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Chapter Three

After his brush with expulsion, Swango was a model medical student. He dutifully repeated the OB/GYN rotation, attending all the required surgeries and oral examinations, and he acquitted himself satisfactorily in his other supervised assignments.

Dean Richard Moy had taken an additional step that he believed might put others on notice that SIU had experienced problems with Swango's performance. Every graduating medical student receives a "dean's letter," which reviews his or her strengths and weaknesses and is used in applications for internships, residencies, and other employment. Though another administrator usually drafted such letters, Dean Moy took a personal interest in Swango's. It was carefully written to call attention to the fact that he had not graduated with his class, that he had failed a rotation and been required to repeat it, and that there had been concern about his professional behavior. Given the school's anxiety about possible legal liability, this was as far as Moy felt the letter could go. He was confident that, at the least, it would cause a teaching hospital to call SIU for more explanation before admitting Swango for further training.

Yet on Match Day, March 16, 1983, Dr. William Hunt, director of the department of neurosurgery at Ohio State University in Columbus, offered Swango a residency in neurosurgery after the successful completion of a year's internship in general surgery to begin on July 1. That year, Ohio State, one of the most prestigious residency programs in the country, had received about sixty applicants for its neurosurgery residence program and had invited twelve for personal interviews, Swango among them. He was the only student finally offered a position. Swango's success seemed even more astounding than his offer from the University of Iowa had been the year before.

Michael Swango was graduated from SIU on April 12, 1983. Though there was no ceremony, he received his diploma in the mail, and Muriel spread the good news of his graduation and acceptance at Ohio State to family members. These developments lent credence to Michael's explanation that a computer glitch had postponed his graduation. No one questioned why it would have taken nearly a year to correct such an error. Nor did Michael mention to anyone in Quincy, let alone at Ohio State, that shortly after his graduation from SIU he was fired by America Ambulance.

Already on probation there because of his violent outbursts, Swango had responded to an emergency call in Rochester, Illinois, a small town close to Springfield. The patient, gasping for air and in acute pain, was suffering a heart attack. Swango's instructions were to administer any emergency treatment called for and then transport him in the ambulance to the nearest hospital. Instead, he made the patient walk to his own car and told the family to drive him to the hospital themselves. The patient survived, but the family called America Ambulance to complain about Swango. No one could explain his cavalier behavior. It was both medically unsound and a clear violation of the ambulance corps' rules. Swango offered no adequate explanation and was fired.

But Michael was no doubt indifferent to his dismissal now that he had graduated from SIU. He returned to Quincy and was promptly hired as a paramedic by the Adams County Ambulance Corps. He worked there for just three months, since he had to be in Columbus, Ohio, by July 1 to begin his internship.

Anne Ritchie first met the new blond intern on the ninth floor of Rhodes Hall, one of the largest buildings in the Ohio State medical complex. She did a double-take. She thought he was handsome, with an athletic build and angular face, a very all-American look. But what struck her most was that he looked remarkably like her cousin's husband in Minnesota. The similarity was so pronounced that she checked the I.D. tag on his surgical jacket to see if there might be some family relation. That was why she remembered his name: Michael Swango.

Attractive, popular, and vivacious, Ritchie was the daughter of a physician, and had always wanted a career in health care. She loved working in the Ohio State Hospitals, even though as a "casual" or supplemental nurse, working two to four shifts a week whenever she was needed, she ranked fairly low. Swango didn't seem the least bit interested in his resemblance to her cousin, but Ritchie was accustomed to indifference on the part of doctors. At the Ohio State Hospitals, which maintained a rigid hierarchy among doctors, nurses, and other staff, nurses didn't speak to attending physicians unless specifically questioned by them. The physicians gave their instructions to residents and interns, who in turn passed them on to the nursing staff. Any questions or statements by the nurses were supposed to be directed either to the interns and residents for transmittal to attending physicians, or to their nurse supervisors.

With over 50,000 students at the time Swango arrived, Ohio State is virtually a city unto itself; it even has its own police force and governance. The Ohio State University Medical Center is located just a few blocks from "the oval," the grassy center of the sprawling campus. After the Ohio State Buckeye football team, the medical center is the crown jewel of the giant state university. It has 1,123 beds and 4,278 employees, and university officials describe it as the second-largest teaching hospital program in the country (after the University of Iowa's). The hospitals sometimes vie for supremacy in Ohio with the prestigious Cleveland Clinic, the highly regarded Case Western Reserve University, also in Cleveland, and the University of Cincinnati. But its size and political clout -- the university trustees are appointed by the governor, and the hospitals' board is a Who's Who of prominent Ohio business and civic leaders -- usually ensure Ohio State's preeminence. Graduates of the medical school dominate Ohio's medical establishment and institutions.

