could be less than forthright.
Everybody thinks I killed somebody. Wonder if I can get my old job back.
Not to sound like a Pollyanna, but one bonus did come from Bubba’s nocturnal visit: the realization that I wasn’t as far off the mark as I thought. That was good. On the other hand, I’d personally seen two dead bodies that were the result of the killer’s handiwork, and if he killed once, he’d kill again. Maybe me. That was bad.
Suddenly, I had this sensation that I was dealing with some really serious stuff. I don’t know why, but up to now it felt on some level like a game to me. I go up, I go down, I go all around, chasing after something as if it’s some kind of 3-D, real-time version of Clue. Colonel Mustard did it with the pipe wrench in the drawing room.
Only this time, if you lose the game, Colonel Mustard does you. And it’s for real.
That dose of reality kept me up all night. When Bubba finally plodded down the metal staircase to Mrs. Hawkins’s backyard, thankfully not pulling the side of the house down as he went, I pushed the door to and leaned a chair against it, figuring I’d repair the splintered doorjamb tomorrow. Then I checked all the windows. I settled into bed, but as close as I could get to sleep, it may as well’ve been in the next county.
Finally, around six, I rolled out of the sack and made a pot of coffee. I looked in the mirror and saw that my nose was still swollen, with a few disgusting flakes of dried blood on my cheek, a little more mixed in with my hair. There’d been a little blood seepage as well from the closure strips on the back of my head. Damn, that thing was never going to heal if people didn’t stop slamming me around like a fifty-pound sack of dried dog food.
Dog food, again. Bad joke.
I cranked the shower up full blast and stood under the spray until the hot water ran out. Every muscle in my body, it seemed, ached. I was hurting in places I hadn’t hurt since I’d gone out for football my freshman year at prep school. All it took was two workouts; I never came back for the third. My father called me a quitter, until the coach told him I was, at 125 pounds, the smallest kid he’d ever seen go out for varsity football, and he was surprised I made it through two days.
I’d felt like a quitter last night as well, at least until Bubba Hayes showed up and had the unfathomable kindness to beat some sense into me. He’d never know what a favor he’d done, and while somewhere inside there was part of me that wanted to tie him down and jump on his head for an hour or two, I was strangely grateful to him.
Put back together as well as I could be, I finished the coffee and headed to the hospital. I had no idea if Jane Collingswood was still on duty or not. I knew residents pulled some god-awful shifts, so I figured she might be there. I was going to hunt her down, and Zitin, too. It was time to get some answers.
There was the usual midday construction on the freeway; I could see as I crossed the Shelby Street Bridge that traffic was backed up in both directions all the way to the horizon. I decided to skip that experience and threaded my way through the downtown traffic, up past the Union Rescue Mission, just over from the downtown bus terminal, and maneuvered my way onto Broadway. There was construction there as well, with traffic slowed to walking speed. The Ford began overheating, the indicator moving up fast toward the “oh, hell” range. I loosened my tie, having already thrown my jacket into the seat next to me. I rolled my shirtsleeves up past my elbow. Life went on like that for nearly forty minutes before I found a parking space six blocks from the hospital.
Lack of sleep, physical abuse, urban stress-by the time I walked into the air-conditioned lobby of the medical center, I was a dripping mess. By now, I pretty well knew my way around, so I walked past the lobby, down a hall, turned left onto a corridor that looked as long as a football stadium, and walked about twenty minutes. At the end of the hall, two closed beige metal doors supported a sign that said EMERGENCY ROOM-AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY and below that ALL OTHERS USE OUTSIDE ENTRANCE.
I walked out a glass door and into the heat. A curved drive wide enough for ambulances three abreast ran from the street, under a concrete canopy, and back out onto the street. The drive was empty save for one quiet orange and white van that had emblazoned on the side in blue paint: PARAMEDIC EXTRICATION UNIT.
I didn’t even want to speculate on that one. I walked past the van onto the breezeway that led up to a series of glass doors, the same ones I’d gone through what seemed so many nights before, back when life was simpler and nobody was threatening to kill me, jail me, fill-in-the-blank me.
The emergency room was its usual buzz. The E.R. people seemed frenetic, even when there was only a couple of patients waiting around with skateboard injuries. Stress junkies, they’ve got to be. Otherwise, they’d never last.
The calm, suited woman in the middle of this maelstrom sat behind a high circular desk with a row of clipboards set out in front of her. I walked up to the counter and leaned over to look at her.
“You’ll have to fill out these forms, sir,” she said before I had a chance to open my mouth.
“Wait,” I said.
“We can’t do anything for you, sir, until you fill out these forms.”
“I-”
“Sir, you must fill out these forms before we can help you.” She reached over, grabbed a clipboard with a Bic pen and a stack of papers already loaded, and thrust it at me. “Please cooperate.”
I must have looked desperately in need of medical care. I was sure having trouble getting through to this woman on any other level.
“Ma’am,” I said, pulling out my license, flipping my badge at her, then shutting the case before she had a chance to examine it. “Harry Denton. I’m a detective, and I’m looking for Dr. Jane Collingswood. She went on E.R. rotation last night. If she’s still here, I’d like to see her.”
She appraised me for a moment, but she didn’t ask to see the license again. “Have a seat over there, Detective, and I’ll see if I can locate her.”
I took a seat in the waiting area, my gut doing a bump and grind at the thought that I’d once again borderline impersonated a police officer. If these people assumed I was a cop, that was their problem. Spellman, however, probably wouldn’t see it that way.
For about ten minutes, I thumbed through a two-year-old copy of
“Things have gotten a little quiet down here today, Detective,” she said. “Dr. Collingswood’s on a break, in the third floor doctor’s lounge.”
I stood up and flipped the magazine onto the table. “Thanks,” I said, turning my back on her before she got a better look at me than she already had.
Back inside the main building, I trekked to the lobby and up to the information desk. The fat lady behind the desk had wires coming out of her everywhere: headphones, telephone mike, Walkman.
“Third floor doctor’s lounge,” I said. “This way?” I pointed down the hall.
“Sorry, sir. Doctor’s lounge is restricted.”
“I know that,” I said irritably, “I’m Dr. Evans, Neurosurgery. I just got confused out here. Now which way is it?”
“Oh, yes, Dr. Evans. Follow the red line around to the second bank of elevators. Go up to three, take a right.”
I turned around and walked away from her. Doctor’s aren’t known for passing out polite thank-yous to just anybody. Upstairs, I stepped out of the elevators and took a right, down past the nurse’s station, a row of offices, what may have been a classroom, and stopped in front of a door with a plate on it that read DOCTOR’S LOUNGE- AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
I’d had enough of that authorized personnel crap. I took out my license and looked at it. Yep, I’m authorized.
I pushed open the door and stepped in. The room was dark, cool, with a color television, floor model, flickering silently away in the corner. It was a comfortable room: subdued, pastel-blue carpet, heavily padded and equally heavily used sofas lining the walls, with the center of the large room occupied by wooden tables and cafeteria chairs. There were two sleeping bodies on the sofas, backs to the rest of the room, the wrinkled white of lab coats rising slowly up and down in breathing rhythm.
Jane Collingswood sat at a table, back to me, sipping something out of a Styrofoam cup and flipping through a magazine. She hadn’t moved when I walked in. I padded slowly up behind her and stopped.
“What, you couldn’t sleep?” I asked, my voice low.
She twisted around in the chair. It was comforting to see that even someone as attractive as Jane
