“Well?” Chet asked.
“Well what?” Jack asked back.
“The daily question,” Chet said. “Are you still employed here?”
“Very funny,” Jack said. He was perplexed by the stack of four large manila envelopes at the center of his desk. He picked one up. It was about two inches thick. There were no markings on the exterior. Opening the latch, he slid out the contents. It was a copy of Susanne Hard’s hospital chart.
“You’ve seen Bingham?” Chet asked.
“I just came from there,” Jack said. “He was sweet. He wanted to commend me on my diagnoses of tularemia and Rocky Mountain spotted fever.”
“Bull!” Chet exclaimed.
“Honest,” Jack said with a chuckle. “Of course, he also bawled me out for going over to the General.” While Jack was talking, he took the contents out of all the manila envelopes. He now had copies of the hospital charts of the index cases of each outbreak.
“Was your visit worth it?” Chet asked.
“What do you mean, ‘worth it’?” Jack asked.
“Did you learn enough to justify stirring up the pot once more?” Chet said. “We heard you got everyone over there angry again.”
“Not a lot of secrets around here,” Jack commented. “But I did learn something that I didn’t know.” Jack explained to Chet and George about the ease of ordering pathological bacteria.
“I knew that,” George said. “I worked in a micro lab during summers while I was in college. I remember the supervisor ordering a cholera culture. When it came in I picked it up and held it. It gave me a thrill.”
Jack glanced at George. “A thrill?” he questioned. “You’re weirder than I thought.”
“Seriously,” George said. “I know other people who had the same reaction. Comprehending how much pain, suffering, and death the little buggers had caused and could cause was both scary and stimulating at the same time, and holding it in my hand just blew me away.”
“I guess my idea of a thrill and yours are a bit different,” Jack said. He went back to the charts and organized them chronologically so that Nodelman was on top.
“I hope the mere availability of pathological bacteria doesn’t encourage your paranoid thinking,” Chet said. “I mean, that’s hardly proof of your theory.”
“Umm hmm,” Jack murmured. He was already beginning to go over the charts. He planned to read through them rapidly to see if anything jumped out at him. Then he would go back over them in detail. What he was looking for was any way the cases could have been related that would suggest they were not random occurrences.
Chet and George went back to their conversation when it was apparent Jack was preoccupied. Fifteen minutes later George got up and left.
As soon as he did Chet went to the door and closed it. “Colleen called me a little while ago,” he said.
“I’m happy for you,” Jack said, still trying to concentrate on the charts.
“She told me what had happened over there at the agency,” Chet said. “I think it stinks. I can’t imagine one part of the same company undermining another. It doesn’t make sense.”
Jack looked up from his reading. “It’s the business mentality,” he said. “Lust for power is the major motivator.”
Chet sat down. “Colleen also told me that you gave Terese a terrific idea for a new campaign.”
“Don’t remind me,” Jack said. He redirected his attention to the charts. “I really don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t know why she asked me. She knows how I feel about medical advertising.”
“Colleen also said that you and Terese are hitting it off,” Chet said.
“Really now?” Jack said.
“She said that you two had gotten each other to open up. I think that is terrific for both of you.”
“Did she give any specifics?” Jack asked.
“I didn’t get the sense she had any specifics,” Chet said.
“Thank God,” Jack said without looking up.
When Jack answered Chet’s next few questions with mere grunts, it dawned on Chet that Jack was again engrossed in his reading. Chet gave up trying to have a conversation and turned his attention to his own work.