So Swango joined an elite group of medical school graduates for his first assignment as a surgical intern, which was in the emergency room. Given such competition, it didn't take long for some of his shortcomings to surface. Each doctor in charge of a surgical rotation evaluates the interns at the conclusion of the rotation, and Dr. Ronald Ferguson, the doctor in charge of transplant surgery, who oversaw Swango's work from mid-October until mid-November, told Dr. Hunt that he was going to fail Swango, and that he didn't believe he was competent to practice medicine.

While the details of Swango's performance have been shrouded in secrecy by Ohio State (the school has said only that nothing of a criminal nature was contained in Swango's evaluations), Ferguson complained specifically about Swango's brusque and indifferent manner with patients, his cursory H & P's -- charges that echo the criticisms of his performance at SIU -- and a general sense that Swango lacked the temperament and dedication necessary to be a doctor. Swango also alarmed at least one other of his supervising physicians with remarks suggesting a fascination with the Nazis and the Holocaust. (This fascination was noted in his student record.)

Some of the residents, who spent more time with Swango than the attending physicians did, also complained to doctors on the faculty that Swango was "weird." While making rounds, residents often give interns tasks and then critique their performance. Whenever they criticized Swango -- as they often did, because of his incompetence -- Swango would immediately drop to the floor and begin a strenuous set of push-ups. He could do hundreds of them. It was almost as if he were still in the Marines, and this was his self-imposed punishment. Of course, the residents thought his reaction not only peculiar but highly inappropriate for a doctor making rounds. Despite their admonitions, he persisted.

At the time Swango was hired, no one from Ohio State called anyone at SIU. Indeed, no one appears even to have noticed that he should have graduated from SIU a year earlier than he did. But now, troubled by the negative report from Ferguson and other comments about Swango's odd behavior, Dr. Hunt got on the phone to SIU's Howard Barrows, the associate dean for medical education. Barrows was in charge of student recommendations, including the dean's letters signed by Moy, and had helped draft Swango's. With an edge of annoyance, Hunt asked about Swango. "What kind of guy did you send us?"

Barrows said that Hunt should have seen plenty of warning flags in Swango's dean's letter. "Well," Hunt retorted, "I don't read dean's letters."

Barrows asked him if he'd kept the dean's letter in Swango's file, and Hunt said he'd check. Soon after, Hunt called back: he'd found the letter.

"Oh, my God," Hunt said. "You're right. You did tell me."

Still, no consideration seems to have been given to terminating Swango's internship. On January 14, 1984, Hunt met with Swango and warned him that he had received a failing evaluation from Dr. Ferguson that might threaten his residency. He reminded Swango that the offer of a residency in neurosurgery was contingent on successful completion of the one-year internship. Swango took the news calmly; he seemed suitably concerned and sincere in his desire to improve. He was sufficiently charming and contrite that Hunt helped him plot strategies for overcoming the negative review and continuing with his residency. Hunt recommended that Swango appeal Ferguson's evaluation to the Residency Review Committee, made up of doctors from the surgery department. Swango took him up on the suggestion, and the committee met later that month to reevaluate him.

Ritchie and Swango didn't have much contact after their initial meeting, when she had examined his name tag, though she did talk fairly often to his new girlfriend: a fellow nurse named Rita Dumas, who also often worked in Rhodes Hall. The relationship surprised many on the nursing staff, because Dumas hardly seemed a catch for a promising and handsome young intern. She was reasonably attractive, but her personality had caused some of the other nurses to keep their distance. Divorced a few years before, with three young children, she was always complaining about something. She worked the night shift, returning home at seven in the morning, just as the children were awakening. She said she was never able to get enough sleep, which might have accounted for her often surly mood.

But she seemed transformed by the romance with Swango. Though she still kept mostly to herself, she acquired a new glow of confidence, and her attitude toward life seemed to improve. A few of the other nurses noted the changes with a touch of envy. Dumas had been going through a difficult period. Swango had been tender and supportive. He was wonderful with her children, and they loved it when he performed feats of juggling for them. She later said, "I do not think that I would have survived had Swango not been there for me."

