Desperate, Gin had removed it before llanding him his jacket. She felt like a creep, but consoled herself with the thought that she was only borrowing it.
Gin was warm and contented as she dozed off, vowing to spend most of Sunday morning becoming an expert with the Electropick, then tackling Duncan's drawer in the afternoon.
Only a nagging apprehension about what she'd find there disturbed her repose.
THE WEEK OF OCTOBER GINA r IT WAS TUESDAY AFTERNOON BEPORE GINA GOT A chance to use the Electropick on Duncan's drawer.
I should have been done with this days ago, she thought as she stood inside the door to the basement stairs. She was waiting for Barbara to leave her desk on one of her frequent trips to the copier or the printer, both of which were downstairs, or to the patient education room across the hall from her desk.
Sunday would have been perfect. Gin had practiced all morning with the Electropick and had become fairly adept. She'd used it on every cylinder lock in her apartment, even on her car.
Gerry had called Sunday afternoon, and they'd talked about how wonderful the night before had been. Finally he asked about the Electropick. He couldn't find it. Had he left it there? Gin told him he had and joked about it, telling him he didn't need to pull that old stunt of leaving something behind just so he could have an excuse to come back. When he mentioned stopping by later to pick it up, she begged offsaying she had a million errands to run before pulling a shift at the hospital. Which was sort of true. Luckily, Gerry didn't seem to be in a big rush to get it back. They had a number of the things at the Bureau.
More practice, and by midafternoon Gin felt ready. But when she arrived at the office she found a dark blue Buick Park Avenue parked in the lot. Oliver's car. What was he doing back? And on a Sunday when he should have been home watching football? Except Oliver wouldn't know a Redskin from a Mighty Duck. All he cared about were his lab and his implants.
So Gin drove off and returned in two hours. The Buick was still there.
Two hours after that it was gone but night was falling and the cleaning service had arrived. She had to call it quits. She was due at the hospital.
Monday offered no chance. Duncan stayed uncharacteristically late and Gin couldn't hang around because she had a meeting with the other legislative aides in Senator Marsden's office.
But today Duncan had stayed true to form, finishing his surgery and making a beeline for his club, so he said.
That was another thing that bothered her. Where did he really go? And who was the mysterious Dr. V. he'd been meeting with? Secrets and more secrets. How could she help but be suspicious?
She heard footsteps approaching. High heels. Only one person here wore heels. Casually, Gin stepped out into the hall.
"Hi, Barbara, " she said.
The blonde started, then smiled. "Jesus God, you scared me. I thought you were gone." I will be in about two minutes. ' Gin hurried down the hall and ducked into Duncan's office. Plenty of light from the afternoon sky filtering through the rock garden. Perfect lock-picking conditions.
"I've got to be crazy, " she muttered. Tension was a cold hand tightening on the nape of her neck. She tried to shake it off.
Do it. Now.
She knew if she hesitated, if she gave herself time to think, - she might allow a spasm of sanity to change her mind. She if pulled the Electropick from her lab-coat pocket and knelt before the drawer. On the remote chance that it might be unlocked, she tugged on the pull.
No such luck.
Okay. Electropick, do your thing.
She probed the keyhole with one of the raking tools but it wwldn't fit.
She needed a smaller one. No problem. She'd spent much of Sunday switching rakes. A lot like switching drill bits, only easier. She inserted the next smaller size, adjusted the thumbscrew, then tried again. This time it slipped in easily. Half a minute later she had the tension bat in the keyhole and was slowly twisting it. She heard a click as the little bok slipped back inside the lock.
"Yes! " she whispered.
She exttacted the tension bar and pulled open the drawer.
And there they were, the oversized trocar and the mystery bottle.
She hesitated, then picked up the trocar and sighted down its bore, little more than a hollow stainless steel tube with a sharp, beveled point at one end and a hilt at the other.
Something like a giant hypodermic needle. Just about big enough to hold one of those giant economy-size implants she'd seen Oliver dissolving with ultrasound. She slipped the obturator into the trocar, filling the bore with more stainless steel.
She remembered the puncture wound on Senator Vincent's thigh in recovery. It could have been made by something like this. She imagined Duncan positioning the trocat's sharp beveled point against the skin along the outer aspect of Vincent's thigh, then punching it through on an angle. He'd advance the trocar about three inches into the subcutaneous fat, then withdraw the solid obturator, leaving the hollow outer tube in the thigh. He'd slip the implant into the bore of the trocar. With the blunt end of the obturator he'd ease the implant to the far end of the bore, retract the trocar along the shaft of the obturator, then remove both instruments as one.
Leaving the implant behind, nestled in the subcutaneous fat of the thigh.
She shuddered. The whole idea gave her the willies.
She separated the trocar and obturator and laid them aside, then picked up the mystery bottle. An injection vial. She examined its top and spotted multiple punctures in the center of the red rubber stopper.
It's been used, she thought. But what's in it?
A thin, dear, amber fluid sloshed on the other side of the glass. She twisted the bottle until she could read the label. The GEM Pharma colophon huddled in the upper left corner. Two words were typed across the center, TRIPTOLINIC DlETHSfLAMIDE "Well, ' she muttered, "that dears up everything." What the hell was triptolinic diethylamide?
She'd never heard of it.
She studied the name, committing its spelling to memory, then she placed the bottle on the desktop and began rummaging through the drawer.
Not much there. The most prominent object was the little handheld recorder that Duncan used for his consults and operative reports.
Gin's heart revved a little when she spotted a tape in it. She pressed the rewind, then hit PLAY. A tinny version of his voice buzzed forth, droning an incisionby-incision, suture-by-suture recap of the tip graft they'd done on an eighteen-year-old girl's nose Monday. She spotchecked through the tape and found only more of the same.
In the back of the drawer she found a slightly faded photo of a teenage girl. Blond hair, a forced smiie, and bright blue eyes. Duncan's eyes.
Gin's fingers trembled. Lisa Lathram. Had to be. She stared at the innocent, seemingly untroubled face that offered no hint of the troubled soul harbored within. Who'd ever guess she'd attempt suicide three times?
Gin sighed and put the photo aside.
What else in the drawer? No other tapes. A few business cards, a two-year-old schedule for the Orioles, a brochure from a coffee importer, some blank index cards, and a nail dipper.
That was it.
Gin leaned against the desk, relieved, but still unsettled. Lisa's photo was here, but no legislator death list with names crossed off, no morbid collection of newspaper clippings. But still there was the trocar and the triptolinic diethylamide, whatever that was. Probably harmless . . . but why was it in his locked drawer? Maybe for the same reason an old Orioles schedule and a nail clipper were locked up along with them, This simply was where certain items ended up.