I remembered only too well when I had stumbled blindly among them, holding tightly, stubbornly, to each grim crumb of hope. And then, eventually, the day had come when all hope was gone. I had resigned myself to my mother's loss, knowing the how. That was inevitable. But for three long years I had spent every resource at my disposal, delaying as long as possible the unpredictable when.
Walking the hospital halls that bright spring afternoon, knowing the difference between the budding promise outside and the burgeoning grief inside, I could relate to Candace Wynn just a little bit. Maybe, after fighting a losing war for far too long a time, she had cracked under the strain.
I started with the obvious, the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center on First Hill. A lady at the front desk cheerily told me they had a master list of all the cancer patients in Seattle, but without a name, she couldn't help me. She did, however, point me in the direction of the hospitals with known cancer units-Swedish, Providence, Cabrini, and Virginia Mason on Pill Hill-and later, University Hospital, Overlake, and Northgate.
I drove like a maniac from place to place, speeding on the way, leaving the Porsche in patient-loading zones with the hazard lights flashing when I went inside.
And all the while I was driving, I kept coming back to the same question: Why had Candace lied about the locker? Why had she pretended to have heard about it only the night before, and why had she encouraged Ned Browning to destroy it? She knew we knew about it. The list wasn't something that could simply be swept under the rug and forgotten. There was some reason for her telling Browning on that particular day in that particular place. I drove and wished I had the answer.
At each hospital, it wasn't a matter of waltzing up to the head nurse, showing her Candace Wynn's picture, and getting a straight answer.
Straight answers aren't to be had from either doctors or head nurses. They're usually too close to God to talk to mere mortals. I went looking for orderlies, for hospital volunteers, for candy stripers-little people who might feel some sense of importance in being asked to help.
And help me they did. They were happy to look at the picture of Candace Wynn, and over and over they shook their heads. No, they were sure no one like that had visited any of the patients who were in that hospital right then.
And with each shake of the head, with each negative answer, the icy knot in my gut got bigger. I wasn't getting any closer. A terrible clock was ticking in my head, telling me that time was running out. I tried to tell myself it was just from being in hospitals, from seeing so many people who were sick or dying or both. But that didn't help me shake it.
The lady at Fred Hutchison had given me a list of board-approved cancer units. I visited them one by one and came up empty-handed each time. By the time I reached the last one, I was pretty discouraged.
Instead of leaving the lights flashing, I searched around and found a real parking place in the lot outside Northgate General Hospital. I ignored the noisy horde of teenyboppers on their way to the latest teenybopper movie. They were having a great time, laughing and joking and shoving one another around. I wanted to tell them to shut up and pay attention, that there was a real world out there waiting for them.
Back in my car with yet another failure, I sat for a moment, resting my head on the steering wheel. I had struck out. Tired beyond bearing, I was determined to go on, if I could just figure out where I ought to go.
I tried to collect my thoughts. It was like corralling a herd of frightened, milling sheep. I kept after it, though, and gradually, as I sat there, order returned.
Going over every conversation with Candace Wynn, playing back each one in my mind, I picked out only those things she had told me about her mother. I remembered her saying she had visited her mother in the hospital during the third quarter of the game. That had to have been fairly late in the evening. After eight o'clock. Dave Rimbaugh had told us that much. To get to a hospital from Seattle Center before visiting hours ended, it must have been one fairly close at hand.
I got out of the car and walked back through the movie-going kids and into the waiting room at Northgate General Hospital. I walked up to the main desk.
'What's the closest hospital to Seattle Center?' I asked the young black receptionist. She turned to a much older lady sitting next to her.
'What do you think, Irene?'
Irene shrugged. 'Group Health up at the end of Denny, or maybe Ballard Community.'
I felt a faint surge of hope. Ballard Community wasn't that far from Seattle Center, and it wasn't that far from Fremont, where Candace Wynn lived, either. I charged out the door and back through the parking lot. When I started the Porsche and peeled out of the place, I left a few young high school bucks staring after me in openmouthed envy.
Parking on N.W. Fifty-third, I dashed into the hospital and was directed to their medical/surgical floor, 5-E. There, I tackled a lady in a bright pink jacket pushing a cart full of paperback books and newspapers down the hall. Her name tag said Mrs. Rasmussen-a good, old-fashioned Scandinavian name.
'Excuse me,' I said. 'I'm with Seattle P.D. I'm trying to locate a patient.'
She pointed down the hall. 'If you'll just go down to the nurses' station, they have a list of all the patients there.'
'No, you don't understand. I don't know the patient's name.' I had conducted the same conversation over and over the whole afternoon. I opened the yearbook to where a piece of paper marked Candace Wynn's smiling picture. 'This is her daughter.'
Mrs. Rasmussen fumbled in the pocket of her pink jacket and brought out a pair of goldframed glasses. She perched them on her nose and peered down at the picture. 'Oh, her!' she said. The disgust in her voice was unmistakable.
'Her? You mean you recognize her?'
'You say you're from the police? Well, it's about time, that's all I have to say.'
'What do you mean? What are you talking about?'
'I was telling Betty just the other day that somebody should see to it that girl goes to jail.'
'But why?' I was sure that if I ever got Mrs. Rasmussen on track, she was going to tell me everything I needed to know and then some.
'You know, some of the patients complain about their kids, that they do stuff behind their backs, give away their things, move into their houses whether they want them there or not. But I was there the day she made her mother agree to sell the house. It was awful. It made me sick. Mrs. Scarborough cried and cried about it afterward.'
'That's her name? Mrs. Scarborough?'
'Yes. Elaine Scarborough. Second room on the left. The bed by the window.' Mrs. Rasmussen took off her glasses and patted them back into her pocket. 'That's not all, either.'
'It isn't?'
'She kept saying that at home her daughter sometimes wouldn't let her have her pain medication.'
'Did anyone do anything about it?'
'The doctor said he was sure the visiting nurses made certain that kind of thing didn't happen. But you should have seen how happy she was to be in a hospital so she could get medication when she needed it. She was in such pain! What kind of a monster would do a thing like that? I just can't understand it!'
Mrs. Rasmussen stood there glaring at me with one hand on her hip as though she expected me to come up with an instant explanation. What kind of monster indeed! There's no understanding that kind of human aberration.
A hefty nurse came rustling officiously down the hall. Mrs. Rasmussen beat a hasty retreat into the nearest doorway, saying a cheerful 'Good afternoon' to whomever was inside.
Uncertainly, I paused in the hallway for a moment too long. The nurse, observing my indecisiveness, stopped beside me. 'May I help you?'
'Yes. I wanted to see Mrs. Scarborough.'
'Are you a family member?' the nurse inquired.
'No. Not really.' I stopped short of pulling out my badge and identifying myself. It didn't make any difference.
'I'm sorry. Mrs. Scarborough is gravely ill. Her doctors have limited visitors to family members only, and even those are allowed to stay for just a few minutes at a time.'
