Cell (22 page)

George's suspicions ratcheted upward. While he was still inclined to believe that a glitch was responsible, or that a malicious hacker was involved, a new possibility occurred to him: What if iDoc was intentionally serving as a “death panel”? It would certainly help Amalgamated's bottom line, either as a company policy, which was an extreme thought, or more likely as the work of a rogue programmer sitting on a lot of Amalgamated stock options. But almost as soon as the idea occurred to George, he dismissed it out of hand. He couldn't imagine anyone doing such a thing during the beta test. If someone were thinking of such an awful thing, he'd certainly wait for iDoc to go national before unleashing it.

As George was thinking in this vein, he remembered a few high-profile cases recently in which doctors or nurses had taken it upon themselves to relieve patients of what they thought were to be their final months of painful treatment. Maybe these health care professionals were motivated by nothing other than compassion. On the other side of the coin were those bean-counter professionals who thought about resource allocation, which meant freeing up beds for patients who would be returning to society to lead productive lives rather than having them occupied by people who were terminal. George remembered a case in which a Brazilian doctor had been responsible for the deaths of over three hundred patients.

All these thoughts gave George an unpleasant shiver. It was a scary side to the concept of digitalized medicine and an awful distortion of the idea of the smartphone becoming an ersatz physician. iDoc was undoubtedly going to prove itself a fantastic idea and the wave of the future, and to have it hijacked for whatever reason would be a colossal tragedy. This realization brought George back to the importance of the embedded reservoir in the execution of any kind of death panel. As Sal had apparently sensed, if iDoc was killing people, it had to be done with the help of the reservoir. George felt he needed to focus on that.

Suddenly an idea struck him. It was a crazy idea, but possibly a good one. He remembered that Sal's funeral service was set for that afternoon. If he could only remember where.

George pulled out his cell and Googled local funeral homes. He only got to the Cs before hitting upon Carter's Funeral Home. As soon as he saw the name, he remembered it was the one Clarence had mentioned. While he may not have been able to examine Sal's body in the morgue, he just might be able to do so at the funeral home. Or at least talk to the embalmer. He didn't know how they might react, but it would be worth a try. Worst case, he would get a chance to pay his respects to Sal.

With sudden resolve, George leaped out of his seat and bolted for the exit, startling two ER residents.

He dashed out into the ER proper, pulling off his white coat as he ran. His first stop was an empty exam room, where he grabbed a pair of surgical gloves just in case. Then he headed for the parking garage.

“George! Hey! Over here!”

George pulled himself to a halt. To his astonishment, Debbie was waving him back.

“I meant to ask you earlier,” she said, “are you up for Whiskey Blue again tonight? I'm thinking of heading over. I'm going to need a break after today. It's a circus here.”

“I don't know,” he said, a little out of breath. Her constant switch from hot to cold bewildered him. The last thing he wanted to do was go back to the bar. At the same time he didn't want to burn any bridges. “I'll text you when I get home.”

“Where the hell are you going in such a hurry?”

“Believe it or not, I'm heading off to a local funeral home.”

“A funeral home? What on earth for?”

“Sal DeAngelis's service is today.” He leaned close to Debbie and whispered, “To be honest, since I can't imagine many people are going to show up, I'm hoping I'll have the opportunity to inspect the body. I have a new theory about his self-inflicted abdominal wounds. I think there is a good chance that he was trying to remove his drug reservoir. What I'd like to do is find out if he had been successful.”

Debbie eyed him as if she thought he was going off the deep end. “You're crazy! You have to stop this shit!”

“I know, it sounds ridiculous, but I'm committed. Let me put it this way: I'm beginning to think that ‘something is rotten in the state of Denmark' when it comes to Amalgamated Healthcare.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Debbie said irritably.

“Amalgamated Healthcare, or at least somebody in the company, might not be as ethical as the Amalgamated front office wants us to believe.”

“Isn't it a little cliché to blame the health insurance company?” She glanced down, seeing what he had in his hands. “What are you doing with surgical gloves?”

“Just in case.” He waved them at her as he headed for the main entrance.

“In case of what?” she called after him.

“I'll text you later about tonight,” he said, ignoring the question. A moment later he was in the connector, half power-walking, half jogging on the way to the garage.

CLAYTON HANSON'S HOME

BEL AIR, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

FRIDAY, JULY 4, 2014, 12:20
P.M.

C
layton was lounging by his pool, enjoying lunch at a table under a yellow-and-white-striped umbrella. He was in the company of a bikini-clad young woman who was twenty-five years of age, while a mister system puffed out sprays of cool vapor to combat the heat. He'd had her over the night before, and although she left in a huff while he was off on his command visit to Debbie Waters's apartment, Clayton had managed to patch things up that morning.

Just then Clayton's cell phone rang. He leaned over and stared at its display. He wasn't on call and couldn't imagine who would be phoning. It was Debbie. He frowned, debating whether to answer.