On February 6, Anne Ritchie reported to Rhodes Hall for the morning shift, and was assigned to a neurosurgery patient in Room 968, named Ruth Barrick. Barrick was a pleasant, elderly woman who had been admitted to the hospital on January 17. She had fallen and hit her head at home ten days earlier and suffered a cerebral hematoma. Though her condition was serious, it had never been considered life-threatening until she suffered respiratory arrest and nearly died on January 31 -- just after Swango's appeal of his negative evaluation was rejected.

No one told Ritchie what had happened. But on January 31, another nurse, Deborah Kennedy, had given Barrick her breakfast and assessed her condition. The patient seemed to be doing well. She was sitting up in bed, talking, and responding to directions. At about 9:45 a.m., Dr. Swango had come into Barrick's room and told Kennedy, "I'm going to check on her." Kennedy thought this was peculiar, since doctors rounded at 6:30 a.m. and rarely returned unless there was a specific problem. In such cases, it was the attending physician, not an intern by himself, who would call on the patient. But Kennedy gave the matter little thought. She left Swango alone in the room with Barrick.

About twenty minutes later, Kennedy returned to check on Barrick. Swango was gone. Barrick was now reclining and seemed to be asleep, but when she drew close to the bedside, Kennedy was alarmed. Barrick was barely breathing. Her skin was taking on a bluish cast, a sign of imminent death from respiratory failure. Kennedy immediately called a code over the intercom, and doctors came rushing to the room. Swango was the first to respond, but others too began working to resuscitate her. After forty-five minutes Barrick's vital signs seemed to stabilize and she was transferred to intensive care. There she recovered without any evident lingering effects, and returned to her room.

At about eight a.m. on February 6, Ritchie gave Barrick a bath. The patient was alert, talking, cheerful, and seemed to be recovering. But Ritchie noticed that the central venous pressure (CVP) was low in the central line, an intravenous tube supplying medication to the major blood vessels. She called to ask that a doctor check the line, and then left the room to check other patients. A few minutes later, she saw Swango enter Barrick's room, remembered him as the new doctor who looked like her cousin, and felt relieved that an M.D. had responded to her call. Ritchie might have given the matter no further thought, but some time passed and she didn't see Swango emerge, which made her think that there might be a problem with the central line. This wasn't unusual, because the central line, connected as it is to the major blood vessels, often requires some delicate work if a blockage occurs, and there is a particular risk of air getting into the tube, which can be fatal. So Ritchie went back into Barrick's room to see if Swango needed help.

Swango had drawn the curtains entirely around Barrick's bed, which meant that neither Barrick's roommate nor anyone passing the room's open door could see what was happening. Ritchie found this odd. She stuck her head through the curtains. Swango was hovering over Barrick's chest area and seemed startled. "Do you need any help?" she asked cheerfully. "No," Swango replied. Ritchie left.

Ten minutes later, concerned that Swango still hadn't finished, Ritchie entered the room, saw the closed curtains, and again asked if Swango needed any help. He said he didn't. Three minutes later, Ritchie returned, opened the curtain, and looked in. This time she saw that Swango was using two or three syringes. One was stuck directly into the central line. Another was resting on Swango's shoulder, as if he was waiting to insert it whenever the other syringe had emptied. Had Swango simply been using the syringes to clear the line, there should have been blood in them. But there was no blood. Swango again said he needed no assistance and Ritchie left the room.

Just a few minutes later, Ritchie saw Swango finally leave. "Good," she thought to herself. "That's finally over." Whatever was wrong with Barrick's line had evidently been corrected. Almost immediately -- no more than ten seconds had elapsed -- she went back into the room to check Barrick's dressing where the central line entered the body.

Ritchie was stunned. Barrick had turned blue. She gave one terrifying shudder and gasp, then stopped breathing. Ritchie screamed "Code Blue! Code Blue!" then began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, desperately trying to get breath into Barrick's lungs. She looked up and saw Dr. Swango coolly watching her from the back of the room, doing nothing to assist her or the patient. "That is so disgusting," Swango said of her efforts at mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, his voice tinged with contempt.

Still in shock, Ritchie stared at him in disbelief. "You jerk!" she shouted, before returning frantically to the patient. Other nurses and doctors rushed in and began chest compression, to no avail.

