Part 54 (1/2)

”Come on,” Ally said ”that had to be Kristen. The girl downstairs recognized her. Though she did say she looked different somehow.”

”You're going to think I'm crazy,” he went on, still staring around at the walls, ”but it seems to me the girl on the street was a lot younger than this one.” He bit a fingernail contemplatively. ”Christ, this is some sick material.”

”Stone, I'm going down to my office, to take care of some things and think about this. Come along if you like. Maybe we've overlooked something obvious. Something that--”

That was when the beeper on his belt went off. He looked down at the number.

”Whoops. It's my managing editor.”

”Where you work?”

”Right. Only I've got a feeling this call could be about how I used to work there.”

Chapter 22

_Wednesday, April 8

3:18 P.M.

_

Ellen O'Hara, R.N., who was in charge of the nursing staff at the Dorian Inst.i.tute and chair of the union committee for the Gerex Corporation, looked around the room, which was a conference s.p.a.ce just off the laboratory in the first level of the bas.e.m.e.nt. Each of the three other nurses present reported directly to her and they had filed in casually one by one, in order not to draw the attention of the research staff as they pa.s.sed the laboratory. They all sensed the imminence of crisis and this was a clandestine emergency meeting.

The appearance of Katherine Starr and the shooting that transpired had left the entire nursing staff in dismay. Of course they all remembered Kristen Starr, the outgoing and scatterbrained TV personality, who had arrived in the throes of a mental meltdown. Some also remembered her mother, Katherine, who had made a nuisance of herself till she was refused further admittance (on the orders, everyone suspected of the owner, Winston Bartlett, who was widely reported to have a romantic relations.h.i.+p with the girl).

They also suspected that something had started going terribly wrong with Kristen's cosmetic procedure. After seeming okay, her behavior had suddenly become erratic and she had been immediately whisked into intensive care in the subbas.e.m.e.nt and quarantined before anybody on the regular nursing staff could learn what the problem was. She was attended by the research team he had brought from California, and the information officer at the registration desk in the lobby, May Gooden, was instructed to say she had voluntarily left the program. (Well, maybe she had, but she hadn't left the inst.i.tute.) Then less than a week ago, she was rolled out on a gurney and loaded into the ambulance, which was driven by Winston Bartlett's j.a.panese thug, and taken G.o.d knows where.

Ellen had checked and was dismayed, though not entirely surprised, to discover that none of this had been included in the weekly clinical- trial reports being forwarded to the National Inst.i.tutes of Health.

(Which in itself was a flagrant violation of procedural requirements.)

And now this. Kristen's own mother showed up deranged and carrying a pistol, looking for her. How much longer would it be before the NIH, or the police, found out that something funny had gone on?