“Excuse me,” Clayton said, deciding he had little choice but to talk with her. “I need to take this.” He moved away from the table to talk privately. “What?” he demanded, a little harsher than he had planned.

“Is that any way to say hello? Especially to someone who's going out of her way to help you?”

“I'm sorry. I'm just in the middle of something.”

“I hope you're having a wonderful time,” Debbie said sarcastically. “I'm slogging it out here in the ER.”

“Did you have something to tell me? If so, out with it. I told you I was busy.”

“I can only imagine. But you better be nice to me or I won't share the important information I just learned, smart-ass.”

“I am being nice. I answered, didn't I?”

“Are we still on for Spago on Saturday night?”

“Of course we are! I'm looking forward to it.” Clayton rolled his eyes.

“I just had a word with your favorite resident. Seems he is on a fucking crusade.”

Clayton winced. “You'd better explain.”

“He is still focused on those deaths because, as he said, ‘something is rotten in Denmark,' whatever the hell that means.”

“It's a quote from Shakespeare, which is pretty damn famous.”

“Careful, buddy. You're on thin ice with me.”

Ignoring the comment he said, “Do you have any idea what he was referring to?”

“Amalgamated Healthcare, most definitely. He's bent out of shape about something called a reservoir. He left the hospital with a package of surgical gloves, going to DeAngelis's funeral.”

“Shit,” Clayton mumbled. He could feel his stomach start to suds up. This George problem was going from bad to worse. “Okay, Debbie, thanks,” Clayton said as amiably as possible. “I appreciate the info, but I gotta run now. Talk soon, and see you Saturday night.”

Clayton hung up without waiting for Debbie to say good-bye and speed-dialed Thorn. The executive's voice mail picked up, and Clayton could only leave a message asking Thorn to call him back ASAP. It was important.

Clayton went back to the pool, smiling at his young lady friend, and tried to refocus his attention on her. But he couldn't. There was way too much at stake to relax. Something had to be done, and done quickly.

CARTER'S FUNERAL HOME

WESTWOOD, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

FRIDAY, JULY 4, 2014, 1:45
P.M.

G
eorge had the suspicion that Carter's Funeral Home had been something else in its former life. Incongruously it had a steep gabled roof with windows climbing up to the apex. Maybe it had been a restaurant, he guessed, inappropriate as that was. He surveyed the U-shaped parking lot. There were only a half dozen cars, mostly toward the rear. If employee vehicles were subtracted, then that didn't leave much in the way of mourners. From George's perspective that was auspicious. He was counting on few, if any, visitors coming to view Sal's body.

George went inside. As he had hoped, the place seemed empty, without a soul in evidence. Low-level, mournful organ music from hidden speakers pervaded the place. On a pedestal was a guest book. He looked at the open page. There was only one scheduled service, and that was for Salvatore DeAngelis at 2:00
P.M.
He checked his watch. He would have to hurry.

The front room on the right was a reception area with overstuffed upholstered seating. On the left was a room with various caskets on display. George walked down a central corridor, which ran parallel to the long axis of the building. He came to a room with open double doors. On a pedestal in front of a makeshift altar was a closed casket. A dozen or so folding chairs had been set up. No one was in the room. He checked his watch again, unsure what to do: fourteen minutes until the service was scheduled to begin. He couldn't tell whether or not he was looking at Sal's casket, but, considering that the man had rocketed through a windshield and impaled himself on an LED display, a closed-casket service sounded like an appropriate idea.

Wanting to get a better lay of the land, he continued down the main hallway. Through a partially opened door on the left he spotted two women with their backs to him talking in subdued tones with a man in a dark suit and a forlorn expression.
Sal's sisters?
he wondered. From the style of their clothes and hats, they looked like stereotypical old maids. A quick glance at the name on the door confirmed that it was the office of the funeral director, Myron Carter.

“May I help you?” a man whispered in George's ear. George nearly jumped out of his skin. He spun around, confronting the chest of a hulking man in a conservative suit similar to the funeral director's.

“Hopefully you can,” George replied in a hushed tone. “I'm here to pay my respects to Salvatore DeAngelis.”

“Back this way.” The giant gestured back down the hall in the direction George had just come.

The man silently accompanied George back to the room with the closed casket and after a bow thankfully disappeared. Unfortunately there were now two people in the room. One was an African American woman, probably in her sixties, wearing a purple dress, the other a short Caucasian man about the same age. They were not sitting together. The woman had a snippet of a veil covering the top of her face, so it was hard to make out her features, but George didn't think he had ever met her. He knew he had never seen the man.

George decided to take a seat and figure out his best course of action. It would also give him a few moments to bow his head and say good-bye to Sal—and ask for his forgiveness for what he was about to do if he had the courage to follow through, which he doubted, what with mourners in the room.

