The laceration of her lip and the bruise on her cheek had grown more painful. Gingerly she touched her cheek to see if the swelling had increased. It had not. She looked out over the Esplanade and the frozen Charles River to her right The lights of Cambridge were sparse and uninviting. The taxi banked sharply left off Storrow Drive onto Park Drive, requiring Susan to steady herself with her arm.
She tried to assess her progress. It wasn’t encouraging. To keep within a reasonable limit of safety, she thought she had another thirty-six hours or so to press her search. But she was stymied. As the cab crossed the Fenway, Susan admitted to herself that she had run out of ideas on how to proceed. She felt she could not chance the Memorial by day with Nelson, Harris, McLeary, and Oren all lined up against her. She doubted the nurse’s uniform would work on a direct confrontation.
But she wanted more data from the computer. She needed the other charts, too. Was there a way to do it? Would Bellows help? Susan doubted it. She now knew that he was truly anxious about his position. He really is an invertebrate, she thought.
And what about Walters’s suicide? How could those drugs be tied in?
Susan paid her fare and got out of the taxi. Walking up to the door, she decided that in the morning she would try to find out as much as possible about Walters. He had to be related. But how?
Susan stood by the front door with her hand on the knob, expecting to be buzzed in by the watchman at the front desk. But he wasn’t sitting there. Susan cursed as she rummaged in her coat for her keys. It was uncanny how the man at the desk seemed to disappear whenever you needed him.
The four flights up to her floor seemed longer than usual to Susan. She paused on several occasions, because of a combination of physical fatigue and mental effort.
Susan tried to remember if Bellows had said succinylcholine was among the drugs found in the locker in the doctors’ dressing room. She distinctly remembered his saying curare but she could not remember succinylcholine. She got to the top of the stairs still very much lost in thought. It took another minute to find the correct key. As she had done countless times, she inserted the key in the lock. It took a bit of effort.
Despite her deep thought and exhaustion, Susan remembered about the wad of paper. Leaving the key in the door she bent down to look.
The paper was not there. The door had been opened.
Susan backed away from the door, half-expecting it to open suddenly. She remembered the horrid face of her assailant. If he was within the room, he was undoubtedly poised, expecting her to enter as usual. She thought of the knife he had not used the last time. She knew that she had very little time. The only factor in her favor was that if he were in the room, he would not know Susan suspected his presence. At least for a few moments.
If she called the authorities and the man was found, she’d be safe for some hours perhaps. But she recalled the threat about telling the police, the photograph of her brother. Did that suggest a burglar or a rapist? Not likely. Susan understood that the man who attacked her before was both professional and serious, deadly serious. She should run, perhaps even leave town. Or should she call the police anyway, as Stark had suggested? She was no professional; that was painfully apparent.
Why would they be after her already? She felt confident she had not been followed. Maybe the wad of paper had fallen out by itself. Susan advanced toward the door again.
“What the hell’s the matter with this lock?” she said aloud, shaking the keys, playing for time. She remembered that the watchman was not at his desk downstairs. Should she go down and knock on someone else’s door, saying that hers was stuck? Susan backed away again and moved over to the stairs. She thought that was the best idea under the circumstances. She knew Martha Fine on three well enough to knock at this hour. She didn’t know what she should tell her. It was probably best for Martha if she told her nothing. All she’d say was that she couldn’t get into her own room and she needed to sleep on Martha’s floor.