and realized they were knotted into fists.
Fuck all of you.
She sat up. The dizziness lasted only a few seconds, then passed. She'd been lying in bed too long. It was time to get moving. To regain control of her life.
She crossed the room and opened the door a crack.
A nurse looked up from her desk and stared directly at Abby. Her nametag said WSoriano, RN. 'Do you need something?'
'Uh, no,' said Abby, and quickly retreated back behind her closed door.
Shit. Shit, they were keeping her a prisoner.
In bare feet she paced a circle around the room, trying to plan her next move. She couldn't think about Mark right now. If she did, she'd just curl up in bed again, crying. That's what they wanted her to do, what they expected her to do.
She went to the chair by the window and sat down to think. She considered the moves open to her, but couldn't come up with any. Last night, Mark had said Mohandas was on their side, but now Mark was missing. She wasn't going to trust Mohandas. She wasn't going to trust anyone in this hospital.
She went to the nightstand and picked up the phone. There was a dial tone. She called Vivian's number, and got a recording. Then she remembered that Vivian was still in Burlington.
She called her own home, punched in her access code, and listened to the messages from her answering machine. There had been another call from Vivian, and by the tone of her voice, the call had been urgent. She'd left a Burlington number.
Abby dialled it.
This time Vivian answered. 'You barely caught me. I was just about to check out of here.'
'You're coming home?'
'I've got a six o'clock flight to Logan. Listen, this trip has been nothing but a wild goose chase. There were no harvests done in Burlington.'
'How do you know?'
'! checked the airport here. And every other airstrip in the area. On the nights of those transplants, there were no midnight flights logged out of here to Boston. Not a single dinky plane. BuffingtoWs just a cover for them. And Tim Nicholls provided the official paperwork.'
'And now Nicholls has vanished.'
'Or they got rid of him.'
They both fell momentarily silent. Then Abby said, softly: 'Mark's missing.'
'What?'
'No one knows where he is. Detective Katzka says they can't find his car. And Mark doesn't answer his pager.' She paused, her throat closing over.
'Oh, Abby. Abby…' Vivian's voice faltered.
In the brief silence, Abby heard a click on the line. She was gripping the receiver so tightly her fingers ached.
'Vivian?' she said.
There was another click. And then the line went dead.
She hung up and tried to call again, but there was no dial tone. She tried the operator, tried hanging up again and again. Still no dial tone.
The hospital had disconnected her telephone.
Katzka stood on the narrow walkway of the Tobin Bridge and stared down at the water far below. From the west ran the Mystic River, on its way to join the waters of the Chelsea River before flowing out to Boston Harbour and the sea. It was a long drop, thought Katzka, imagining the force with which a body would impact on that water. Almost certainly a fatal drop.
Turning, he gazed past the late-afternoon traffic whizzing by and focused on the downriver side of the bridge. He traced the hypothetical sequence of events that would follow a body's plunge. The corpse would be carried by the current into the harbour. At first, it would drift along below the water's surface, perhaps scraping across the bottom silt. Eventually the body's internal gases would expand. This would happen over a time span of hours to days. It depended on the water temperature and the speed with which the gas-forming bacteria multiplied in the rotting intestines. At a certain point, the corpse would float to the surface.
That's when it would be found. In a day or two. Bloated and unrecognizable.
Katzka turned to the patrolman standing beside him. He had to shout over the sound of traffic. 'What time did you notice the car?'
'Around 5 a.m. It was pulled over in the northbound breakdown lane. Right over there.' He pointed across the lanes of whizzing cars. 'Nice green BMW.! stopped right away.'
'You didn't see anyone near the BMW?'
'No, sir. It looked abandoned. I called in the licence number and confirmed it wasn't reported stolen. I figured maybe the driver had engine trouble and left to get help. It was a hazard to traffic, sitting there. So I called the tow truck.'
'No keys in the car? No note?'
'No, sir. Nothing. It was clean as a whistle inside.'
Katzka looked back down at the water. He wondered how deep the river was at this point, and how fast the current was moving.
'I did try calling Dr. Hodell's home, but no one answered,' said the patrolman. 'I didn't know at the time that he was missing.'
Katzka said nothing. He just kept gazing down at the river, thinking about Abby, wondering what he should tell her. She had looked so heartbreakingly fragile in that hospital bed, and he couldn't bear the thought of inflicting any more blows. Any more pain.
I won't tell her. Not yet, he decided. Not until we find a body.
The patrolman looked down at the river, too. 'Jesus. Do you think he jumped?'
'If he's down there,' said Katzka, 'it wasn't because he jumped.'
The phones had been ringing all day, two L?N's had called in sick, and charge nurse Wendy Soriano had missed lunch. She was in no mood to be pulling a double shift. Yet here she was at 3.30 p.m., facing the prospect of another eight hours on duty.
Her kids had already called twice. Mommy, Jeffy's hitting me again. Mommy, what time is Daddy coming home? Mommy, can we use the microwave? We promise we won't burn the house down. Mommy, Mommy, Mommy.
Why didn't they ever bother Daddy at work?
Because Daddy's job is so much more fucking important.
Wendy dropped her head in her hands and stared down at the stack of charts flagged with doctors' orders. The residents loved to write orders. They breezed in with their fancy Cross pens and scribbled such earthshattering instructions as: 'Milk of Magnesia for constipation,' or 'bedrails up at night'. Then they presented the flagged charts to the nurses like God passing instructions to Moses. Thou shalt not tolerate constipation.
With a sigh, Wendy reached for the first chart.
The phone rang. It better not be the kids again, she thought. Not another Mommy he's hitting me call. She answered it with an irritated: 'Six East, Wendy.'
'This is Dr. Wettig.'
'Oh.' Automatically she sat up straight. One didn't slouch when speaking to Dr. Wettig. Even if it was on the phone. 'Yes, Doctor?'
'I want to follow up that blood alcohol level on Dr. DiMatteo.
And I want it sent out to MedMark Labs.'
'Not our lab?'
'No. Route it directly to MedMark.'
'Certainly, Doctor,' said Wendy, scribbling down the order. It was an unusual request, but one didn't question the General. 'How's she doing?' he asked. 'A little restless.'
'Has she tried to leave?'
