Hour Game

'Yes, sir,' the nurse answered. 'Mrs. Battle was here from four until right around ten. She was in the room the whole time. Mr. Battle was alive and doing fine at a few minutes after ten when his nurse last checked him. There were no other visitors during that time.'

'How about before Mrs. Battle got here?' asked Michelle.

'His daughter, Savannah, came and stayed for a while early in the afternoon. I don't know the exact times. And also Dorothea Battle came in after that, say around two-thirty.'

'Did they come through the rear entrance?' asked Bailey.

' Savannah did, Dorothea Battle came in the front,' answered the nurse.

'We'll need exact times on those visits,' Williams told them.

'Fine, we'll get them,' said the doctor stiffly. 'Now, can you excuse me? I have other patients to attend to.' The man was surely contemplating the lawsuit that was heading right at his and the hospital's wallets, thought King.

'Hope you have better luck with them,' fired back Williams, who'd obviously read the same message in the man's tone.

After he'd left, Williams continued questioning the nurse. 'So at ten-fifteen Battle 's condition changed.'

The nurse nodded. 'He went into cardiac arrest. He was flatlined when the first nurse arrived. The crash team tried to resuscitate but was unsuccessful.'

King said, 'So in the ten or so minutes between the nurse's checking him and his flatlining, the killer struck and the poison, if that's what we're looking at here, took effect.'

'Looks that way,' agreed Bailey.

'I noticed that the room has a video camera,' said King.

'They all do. That way we can monitor all the patients from the nurse's station.'

'But no one saw anyone else come in the room after Mrs. Battle left?'

The nurse looked nervous. 'Sometimes the nurse's station isn't manned.'

'Like during shift change?' said King.

'Yes. Now, if someone did come in after Mrs. Battle left, they had to come through the rear door, or else someone would have seen them.'

'Understood,' answered King.

'Pretty ballsy to do it with people all over the place,' commented Williams.

'Well, if someone were going to try something like that,' said the nurse, 'they picked the right time to do it.'

'Yes, they certainly did,' said King.

As King and Michelle were leaving the unit, King stopped at the nurse's station.

'Mind if I take a look?' he asked the head nurse.

He went behind the large console and studied the live video feeds appearing on the monitors. 'These aren't on tape, are they?' he asked.

'No. It's not for security, just for the welfare of the patients.'

'Well, you might want to rethink that philosophy.'

'What was that about?' Michelle asked after they'd left the hospital unit.

'It occurred to me that someone familiar with hospital procedure would also know about the cameras. You don't want to be caught on TV when you're killing someone; it really puts a crimp in your legal defense. In all the other rooms the camera was positioned such that the entire bed and all the apparatus on either side of the bed were shown. In Battle 's room the feed was only of the bed and the right side.'

Michelle said, 'The killer moved the camera so he wouldn't be shown doing the deed in case someone was looking at the monitor.'

'That's right.'

On the way out of the hospital Harry Carrick met them at the exit. Though it was very early in the morning, Carrick was neatly dressed in a tweed jacket and dress shirt with an open collar.

'Harry, what are you doing here?' asked King.

'Bobby Battle and I are old friends. Well, we were old friends. And I'm also the general counsel for the hospital. They called me at home. I've just finished meeting with them. It's a conflict, that I readily admit. But there you are. Have you seen Remmy?'

'No, she'd already come and gone by the time we got here.'

Carrick said, 'I know some of what was found in Bobby's room. I'm assuming there's more to it.'

'There is. We just don't know what really.'

'Well, I won't keep you, but we need to reconvene shortly on Junior's case.'

'How's it going?'

'What you've discovered up to this point are things I needed to know but aren't particularly helpful for our cause. I felt out the commonwealth's attorney regarding a plea deal of some sort and got stone-cold silence for my troubles. Remmy is most definitely calling the shots. She was upset before, and now with Bobby's death I don't see her aggression abating.'

'Probably increasing,' said Michelle.

'Probably,' said Carrick glumly. 'Well, I won't keep you. If you hear anything more about Bobby's death, let me know.'

He turned and left them. They watched as he climbed into a perfectly restored British MG convertible and sped off into the reddish glow of the ascending sun.

Michelle turned to King. 'I really feel for Harry. He's friends with the Battles, and yet he's representing Junior Deaver and the hospital where Bobby died.'

King nodded. 'I definitely see a lawsuit coming Wrightsburg General's way. Pretty ironic, suing a place that has your name on the outside of the building.'

'I don't think that would deter Remmy Battle in the least.'

'I wasn't thinking it would.' He stretched and yawned. 'I'm debating whether to go to the office or back to the boat to sleep.'

'I'm going to go for a run,' said Michelle. 'Why don't you come with me? Endorphins are good for the brain.'

'Running! You just did kickboxing!' he exclaimed.

'That was yesterday, Sean.'

'God took a day off, you know.'

'If he was a woman, he wouldn't have.'

'Okay, you convinced me.'

She looked pleased. 'You're going to run with me?'

'No, I'm going back to the boat to rest. If it was good enough for God, it's good enough for me.'

CHAPTER 30

THE POST OFFICE WAS UNDER strict instructions to immediately forward any suspicious letters addressed to the Gazette to the police. The Hinson letter came the day after Bobby Battle had been murdered. It was simply worded.

One lawyer less, who cares? I trust you know who I'm not this time. See you soon.

Meanwhile, Sylvia Diaz had risen from her sickbed and finally performed the autopsy on Robert Battle.

At the moment she was sitting with King and Michelle in her office. Chief Williams and Chip Bailey had both attended the Battle autopsy, she told them.

'I think Todd is now thoroughly comfortable with postmortems, unfortunately simply from sheer numbers,' commented Sylvia.

'So what killed Bobby?' asked King.

'I won't know for certain until the toxicology screens come back in a week or so, but it looks like someone shot