desk. There was only one doctor in the lounge and he was engrossed in an EKG when Philips walked through to the showers.
Rapidly he showered and shaved, leaving his clothes in the corner of the room. By the sinks he found a pile of surgical scrub gear, which was the favorite apparel of the emergency room staff. He put on a shirt and pants and the surgical hat to cover his wet head. He even tied on the mask. There were many times that hospital personnel used masks outside of the OR, especially when they were suffering from a head cold.
Regarding himself in the mirror, Philips was convinced that someone would have to know him very well to recognize him. He’d not only gotten inside the hospital but he looked like he belonged. As for Harvey Hopkins, ER patients were always walking out. Philips looked at his watch. He’d used up an hour.
Charging out of the lounge, Philips crossed the ER and ran past two more policemen. He used the back stairs behind the cafeteria to reach the second floor. He wanted a radiation detector, but decided it was too dangerous to fetch the one in his office and had to search around the radiotherapy section until he found another. Then he ran back down the stairs to the main floor and hurried into the clinics building.
The elevators there were old and required operators, who had already left for the day, so Martin had to climb four flights to GYN. He had decided on the subway, sandwiched between two very unhappy businessmen, that the radiation could have been connected to GYN, but now that he had arrived, radiation detector in hand, his resolve began to falter. He had no idea what he was looking for.
Passing the main GYN waiting room, Philips turned into the smaller university clinic. It had yet to be passed over by the cleaning crew, and the area was littered with overflowing ashtrays and papers. It all looked so innocent and normal in the meager light.
Philips checked the receptionist’s desk but it was locked. Trying the two doors behind the desk he found the whole area to be secured. But the locks were simple ones, which required the key to be inserted in the doorknob itself. A plastic card from the top of the receptionist’s desk sufficed to open one. Martin went in, closed the door and turned on the lights.
He was standing in the hallway were he’d talked with Dr. Harper. There were two examining rooms to the left and the lab or utility room to the right. Martin selected the examining rooms first. Monitoring the detector very carefully he went over each room, slicking the detector into every cabinet and recess and even going over the examining tables themselves. Nothing. The place was clean. In the lab areas he did the same thing starting with the countertop cabinets, opening drawers, peering into boxes. At the end of the room he went over the large instrument cabinets. It was all negative.
The first response came from the wastebasket. It was a very weak reading and totally harmless, but it was nonetheless radiation. Glancing at his watch, Philips noticed that time was slipping rapidly away. In one-half-hour he was going to have to call Denise’s apartment. He decided that he’d present himself only after he’d made sure Sansone wasn’t holding her.
With the positive reading in the wastebasket he decided to go over the lab one more time. He found nothing until he returned to the closet. The lower shelves were filled with linen and hospital gowns, while the upper shelves had a mixture of laboratory and office supplies. Below the shelves was a hamper filled with soiled linen, which registered another weak positive reading when he pushed the probe almost to the floor.
Martin emptied out the soiled linen and went over it with the detector. Nothing. Sticking the probe into the emptied hamper Philips again got a weak response near the base. He reached down and put his hand into the enclosure. The walls and floor of the hamper were painted wood and seemed solid. With his fist he struck the bottom and felt a vibration. Taking his time he hit it all around the periphery. When he got to the far corner the board tilted slightly, then fell .back into place. Pushing in the same location Martin raised the floor of the hamper and looked beneath. Below were two shielded lead storage boxes with the familiar radiation warning logo.