“Visit who, honey? You? I already told you. I woulda been by to see you but I was down south in the mountains. Had to talk to some Indians, see if one of them might’ve made that bomb and thrown it.”
“Not me, Custis. The marshal.”
“What about the marshal?” he mumbled, his mind unfocused as he rode on the thin edge that divided sleep from wakefulness.
“Is that why you haven’t been to see him? You don’t have to worry, dear. I won’t give it away.”
“See who, dammit?”
“Custis! Are you paying attention to me at all? I said is that why you haven’t been by to visit with Marshal Vail?”
Longarm felt a jolt go through him as sharp and piercing as a bolt of lightning.
He jerked upright, startling Deborah and sending her tumbling half off the narrow bed that really was intended for one person to sleep in.
“Did you ask whyn’t I visit Billy Vail, girl?”
Chapter 24
It was almost four in the morning by the time Longarm made it to the hospital. He would have been willing to run all the way from Deborah’s house if he had to, but in fact he’d been able to locate a hackney with its driver sleeping inside and the horses hipshot and dozing. The hack dropped him at the back of the hospital and rolled silently away into the night, leaving Longarm shivering in the predawn air.
The back door was unlocked, as Deborah had told him it would be. Inside, the hospital was silent and dark save for lamps burning at the empty nursing stations on each floor. Longarm had no idea where the overnight nurses had disappeared to at this hour. Wherever they were, they were paying no attention to the sleeping patients.
Longarm’s boots rang hollow and haunting on the polished hardwood floor of the main corridor. He climbed a service stairwell—again relying on Deborah’s detailed instructions—and barely cracked the fire door open to look down the third-floor hallway.
As he’d been told to expect, there was a guard sitting outside the last door on the right. Unfortunately the guard—a man Longarm did not know and was pretty sure he’d never seen before—was wide awake. Longarm had been more than halfway hoping the guard would have imitated the nurses and disappeared into the linen storage areas or laundry rooms or whatever to nap until the commencement of activities come daylight.
Muttering under his breath, Longarm retraced his steps back down the stairs, getting well away from any likelihood of chance discovery while he took time to think this through. He didn’t want to bull his way forward right now and risk fucking up. Not while he had no idea just what was going on here, he didn’t.
Longarm mulled over the possibilities. Then he poked around in several of the rooms that were posted with signs warning away all but officially authorized personnel, doctors and the like.
Ten minutes later he climbed the stairs again, this time going up the central stairway and making no effort to muffle the sounds of his footsteps.
When he appeared on the third-floor landing, he did not look quite the same as when he’d arrived. His broad- brimmed Stetson hat was missing, and his hair was slightly unkempt, as if he’d been roused from sleep and hadn’t taken time to comb it as yet.
A slightly soiled white smock had replaced his usual tweed coat. It hung open at the front, exposing his shirtfront, vest, and necktie. Now there was no gunbelt or holster at his waist. Instead he wore one of those chest- listening devices draped around his neck. Stethoscope, was that it? He was having a mite of trouble remembering the name of the gadget. There was sort of a metal headband clamped around his head with a magnifying glass attached to it. The thing—he had no earthly idea of the proper name for it—was uncomfortable as hell to wear. But, he hoped, impressive to look at. Which was all he wanted it for anyway.
He had a fistful of pencils in the breast pocket of his smock, and was carrying a handful of papers that he’d purloined at random from a deserted nursing station downstairs. He hoped they were not crucially important to anyone because he might or might not have a chance to return them later.
Walking slowly and perusing the paperwork while he did so—not that the notes he found there told him anything; they might as well have been in a different language for all he could figure them out—he entered a room about halfway down the third-floor hall.
An elderly man was asleep on a bed there, his toothless mouth hanging open and a rasping series of loud snores streaming out of him. The old fellow looked barely alive, but the snoring at least proved that he would likely make it through this night anyway.
Longarm stood by the doorway for several minutes, wishing he could light a cheroot while he waited. After he thought sufficient time had passed, he went back into the hallway, his boots loud on the bare floor. The guard down at the far end of the hall pretty much had to notice him. Hell, he was the only thing moving in the whole damn hospital, or anyway so it seemed.
Longarm ostentatiously pulled his Ingersoll watch from his vest pocket and inspected it—it was 4:38 A.M.— then faked a yawn and sauntered down in the direction of the room with the guard outside it.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Good morning, Doctor.”
“Excuse me, please. I suppose I should go ahead and check on Mr. Janus while I’m here. Save myself a second trip later this morning.” Janus was the name Deborah told him they were using for the “patient” in
342.
“Yes, sir,” the guard said. “Uh, Doctor? Could I ask you a favor, please?”
Longarm’s heart skipped a beat, and a frog the size of a jackrabbit leaped into the back of his throat. What if this guy had a medical question? Jesus!
Well, if he did there was only one thing to do. Lie. Stand there and lie like a sonuvabitch and hope the man wouldn’t know any better.
“Certainly,” he said, trying to sound bored and unconcerned, but not sure he pulled it off too well. Whether he
