearing this exchange, Sean immediately guessed what was going through Janet’s mind: she was thinking about their break-in into the chart room.
“Janet has had a rather difficult experience,” Sean said, stepping into the room.
Harris turned. “I’m not talking to you, boy,” he said menacingly.
“Listen, jughead,” Sean said. “We didn’t call the Marines. Janet has spoken to the police. You can get your information from them. She doesn’t have to talk to you, and I think she’s been through enough tonight. She doesn’t need you pestering her.”
The two men faced off, glaring at each other.
“Please!” Janet shouted. Fresh tears welled in her eyes. “I can’t stand any tension just now,” she told them.
Sean sat down on the bed, put his arm around her, and leaned his forehead against hers.
“I’m sorry, Miss Reardon,” Harris said. “I understand. But it is important for me to ask you if you’ve seen anything unusual while you worked today. I know it was your first day.”
Janet shook her head. Sean glanced up at Harris and with his eyes motioned for him to leave.
Harris fought hard to keep himself from slapping the kid around. He even fantasized about sitting on him and shaving his head. But instead he turned and left.
As the night advanced toward dawn Tom Widdicomb’s anxiety gradually increased. He was in the storeroom off the garage huddled in the corner beside the freezer. He had his arms around himself and his knees drawn up as if he were cold. He even intermittently shivered as his mind constantly tortured him by replaying over and over the disastrous events at the Forbes residence.
Now he was a total failure. Not only had he failed to put Gloria D’Amataglio to sleep, he’d failed to get rid of the nurse who’d prevented him from doing so. And despite the nylon stocking he’d worn, she’d seen him up close. Maybe she could recognize him. More than anything, Tom was mortified to have mistaken that stupid hair dryer for a gun.