The sirens were police cars, then: Sheriff Lytton responding too late to Berenford Memorial’s call for help.
Bill Coty must have failed to rally enough of his volunteers to Joan’s protection. Or he had simply cared too much to forget about her when he went off-duty-
Hands shaking wildly, Linden picked up the handset again and dialled Sandy Eastwall’s number.
For the first time in years, she wished that she had bought a cordless phone. She wanted to rush upstairs and check on Jeremiah while she waited, shivering, for Sandy’s voice.
Buffeted by wind, the front door thudded dully against its latch. Surely nothing had happened to Jeremiah since she had left his room? But Bill Coty had been shot-by Roger. Who obviously had a gun.
Linden had told Bill that Roger was not dangerous enough for guns. Now she knew better.
Providentially Sandy answered the phone almost at once. “Hello?”
“Sandy, it’s Linden. I’m sorry, I’m needed at the hospital. It’s an emergency.”
Bill Coty was dead because Linden had underestimated Roger’s madness.
Sandy did not hesitate. “I’ll be right there.”
“Thanks.” Linden hung up and headed for the stairs.
Joan’s son would be in a hurry now. He meant to precipitate the crisis for which his heart hungered immediately.
With her hand on the knob of Jeremiah’s door, Linden paused to gather herself. How could anything have happened to him? Scarcely twenty minutes had passed since she had put him to bed. Yet she feared for him. Her whole body trembled at the possibility that Roger wished him harm.
Easing open the door, she peered into his room.
Light from the hall behind her reached across his floor to the raceway towers guarding the head of his bed. Between them he lay outstretched, his blankets already rumpled and twisted around him, one arm extended like an appeal. He made faint snoring sounds as he slept.
Roger had shot Bill Coty in the head.
Linden’s trembling grew more acute. She shut the door and hurried downstairs to wait for Sandy.
At the bottom of the stairs, standing amid Tinker Toy spires and buttresses, she heard the front door rattle again as if someone outside struggled to open it. Sandy could not have arrived yet-and in any case, she always rang the doorbell. Nevertheless Linden ducked under a rampart to unlock the door, pull it aside.
Wind slapped into her face, snatched tears from her eyes. The gust felt unnaturally cold; and abrasive, full of grit. A storm was on its way, a serious storm-
In the porch light, Linden saw Sandy lean toward the house as if she were tacking through the wind. Gusts plucked at her coat so that it fluttered like a loose sail.
Swept forward, Sandy mounted the steps to the porch. Linden let her into the house and pushed the door shut, then said, “That was fast.”
Light chased the shadows from Sandy’s face. Strain pinched her mouth, and her eyes were dark with doubt.
“Are you all right?” Linden asked quickly.
“I had a feeling-” Sandy began, then stopped herself to attempt an unconvincing smile. “Whatever bothered you today must be catching. It came on me while I was driving home. I couldn’t relax-” She smiled again, more successfully this time. “I knew you were going to call. I already had my coat on when the phone rang.” Then her expression resumed its indefinite distress. “I hope nothing bad has happened.”
“I’ll let you know,” Linden replied to avoid explanations. “I’ll call as soon as I can.”
Sandy nodded. She appeared to be listening to the wind rather than to Linden.
Still shivering, Linden took her own coat from the entryway closet, belted it around her, and impelled herself out into the night.
When she had pulled the door closed after her, however, she paused where she was until she heard the lock click home. She could not imagine what had unsettled Sandy’s usual phlegmatic calm, but she was fiercely glad of it. Scared, Sandy would be particularly cautious; and Linden desired every scrap of care which Sandy could provide for Jeremiah.
She needed that reassurance to help her bear the inchoate conviction that she was abandoning her son. She yearned to flee with him now, take him and run-
Surely Roger was unaware that she had a son?
She had to close her mouth and squint her eyes against the grit in the wind. Clutching her resolve around her like another coat, she forced herself to hasten down off the porch and across the lawn to her car.
A hard gust nearly tore the car door from her hand as she pulled it open. She stumbled into the driver’s seat as if she had been shoved. The door resisted her tug for an instant, then slammed shut after her. At the impact, the car staggered on its springs.
The starter ground briefly before the engine came to life. With as much caution as she could muster, she backed out into the street and turned toward the hospital.
For a block or two, the wind left her alone. Then it staggered the car again, whining in the wheel wells, striking the hood and trunk until they vibrated. The street lamps lit dark streaks in the air like handfuls of dust thrown along the leading edge of a gale. They swirled when they hit the car, curled momentarily on the windscreen, danced away.
Fortunately Berenford Memorial was not far. And street lamps were more common in the centre of town: they seemed brighter. Nevertheless dust tainted the air in swift plumes and streamers, scattering into turbulence at the edges of the buildings. Scraps of paper twisted like tortured things in the eddies.
Past the bulk of County Hospital, she wheeled into the parking lot between it and Berenford Memorial. From the lot she could not see the front door. But three patrol cars had reached her domain ahead of her. Their lights flashed empty warnings into the night.
Blinking hard at the dust, and at the wind’s raw chill, she hugged her coat around her and hastened along the walk toward the front door. She could have used the staff entrance and saved herself thirty yards, but she wanted to enter the building as Roger must have entered it, see the sequence of what he had done.
Around the corner of the building and along its front she hurried. The front steps she took two at a time, nearly running.
Lit by the lights from the small reception lobby, as well as by its own lamps, the outer door seemed to appear in front of her as if it had been swept into existence from some other reality. She was reaching for its handle when she saw the ugly hole torn in the metal where the lock had been. From the hole, cracks spread crookedly through the glass.
Berenford Memorial’s entrance had two sets of heavy glass doors, one inside the other. At night the outer door was kept locked. The people who worked here used the staff entrance and their own keys. Visitors after dark had to ring a doorbell which summoned the duty nurse or an orderly; and they were not admitted until they had introduced themselves over the intercom by the door.
Apparently someone had refused to let Roger in.
Sara Clint was the duty nurse: who were the orderlies? For a moment, distracted by Roger’s violence, Linden could not remember. Then she did: Avis Cardaman and Harry Gund. Harry would have been useless against an intruder. He was a freckle-faced young man with an ingratiating demeanour and a positive genius for paperwork; but he tended to flinch whenever he heard a loud voice. Avis, however, was a huge and compulsively responsible man whose gentle manner concealed his prodigious strength. Linden had often suspected that he could have intimidated the paint off the walls, if he had considered it a threat to his patients.
If Roger had taken Joan in spite of Avis-
How many other casualties had he left in his wake?
Snatching a quick breath for courage, she heaved open the outer door, then the inner, and strode into the lobby.
The space was crowded with police officers: Sheriff Lytton and at least six of his deputies. They all looked toward her as she entered.
Behind them, Harry Gund attended the reception desk. His manner seemed at once frightened and defiant, as if he had shamed himself in some way, and now sought to make amends with a display of attention to duty. Near him stood Maxine Dubroff and her husband, Ernie, their arms around each other.
