Sunday
It was three a.m. and Ginny sat just outside the door of ICU Five, watching her patient sleep, her mind wandering back to the vexed problem of Professor Craig’s death. It was all very well to tell Hal she wasn’t investigating, but her conscience kept reminding her that Craig had been her patient, her responsibility.
The virus had killed him. The virus was not a naturally occurring bug. It had been created in a lab and she knew which lab. To be infected with this virus required blood-to-blood contact and the evidence pointed to injection.
She had a partial list of people known to have had access to the virus and another of those who’d had access to Professor Craig.
She had tentatively eliminated Mark Craig and Fiona Campbell as suspects. That left Elaine Larson, Samuel Adams, and maybe others she hadn’t yet identified.
Ginny squirmed at the thought. The very idea that she could suspect someone she knew of being a murderer made her more than uncomfortable. She pushed the rolling table away and stood up, then spent the next ten minutes checking on her patients, focusing on them, rather than herself, but neither needed her attention. She sat back down.
On impulse, she pulled out her talisman and looked at it, examining the carving with attention. In addition to guiding humans to their destinations, if you went back far enough, there were stories of healing powers as well.
The artist who carved it had believed in the magic powers of the rowan wood. It was just a superstition, of course. Nothing a modern medical professional would believe. Still—
She’d gotten the pendant as a birthday present one year and she’d happened to be fighting an infection at the time. She had put the pendant on for decoration and worn it, and the infection had promptly resolved.
Being a scientist, she’d done some experiments. Each time she’d been ill or injured, she’d worn the pendant and had mended quickly, more quickly than the books called for.
She took to wearing it to work, not really believing, but interested in the role of the human mind in healing. All these years, she’d worn it and watched and hadn’t told anyone why. If they asked, she said it was because there was no wood in modern ICUs and how else was she to knock on wood if she needed to? This, being a better-known and more widely accepted custom, passed muster and allowed her coworkers to laugh at her without concern for her sanity.
Her fingers stroked the old wood. Could the rowan guide her in this unfamiliar territory? What path would it tell her to take, retire from the field or continue investigating?
Was she still investigating? It certainly looked like it. So, why? Ginny considered the question as honestly as she could.
There were several possible answers. Intellectual curiosity was one of them. It was fun puzzling out the details and getting them to fit together, to make sense. Catharsis was another. There had been a distinct sense of relief when she decided she could eliminate Fiona Campbell as a suspect. She didn’t like her, but she didn’t want her to turn out to be a murderer.
She frowned to herself. Of all the people on her list, the one she knew the least about was Samuel Adams. She hadn’t been there to see his outburst, just heard about it later. A belligerent, rude, spoiled man, by all accounts. It would be satisfying to pin the murder on him.
Ginny felt a frisson go down her spine at the thought. She didn’t want to pin the murder on anyone! That wasn’t her job. She was a nurse. Her job was helping people, caring for them.
She stared into the darkened ICU room in front of her. What was the virtue in finishing what you started if it meant that someone had to die? Well, maybe go to prison, but Texas had the death penalty and it was always a possibility. Did she want to be responsible for that?
Not if the person was innocent, but what if he was guilty?
Ginny’s mind ground to a halt. Guilty.
Everything she had ever learned, from her parents, her schooling, her church, her heritage; all had maintained that man has free will, but should not be given free rein.
“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” John Stuart Mill, a renowned Scottish philosopher, had said that.
Could she look on and do nothing?
Before she could answer that question, her job intervened. She rose to care for one of her charges and the quiet moments of the night faded into the continuous tasks of the early morning. When her shift was over, she left the hospital with the issue still unresolved.
* * *
Ginny had slept and eaten and was pinning her hair up in preparation for her second shift when her phone began to buzz. She pulled it out of her purse and answered.
“Ginny, it’s Hal. I wanted to catch you before you left for work.”
“Well, you’ve caught me. What’s up?”
“I’ve got some news.” He sounded uncomfortable.
Ginny sat down on the side of her bed, wondering what was coming.
“It’s about Jim Mackenzie.”
Ginny almost snorted. Of course. It would be. The rivalry between these two was beginning to annoy her.
“I asked around at work and it seems someone remembered him. Did he tell you he did a two week rotation at GeneTech, as part of his training?”
Ginny felt her brain freeze.
“Ginny? Ginny? Are you there?”
She swallowed hard. “Yes, Hal. I’m here.” He could not, could NOT, have been there for two weeks and failed to tell her about it.
“There’s more.”
Ginny could hardly breathe. “Go on.”
“Well, something happened at college. I didn’t want to mention it, but then I realized it might be relevant.” She could hear Hal take a breath, then hurry through the rest of it. “There was a death. One of Jim’s friends committed suicide. It was because he’d been raped by a visiting professor and he couldn’t face the humiliation. Jim took it really hard. I gather this was someone he looked on as the little brother he’d never had. That sort of thing.” There was another intake of breath on the other end of the line. “The visiting professor was Donald Craig.”
Ginny gasped.
Hal hurried on. “This isn’t proof. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. It’s just odd Jim moved back to Dallas and a couple of months later Professor Craig winds up dead.”
“Are you accusing Jim Mackenzie of murdering Professor Craig?” Ginny had trouble getting the words out.
“Well, no. At least, I don’t think so. I can’t believe he would do such a thing. Maybe I’m wrong. Probably, I’m wrong. I just thought I should mention it.”
Ginny didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer.
“Ginny?”
She drew a ragged breath into her lungs. “The police have to be told.”
“Why? It’s not evidence. I just thought you should know.”
“If he’s guilty, he needs to be punished and if he’s not, he needs to be cleared.”
“But it’s not your job, Ginny.”
“I have to go, Hal.”
She hung up the phone struggling to regain her self-control. It didn’t matter who was guilty, did it? What mattered was the guilty party paid for his crime.
She finished getting dressed, glanced at the clock, noting she had half an hour before she had to leave, then went into the office and opened her computer.
Genealogists deal in death, a lot of it. A morbid breed, they revel in the demise of innocent strangers, thrill to the lists of the lost, and picnic among the tombstones. Ginny had subscriptions to a variety of sources that did nothing but collect obituaries and death notices.
It took her less than ten minutes to confirm what Hal had told her; the basic fact of the death, at least, and the location and the year. The obituary, written by the grieving family, would not, of course, have details of the police investigation.
Could she confirm Jim had spent two weeks in the lab the virus had come from?
She pulled up the State of Virginia Medical Board site and navigated to the page on Jim. She was looking for his training and education. No help. Maybe it was part of a continuing education offering. She opened the link and started hunting.
There were a lot of them. The list included the dates and location for each one. All major cities. Big conferences, in places that had research centers. None in Dallas. Some in Houston, Phoenix, San Diego, Chicago, Boston, Washington.
Ginny felt her heart skip a beat. She wiped sweating palms on her pants, then forced herself to open the Victims spreadsheet, her hand shaking.
She clicked on the tab for Victim # 1, jotted down the location and date, then did the same for Victim # 2. Then she pulled down the search utility on the Medical Board site.
She plugged in the date for the first death and the machine scrolled to the date of a medical conference in Boston. The second date brought up one in Washington, D.C. Ginny checked the results three times, then closed the browser and sank back in her chair. Jim Mackenzie had been present, attending medical continuing education conferences, at the same time each of the other two deaths had occurred.
* * *