“Seriously, Mallory? You don’t think Jessop and Riker will notice you the second you walk in the door?” Could a bright red fire engine be less conspicuous in the hospital lobby?
“I’m going in through a basement window.”
Oh, of course. He had forgotten who he was dealing with. Any fool could go in by the front door. He pulled into the visitors’ parking lot and rolled along the side of the building. “Just stop me when you see a window you like.”
“It’s the last one at the rear.” Mallory consulted his wristwatch. It was safely past the hour when the clerk went off shift. “Augusta says this woman always complains about the view from the back end of the parking lot. Pull up here. And park the car close by.” She handed him a piece of paper. “And get this prescription filled at the pharmacy. It’s for Augusta.”
He stared down at the paper in his hand. “This has my name on it as the prescribing physician.”
“Well, you’re a doctor.”
“I’m a Ph.D. not a medical doctor.”
“You are now. I gave you a New Orleans physician’s number. You’ll be on the pharmacy computer. Don’t worry about it.”
She crept out of the car, and he gave her cover while she opened the basement window. He had expected her to whip out an elaborate tool kit with delicate lockpicks. Instead, she opted for expediency and used a rock.
Riker changed his mind about going outside for a smoke. Charles Butler had just entered the lobby, bearing a huge bouquet of brilliant flowers. Though he usually attracted some attention for his size and height, he walked through the crowded area without turning a head. In the aftermath of a highway accident, people in hospital garb were moving with urgent purpose. The civilians were haranguing the personnel at the front desk, and others sat, worried and waiting, filling all the chairs and couches scattered about the lobby. All around the giant in blue jeans, people were preoccupied with matters of life and death.
Only Riker noticed Charles approaching the pharmacy window and handing a piece of paper over the counter. The gray-haired pharmacist looked at the paper, nodded and held up five fingers, to say this transaction wouldn’t take much time.
Charles had only walked a few steps away from the counter, when he was roughly shouldered by a speeding nurse, who bounced off of him. Riker could read the body language of Charles rushing to apologize for what she had done to him. The nurse gently touched one of the exotic blooms in Charles’s bouquet and nodded. Now she pointed down the hall where Charles would find Alma Furgueson’s room and her visitor, the sheriff.
Riker had begged off that interview. He hadn’t wanted to see the sheriff’s interrogation style applied to the woman who had crawled from the cemetery on her hands and knees.
He felt around in his pockets for cigarettes and matches as he walked outside. Charles’s Mercedes was nowhere in sight. He strolled around the side of the building and spotted the silver car at the back of the lot, though there were a dozen spaces close to the front door.
Now that was interesting.
He walked toward the car, but stopped when he came to the window with the broken pane of glass. It put him off for a moment because this was not her style. Well, maybe the brat had been in a hurry.
He turned to the metal doors under the sign for the service entrance. They should open onto a freight elevator. He tried door pulls – locked tight and no signs of a pick. She had definitely gone through the window. She probably wanted to avoid meeting staff in the basement halls.
He tested the door of Charles’s car. Not locked. Good. He had never hot-wired a Mercedes before, but it shouldn’t be much of a challenge.
Riker forgot the urge for a cigarette and returned to the hospital lobby. A young woman was entering the door next to the pharmacy window. A few minutes later, the old man with the glasses was heading down the hall marked by a sign for the cafeteria.
Riker walked up to the window, gave the young woman Charles Butler’s name and asked her when the prescription would be ready.
“Oh, you’re in luck. He finished that one before he went to lunch.” She slid the bag over the counter. “That’ll be thirty dollars and twenty-five cents, Dr. Butler.”
Riker paid her and opened the bag. Doctor Butler? He read the labels for drugs which were all too familiar. One he recognized as an anti-inflammatory. The second bottle was antibiotics. And the Percodan would kill the pain.
He strolled over to the basement door as an orderly parked a wheelchair by the wall a few steps away. And now the rest of the plan fell into place as the orderly disappeared into the men’s room.
Riker opened the basement door and surveyed the deserted stairwell. He rolled the wheelchair through the doorway and down the stairs. The lower floor was a labyrinth with no helpful signs, and no elevator in sight. He knew he was facing east as he rolled the chair down a corridor which turned a corner and sent him south. He reoriented himself with every turn, hunting for the room to match the window with the broken glass. This section of the basement was pin-drop quiet, deserted in the lunch hour.
He settled on a door at the end of a long hall. On his way toward it, he passed the freight elevator which would open onto the service entrance in the parking lot. This was just too good to be true, and he flirted with the idea that God was on his side in this plan to batter a woman, to knock her senseless and carry her away.
He parked the wheelchair in front of the door at the end of the hall. Hunkering down, he used both hands to block the overhead bulb from the wide crack at the threshold. No light shone through from the room beyond. He pulled out a handkerchief and unscrewed the bare bulb over the door so the light from the hallway wouldn’t give him away in silhouette. Beneath the doorknob was a standard lock, nothing formidable. He applied all his strength to a twist of the knob to force the flimsy lock. The door opened quietly.
The long room was almost black. There was hardly any light from the rectangle of the broken window in the far wall. While his eyes adjusted, he was guided by the small penlight in Mallory’s hand.
She was completely absorbed in the contents of an open file drawer. He made out the dim shape of a desk lamp to her right. One of his hands went out to the lamp switch, and with the other, he grabbed Mallory by the shoulder and spun her around. And then there was light, but he was more startled than she was.
“Well, if it isn’t Jesse James,” he said, staring at the wide-brim hat shading her eyes. Her coat was laid open and now he could see the gun belt. “You got your geography mixed up, kid. This is the Deep South, not the Old West.”
Her face turned up and now he met her eyes. She was blinking in the light and wincing with real pain, her fingers working frantically to pry his hand from her shoulder. As his hand dropped away, the pain in her face lessened. He pulled the coat back and felt the bulk of the bandage beneath her blouse.
“Ah, Mallory, you took a bullet, didn’t you?”
She shook him off, saying nothing, only showing him she was not all that happy to see him again. He held up the pharmacy bag. “Dr. Butler’s prescriptions? I thought this crap looked familiar. Now what’s going on, kid?”
She took the pharmacy bag from his hand and checked the contents, as though she thought he might have stolen something. He knew she was stalling for time, hunting for a good lie.
“I’m looking for missing lab work my mother ordered on a patient. Any blood work would have been done here.”
That could be true. Mallory sometimes told the truth just to confuse him. Sheets of blue papers protruded from the oversized pockets of her long black coat. “What’ve you got?”
She ignored the question as she slid open another file drawer and continued her pilfering. It was awkward work, for she would not turn her back on him, and thumbed the files from the side of the open drawer. Now that she was on her guard, he had no hope of taking her by surprise, and he couldn’t rush her with the file drawer blocking him. “How’ve you been, Riker? You look like hell.”