Play To Kill

    Frost's heart skipped a beat when she moved the finger a little more. He pulled out his notebook, laid it at her side, and put a pen in her hand.

    In any hospital he'd ever been in, the Intensive Care Unit waiting room made the rest of the place look like a sci-fi bus stop, and this one was no different. No dinky cubicles with plastic chairs here. Soft furniture in gentle colors, carpet underfoot, lamps on real wood tables instead of that crappy fluorescent lighting that made everyone look half- dead. They had food and drinks on a long table with a cloth, televisions and computers, books and magazines, and a lot of plants. The plants always made him feel good, until he started thinking that they might live a lot longer than anybody in ICU. Families in crisis mode had long, agonizing waits in places like this, and someone had put a lot of thought into making it easier.

    Alissa was curled on her side on a green sofa with little white dots. She was pretty like her mother, fresh- faced like her mother used to be before life wore her down. Frost laid a gentle hand on her shoulder and whispered her name. 'Your mother's awake.'

    She was awake instantly, on her feet, hugging him hard, and he reminded himself not to make too much of that. People were always hugging people in places like this.

    He waited until the glass door had closed behind her before he went to a phone, pulled his notebook out of his pocket, and flipped it open. Marian had managed only three letters in faint, wavering print: 'ENG.'

    'Ginny, it's Ethan.'

    Dead silence on the line, and Ethan knew what that was about. Nobody thought Marian would get through the first night, let alone the second, and everyone at the office had been dreading this call.

    'It's okay, Ginny, she's still with us. And she woke up, which is a good sign, but it's still touch and go.'

    'Oh thank God. I was afraid you were going to say-'

    'I know. Listen, who's on the desk today?'

    'Theo.'

    Chief Frost rubbed at his face. Theo was two weeks on the job and had about three whiskers on his whole face. 'Anybody else?'

    'Just me, and I've got every light on the board blinking. The press is driving me nuts. So you want to talk to him or not?'

    Yeah, I guess.'

    Theo had a spindly little frame and the face of a twelve- year-old boy, but a voice that boomed like he had an amp plugged into his chest. He could probably scare a criminal to death as long as they never saw him. 'What do you need, Chief?'

    'Marian woke up…' 'GREAT!'

    Frost winced and held the phone a little further from his ear. 'Anyway, she managed to write down three letters. E, N, G. Could be the beginning of a last name, a first name, maybe initials, I don't have a clue. Check with the people she works with at the bar and the diner, see if it means anything to them. If you don't get anywhere on that track, hit the phone books, the computer, whatever you can think of.'

    'Will do. Did you ask the daughter?'

    'I will. She's in with her mother now. I'll call you back if she has anything for us. If not, keep working it.'

    'No problem. Uh, have you been watching the tube this morning…?'

    The question was so out of left field Frost almost hung up on him.

    '… because, the thing is, there was this attack on another waitress in Wisconsin last night. Tied her up, knocked her around, then came at her with a knife, kind of like what happened to Marian. I thought maybe it might be worth a call to that FBI agent who put us on to the scene in the first place to see if there's any connection.'

    Frost took a breath. 'Son of a bitch, Theo, you may have some cop in you.'

    'Yes sir. You want his number?'

    'Oh. Yeah. Thanks.'

    Alissa came out before he could place the call, and he spent some time talking to her before he showed her what Marian had written. She stared sad little holes through those shaky, barely formed letters, and nearly wept when she finally shook her head. 'I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't know anybody with a first or last name that begins with ENG. I know all her friends and the people she works with. But you know what the traffic is like at the diner and the bar. It could have been a customer she never mentioned.'

    'Maybe. We're checking on that right now.'

    Like any human being on the planet, Alissa's eyes were drawn to the television in the waiting room. Didn't matter if you were in a sports bar, an airport, or even a hospital, Svengali lived in pixels these days, and if there was a screen around, it didn't take long before everybody's attention was drawn to it. Personally, Frost hated that you couldn't get away from the damn things. He'd gone to Europe once, gotten out of a taxi at an airport where about a thousand people were standing with bags in hand before they went into the terminal, all staring up at a screen the size of an old drive-in movie. There was nothing really interesting about it - just a bunch of rockers in a music video that sounded like cars crashing - but everyone seemed hypnotized by the image. They just stood motionless in front of the thing, no one talking, no one interacting, all looking up, oblivious to anything around them. That had creeped him out big time. Reminded him of Soylent Green or one of those other futuristic movies where everyone lived in some kind of a weird zombie state, as if the brains had been sucked right out of their heads.

    But maybe it wasn't such a bad thing to be mindless in an ICU waiting room; to get a brief respite from the bad thoughts and fears that kept you just on this side of screaming. Alissa looked almost vapid, which was about as close to serenity as she was going to get for a while.

    She made a soft noise in her throat, and Frost looked at the TV. They were showing a full screen of one of those nonspecific police sketches that always end up looking like somebody you know.

    'What is it?'

    'Nothing. That man looks a little like one of my teachers, is all.'

    'How much like him?'

    She gave him a sheepish smile. 'Not much. The mouth, a little.'

    Frost tipped his head and looked at the guy. 'Looks like Owen Wilson to me.'

    'I'm going to go back in and sit with Mom now, okay?'

    Frost didn't answer. He was just another automaton in front of a television, mouth-breathing like an idiot while he read the crawl line under the sketch that identified it as the attacker of the Wisconsin waitress Theo had told him about. 'Alissa?'

    'Yes?'

    'What's your teacher's name?'

    'Mr. Huttinger.'

    'First name?'

    Alissa pursed her lips as she tried to remember. 'Cliff, I think… no, Clinton. That was it. Clinton Huttinger.'

    Frost kept his disappointment to himself. Why couldn't it have been Engleburton Huttinger, or something like that? 'Okay.'

    'He was the best English teacher I ever had, actually. A really super guy.'

    After she went back to her mother's room, Chief Frost tried to talk himself out of jumping to conclusions because he wanted an answer so damn bad, but all he kept seeing was his own high school report cards with all the classes abbreviated to three letters because the space was too small.

    He had Theo back on the phone within minutes. 'Go, Chief.'

    'ENG might be an abbreviation for English.'

    'You think the guy's a Brit?'

    'Just listen, Theo. Don't repeat anything I say out loud. I don't want anyone in the office or out of the office getting wind of this, because I'm going on my gut here and nothing else, and I don't feel like trashing the life of someone who might be a decent guy.'

    'Got it, Chief. Go ahead.'

    'There's an English teacher at the high school…' 'Ah. English. ENG.'