took the microphone as auctioneer at the annual charity auction for the hospital-came toward them, smiling.
In spite of John’s smile, Jean-Anne said, “Who’s been shot?”
“Shot? Oh, no, Jean-Anne. It’s nothing like that. There’s been a contamination problem. Nothing serious but-”
“What kind of contamination?” Julian asked.
“Nothing serious. But anyone who’s been to the hospital the last few days, and anyone who has a friend or family member currently here as a patient-we need you to give us a blood sample.”
“Is Mary-Jane all right?” Jean-Anne asked.
“Yes, yes, she’s fine.”
“Is she infected with something, after what she’s already been through?”
“No, Jean-Anne,” John Martz said. “She’s already been tested, and she’s fine. We don’t need much blood, just a drop, a thumb prick will do it. If you’ll follow me… ”
Moving with the officer as he crossed the lobby to the elevator alcove, Jean-Anne said, “Her gallbladder wasn’t just inflamed and full of stones, poor thing. She said on the phone it was abscessed.”
And Julian said, “I hope this contamination thing isn’t going to lead to complications for her.”
“No, like I said, she’s fine,” John Martz assured them. “She tested negative.”
“What do the police have to do with any kind of contamination?” Jean-Anne wondered. “Where are the doctors and nurses?”
“They have their hands full. They asked us for assistance. By law, we’re obligated to help in a health emergency.”
“Emergency?” Jean-Anne frowned. “But you said it was nothing serious.”
“It’s not that serious,” John Martz said, escorting them into the elevator. “They’re short on staff because of the flu, and when this situation came up, they had to declare it an emergency for us to be able to assist.”
As the doors closed, Julian said, “What kind of contamination? You still haven’t said.”
“I’m no medical scientist, Julian. If I tried to explain it, I’d only make an idiot of myself. Dr. Lightner will lay it out for you.”
The elevator was already descending when Jean-Anne said, “John, I think the blood lab is on the main floor.”
“Yes, it is. But Dr. Lightner has set up a second testing station in the basement to speed things along.”
The elevator doors opened, and they stepped into the corridor. John Martz turned right, with Jean-Anne at his side and Julian a step behind.
A strikingly handsome young man came out of a room on the left. His looks were so singular that Jean-Anne thought he must be someone famous, perhaps someone she had seen on TV.
She glimpsed a few peculiar objects in the room beyond him: what seemed to be bags made of a silvery fabric, hanging from the ceiling, approximately pear-shaped and evidently filled with something heavy.
Then the young man closed the door behind him, and John Martz led them farther along the corridor as he said, “It only takes a few minutes to get the test results. And they’re gentle with the needle.” He held up a thumb. “Can’t even see where they pricked me.”
Jean-Anne thought she might have seen the young man on American Idol. She glanced back, but he had disappeared.
John Martz ushered them into an unfurnished room in which sat five patients in wheelchairs. Closing the door and remaining beside it, he said, “It’ll only be a minute.”
Of the patients, three were strangers to Jean-Anne. The others were Lauraine Polson and Susan Carpenter.
Lauraine, a waitress at the Andy Andrews Cafe, had been admitted on Monday with a severely prolapsed uterus. She was supposed to have had a hysterectomy this morning. The previous evening, Jean-Anne visited her, bringing a book of crossword puzzles, to which Lauraine was addicted, and a small basket of fresh fruit.
“Dear, you didn’t have surgery?”
Lauraine grimaced. “It’s annoying, but there’s nobody to blame. There’s a shortage of surgical nurses because of the flu. I’ve been rescheduled for tomorrow.”
“Until tonight, I haven’t heard anything about the flu going around,” Julian said.
“It’s hit a few of our guys in the department,” John Martz said.
Susan Carpenter, a beautician at Rosalie’s Hair and Nails, indicated the semitransparent Tupperware container in Jean-Anne’s hands. “Are those your mini muffins, Jean-Anne, like you brought us at the shop last Christmas? I usually don’t like muffins but they were fabulous.”
“These are for my sister, dear, and low-fat. She’s held over from gallbladder surgery for intravenous antibiotics, since it was badly abscessed. I didn’t know you were here, or I’d have brought you some.”
“They just checked me in this afternoon.” Susan pointed to the wrapped paperback that Julian held. “I love that giftwrap.”
“Mary-Jane is crazy for cats,” Julian said.
“I know she is,” Susan said. “I didn’t think she’d ever get over losing Maybelle.”
“I don’t think she really has,” Julian said.
The door opened, and into the room came a different young man from the one in the corridor a minute earlier. Remarkably, he was even more handsome than the first, his face so compelling that again Jean-Anne felt sure he was somebody.
In the service room at the top of the stairs to the hospital roof, Travis consulted his wristwatch and said, “It must be dark enough now.”
Bryce Walker wasn’t yet chilled to the bone, but he was cold enough that he wanted to get moving.
From a wall hook, he took down a broom. Before opening the outer door, he switched off the lights.
Because of the overcast, the bleak October heavens appeared nearly as dark at the start of twilight as they would be at the end. In the stillness of the evening, the low cloud cover was as motionless as a painted sky.
Travis stepped out onto the roof. Bryce followed him, laying the broom handle across the threshold to prevent the door from falling completely shut.
The outer door would lock automatically. Although the hospital might be enemy territory, Bryce wanted the option of retreat.
Here and there across the vast flat roof stood several shedlike structures similar to the one they had just left, some with slatted and screened walls, others with solid walls. A couple of them housed head mechanisms for the elevators and provided service access. Bryce didn’t know what the others were.
Hooded vent pipes and ducts of different sizes rose one or two feet above the roof. In the fading light, they resembled clusters of mushrooms.
Each of Memorial Hospital ’s three wings featured a sturdy steel ladder bolted to the brick wall, to provide firemen with access to the roof by other means than the hydraulic tower ladder on their truck. Descent along the north wing or the main wing would be too public, but the third ladder, which was the farthest from their current position, allowed a discreet escape down the relatively secluded southern face of the building.
As long as they traveled close to the center line of the building, the width of the roof and the three-foot-high parapet wall would prevent them from being seen by anyone on the grounds below or out on the street.
Bryce said to the boy, “The attic is directly underfoot, with no one there to hear, but let’s be light-footed anyway. Stay close.”
“All right.”
“Be careful of the vent pipes.”
“I will.”
The handsome young man moved with the grace of a dancer and the self-confidence of a star. He stopped at the center of the room. The five patients in wheelchairs waiting for their blood tests, Jean-Anne Chouteau, and Julian Vergelle were in a semicircle around him.
When he smiled at them, his beauty seemed otherworldly. Jean-Anne saw that she was not the only one whom he enchanted. Even Julian stared as if transfixed.
Although she didn’t know this man and although she would be disappointing Mary-Jane, Jean-Anne wanted to