He was convinced that if something had gone wrong with Sal's embedded reservoir, the evidence would soon be buried with him. But if George could get hold of the reservoir, he might be able to match the dosages still in it with the approximate date Schwarz had inserted the device.

As if answering his prayers, the two other people in the room suddenly stood up and walked out. George was alone with Sal's corpse. Checking his watch, he saw there were now only six minutes till two o'clock. If he was going to do anything, this was the time. Besides the canned music in the background, the only sound was the ticking of a grandfather's clock out in the hallway.

With sudden resolve, George stood up. His pulse was hammering. He felt as if he were about to rob a bank. It was now or never. After looking around to make sure he was still alone in the room, he tried to lift the lid of the casket. It cracked open with ease. He was relieved it wasn't secured.

After one more glance back toward the hallway, George raised the lid all the way and looked down.

Sal was dressed in a dark blue suit. There had been some attempt to put his face back together, but the result was grotesque. Again asking for Sal's forgiveness for disturbing him, George donned his gloves before unbuttoning Sal's jacket and opening his dress shirt to expose his marble-white lower abdomen. George paused for a moment to catch his breath when he caught sight of the wound where the large embalming trocar had been inserted to suck out the blood and intestinal contents and infuse embalming fluid. People assumed doctors were immune to such sights, but they were wrong.

Swallowing hard, George switched his attention to Sal's left lower abdomen. In addition to a number of abrasions, there were a few shallow, surgical-like cuts in the skin and a deep one that could very well have been made with a utility knife. George inserted a gloved index finger in the deep one and felt around inside the stiff, lifeless tissue. Nothing! There was no reservoir! George felt again to be sure.

Either Sal had succeeded in getting the reservoir out or someone else had. Maybe that was the reason Clayton had been down in the morgue the day George had seen him? Or perhaps more likely, could it have been the reservoir that the suits had been searching for in Sal's apartment the night before.

After putting Sal's clothes back in a semblance to the way they had been, George was starting to close the coffin when there was a piercing scream. In a panic he dropped the lid and spun to the voice. The scream had come from one of the women he'd seen in the funeral director's office. She was standing in the doorway with a hand clasped to her mouth in horror. The horror quickly turned to outrage.

“What in the hell do you think you're doing!” she demanded.

The other sister and the funeral director appeared right behind her.

“He opened the casket!” the first sister yelled, pointing a bony gloved finger in George's direction.

“This is a closed-casket ceremony, sir!” the funeral director bellowed.

“I . . . I know,” George stammered. “I'm sorry. I just wanted to see if—”

“Look at his gloves!”

A gasp escaped the second sister. “Pervert!”

“No! I'm sorry! It's not . . .” It's not what? He didn't know where to begin. Then the hulking giant appeared behind the three.

In a panic, George scanned his options. The double doors through which he'd entered were blocked by the four outraged but stunned people, but there was a second door that thankfully wasn't locked. George bolted for it and found himself in a second, empty viewing room. Through that room he returned to the main corridor, only deeper into the funeral home and farther from the front entrance.

Running the length of the hallway and passing the funeral director's office, he burst through one of the doors labeled
STAFF ONLY
. He skidded to a stop. He was in a tiled embalming room, which contained several metal worktables, one of which was occupied by another marble-colored naked corpse being worked on by a startled man in a large apron. The man was holding an embalming trocar, and in the corner a suction machine was loudly chugging away. George looked about wildly for an exit. He spotted one and bolted for it.

Outside, George could hear yelling as he sprinted around the building toward his car.

A moment later George was in his car, getting the engine going as the elderly women and funeral director piled out the front door, yelling for him to stop. George eyed them in his rearview mirror as he quickly backed up. He was just about to pull away into traffic when a massive hand slapped the driver's-side window. It was the hulk. Where the hell did he come from? The man leaned down and stuck his angry, red face up against the window, screaming at George to get out of the car.

George stepped on the gas, swerving his Jeep into an opening in the lane of traffic. In the rearview mirror he caught a glimpse of the hulk shaking his fist at him.

After a few blocks George slowed down, blending into the holiday traffic. That was close! As his breathing returned to normal, he started to think about the reservoir. He was more convinced than ever it was the key.

With sudden resolve, George pulled out his phone and located the nearest Los Angeles police station. It was the West L.A. Community Police Station on Butler Avenue. George turned at the next corner and headed in that direction.

As George wiped the sweat from his brow, a couple of police cruisers with their sirens blaring sped by him, luckily heading in the opposite direction. He wondered if they were on their way to Carter's Funeral Home. What if surveillance cameras had caught his face or, worse, recorded George's violation of the corpse. Was what he had done considered a crime? He didn't know. What he did know was that regardless of whether it was a crime or not, if his actions became public knowledge, it wasn't going to make him any friends at the medical center, especially with the conservative hierarchy of the radiology department.