The Night Caller (27 page)

It wasn’t all that terrible, the Night Caller thought. To kill out of practical necessity had always been a tolerable act and weighed lightly on the conscience. Somewhere people did it every day, politicians, generals, cops. Killing the writer had been that way—that she wasn’t yet officially dead wasn’t of much concern. It was only a matter of time, and that part of her that could do him harm was already in blood and ruin.

There’d been no need to take time for the complete ritual. Those murders were different, solemn acts of mercy and infinite understanding for both parties. Giving and taking and knowing at last.

But he hadn’t really minded that much eliminating the threat of Deni Green, and it gave him additional ways to mislead the authorities. After all, she didn’t fit any pattern or definition—other than pest.

Dangerous pest.

Survival, that was why they killed, the politicians, the generals, the cops. And that was why he’d killed the writer, removed her and what she knew from the world. Her future could no longer intersect with his, because now she had no future. It was all simple and amazingly complicated.

The cop was still a threat. The Night Caller knew that. He’d seen his photograph, and later the man himself. But even in the grain of black and white newspaper photography, there it was in his eyes. It had risen from the paper and struck the Night Caller like a revealing electric shock.
He is my opposite side. He will never stop, because he can’t.

The Distraught Dad.

Time enough for him. Time will take care of him. The special policeman, the romantic, the Police Special.

Time will take care of us all, every one, the detritus of fate, sleeping in the cradle of eternity. Everyone beautiful at last.

Some will rest easier. Knowing forever.

Everyone beautiful at last.

The air was cool and smelled of Pine-Sol disinfectant. Coop sat in a green plastic chair and stared at the scuffed black leather toes of his shoes.

He was on the third floor of Mercy Hospital, in a waiting room that was really more of an alcove with a sofa, several chairs, a coffee machine, and a red vending machine that dispensed canned soda or bottled water. The hall was wide, with teal carpeting. Near the waiting alcove and nurses’ station, the carpeting gave way to a tile floor that had a waxed, dull gleam to it. The nurses’ station was about fifty feet away, a busy hub with three nurses inside a circular counter. They were consulting computers, taking phone calls, studying or marking charts on clipboards. Every five minutes or so, one of them would raise a section of the counter and escape the circle to scurry down the hall in response to a flashing call light, or to make a patient force down a pill or endure some minor medical procedure. Angels of kindness and discomfort.

The duty nurses on Three weren’t the only hospital personnel striding back and forth in the hall off the waiting alcove. The intensive care units were down the hall to Coop’s right. To his left was a set of swinging doors that hissed and opened automatically when anyone approached them from either direction. White-clad nurses, green-clad doctors, people in business suits and casual clothes, came and went, some of them pushing gurneys or linen carts, most of them looking preoccupied. Near the nurses’ station, many of them made a right-angle turn toward the elevators. Others walked the straight line between the ICUs and whatever lay beyond the wide swinging doors.

Coop had been allowed to look in on Deni. And that, literally, was all he could do. He had to stand behind a large window so he wasn’t breathing and contaminating Deni’s purified air.

She lay in a bed with her head heavily bandaged, a clear oxygen tube coiled up to her nose. Another clear tube dangled from a corner of her mouth. Her eyes were closed and her face wore no expression. Were it not for the bruises on her right cheek, she would have seemed a wax figure not yet given identity and personality by its maker. A plastic packet dangled from a steel pole next to the bed, feeding a tube that led to a needle in the back of her left hand, life a drop at a time.

One of her doctors, a tall guy a nurse had identified as Dr. Lewellyn, Deni’s primary physician, entered the room and glanced over at Coop behind the window. Then he studied the chart at the end of the bed, made a notation on it, and left the room. Coop thought maybe he’d come to the other side of the glass and talk to him, but he continued on his rounds.

Coop saw a uniformed cop slumped reading a magazine in the main waiting room, but he chose not to sit with him and make strained small talk. Instead he drank a bitter cup of coffee in the waiting alcove near the nurses’ station. Then he took up his position on the hard plastic chair where he would be easily visible, in case there was a change in Deni’s condition.

Hospital personnel continued to pass in both directions, their footfalls making no sound on the tile floor. He was aware of their passing only because of the faint, flickering shadows created by the overhead fluorescent lighting. Or now and then someone whose shoes squeaked would stride past.

Something made Coop look up. The cop who’d been in the waiting room was turning the corner near the nurses’ station, heading toward the elevators. One of the nurses was staring in Coop’s direction.

The atmosphere changed. Time seemed to slow down. A sad-looking man in what looked like a gray maintenance uniform strode past Coop, his shoes squealing like anguished mice on the waxed tile floor. Coop would always remember the sewn-on name tag above his shirt pocket:
REV.
Curious. What might the letters stand for? Revere? Reverend? Revelations? From the opposite direction a tall, tired-looking man in green scrubs approached. Deni’s physician, Dr. Lewellyn. He was wearing rubber-soled shoes much like Rev’s, only his footfalls made no sound at all. He might as well have been a ghost.

