Seventeen deaths and a cover-up was a story and Harry was intrigued.

‘How do you know this?’ he asked.

‘I worked at Clark County medical records department for over twenty years,’ Earl explained. ‘The major hospitals and clinics all use our centre. SNor created extra work, so I came out of retirement on a twelve-week contract to help with an administrative backlog.

‘I thought something was peculiar when I had to track down a patient record with a wrongly entered insurance number. I noticed that the source of infection was Janssen Island Casino on the hospital record, but shown as “Out of State” on the stats uploaded to the Center for Disease Control.

‘So I called up all SNor deaths in the hospital nearest Fremont Street, and found sixteen more records that had been changed from Janssen Island to Out of State. When I showed my line manager, she said she’d look into it. When nothing happened after two weeks, I made a fuss and got rebuked for ordering dead patients’ records without authorisation.

‘Two days later, I arrived at work and my swipe card was dead. I got told I was being dismissed for breaching patient confidentiality, but they said they’d pay the rest of my twelve-week contract if I signed an agreement not to speak out.’

‘Did you sign?’

‘I needed the money,’ Earl said. ‘But it’s gnawed at my conscience ever since …’

‘Did you think about going to the cops? Or the CDC?’

Earl snorted. ‘I’ve lived in this town long enough to know better than to go to the cops complaining about the Janssens. And I called the CDC, but their manpower is focused on preventing the next synthetic-virus outbreak. The guy I spoke to was sympathetic but blunt: they’ve dealt with a major disease crisis and they don’t have resources to send a team to Nevada to start digging around a hospital records department.’

Harry sighed. ‘So the Janssens win again.’

‘I’m being followed,’ Earl said nervously. ‘My daughter says I’m senile. But he’s a big fellow, with his hair in a ball … I forget what you call that.’

‘A man bun,’ Harry said, shuddering.

‘They came inside my house while I was bowling. They didn’t take squat, but I live alone and I could tell things had been moved around.’

‘What about evidence?’ Harry said, knowing that one old man whose own daughter accused him of being senile wouldn’t count for much. ‘Do you have printouts of the records?’

Earl sounded outraged. ‘Medical records are sensitive documents. Removing them would be a gross breach of patient confidentiality. But I am willing to give you names of the people whose records were changed. If you tracked down their relatives, they can legally request to see their deceased relative’s medical records.’