and surgical outfit in it She glanced at her watch. It had been almost an hour since she had left Carey, and thirty- five minutes since Dahlman had gone into surgery. Dahlman’s golden time was dwindling to nothing. She kept him moving as steadily as she dared down the long, empty hallways, past offices and labs that had closed doors and darkened windows, but each step was short and deliberate. Her mind kept bounding ahead, bursting forward to consider each foot of the corridor they still had to cross.
They passed an alcove with a big window and she turned her head to look out. There was nothing out there but the driveway and a cinder-block wall, and the blackness threw a bright, sharp-edged reflection back at her. She kept exerting the steady, gentle pressure on Dahlman’s good arm. Her mind carried the sight of their reflection like a snapshot, and she studied it.
She could detect no errors so far. Whatever Carey’s anesthesiologist had shot into Dahlman seemed to be wearing off. He bent over a little as he walked, but he didn’t look as though he was protecting a bullet wound. The waxy brown polish had covered his gray hair, and it looked as though he had slicked it down with the kind of greasy stuff that some men his age actually used. The coat and tie helped. Dahlman looked like a man who had just come from visiting a patient, and Jane could easily be his daughter.
Jane led him around another corner and she could see the rectangle of the glass door ahead. Through it she could make out a few feet of dimly lighted sidewalk, and then inviting darkness. She wanted to push him, to get out of the light, away from the hospital before something happened. But suddenly there was movement in the darkness, and it startled her. In a second she could see that there were two men coming up the walk toward the door.
She let go of Dahlman’s arm. “Walk by yourself. Do the best you can.” She spoke evenly and forced her face into a smile as she glanced at the old man. From a distance, she knew, it would look as though they were having a pleasant chat.
“What is it?” Dahlman whispered. “What’s wrong?”
She looked at him as though he had said something clever. “Two men coming up the walk. If they’re cops, they won’t be the ones who arrested you, because those two have been sent home for the shift. These haven’t seen you before. Just act like we’ve visited Aunt Hilda, and we’re going home. Don’t rush, because we’re not in a hurry.”
“What if they’ve seen my picture?”
“If they say your name, laugh at the idea. Don’t try to run, but keep moving unless you have to stop. If we’re separated, turn right at the corner and go to 4997 Carroll Street. It’s about a block. Wait for me behind the building.”
As Jane moved toward the door she focused her eyes on the right objects: on the floor for two seconds, on her companion for two more, straight ahead for just a second and then at a spot on the floor ten feet ahead so she didn’t appear to be looking at the men or not looking. She controlled her breathing to relax the tightness that was growing in her chest. She had been so close to the outside that she had almost begun to consider it accomplished when the sudden sight of the two men had startled her.
The fact that there were two of them bothered her. There were a thousand harmless reasons why two large men in their thirties might come up the walk together, but until one of them had been positively shown to apply this time, none of them brought any reassurance. Couples or solitary men might be doing anything, but men didn’t usually travel in pairs unless they were working, or doing something that excluded women. These two weren’t playing poker or bowling.
She touched Dahlman’s arm again to move him along. The best place for them to see him was right outside the door, where the light would be behind him and his face in the shadow.
Through the glass she saw the blond one’s eyes take note of the fact that Jane and Dahlman weren’t going to turn at the end of the hall, but were coming out the door. Then he did something unexpected. He stopped, turned away, bent his head, and cupped his hands in front of his face to light a cigarette. His companion stopped and stood in front of him to shield him from the wind.
As Jane stepped out and held the door for Dahlman, she turned her face to feel the direction of the wind. She had to be sure. The wind sometimes whipped around in eddies beside big, tall buildings. She took five more steps, then watched the darker man point his finger toward the lighted lobby entrance and mutter something. The blond one agreed, and they set off across the lawn in that direction, walking slowly. Jane stared at their backs as she walked. As soon as she was five more steps away from the building she stuck her finger in her mouth and lifted it to feel the wind. “We might have a problem,” she said quietly.
“Why? They ignored us,” Dahlman protested.
“The blond one—the one that lit the cigarette—turned into the wind to do it.”
“I’m not surprised. Smoking in this day and age requires a certain flair for ignoring the forces of nature.”
“Don’t you see?” she asked. “He was doing it just to turn his face away from us. He’s thirty feet from a building where he’d have to put it out anyway.”
Dahlman was silent for a moment. He looked over his shoulder, then winced and grunted from the pain. “Do you think they’re policemen?”
“A policeman might recognize you, but he doesn’t care if you see his face. Carey said you thought someone wasn’t just trying to get you arrested. Is that true?”
“Yes. I think someone is trying to kill me.”
Jane found that Dahlman was walking a little faster now, but it cost him great effort. They moved down the street toward the corner. Just as they turned up Carroll Street, Jane saw the two men coming away from the lighted lobby entrance of the hospital and walking toward the door where she had first seen them. She said, “We’re in trouble. They didn’t go into the lobby entrance. You’re too weak to run, it’s too late to hide, and I’m not carrying anything that would scare them”—the answer came to her as she heard herself say it—“off.” She leaned close to him and said, “Can you keep walking?”
“I can, but—”
“Then do it. Walk straight up the street to the small brick building over there. It’s Carey’s office. No matter what anyone does, keep walking. Go around to the little parking lot in back. Sit down between the gray car and the brick wall. Don’t move. If they follow you, try to watch them but don’t let them see you. Got it?”
“I heard it,” said Dahlman.
“Do it.” Jane pivoted away from him, then stepped along the side of the hospital building. As soon as she was out of sight of the sidewalk she began to run. She knew that she must look insane running in a skirt, but in the narrow space beside the tall building nobody could see her. The weightless, flat shoes she had worn were better than she had expected.
She worked herself up into a sprint, dashing along the side of the building. Three stories above her, there were lighted windows where she knew that patients lay staring up at television sets that showed live shots of police officers milling around the hospital. Down here she was alone.
Just before she reached the lighted area at the far end of the building she slowed to a walk. She knew it would have to be the first try. She couldn’t walk up and loiter, looking for an opportunity. It had to be there and she would have to read it instantly.
Jane took a deep breath as she stepped around the corner into the light. The three television trucks had their booms up and their dishes turned toward their stations’ receivers. The ambulances were lined up in their spaces as before. No one was missing. There were five police cars now. Three had arrived after the emergency was over, so they had been parked in designated spaces with their doors closed.
She stepped along more quickly, her head held rigid, but her eyes scanning. She was closer now, and she could hear the same garbled radio noises she had heard when she had arrived. She passed to the right of the first police car, where she could see the ignition on the steering column, but the radio sound led her on past it.
The window of the second car was half open, and faint orange lights glowed on the dashboard. She angled away from the curb and passed the trunk. In a single, fluid movement, she reached for the door handle, swung open the driver’s door, and was in. She turned the key, brought down the gear selector, and stepped on the gas pedal. She didn’t let the car glide forward before she began the turn, because it would pass in front of the glass doors of the emergency room. Instead she wrenched the wheel to the left as far as it would go and swung around smoothly to drive the wrong way down the entrance lane.
Jane pulled out of the drive and accelerated up the straight, empty street away from the hospital. As she passed into the little splash of light under each street lamp she studied the interior of the police car: first the shotgun upright in the rack behind her right elbow, then the dashboard with its radio and mike and what looked like