A suspicion, a possibility, grew in Coop like embers stirred to flame.

“Mr. Cooper?” the doctor asked. “Denise Green’s friend?”

Coop said he was.
Denise.

“I’m afraid she’s gone,” Dr. Lewellyn said. He reached out and gently touched Coop’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. There really never was much of a chance.”

“Did she regain consciousness? Say anything?”

Lewellyn shook his head no. “She was never even close to being able to do that.”

Coop nodded. “Thanks for your efforts, Doctor.”

“The nurse said you weren’t a relative…. Is there anyone the hospital should contact?”

“Her agent, I guess.”

“Agent?”

“She was a writer. Her agent, her editor at Whippet Books…”

“I’ll tell the nurses.”

The nurse who’d been staring at Coop had followed the doctor but stayed at a discreet distance, where she stood very still with her hands folded in front of her. Now, sensing their conversation at an end, she approached.

“Mr. Cooper?”

“Yes.”

“There’s a phone call for you. You can take it at the nurses’ station.”

Coop thanked Dr. Lewellyn again, then followed the nurse.

Another nurse, seated behind the circular counter, lifted a phone on a long cord and set it on the countertop.

Coop said hello into the receiver, turning away from the seated nurse.

“It’s Art Billard, Coop. I have some more information on Deni Green.”

“Art, she just—”

“I’m calling you as a friend, Coop. But I’m still a cop, so be careful what you say.”

What the hell was
this
about?

“Everything on the hard drive of Deni’s computer was deleted,” Billard said. “Really deleted by someone who knew what they were doing. Our tech heads say there’s no way to recover anything.”

“Like Georgianna Mason’s computer,” Coop said. He remembered Bette’s notebook computer was never located.

“That might help.”

What did Billard mean by that?

“You were in New York when the Mason murder occurred, weren’t you?”

“I believe so, sure.”

“What about when Deni Green was attacked?”

“Why?” Coop asked, moving cautiously now.

“The lab boys discovered a bullet imbedded in the back of an upholstered chair by her desk. It appears whoever beat her also shot at her but missed.”

“The bullet couldn’t be too misshapen. Have it run through the FBI computer, find out what kind of gun fired it. Maybe the barrel pattern is even on file with them and we can identify the individual gun and its owner.”

“No need to check the FBI files. We had the pattern in the NYPD computer database. It fits the barrel of a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight Police Special. Your gun, Coop. The one you kept when you were pensioned off.”

Coop said nothing. He was trying to grasp what he’d just heard. The purse stolen from Cara had been returned minus cash and credit cards, and her gun. Coop had given her his gun to replace the one that had been stolen. Now it had been used by whoever attacked Deni. Coop was sure the shot had been fired into the chair precisely so the police would run their ballistics tests and suspect him.

“You still got that gun, Coop?”

“No.” He could hear Billard’s hard breathing.

“If Deni comes to, she can ID her assailant, set this straight.”

“Deni just died.”

More ragged breathing. “We’ve got murder, then.”

“You didn’t make this call, Art.”

Coop hung up.

He turned to the nurse who’d told him he had a phone call. “Humor me on something?” he asked.

She put down her pencil and smiled. “Sure.”

“When I was sitting there waiting for word from the doctor, I noticed that most of the medical people here wear shoes that don’t squeak on the tile floors. Is there a reason?”

“Other than it drives us nuts, it can be very distracting in the operating room. And it can cause what someone says beneath a surgical mask to be misunderstood.”

“So you buy special shoes?”

“Soft-soled shoes, usually. For comfort.”

“But they squeak worse than leather on a tile floor.”

“Some of them do. But you can cut the soles so they’re sectioned and won’t squeal on tile.”

“Really? Is that fairly common in hospitals?”

“It is here at Mercy, so I’m sure it’s done in other hospitals. Especially among operating room personnel. You in the shoe business or something?”

“Sort of.”

Coop thanked her. Then he left Mercy Hospital as fast as he could without actually breaking into a run. The rubber soles of his shoes squealed on the waxed tile floor with every step, as if in agony.

There was risk now in everything. Coop didn’t pause outside the hospital to hail a cab. He wanted to walk, anyway. To think. Finally he stopped at a phone booth on East 57th, fed it a cold coin, and called Cara’s apartment.

He stood with the receiver to one ear, a finger in the other to block the sounds of traffic, and listened to the phone ring over and over on the other end of the connection.

By the tenth ring he knew she wasn’t going to answer. He told himself she’d worked late, or gone somewhere after leaving the bank. Or maybe she’d simply gone somewhere for supper.

