The Case of the Sin City Sister (25 page)

“You know, I’ve never seen you come with him before,” the man noted.

“No, this is my first time,” Eve explained.

He nodded, still seemed to be deep in thought about the question that had been asked.

“We’re friends,” Eve volunteered, not sure why she needed to add this bit of information to the stranger.

He nodded again.

“We’re here trying to locate my sister,” she added. “She lives here and we haven’t heard from her in a while. We came from New Mexico to try and find her.” Now Eve was telling everything. It was all just flying out of her mouth and couldn’t be stopped.

“We think she’s in trouble and her neighbor was beaten up earlier today and is in the hospital. And there’s some guy—”

“He left about an hour ago. He didn’t say where he was going,” the man said.

“Oh.” Eve was stunned to hear the answer and stunned to be stopped midway through her story.

“Do you want a cab?” he asked again.

“Did he say where he was going?” She thought that was a long shot.

The night manager shook his head. “Just said he couldn’t sleep.”

She thought about the exchange Daniel might have had with the hotel manager and the fact that they knew each other.

“Does he do that a lot when he stays here?”

The night manager seemed to be studying Eve. There was a long pause before making his reply.

“Sometimes,” he finally answered.

Eve waited.

“He likes to go to the Rio,” he said.

She smiled and nodded. “Yeah, he likes to go there,” she said softly. “That’s where my sister works . . . worked,” she corrected herself.

“So, maybe you could find them both at the Rio,” the man suggested.

“Yeah, maybe.” The thought of something so easy, so perfect almost made her want to try it.

“So, you need a taxi?”

Eve glanced out the lobby doors and saw the cab sitting at the entrance. “I think I see one waiting,” she responded. “Good night,” she said and headed out the door.

She jumped into the back of the cab and looked at the man in the rearview mirror. It was not the same driver from the night before.

“Alta Bates Hospital,” she said, thinking that sitting with Pauline made as much sense as anything at the moment.

And the driver took off, whipping them out of the driveway and onto the street. Eve was looking out the windshield, watching as they pulled away. She heard the whine of a motorcycle close behind them, but she gave the sound no thought and simply placed her attention on the road ahead.

FORTY-ONE

“I think I’ve changed my mind,” Eve said to the cabdriver.

He glanced at her in the rearview mirror as he slowed down.

He waited for new instructions as Eve suddenly thought about going to the Rio to see if that was where Daniel had gone. Her mind was a jumble. Maybe he was talking to someone in the lounge, she thought, and if she found him, she could tell him about her discovery, about the FBI.

She shook her head. “No, never mind, I still want to go to the hospital.” She wanted to let Daniel know what she had found out, but she also wanted to visit Pauline again, to see Dorisanne’s friend and see if she might be able to answer a few questions.

She felt the car speed back up and decided to close her eyes for a second. She was tired and thought she might rest.

She was surprised when she felt the car come to a stop. “Here,” was all he said, waking Eve from her brief nap. She glanced around,
noticing that the cabdriver had stopped at the hospital emergency entrance.

“After hours, you have to enter in through there,” he explained.

Eve looked at the double doors where she was being dropped off. She hadn’t considered that it might be difficult to go up to the floors this late at night, so she wiped her eyes and tried to straighten her hair, wanting to make herself look as presentable as she could. She paid the fare and made her way into the hospital. She was greeted by an older woman, dressed in blue scrubs and a gray sweater, a pair of reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, who was sitting at the front desk, busy typing on a keyboard. “What’s the emergency?” she asked without glancing up from the computer screen in front of her.

Eve waited, unsure of exactly how to answer.

The woman glanced up. “What’s wrong with you?”

Eve shook her head. “Nothing’s wrong with me,” she answered. “I’m here to visit someone who is a patient in the Intensive Care Unit.” Eve knew she was there after the visiting hours for that floor, but she hoped the woman would still allow her through.

“Are you family?” the attendant asked, having returned to her computer work. She was not watching Eve for an answer.

Eve nodded, somehow thinking that the nonverbal lie was not as damaging as a verbal one.

The woman looked up.

Eve was still nodding, a stupid grin plastered on her face.

The attendant seemed to be studying her. She eyed Eve from above the top of her reading glasses. “Visits to patients in Intensive Care are for family members only, and not even they get in at this
hour,” she reported. “You can visit at seven in the morning. They’re real strict about letting the patients get their rest at night.”

Eve took in a breath. There was a bit of commotion in the waiting room beside the desk. A child started to cry and Eve watched as a young man, probably the father, picked the little boy up and held him. The child whimpered and then quieted.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, turning back to the woman at the desk, not sure why this was anything she needed to be sharing, not sure why this information might help her get to Pauline’s room.

“So take a pill, drink some hot tea, count sheep.” She went back to the computer data entry she was working on.

Eve remained at the desk. She thought about telling the woman that she was a nun, thinking that perhaps playing the religious order card might have some leverage with hospital desk clerks. She waited. “My cab just left,” she explained, deciding to try for pity.

There was a long, drawn-out sigh from the woman at the desk. “What’s the name?” she asked while she typed a few commands on the keyboard.