Ruth Barrick was dead.

The last entry in Barrick's "physician progress notes" was made by Swango and dated February 6 at eleven a.m.:

PT [patient] suffered apparent respiratory arrest witnessed by R.N. No pulse present, Code Blue called at 10:25 hrs. PT did not respond to resuscitative measures...pronounced dead at 10:49. Dr. Joseph Goodman and family notified per Dr. Arlo Brakel.
Swango.

The death certificate cited the cause of death as "a. Cardiopulmonary arrest, due to, b. Cerebrovascular accident," a stroke in lay terms.

Ritchie was astounded and appalled when Swango insisted he wanted personally to convey the news of Barrick's death to her family members. (She later saw him leading relatives into a private room.) And she could hardly believe what she had witnessed. She was almost certain that something Swango had done had killed Barrick. Still, it never crossed her mind that he might have killed her deliberately. She assumed that he had accidentally allowed an air pocket to enter the central line, causing a fatal embolism in the bloodstream. Such accidents did sometimes happen, which was one of the reasons only doctors were allowed to adjust central lines. But why hadn't Swango acknowledged the error? Why had he acted as he did? And what was he doing with those syringes?

These troubling questions were still swirling in Ritchie's mind that afternoon when she responded to an urgent call in another room. The head nurse, Amy Moore, was with a patient who was having serious trouble breathing. Ritchie was alarmed to see that Swango was also in the room. With the patient gasping for breath, he ordered Ritchie to fetch a heart monitor.

Moore seemed incredulous: Using a heart monitor would take valuable time. "We don't need a heart monitor to check her lungs!" she exclaimed. It was rare for a nurse to defy a doctor, but the patient's condition plainly suggested blood clots in the lungs. She needed to be rushed to another floor for testing.

Swango was insistent. "She has to have a heart monitor."

"No she doesn't!" Ritchie interjected, fearing that the patient would die while they delayed dealing with an obvious condition.

But Swango was adamant. Moore said she could handle the situation, and told the visibly upset Ritchie she could leave. Moore got the patient to the other floor in time to save her life.

After her shift ended that day, Ritchie was driving home on Route 315 to the northwest suburbs where she lived. She couldn't get the day's disturbing events out of her mind. Barrick's death, Swango's unfeeling reaction to it, and his jeopardizing another patient made her consider the possibility that his actions had been deliberate. Her heart started racing; her head felt light; and she feared she would faint. She pulled over to the side of the busy highway to collect herself, but she still felt waves of anxiety. As soon as she could, she got off the highway and drove to her sister's house, where she broke down in tears. She told her sister about Ruth Barrick, and then about the other patient. Her sister called their father, the doctor, who said he'd check on Anne as soon as he could. Meanwhile, she did deep breathing exercises in an effort to stem the anxiety and calm herself. Surely she was wrong about Swango; Barrick's death was an accident. Eventually her pulse returned to normal, she regained her strength, and she was able to drive home.

The next day, in line with the hospital protocol that any irregular incidents should be reported to one's immediate superior, Ritchie told Amy Moore her suspicions that Swango had caused Barrick's death. She also talked with several other nurses about what had happened. Given hospital practice, she didn't dare say anything to any doctors. And in any event, she was afraid to mention the real cause of her anxiety attack: her suspicion that Swango's actions had been premeditated and deliberate.

That same evening, February 7, Swango and several other doctors made their evening rounds, stopping to see Rena Cooper, a sixty-nine-year-old widow who had had an operation that morning for a lower back problem, and Iwonia Utz, age fifty-nine, who was scheduled for, but had not yet received, treatment for a brain tumor. For twelve days the two had shared Room 900 in Rhodes Hall; over that time, they had become friendly. Cooper, a former seamstress and, for nineteen years, a practical nurse, and Utz, also a widow, and the mother of nine children, had discovered that they shared a strong Christian faith. (Cooper described herself as "born again.") On the evening of February 7, they had dinner, watched some television, and were avidly discussing the Bible when the doctors arrived. The doctors noted nothing unusual and continued their rounds. When they left, Cooper was lying comfortably on her side, with an intravenous tube for antibiotics connected to her left arm.

