Coma by Robin Cook. Part five

The thing that encouraged her the most was that someone had decided that she was important enough to be threatened. It might mean that she was on the right track; maybe she had already found more answers than she could associate. She could be like the professor who had carefully discovered all the information necessary to break the secret of DNA. But he had not arranged it properly, and it took the ingenuity of Watson and Crick to pull it all together, to see the whole molecule as the wonderful double helix.

Susan carefully leafed through her notebook, reading all that she had written down. She reread her notes about coma and its known causes; she underlined those articles she still planned to read; she underlined the title of the new anesthesiology text she had seen in Harris’s office. Then she reread the extensive material on Nancy Greenly and the two respiratory arrest victims. Susan was sure that the answer was there but she couldn’t see it. She knew that she needed more data to increase the likelihood of making correlations. The charts. She needed the charts from McLeary.

It was seven-fifteen when she was ready to leave her room. As if she were in some spy movie, she checked out the parking lot from her window, to see if she were under obvious surveillance. She looked over the cars, but saw no one. Susan pulled the curtains closed and locked her door, leaving her lights on. In the corridor, she stood for a moment, then, extrapolating from her movie experience, she rolled a small wad of paper into a ball and carefully inserted it between the door and the jamb, next to the floor.

In the basement of the dorm there was a tunnel leading over to the Anatomy and Pathology Building. It carried steam pipes and power lines, and Susan and her classmates occasionally used it during inclement weather. Susan had no idea if she would be followed but she wanted to make it difficult, hopefully impossible. From the anatomy building Susan used the passageway to the Administration Building, which she found unlocked. From there she exited by the medical library, catching a cab on Huntington Avenue. She had the cab do a U-turn after a quarter of a mile and drive back, passing the spot where she had hailed it. Nestling down in her coat to keep from being seen, Susan tried to see if anyone was following her. She saw no one at all suspicious-looking. Relaxing, she told the cab to take her to the Memorial Hospital.

Like any professional “hit man,” Angelo D’Ambrosio felt an inner satisfaction at having successfully completed a job. After communicating the message he had for Susan, he had walked back to Huntington Avenue and caught a cab near the corner of Longfellow. The taxi driver was delighted: finally he’d found an airport run which meant a decent fare and undoubtedly a good tip. Prior to D’Ambrosio he’d had nothing but old ladies going to the supermarket.

D’Ambrosio settled back in the cab, content with his day’s work. He had no idea why he had been contracted to do what he had done in Boston that day. But D’Ambrosio rarely knew why, and in fact he did not want to know why. On the few occasions when his information and briefing had been more complete, he had had more trouble. On the current assignment, he had been merely told to fly to Boston in the evening of the twenty-fourth and stay at the Sheraton Downtown under the name of George Taranto. The following morning he was to proceed to 1833 Stewart Street and to the basement apartment of a man named Walters. He was to have Walters write a note saying, “The drugs were mine. I cannot face the consequences.” Then he was to dispose of Walters in a fashion that would suggest suicide. Then he was to isolate a female medical student by the name of Susan Wheeler and “scare the shit out of her,” telling her that she would be in danger if she did not return to her usual occupation. The orders had ended with the usual exhortations about being careful. There was a packet of information about Susan Wheeler, including the photo of her brother, some background, and a schedule of her current activities.

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