the light was from the hallway. This guy walks in, a guy I’ve never seen before. He just strolls in like he belongs, smiles at me when he sees I’m awake, says he’s sorry to disturb me, but he’s a neurosurgeon and my doctor asked him to see me, and sure enough, he’s all dressed in green scrubs, a mask over his face, a stethoscope around his neck, those paper booties on his feet. I’ll admit, at first I simply accepted what he said, so many white coats and green scrubs all over, in and out of here, like Grand Central.
“He comes toward me, talking all the time, telling me everything again, like I’m not a doctor and don’t already know everything he’s talking about, and even repeated how my doctor wanted him to check me out, and he’s sorry it’s so late but he just came out of an emergency surgery, didn’t even have time to change, and I say, ‘Why do I need a neurosurgeon? And what’s with the mask?’
“And the guy stops cold in his tracks and I swear to you, he hisses, just like a snake. He pulls out a needle and I see it’s capped, and right away I know there’s something hinky in that needle, something real nasty bad for me in there. I yell out for Agent Tomlin, but there’s no answer. The man tells me I’m one lucky son of a bitch, but enough is enough. And he hisses again, amazing—like nothing I’ve ever heard before.
“I hear Louise’s voice outside the door, and then the door slams open and there’s Louise, a gun in her hand, and this guy whirls toward her, and bless her heart, she doesn’t hesitate, she shoots him. The guy hisses again, drops the needle, grabs his arm, yells at me that I am a dead man, and bolts to the door. He knocks Louise flat on her ass. I yell after him to stop, and Louise raises the gun again to shoot him, but she hits the bathroom door.”
“Yeah, she did,” Hayward said. “A fine shot. That door’s not moving.”
MacLean said, smiling, “That wasn’t bad, Chief.”
“I’ve got the needle,” Hayward said. He handed the needle, still capped and carefully wrapped up in his own handkerchief, to Sherlock.
Savich asked, “Did you recognize his voice, Timothy?”
“Well, no, he had that mask on. It muffled his voice.”
“It was a man?”
MacLean looked at Sherlock. “I don’t think it was a woman, but it all happened so fast—no, I’d have to say it was a man.”
“Young? Old?”
MacLean looked at Sherlock. “Again, he had that mask over his face, mouth included. I don’t know.”
“All right, that’s good, Timothy,” Savich said. “Tell us again what happened then. Slow down.”
Sherlock saw MacLean was beginning to come off his adrenaline high, and she began to stroke his forearm.
“I’ll tell you, it was wild. Louise was yelling,
“She started examining me then, feeling me up, that’s what I told her, and then she stopped and cocked her head toward the door. We saw all these hospital people working on Agent Tomlin. It sounded like pandemonium to me. I asked her to call you, Agent Savich, and she told me she’d tell Chief Hayward and he’d do it, that was better.
“Bless her heart, she was so upset, so excited, so relieved that I was okay. She hugged me, real hard, hurt my ribs, but I just hugged her back. She did really good. She saved my life.”
“She certainly did,” Sherlock agreed.
FORTY-THREE
Nurse Louise Wingo said from the doorway, “I’ve never been so scared in my life.” She looked down at her watch. “It’s after one o’clock in the morning, Dr. MacLean. You need to rest.”
“Rest? For what reason, I ask you? Please don’t tell me it’ll improve my quality of life. You can come here if you want to, Louise, and you can hug me some more. You should have seen her, Savich. She came running in, brought the gun up, and shot the guy, no muss, no fuss. No, Louise, don’t bother telling me I need to rest. My brain’s working at a great clip, and I’m fine.” He beamed a happy face at everyone. “I haven’t had this great an adrenaline kick in a very long time.”
Louise said to them, “Mine is probably higher than his.” She fanned herself, and grinned. “Wow, was that ever incredible! No way my husband’s going to believe it. He thinks the night shift is boring. Wait’ll he hears this.
“Thank God you’re okay, Dr. MacLean. I’m so relieved Mrs. MacLean wasn’t here. She left about eleven.”
“You’re right about that,” MacLean said. “Molly would have jumped on him, and he might have hurt her. I’m thanking you for her, too, Louise.”
Sherlock said, “Jack told us that Molly looks after her own. If she saw anyone trying to hurt anybody in her family, she’d go nuts.”
MacLean said, “That’s the truth. Usually I’m the one on her bad side. Louise, she’s going to bring you chocolate chip cookies for a year. Be prepared.”
Louise said to them, “Actually, Mrs. MacLean already brought us homemade goodies. She crochets afghans while she sits with Dr. MacLean. We let her stay as long as she wants to.”
MacLean said, “Molly fusses and nags, she’s always asking me how I’m feeling, what I’m thinking, as if she can stop the dementia from getting worse that way. I finally talked her into going home. She agreed, said I was someone else’s pain until tomorrow, and she kissed me good-bye.” MacLean closed his eyes, swallowed. “If she’d been here, that bastard wouldn’t have hesitated to kill her, too.” He looked over at Louise. “Thank you, Louise. Any of those yahoo doctors give you grief, you just give me a holler. I’ll take care of them for you.”
Sherlock said, “I’ll call Molly first thing in the morning, tell her you’re okay. No sense in worrying her tonight.”
“Careful, Dr. MacLean,” Louise said, “you’ve nearly dislodged the IV line.” Sherlock saw that her hands were steady as she worked on the line. She straightened, lightly ran her hand over his forearm. “You’re good to go now. Please, try to calm down.”
MacLean said, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll have enough time to be calm when I’m dead. How’s poor Agent Tomlin?”
“I heard one of the doctors say it was probably a load of sedative punched in his neck, but since he’s already beginning to come out of it, it either wasn’t much or he jerked away so not all of it went in. He’s stable, still really drowsy. He should be okay, just out for a while. That’s all we have so far.”
Sherlock saw Dillon speaking to Chief Hayward. He looked up and said to her, “Chief Hayward’s got all the hospital security searching the building and grounds, but he could use more people. I’m going to give Ben Raven a call, wake him up. He’ll get more cops down here to help the security people.”
They wouldn’t find the man, Sherlock thought, and she hated that she was so certain. This was well planned, he knew how to get in and out. But maybe— “What about video?”
Chief Hayward said, “I called down to set it up.”
Sherlock leaned down and whispered next to MacLean’s ear, “All in all, none of us can complain.”
“Poor Agent Tomlin can,” MacLean said.
Ten minutes later, Savich and Sherlock went inside the small hospital security room near the front entrance. There were twelve video screens, ten of them running live feeds from cameras at locations inside the hospital.
Chief Hayward said, “We’ve got a camera at the entrance to the hospital, one camera on each floor. I asked Fritz to pull up two tapes of where the assailant would have had to walk to get to Dr. Mac-Lean’s room.”
Fritz said, “I couldn’t locate the assailant coming into the hospital. I will have to look earlier. This tape is from Dr. MacLean’s floor.”
They all watched the screen. Chief Hayward said, “Stop. Look, that must be him, the guy in surgical scrubs, a mask over his face, and a cap on his head. If it was during the day, someone would have wondered who the hell he was since no one wears a mask in the hallway. There’s no reason for that. He’s also wearing surgical gloves, so no fingerprints. Sorry about the quality of the film, but we should be able to make him out okay.”
They watched the man walk toward the camera. He turned a corner just past the nurses’ station and disappeared.
“Okay,” Chief Hayward said. “Fast-forward, Fritz.”
“Stop, there he is,” Savich said a couple of seconds later.