About an hour later, between nine and 9:15 P.M., an Ohio State nursing student, Karolyn Tyrrell Beery, came in to Room 900 for a routine hourly check and was surprised to see Swango there. Cooper had requested more pain medication, asking Utz to hold the call button down for her because she couldn't reach it, and Swango had apparently responded to the call. He was standing at Cooper's bedside, only about three feet from Beery, and the student noticed that he was adding something to Cooper's intravenous tube by inserting a syringe. "Her line must have clotted off" was her only thought; she assumed Swango was clearing a blockage. Beery stepped outside to enter data on Utz's chart. She was running late, and ready to move on to her next patient when, no more than two minutes later, she heard Utz call out, "Are you all right, Mrs. Cooper?" Then Beery heard a violent rattling of bed rails, followed by Utz's screams.

She rushed into the room. Utz cried out, "There's something wrong!" Cooper was turning blue and had stopped breathing.

Panicked, Beery rushed to the nurses' station for help, and returned to the room with a regular nurse, John Sigg. Sigg took one look at Cooper, then called a code. Two doctors, Rees Freeman, the chief resident in neurosurgery, and Arlo Brakel, another resident, were among the first to arrive, along with several nurses.

The genial, easygoing Freeman was referred to by nurses as "California Boy," since he'd grown up there. He was also a vitamin and mineral enthusiast, frequently handing out zinc tablets to patients, which the nurses also thought was a very West Coast habit. Brakel was often disheveled and tardy; as a joke, the nurses gave him an alarm clock with two large bells on top.

Swango, though he had just been in the room, didn't immediately respond to the code. As the senior resident, Freeman took charge of the emergency. He asked Beery what had happened. "Doctor," she said, "you know, Dr. Swango was in here and he left."

"Dr. Swango was in here?" Freeman asked, somewhat incredulous, since the doctors' rounds had been concluded some time earlier and Cooper wasn't scheduled for any follow-up visits. "What was he doing here?"

"I don't know," Beery said, adding: "This doctor's a real jerk."

Freeman asked what medication Cooper had taken, and another nurse said it was only codeine, a mild pain remedy. Beery then remarked that she had seen Swango giving Cooper something through the intravenous tube, but the doctors seemed skeptical, and she was convinced that neither of them believed her, probably because she was just a student nurse. Their skepticism may also have been rooted in the hospital custom that nurses, not doctors, adjust IV tubes (as opposed to the more complicated central lines). While doctors may inject drugs directly into IV lines, Cooper hadn't been scheduled for any such medication.

With the code and all the commotion in her room, Utz had become hysterical -- by her own account, she was "screaming like mad" -- and Freeman ordered her removed. As nurses converged on Utz, she called out that "a doctor with blond hair did something to Mrs. Cooper." Between sobs, she elaborated to the nurses: the "blond-haired doctor" had come into the room with a syringe and "something yellow that you wrap on your arm when you draw blood." She had heard him tell Cooper that "he was going to give her something to make her feel better." Utz said she had watched as the doctor wrapped the yellow tube around Cooper's arm, injected her with the syringe, and then "ran" from the room. Then Cooper's bed rails began to shake. Utz tried to press her emergency call button, but couldn't reach it, so she began screaming for attention. By the time Utz had finished her story, she had been moved to a private room down the hall, so only nurses heard the full account.

In any event, the doctors at this point were more concerned about saving Cooper than they were about determining the cause of her mysterious paralysis. Brakel later noted that Cooper "was not breathing. She was unconscious. She had no movements to any stimulus, even deep pain." But she wasn't dead -- she had a good pulse and heartbeat. The doctors checked her pupils and noticed that there was faint, sluggish reaction to stimuli. But the doctors were surprised by what they called her "total flaccidity" -- "she didn't even have any reflexes," as Brakel put it. The doctors inserted a tube down her throat to facilitate breathing. This is normally a painful procedure, but Cooper showed no reaction, and the doctors concluded she was essentially paralyzed.

Joe Risley, a nurse's aide, had responded to the code, and was standing outside Cooper's room when he heard Beery, who was a friend of his, tell Freeman that Swango had injected something into Cooper's IV. He moved west down the corridor and rounded a corner, checking to make sure there were no other patient emergencies while the medical staff was preoccupied with Cooper. As he neared Room 966, Risley saw Swango, wearing his white medical coat, come out the door. Risley knew Swango had just been in Cooper's room, and knew of no reason he would be in 966. But what really struck him was a peculiar look of satisfaction on Swango's face when he looked Risley directly in the eye. As Risley later put it, "He had a goofy look on his face....It's an old cliché, like a kid with his fingers in the cookie jar. I mean, it was basically just a shit-eating grin."

