Merilee upstairs.”
For the third time in half an hour I presented my faculty card,
augmenting it with my brand-new full-color hospital badge.
Putting on gold-framed half-glasses, she examined both, taking her TIME The hospital ID held her interest longer.
“The other man had one of these too,” she said, holding it up.
“He said he was in charge of hospital security.”
A man named Huenengarth?” øf She nodded. “The two of you seem to be
duplicating each others efforts.”
“When was he here?”
“Last Thursday. Does Western Pediatrics generally give this type of
personal service to all its patients?”
As I said, it’s a complex case.”
She smiled. “Medically or socio-culturally?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t get into details.”
“Psychotherapeutic confidentiality?”
I nodded.
“Well, I certainly respect that, Dr. Delaware. Mr. Huenengarth used
another phrase to protect his secrecy. Privileged information.” I
thought that sounded rather cloak-and-dagger and told him so. He
wasn’t amused. A rather grim fellow, actually.”
“Did you give him the chart?”
“No, because I don’t have it, Doctor. Dawn left no medical charts of
any kind behind. Sorry to have misled you, but all the attention she’s
generated lately has led me to be cautious. That and her murder, of
course. When the police came by to ask questions, I cleaned out her
graduate locker personally. All that I found were some textbooks and
the computer disks from her dissertation research.”
“Have you booted up the disks?”
“Is that question related to your complex case?”
“Possibly.”
“Possibly,” she said. “Well, at least you’re not getting pushy the way
Mr. Huenengarth did. Trying to pressure me to turn them over.”
Removing her glasses, she got up, returned my ID, closed the door.
Back in her chair, she said, “Was Dawn involved in something
unsavory?”
“She may have been.”
“Mr. Huenengarth was a bit more forthcoming than you, Doctor. He came
right out and said Dawn had stolen the chart. Informed me it was my
duty to see that it was returned-quite imperious. I had to ask him to
leave.”
“He’s not Mr. Charm.”
An understatement-his approach is pure KGB. More like a policeman than
the real policemen who investigated Dawn’s murder, as far as I’m
concerned. The weren’t pushy enough. A few cursory questions and
goodbye-I grade them C-minus. Weeks later I called to see what kind of
progress was being made, and no one would take my call. I left
messages and none were returned.”
“What kind of questions did they ask about her?”
“Who her friends were, had she ever associated with criminal types, did
she use drugs. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to answer any of them.
Even after having her as my student for four years, I knew virtually
nothing about her. Have you served on any doctoral committees?”
A few.”
“Then you know. Some students one really gets close to; others pass
through without making a mark. I’m afraid Dawn was one of the
latter.
Not because she wasn’t bright. She was extremely sharp,
mathematically. It’s why I accepted her in the first place, even
though I had reservations about her motivation. I’m always looking for
women who aren’t intimidated by numbers and she had a true gift for
math. But we never. . . jelled.”
“What was the matter with her motivation?”
“She didn’t have any. I always got the feeling she’d drifted into grad
school because it was the path of least resistance. She’d applied to
medical school and gotten rejected. Kept applying even after she
enrolled here-a lost cause, really, because her non-math grades weren’t
very good and her M-CAT scores were significantly below average. Her
math scores were so high I decided to accept her, though. I went so
far as to get her funding a Graduate Advanced Placement fellowship.
This past fall, I had to cut that off. That’s when she found the job
at your hospital.”
“Poor performance?”
“Poor progress on her dissertation. She finished her course work with
adequate grades, submitted a research proposal that looked promising,
dropped it, submitted another, dropped that, et cetera Finally she came
up with one that she seemed to like. Then she just froze. Went
absolutely nowhere with it. You know how it isstudents either zip