The 5th Horseman - James Patterson [85]
“Look at this list, Marie. Did you put buttons on these people’s eyes?”
There was a long silence as the woman ran her finger down the page, silently mouthing the names.
“I put buttons on their eyes, yes,” she said finally, sitting up straight in her chair and pinning me with an unblinking stare.
“But I swear to God Himself, I didn’t hurt any of them. I think someone did. And I wanted to make sure that God knows. And that somebody knows in this life, too.”
Behind me, Jacobi kicked a chair across the room. It bounced off a wall and came to rest on its side.
“Inspector!” I admonished him, not meaning it for a second.
My eyes swept back to St. Germaine. “It’s okay, Marie. Pay attention to me. Why didn’t you call the police?”
“I need my job, lady,” she said indignantly. “Anyway, what’s the use? No one listens to a person like me. You don’t believe me. I can see it in your eyes.”
“Make me believe you,” I said. “I really want to.”
Marie St. Germaine leaned toward me, spoke in a confiding tone of voice.
“Then you should listen to me now. Talk to the doctor in charge of the hospital pharmacy. Dr. Engstrom. You should be talking to her, not to me. I am a good person. She is not.”
Chapter 121
SOMEHOW, SONJA ENGSTROM made an ordinary white lab coat look like haute couture. Her short platinum-blond hair was combed back, a single diamond drop hung from a platinum chain at her throat, and she was immaculately made up with an iridescent powder and a hint of rose-colored lipstick.
Engstrom stood and shook our hands as I introduced Jacobi and myself.
As we took seats across from her desk, I noticed that her papers were in neatly squared stacks on her desk, pens and pencils all pointing in the same direction in an enamel tray, her diplomas evenly spaced on the wall.
Only the anxious darting of her light gray eyes from me to Jacobi and back again gave me a hint that her life wasn’t all hospital corners.
I was looking at Jacobi when a strange expression crossed his face. His mouth twitched, and his eyes squinted.
I’d worked with Jacobi enough years to know what that look meant.
He recognized her.
Dr. Engstrom hadn’t noticed. She clasped her slender hands under her chin and began to speak unprompted.
She told us that the hospital staff was in turmoil since the jury verdict yesterday, that she herself felt very shaken. “We don’t know who will have jobs,” she said. “Or if the hospital will close. Anything’s possible now.”
“You think you’ll be fired?” I asked her.
“I’ve been worried about that for years. Those inexplicable deaths have made me a wreck,” she said, sweeping her hands through her shining hair.
“I reported my concerns to Carl Whiteley. I spoke to him more than once,” she told us. “In fact, I prepared a report of what I thought were pharmaceutical-based errors.
“But Carl and the legal department assured me that my department wasn’t at fault. He said that somebody at the hospital was playing a joke, a prank, and eventually they’d be caught.
“So on one level, I was relieved. Of course, I know that our computer system is fail-safe, so there was no way. . . .”
She turned her face to the window as her voice trailed off.
“Dr. Engstrom,” Jacobi said, “I’m an old-fashioned guy, as you can probably tell from looking at me. I’m not that familiar with computers and such.”
“It’s very simple, Inspector. Our computer is programmed to dispense medication when a diagnosis is inputted into the system. It’s impossible to prescribe the wrong medication because the machine simply won’t dispense the order if it doesn’t match the diagnosis.”
“Can’t someone fool with the program?” Jacobi asked. “I mean, don’t some people have passwords?”
“Everyone on my staff can enter the diagnoses as written into the computer, but they can’t change any data. I’m the only one who can do that, and I have a biometric password.”
“Beg pardon?” said Jacobi.
“My password is my fingerprint.”
“But can’t a doctor enter the wrong diagnosis?” I asked.