She couldn’t understand why Dr. Mansfield had lied to her. She wanted to believe there was a mistake. That she would get to the morgue and find a different body being removed, not Felicia Rodriguez.
But she was suspicious. The way Dr. Mansfield had handled Felicia’s death had bothered her from the beginning. One thing was for sure, if it was Felicia he was discharging for burial, there were going to be problems.
She jumped the last few stairs and yanked on the basement door. Locked. The stairwell doors were never locked. It was against fire code. Luckily she brought her keys with her which included a master for the hospital doors. She slid it into the keyhole and cranked it. When she heard the bolt slide back, she turned the handle and yanked open the door.
The stairwell door was next to the elevator at the end of the corridor opposite the morgue. She looked to her right at the elevator first. A metal folding chair was jammed between the doors to keep them open. She knew the “Hold Elevator” button could be overridden by an emergency key that every doctor had in case they needed to move a patient. Even though this override function was rarely used, someone wasn’t taking any chances that the elevator would be called away.
She swung her head around to the left, looking down the hallway. At the far end, the door to the morgue was also propped open. Her first thought was that she was too late. They had already transported the body. But a quick glance back to the elevator changed her mind. No, they had to still be down there. Dr. Mansfield had to be in the cooler getting the body ready.
On the way down the stairs, she had imagined how she would confront the old doctor when she saw him. Demand to know what he was doing. But now, standing alone in the basement, dark shadows in every corner from the poor lighting, she felt her nerve slipping.
It wasn’t that she believed Jack, not at all, it was just…Just what? she asked herself. So, maybe some of Jack’s paranoia had rubbed off on her. That was no reason to shrink away from her duties as a doctor. This was a question of protocol. If Dr. Mansfield was trying to cover-up something about Felicia’s death, it was her responsibility to find out what it was.
Still, when she heard Dr. Mansfield’s voice rumble down the hall, she instinctively reached behind her for the door and twisted the handle. Fear spread down her spine like freezing water. With one foot already back in the stairwell, she watched Dr. Mansfield emerge from the morgue pulling a gurney.
Go get the police, Lauren. Don’t do this by yourself.
No sooner had the thought torn through her mind than she saw who pushed the other end of the gurney. She had only met him once, but she would not forget Scott Moran’s face for a long time. His words had devastated her conceptions of her husband. Hell, his short conversation with her had devastated her life. She just couldn’t understand what he was doing in the morgue. It didn’t make any sense.
Neither of the men had seen her yet. Giving in to her instincts, she hurried back into the stairwell and pushed the door shut, hoping the final click of the lock engaging didn’t sound as loud in the basement as it did to her.
With the door closed, she turned and ran up the stairs. She burst through the door into an empty hallway on the first floor. Earlier that day there had been police everywhere, but now the place was deserted. Running toward the cafeteria, she tried to get her thoughts in order. What was she doing? Wasn’t it plausible that the nurse had made a simple error? That Lauren hadn’t heard of one of Dr. Mansfield’s patients dying last night? Was grabbing a cop to confront and accuse a respected doctor of hiding a body really what she wanted to do? God, she was so confused. And exhausted. She needed help.
Styrofoam cups still littered the cafeteria tables, but all other signs of the command post for Sarah’s search were gone. The room was empty. As far as the police were concerned, the case was solved. Now it was just a matter of finding a body. Dragging the river. Looking in dumpsters. Before her mind could go too far down that path, Lauren decided to go to reception. There had to be someone in this Goddamned hospital.
She spun around and ran straight into a body.
She screamed and desperately pushed the man away. Thick, strong hands held her shoulders. The man was talking, and it took a few seconds to realize the words were soothing.
“Easy, easy. No one’s going to hurt you,” the man said.
Lauren pulled away and straightened her posture, her façade of emotional control back in place. She looked at the person who had, in her mind at least, crept up behind her. After a quick calculation, she decided he was the right person to help her. She told the man about Dr. Mansfield. He nodded as she expressed her concerns, both for what he might be doing and how it would look if she were accusing him unjustly.
“Tell you what,” the man said, “we’ll go down and see what’s going on. Just you and me. No need to tell anyone else. That way if it’s no big deal, it’s no big deal. Sound good?”
Lauren nodded. After voicing her concerns about Dr. Mansfield out loud, she felt self-conscious, suddenly sure that the whole thing was a result of her over-wrought mind. “Thanks, I really appreciate it.”
“No problem,” Sheriff Janney said, following Lauren back to the stairwell. “In fact, you wouldn’t believe how glad I am that I ran into you.”
SEVENTY-TWO
“Is that enough?” Jack asked as he leaned in to get a better look. To him, the thin ribbon of what looked like grey play-dough wrapped around the thick steel bar seemed inadequate.
“The shape of the charge is more important than the amount of explosive used,” Lonetree explained as he curved the C-4 into small half moon shapes. “These little guys will cut through the bars and probably won’t spray shrapnel on us at all.”
“Probably?”
Lonetree smiled, “It’s more an art than a science.” He handed a few of the small crescents to Jack. “Wrap these around the inside base of the bar. One per bar.” He noticed Jack’s nervousness handling the material. “Don’t worry. It can’t go off until I put in the blasting filament.”
Jack looked at the wire curled up on Lonetree’s lap. “Looks like fishing line.”
“It’s made special for booby traps. And that’s what we’re making.”
“We agreed no killing if possible, right?” Jack asked.
“Don’t worry. We’re going for minimal collateral damage.”
“Some of the cops out there are hardly more than teenagers.”
“They might get banged up a little, but nothing too serious.”
Together they rigged the explosives. Within five minutes they were ready. Transparent wire connected each of the charges, ran along the floor to the back wall of the cell and terminated in the trigger device in Lonetree’s hand. After getting Lonetree’s signal, Jack reached up and pressed a large red button on the door of the cell. They were told to use the call button sparingly or it would be turned off. He breathed a little easier when he heard a ring in the outside office.
No one came.
He hit the button again.
They waited a full minute and still the door remained closed.
Jack and Lonetree exchanged looks. Jack guessed they were thinking the same thing. What if Janney had left instructions that no one go into the cell block? If so, the whole operation became trickier. They could get out of the cell but not without alarming however many police were in the next room. By the time they set the charge and blew the door that led out of the cell block, there would be a wall of guns lined up against them.