"Just try," Angela said.

When they had Nikki fully dressed, they led her down the hall. The commotion had drawn a flock of gawking patients and staff.

Once outside they all climbed into the truck. Calhoun drove with Nikki and Angela in the cab. David had to sit in the truck bed.

The whole way home Nikki questioned her sudden discharge. She was happy to be out, but puzzled by her parents' odd behavior. But by the time she got in the house she was too excited to see Rusty to persist in her questioning. After she played with Rusty for a bit, David and Angela set her up in the family room and restarted her IV. They wanted to continue her antibiotics.

Calhoun stayed and participated as best he could. Following Nikki's request he brought wood upstairs from the basement and made a fire. But it wasn't his nature to stay silent. Before long he got into an argument with David over the motive for Hodges' murder. Calhoun strongly favored the rapist, whereas David favored the deranged "Angel of Mercy."

"Hell!" Calhoun exclaimed. "Your whole theory is based on pure supposition. Your daughter is fine, thank the Lord, so there's no proof there. At least with my theory there's Hodges' ranting about knowing who the rapist was before a roomful of people the very day he got knocked off. How's that for cause and effect? And Clara thinks Hodges might have had the nerve to speak to the man. I'm so sure the rapist and the murderer are one and the same, I'll wager on it. What kind of odds will you give me?"

"I'm not a betting man," David said. "But I think I'm right. Hodges was beaten to death holding the names of his patients. That couldn't have been a coincidence."

"What if it is the same person?" Angela suggested. "What if the rapist is the same person behind the patient deaths and Hodges' murder?"

The idea shocked David and Calhoun into silence.

"It's possible," David said at last. "It sounds sort of crazy, but at this point I'm prepared to believe almost anything."

"I suppose," Calhoun added. "Anyway, I'm going after the tattoo clue. That's the key."

"I'm going to medical records," David said. "And maybe I'll visit Dr. Holster. Hodges might have said something to him about his suspicions regarding his patients."

"Okay," Calhoun said agreeably. "I'll go do my thing, you go ahead and do yours. How's about if I come back later so we can compare notes?"

"Sounds good," David said. He looked over at Angela.

"It's fine by me," she said. "What about having dinner together?"

"I never turn down dinner invitations," Calhoun said.

"Then be here by seven," Angela said.

After Calhoun left, David got the shotgun and proceeded to load it with as many shells as it would hold. He leaned it against the newel post in the front hall.

"Have you changed your mind about the gun?" Angela asked.

"Let's just say I'm glad it's here," David said. "Have you talked to Nikki about it?"

"Absolutely," Angela said. "She even shot it. She said it hurt her shoulder."

"Don't let anyone in the house while I'm gone," David said. "And keep all the doors locked."

"Hey, I'm the one who wanted the doors locked," Angela said. "Remember?"

David took his bike. He didn't want to leave Angela without a car. He rode quickly, oblivious to the sights. His mind kept going over the idea of someone having killed his patients. It horrified and infuriated him. But as Calhoun said, he didn't have any proof.

When David arrived at the hospital, the day shift was being replaced by the evening shift. There was a lot of commotion and traffic. No one paid the slightest attention to David as he made his way to medical records.

Sitting down at a terminal, David set out Calhoun's copies of the pages that had been interred with Hodges. He'd held onto them since their visit to Clara Hodges. He called up each patient's name and read the history. All eight had had serious terminal illnesses as Clara Hodges had said.

Then David read through the notes written during each patient's hospital stay when they died. In all cases, the symptoms were similar to those experienced by David's patients: neurological symptoms, gastrointestinal symptoms, and symptoms dealing with the blood or immune system.

Next, David looked up the final causes of death. In each case except for one, death resulted from a combination of overwhelming pneumonia, sepsis, and shock. The exception was a death subsequent to a series of sustained seizures.

Putting Hodges' papers away, David began using the hospital computer to calculate yearly death rates as a percentage of admissions. The results flashed on the screen instantly. He quickly discovered that the death rate had changed two years before when it had gone from an average of 2.8% up to 6.7%. The last year the figures were available, the death rate was up to 8.1%.

David then narrowed the death rate to those patients who had a diagnosis of cancer, whether the cancer was attributed as the cause of death or not. Although these percentages were understandably higher than the overall death rate, they showed the same sudden increase.

David next used the computer to calculate the yearly diagnosis of cancer as a percentage of admissions. With these statistics he saw no sudden change. On average, they were nearly identical going back ten years.

The increased percentage of deaths seemed to back up David's theory of an angel of mercy at work. Euthanasia would explain the fact that the relative incidence of all cancers was remaining stable while the death rate for people with cancer was going up. The evidence was indirect, but it couldn't be ignored.

David was about to leave when he thought of using the computer to elicit additional information. He asked the computer to search through all the medical histories on all the admissions for the words "tattoo" or "dyschromia," the medical word for aberrant pigmentation.

He waited while the computer searched. David sat back and watched the screen. It took almost a minute, but finally a list blazed on the screen. David quickly deleted the cases with medical or metabolic causes of pigmentary change. In the end, he came up with a list of twenty people who had been treated at the hospital with a mention of a tattoo in their records.

Using the computer yet again to match name and employment, David discovered that five of the people listed worked in the hospital. They were, in alphabetical order, Clyde Devonshire, an RN who worked in the emergency room; Joe Forbs from security; Claudette Maurice from dietary; Werner Van Slyke from engineering/maintenance; and Peter Ullhof, a lab technician.

David was intrigued to see a couple of the other names and occupations listed: Carl Hobson, deputy policeman, and Steve Shegwick, a member of the security force at Bartlet College. The rest of the people worked in various stores or in construction.

David printed out a copy of this information. Then he went on his way.

David had assumed his visit to medical records had gone unnoticed, but he was wrong. Hortense Marshall, one of the health information professionals, had been alerted to some of David's activities by a security program she'd placed in the hospital computer.

From the moment she'd been alerted, she'd kept an eye on David. As soon as he'd departed from records, she placed a call to Helen Beaton.

"Dr. David Wilson was in medical records," Hortense said. "He's just left. But while he was here he called up information concerning hospital death rates."

"Did he talk with you?" Beaton asked.

"No," Hortense said. "He used one of our terminals. He didn't speak with anyone."

"How did you know he was accessing data on death rates?" Beaton asked.

"The computer alerted me," Hortense said. "After you advised me to report anyone requesting that kind of data, I had the computer programmed to signal me if someone tried to access the information on their own."