“Pauline,” Eve answered, and then realized she didn’t even know her last name. She suddenly felt as if she had surely blown her chances at that point to be allowed into the hospital. “She came in yesterday, through the emergency room. Pauline . . .”

“You got an address?” the woman asked, not waiting for the last name.

Eve thought. “Desert Home Place,” she answered, recalling the name of the complex.

“Pauline Evans?”

“Yes, that’s her, exactly. Pauline Evans,” she answered, relieved to hear the last name.

The woman looked again at Eve. “She’s not in Intensive Care,” she reported. “They moved her to a regular bed a couple of hours ago.”

“Oh, then where is she?” Eve asked eagerly, glad to hear she was no longer in critical condition.

“Room 515,” the woman replied. “Bed B.” She paused for a second and then leaned over and picked up a small sheet of paper and wrote the room number down. She handed it to Eve. “You’ll need to tell the security guard at the elevator where you’re going and that I let you through.”

Eve took the small piece of paper. “Thank you so much,” she said.

“Don’t go making any noise up there,” the woman responded. “They hate it when people come in the middle of the night and make noise. I’m not even supposed to let you in, but since you’re family and all . . .” She smiled slightly at Eve and went back to her computer work.

Eve walked around the desk and made her way to the bank of elevators, passing several doors marking various departments. When she got to the elevators, she noticed that there was no security guard around, so she hit the button, and when the elevator door opened in front of her, she walked in. She pressed the number 5 and felt the elevator start to rise.

The door opened and she was standing in front of a long, narrow desk filled with files and computer screens, several chairs pushed beneath the flat top. The station seemed deserted, so she waited a few minutes, thinking she should probably let somebody know she was on the floor. She finally decided to find the room on
her own and followed a sign on the wall pointing her in the right direction. She turned the corner, hearing the elevator door close behind her.

When she arrived at number 515, she tapped lightly on the door and then pushed it open. In the bed by the door, a patient was tucked under blankets and clearly asleep. Eve didn’t think it was Pauline, but she wasn’t certain. She stared at the back of the patient’s head, could make out it was a woman, but her hair was short and black, not Pauline’s long blond tresses. The woman was snoring, and Eve thought of the Captain and how she could hear him making the same kind of noises through the walls and two closed doors. She wondered if Pauline was able to sleep with such a noisy roommate.

She stood at the door for a few minutes, concerned that she might wake the patient in bed A and noticed that there was a pulled curtain separating the room. She walked in as quietly as she could, assuming that bed B was behind the curtain and that would be where she would find Pauline sleeping.

Eve headed through the door and to the other side of the curtain. She stood at the edge of the bed, surprised to find it empty.

She looked around. The sheets on the bed were tangled and strewn about, and Eve suddenly wondered if she had entered the right room, if she was at the right bed. She wondered if Pauline had been taken down for some test or, worse, returned to the Intensive Care Unit. She checked the bathroom behind her and saw that the door was cracked and no one was in there. She walked past the sleeping patient in bed A and back out into the hallway.

As she glanced down the hall, she saw Pauline being helped
through the exit door of a stairway by another woman who was just about the same size. Eve’s eyes grew wide, and she had a hard time believing what she was seeing.

“Dorisanne,” Eve called out, but before she could make her way to the exit, a nurse had rounded the corner and was standing right in front of her.

FORTY-TWO

“What are you doing here?” The nurse stood between Eve and the direction she needed to go to chase after her sister and the patient she was helping to escape.

“I have to follow . . .” Eve was trying to step aside and head for the stairs, but the heavyset nurse stood in her way.

“How did you get up here, anyway?” the nurse asked before she could finish her sentence. She had a cell phone in her hand as if she intended to place a call. “Nobody is supposed to be visiting at this time of night.”

“I came in through the emergency department. The attendant let me come up,” she explained. Eve tried to see around the nurse, but she was too big. She heard the exit door close and assumed that Pauline and Dorisanne were already moving down the stairs.

“I never heard from security that a visitor was coming up here; the guard always alerts me so I’ll know who to look for.” She seemed to be watching Eve’s every move. “Peter never called, and
I’ve had the phone with me the whole time.” She held up the cell phone she had in her hand.

“Because Peter wasn’t there! Nobody was there. There was no security guard at the elevators. I came up on my own. Now, I really have to—”

The nurse moved closer to Eve, acting as if she was trying to smell her breath or check out her pupils. “Who are you looking for? Who is it you’re trying to see?”

“Pauline,” Eve answered, stepping back. “Pauline Evans. She was moved from Intensive Care sometime this evening. I was told she was in this room.” She pointed at the door behind her. “Bed B, but she’s not there!”

“What?” the nurse asked, stepping into the room, yanking Eve by the arm. “You’re not going anywhere,” she announced, closing the door behind her, pulling Eve with her as she walked around the curtain. “She’s gone!”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” Eve responded, unable to break away.

“Where is she?” the nurse asked. “Where did she go?”

“I don’t know. I only just got here, but I think I saw her heading down the stairs. I need to follow her. I think she’s in trouble and my sister is with her.”