Monday
Ginny opened the front door and stuck her head around the corner. “Mother? We’re back.”
Her mother’s voice answered from the den.
“Did you have a nice time, dear?”
Ginny lifted an eyebrow at Jim who was just closing the door behind him. “Very nice. We’re going to be up in the office if you need us.”
“Sandy called. He said he sent you some files.”
“Thank you.”
Ginny led the way upstairs and settled down behind the big oak desk. She waved Jim into a seat, picked up the phone and dialed Alex’s number.
“Sandy?” She hurried to reassure him. “No, we’re all fine so far. I have another favor to ask. I need permission to show those files you sent to someone I’m working with.” She listened for a moment, then nodded at the phone. “I know, but things have changed. Remember those needle sticks? Well I think they were deliberate. Right, deliberately injected with this virus and the M.E.’s office agrees with me.” Ginny glanced across the room at Jim. He was sitting quite still, listening to her end of the conversation. “That’s right. What we’re trying to do is find out whether there’s any reason to think these three deaths are related. Can you get the proper clearance? Well, tell Chip. He’s the primary investigator.” She listened for a moment longer. “Okay. Yes, give him my number. In the meantime, I’ll remove any identifying information. Will that do? Right. Okay, thanks. Yes, I’ll be careful. Mother sends her love. Talk to you soon. Bye.”
She hung up the phone and flipped on the computer, pulling up her email program first. She downloaded the files, opened them, did a global search and replace on each one, substituting Victim # 1 and Victim # 2 for the patient names, and saved them, using new file names.
“There. Now we have HIPAA compliant versions.” She smiled at Jim. “Since neither you nor I took care of these two, we can’t recognize them. And neither you nor I is going to show them to anyone else until Chip gives us permission, right?”
Jim nodded, laying his hand on his heart. “On my honor as a physician and an Eagle Scout.”
“An Eagle Scout!” Ginny said. “I’m impressed.”
“Yes, ma’am. You should be.”
Ginny put her eyes back on her computer, pushing aside a sudden image of Jim in shorts, though not the Eagle Scout variety. She pulled her desk drawer open, found an empty flash drive and copied the new materials onto it, then ejected it, crossed the room, and pulled out her laptop.
“Here.” She handed him the flash drive, set up the second computer, and signed in.
“You’re Victim # 1. I’ll be Victim # 2.”
Jim looked at her. “Are you sure you want to put it that way?”
Ginny blanched. “Just feed me the data.”
He nodded, opening the files and scrolling through the material. “Okay. What do you need?”
She pulled up the tables she had created the day before. “If we go on the assumption that these are not random deaths, it implies there’s a connection between them. Let’s see if we can figure out what it is.”
They spent the first thirty minutes filling in demographic and medical information.
“All male,” Jim said.
Ginny nodded. “But all over the place on everything else.”
“What else do we have?”
“Method: the same virus, or a similar one, killed each of them.” Ginny opened the CDC file on Victim # 2. “Check the autopsy on Victim # 1 and see if there’s an unexplained puncture wound on your guy.”
Jim nodded. It took him ten minutes. “Here it is. Upper left back, under the scapula. Not a routine site for either intramuscular or subcutaneous injections. Noted as possible insect bite.”
Ginny made a note, “left back” in the column for “presence of unexplained puncture wound” under Victim # 1. “See if he noticed and reported it.”
Jim flipped to the scanned digital images of the E.R. records and peered at the scrawled handwriting. “How is anyone supposed to read this?” he asked.
Ginny smothered her grin. “Years of practice.” She turned to her own file. Victim # 2 had been caught, like Professor Craig, in the neck, just above the collar line, and had a similar E.R. entry. Ginny added it in.
She summarized. “Okay. So everyone has an unexplained puncture wound in an unlikely location and none of the three reported it to the E.R. doctors. All three caught on autopsy and attributed to insect bites.”
She chewed on her lower lip. “Why did all three get autopsied? The first victim was eighty and in poor health. His death could have passed for natural causes.”
“That’s a good question.” Jim scrolled through the records. “Physician Progress Notes indicate a definitive cause of death was required for insurance payout.” Jim looked up. “Maybe he was rich.”
Ginny nodded. “Maybe.” She added another row to her list of characteristics. “It says here Victim # 2 had some expensive hobbies. Maybe there’s a connection to money.”
“Always a good motive for murder,” Jim nodded.
“But Professor Craig definitely was not rich so that can’t be the connection. It has to be just a coincidence.”
“Let’s try opportunity,” Jim suggested.
“Okay, that’s a little easier, at least for Victim # 3.” Ginny frowned. “If my theory is correct, then Professor Craig was infected in the stacks at the Dallas Public library.”
“So what does that tell us?”
“It was someone who knew where to find him?” she suggested.
“It might have been a chance meeting,” Jim pointed out.
“Yes. All right. Someone who knows where the library is, and the genealogy department.”
“Does that imply a genealogist?” Jim asked.
Ginny wrinkled her forehead. “Not necessarily. It could be a historian or someone unconnected with genealogy.”
Jim leaned back, stretching his arms above his head. “Okay. We have an assailant in the library. Is there any kind of control about who goes in and out?”
“Not so far as the library is concerned. There’s the sign-in sheet in the department, but it’s voluntary. I told Chip about it and his people collected the sheets for the week, but what self-respecting murderer would sign in?”
Jim snorted. “I wouldn’t. How about parking records?”
Ginny shook her head. “It’s automated. Time stamped tickets only, and he, or she, could have come on the bus or on foot just as easily.”
“So is there any way to know who was in the genealogy section that afternoon?”