A siren warbled shrilly and a police cruiser turned the corner and immediately got bogged down in traffic. Dirt-crusted gray snow was banked on one side of the street, narrowing it. As the patrol car sat and the driver worked the siren for repeated soprano howls, Coop hung up the phone and walked on.

The Night Caller finished showering and began dressing carefully, almost ritually. Jockey shorts, then pants, belt buckled before seating himself on the foot of the bed. One sock and shoe on, shoe tied, before slipping on the next sock and shoe. The day’s bright sun and the heat from the loft apartment had melted all the snow on the skylight, and the resultant glare lay harsh on everything it touched. So much so that after combing his hair he avoided glancing into the mirror, knowing and loathing what he would see.

Time to look ahead, the Night Caller decided, choosing a tie from the many in his closet.

He settled on a red silk Moschino with a subtle woven pattern.

He stood still for a few seconds, the tie draped over his extended forefinger.

A Windsor knot, he decided.

He could tie one without looking in the mirror.

Cara took a cab to Mercy Hospital and had the driver let her out in front of the nearest entrance to the physical therapy wing.

She paid the fare, then wearing her new purse strapped across her torso as Coop had suggested, strode through one of the revolving glass doors into the lobby.

It was warm in there. A large rubber mat had been laid just inside the door and was puddled with melted snow from people’s shoes and boots. In the center of the lobby was a tall artificial Christmas tree with only red ornaments and an aluminum stepladder nearby. A woman at the reception desk directed Cara to the floor where Ann had been treated as an outpatient for several months after her knee operation.

Cara walked past a line of newspaper machines and a small gift and flower shop to the elevators. With a man wheezing laboriously and a young volunteer tending a woman in a wheelchair, she rode the elevator to the seventh floor.

Cara had helped Ann during one of her first visits here, accompanying her in a cab and aiding her as she used crutches to enter the hospital and limp on and off the elevator. After that visit, Ann had quickly become more proficient with the crutches and insisted on coming alone for her therapy sessions.

None of the nurses looked familiar to Cara, until she glanced into an employees’ lounge and saw a heavyset dark-haired woman sitting at a table drinking a cup of coffee.

Cara stuck her head into the room and looked around. The nurse was alone. Cara saw a large mole on the side of her nose and was sure she was the one who had greeted Ann on the visit when Cara was along.

“Mind if I come in?” Cara asked. “I’d like to talk to you for a minute about my sister.”

“They’ll help you at the nurses’ station,” the woman said. “Just down the hall and around the corner, near the elevators.”

“I know. It’s you personally I want to talk to. I think we met the time I brought Ann in for a therapy session.”

The nurse sipped coffee, wondering how to deal with this. “We treat a lot of Anns, ma’am.”

“Ann Callahan. Her knee had been operated on.”

Now the nurse looked interested. “The Ann Callahan who was…”

“Yes.”

“Come in and sit down. Pour yourself a cup of coffee.”

“I’ll skip the coffee but I’ll sit,” Cara said, and settled into one of the molded plastic chairs across from the nurse.

“I’m Justine,” the nurse said.

“Cara Callahan.”

“You said. Did they ever catch the man?”

“No. That’s kind of why I wanted to talk. Was there anything about Ann’s visits here that you remember as being unusual?”

“You a cop?”

“No. Just a sister.”

Justine smiled. The mole made her nose crinkle. Her round face was tanned except for her forehead, as if she’d recently returned from wearing a hat on a Florida vacation. “Nothing unusual I can recall. I helped train and monitor Ann for her exercise regimen. She was always cheerful. Nice person.”

“Am I the only one who ever accompanied her here?”

“Yes, as far as I know. And you only that once. Ann was the independent type that didn’t want to be a bother. She came here alone by cab. Later, when she was off the crutches, she said she rode the bus.”

Cara jotted down her phone number on a napkin for Justine and gave it to her, in case Justine remembered something that might prove useful. Then she thanked the nurse and stood up.

“Come to think of it,” Justine said, when Cara was at the door, “I do recall something. But you oughta talk to somebody in surgery, where they did the knee operation.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t exactly recall what the deal was, but there was talk over there about something odd happening in the recovery room.”

“Something odd?”

“Well, not all that odd. Don’t get your hopes up. This was just some of the normal hospital gossip. And not very interesting at that, or I would have remembered.”

“Is there anyone in particular here at the hospital I might ask?”

“Eileen Dampp, with two
P
s. She’s an OR nurse. That’s if she’s on duty this evening. You know where surgery is?”

Cara listened to Nurse Justine’s directions to turn this way and that, take this elevator, those stairs, follow the signs…

She thanked the woman and left her to her coffee break.

After stopping twice to ask directions, Cara found surgery on the sixth floor of the opposite wing, in a newer-looking part of the building constructed above the parking garage.

Hospitals, Cara decided, had more twists and turns than the mind of a madman.