The two said nothing to each other as they passed, but Risley, his suspicions aroused, immediately went into the room. On the bathroom sink, located just inside the door, were an 18-gauge needle and a 10cc syringe with the plunger depressed. An 18-gauge needle is large, used on patients only in unusual circumstances when a large dosage needs to be injected at high speed. Lily Jordan, the charge nurse, who supervised other nurses on the floor, was walking by, and Risley asked her if anyone had been assigned to give an injection in Room 966. No, she replied, not that she knew of. Risley asked her to look in the bathroom, and pointed out the huge needle and syringe. "Did you leave that there?"

"No," she said emphatically.

"I just found it," Risley said.

The two thought the location of the abandoned syringe was peculiar, since a sharps container -- a box for disposing of used needles and syringes -- was located just behind the sink.

Risley told Jordan that he'd just seen Swango coming out of the room with a strange look on his face, and the significance of their discovery immediately sank in. Jordan took a paper towel, wrapped it around the syringe and needle, and carefully placed them in a cabinet under the sink.

"You are my witness," she told Risley, who nodded gravely.

Back in Room 900, Cooper was responding to resuscitation efforts. Within fifteen minutes she was breathing on her own, and the paralysis throughout the rest of her body quickly eased. Though the tube down her throat prevented her from speaking, she indicated with gestures that she wanted to write a note. The supervising nurse on the floor that evening, Sharon Black, fetched a notebook and pencil and handed them to her. Cooper scrawled, "He put something in my IV." Black took the note, dated it "February 7, 1984," and wrote Cooper's name and patient number on it. Cooper was immediately removed to the intensive care unit, where she again asked for pencil and paper. This time she wrote, "Someone gave me some med in my IV and paralyzed all of me, lungs, heart, speech" and "someone gave me an injection in my IV and it paralyzed my lungs and heart."

As soon as the tube was removed and Cooper could speak, Dr. Freeman asked her what had happened. She reiterated that a blond-haired person had injected something into her IV; she had seen a syringe in the person's hand. She had never gotten a clear look at this person's face. As soon as he gave her the injection, she felt a "blackness" spread through her body, beginning in the left arm attached to the IV, then spreading from the left to the right side of her body. She became frightened when she tried to speak and couldn't, and with her dwindling strength began shaking the bed rails to attract attention. Then, she said, she saw a "white angel of death" at her bedside and stopped breathing.

Though Beery had the impression that none of the doctors believed her, Dr. Freeman pursued her declaration that Swango had been in the room. He described Swango to Cooper as a "tall, blond doctor" and asked if he might have been the person Cooper saw inject something in her IV. Cooper replied, "Yes, it was that person." Freeman ordered a blood test on Cooper to see if the cause of the paralysis could be determined.

Freeman returned to the ninth floor, where Swango was still on duty, and confronted him with the allegation that he had given Cooper an injection. Swango denied that he had even been in Cooper's room after the doctors finished their rounds. Later, after hearing more reports from nurses, Freeman again asked Swango if he was sure he had never been in the room. Swango repeated that he had had no contact with Cooper. As Freeman later put it, "I confronted him and did question him and he said he was not in the room. Nor did he see her just previous to the incident."

With Cooper seemingly safe in intensive care and the immediate crisis over, a sense of shock descended on the nurses. Though none of them had ever confronted anything like this in their careers, they felt that something had to be done. Black, the supervising nurse, told Nurses Beery and Jordan to write down everything they could remember, and she did the same. Beery wrote that Swango was in the room and "it appeared" that he injected something into Cooper's IV tube. Black collected their statements and placed them in a sealed envelope, which she left for the director of surgical nursing, who would be in the next day. Just after eleven P.M., Black also took the unusual step of calling Amy Moore, the head nurse, at home, and told her what had happened. Then Jordan, too, called Moore to tell her about the syringe Risley had found in Room 966. Moore was alarmed, especially since she had heard about Swango that same day from Ritchie, who had told her about his involvement in Barrick's death. She told Jordan to retrieve the syringe and place it in her, Moore's, briefcase, which was in her office.

Moore was already concerned about the startling increase in the number of codes and deaths on the ninth floor of Rhodes Hall in the prior few weeks, though only now did she begin to link them specifically with Swango. On January 14 -- just after Swango's meeting with D