Killer Move

“Of course I don’t know—or I wouldn’t be looking for her, would I? I called the hospital half an hour ago. I got put through, so she was here then.”

“I came by your wife’s room ten minutes ago but it was empty. I’ve been all over the floor looking for her.”

“Christ,” I said. “Have you seen anybody up here? Anybody who shouldn’t have been?”

“The entire hospital is full of people who shouldn’t be here,” he said. “Right now nobody has any idea who’s supposed to be here and who’s not.”

He seemed to suddenly clock my level of desperation, and took a mental step back. “But . . . what kind of person would you be talking about, anyway?”

“Never mind. I’ll find her,” I said, starting to back away up the corridor. Putting this guy on high alert wasn’t going to make anything easier. “Sure she’s just gone for a walk. She’s like that, hates being cooped up. If you find her, tell her to stay put, okay? Tell her I’m coming.”

“I will. Her condition’s improving, but there’s work to do. She needs more treatment, right away.”

“Gotcha.” I’d stopped listening by then—this guy had no idea of the real level of danger Steph was in, jeopardy that had nothing to do with the contents of a wine bottle—and hurried out into the reception area.

There was no point hurtling randomly around the hospital, however: run in the wrong direction and you’re getting farther away from where you need to be. Much though I wanted to keep myself in constant movement, to be doing something, I had to stop and think first.

Assume no one had come for her.

I had to assume this. If I started to think otherwise, then I was too late and nothing I did could make any difference. I couldn’t bear to go down that road.

So then, assume she moved herself.

This was a woman who’d been poisoned. I wasn’t sure if she’d actually been told this, or if she’d properly absorbed the fact, but half an hour ago she’d received a semihysterical (or at least throttled and intense) phone call from her husband, telling her to get dressed. Thinking, “Okay, that’s weird, but he seems serious,” she does what he asks. He takes longer to arrive than she expects (I’d driven up from the house as fast as I could, but evening traffic stopped me from hammering it all the way). So she gets twitchy. She can’t sit there in her room fully dressed, either, because a nurse could come in and read the riot act, ask what the hell she’s doing, and insist she get back into bed like a good patient. So she takes herself for a walk around the ward or the floor, to wait for me, catch me as soon as I arrive.

I liked that version. I certainly preferred it to the scenario in which someone got there before me.

I wasn’t sure what it meant I should do next, though. The doctor said he’d looked around the floor. How thoroughly? He’d presumably only been looking in the areas a patient might normally be expected to go (restrooms, the snack machines) and wouldn’t have checked every nook and cranny. A hospital would have a lot of nooks and crannies. Did I have time to check them all—when Steph might not even be on this floor?

The area around the nurse’s station was less crowded now. Someone was getting a grip on the situation, and one of the nurses gave me a hard stare as I passed, as if to check I was legitimate. I wasn’t sure what the answer was. It seemed like everyone was looking at everyone suspiciously, and for a moment I was seized by the vertiginous conviction that nobody was here legitimately, that everybody was involved in something I didn’t understand—the nurses, orderlies, supposed patients, and alleged relatives. That any single one of them could have stashed Steph’s body in a cupboard and be enjoying the spectacle of me spinning around searching for her; that any of them could have a gun in their jacket or purse or white coat and be waiting for the most apposite or entertaining moment to drop me, to general applause. Maybe it was a competition. Maybe this was all just a set, and everyone in it actors and extras. Maybe it had always been that way, everywhere in the world, and I was the only person who hadn’t known.

I did a fast tour around the floor and came up empty. Toward the end it occurred to me that she might have gone down to the exit on the ground floor and be waiting there. It occurred to me that this might even be the most likely explanation—Steph was sharp, good at cutting to what-happens-next—and that I was a total moron for not having thought of this in the first place.

I didn’t want to take the elevator down into the middle of the cop zone, so I went back to the far stairwell and clattered down that instead. I knew Steph hadn’t been at the north doors—or at least that she hadn’t been there ten minutes ago, because that’s the way I’d come in. Within a few minutes I’d established she wasn’t at the east doors, either.

Which left only the main entrance. I was going to have to go that way regardless.