“What makes you think he was attacked the same day he got sick?” Ginny asked.
“Oh. Well, no, of course not. There’d be an incubation period, wouldn’t there?”
“With any normal virus, yes.”
Jim groaned. “Have you got something to write on?”
Ginny handed him a yellow pad and a pencil.
“We can extrapolate when the inoculation took place based on the speed the virus replicated and took over the neural cells in his body, but it will take math. I’ll do that later. In the meantime, we can still ask generic questions. So, who would know when Professor Craig was in the library?”
“He was at the conference every morning last week and there were witnesses, a lot of them. After he left each day, he could have gone anywhere, but it’s most likely he went back to his office.”
“Would he clock in?”
“No, but the other staff might have noticed when he arrived. He would have been visible arriving and leaving and coming and going from the stacks. We could ask if anybody spoke to him. After that, it’s anyone’s guess. He might have had errands to run or a dinner engagement or simply gone home to bed.”
“Hmmm. What about the murderer?”
Ginny chewed her lip, remembering what Elaine had told her about the irate client. “We could go over and start asking questions, I suppose. The staff will know who was on duty and they may have noted some of the patrons in particular. When you’ve narrowed down the window of opportunity, we can see if anyone had appointments for that timeframe. What else?”
Jim furrowed his brow. “I can talk to the family tomorrow.”
“Do you want to talk to Armstrong?”
Jim nodded. “Yes. I’ll do that, too.”
“We’d better start another list.”
Jim nodded, picked up the yellow pad and wrote busily for a minute. “Okay. Continue.”
“Opportunity for the other two. Neither died in Dallas and, if the bug acted as quickly on them as it did on Professor Craig, we can assume they were attacked in the city where they died.”
Jim nodded. “Victim # 1 died in Boston, MA.”
“And Victim # 2 in Washington, DC.”
“Both big cities, like Dallas,” Jim noted.
Ginny nodded. “Make of it what you can.”
Jim chewed on his lower lip for a minute. “Big cities have lots of people in them.”
Ginny laughed. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“Wait a minute. What I mean is they have amenities little places don’t have. Museums, libraries, hospitals.”
“A teaching hospital, do you think?”
“Maybe, for the source of the virus, possibly.”
Ginny nodded. “But what about opportunities for murder?”
“Well, big cities can’t keep track of their residents or their visitors. The society is too mobile. They have transportation, hotels, and facilities for large numbers of out-of-towners to use.”
“And conventions.”
“Yes, like the one your genealogy society just held.”
“A convention would be a great place to attack someone. With all the confusion, no one would notice a thing.” Ginny sighed. “It seems to me there are endless opportunities for stabbing a stranger in a big city. How are we supposed to figure this out?”
Jim raised his eyebrows. “We have to think like our murderer. What was his plan? How did he manage to inject all three of these men without their noticing?”
Ginny blinked. “Maybe they did notice, but didn’t think anything about it. You remember what I said, I use misdirection, but someone watching me would see what I was doing.”
Jim’s brow furrowed. “You mean like slapping someone on the back in the restaurant or brushing up against him in the subway? Someone might have noticed that. Especially if the victim said ‘ouch’ or reached up to rub the sore spot.”
“Yes, but that really is a job for the police.” Ginny threw Jim a wry look. “There is no way we can investigate on that scale, even if we had authority and we don’t.”
Jim nodded. “Okay, let’s go back to things we do have access to. What about occupations?”
They worked all the way through the material Alex had provided, making lists and cross-referencing details. When they were through, Jim stretched his legs and sat tapping his pencil on the yellow pad.
“Well, there’s nothing obvious. According to these files, there was no overlap among our three victims. They lived in different parts of the U.S. and had different jobs and lifestyles.” He frowned. “So why did they die in that very rare and specific manner?”
Ginny shook her head. “We need more information.” She glanced at the clock. “And I’m out of time. Here.” She transferred copies of everything they had created onto the thumb drive and handed it to Jim. “Here’s a copy for you. Feel free to add to it.”
He nodded, picking up the yellow pad. “I’ll see what I can do with this. Let me know if you come up with anything else.”
“I’ll see if I can figure out another way to tackle the problem.” She frowned. “I simply can’t believe these three deaths were coincidences.”
Jim looked down at her, his gray eyes not laughing at all. “Ginny, I want to add my two cents to the caution you’ve already heard. Don’t do anything to attract attention to yourself. This murderer — and we don’t know if it’s a man or a woman, poison is usually a woman’s weapon — this murderer had access to Professor Craig. So did you. You might know her. If you scare her enough, she might come after you.”
Ginny felt her throat tighten. He had a point. She nodded. “I’ll be careful.”
“Don’t talk to anyone just yet. Give me some time to think.”
“Okay.” She shrugged. “The only thing I’m going to do for the next two days is work and sleep.” She started for the door, then turned back. “Is it okay if I talk to Alex?”
Jim nodded. “Yes. The CDC and the police, but no one else.” He hesitated. “I don’t mean to be giving orders, but I strongly suggest you not tell the police about this spreadsheet of yours.”
“Why not?”
“Because they don’t like having civilians interfering in active murder investigations.”
Ginny’s brow furrowed. “All we’re doing is compiling data.”
“I know, and I can’t see how it can hurt, as long as we keep it to ourselves.”
She nodded. “Okay. I won’t tell anyone about the spreadsheet.”
She ushered him to the front door.
“When can we get together again?” he asked.
“I’ll be off Thursday.”
“Okay. I’ll call.”
Ginny shut the door on his retreating back, put concerns about the murdered man and her personal safety aside, and hurried off to get ready for her shift.
* * *