Fountain of Death(73)

“She was wearing a little suit,” the nurse said. “I’ve sent it upstairs already, to Ward six. There wasn’t any place to keep it down here. I don’t know if she’s ever going to be able to use it again, though. It’s covered with vomit and it’s ripped in places, too. We had to rip it just to get it off her.”

“This was a navy blue suit with a sort of boxy jacket that came down long over her hips?” Gregor asked.

“That’s right,” the nurse said. “It was a beautiful suit. Expensive.”

“Was that what she was wearing when you saw her at work?” Philip Brye asked.

Gregor nodded. “What about shoes?” he asked the nurse. “And stockings. Was she wearing those?”

“She was not wearing shoes,” Rama Kadhi said. “I thought they had been lost in the ambulance.”

“She wasn’t wearing stockings, either,” the nurse said. “Stockings are always the worst to get off in cases like this. We take scissors and just rip them up. It’s the only efficient way. But we didn’t have to.”

“Wood,” Traci Cardinale said again. This time she did move, side to side, making the IV drip jiggle in its frame. The nurse bent forward quickly to steady it.

Rama Kadhi sighed. “This woman is no longer unconscious in the medical sense. She is only in a very heavy sleep. This is the problem.”

“In the long run, it’s not a problem,” Philip Brye said. “In the long run it means she’s going to recover. What about it, Gregor? Is there anything else you need here? We should let these people get on with what they’re doing.”

Gregor was thinking. There wasn’t anything else he needed here. He’d picked up more than he’d expected to.

“I’d like to go see that suit she was found in,” he said. “You might consider sending it for laboratory analysis.”

“Good idea.” Philip Brye nodded vigorously. “I know where Ward six is. I can take you up.”

“Point me in the direction of a bathroom first,” Gregor said. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Philip Brye took him out into the hall, handed him a key, and pointed him toward where he wanted to go.

“I have hospital privileges here,” he explained, “and those are to the staff toilets. You don’t want to use the ones available to the general public.”

Gregor would have asked why not, but he didn’t have the heart.





4


IT WAS NEARLY THREE minutes later, when Gregor had just shut the water faucet off and started to put his coat back on, that he first heard the koo roo. He didn’t realize, right away, that that was what it was. He was simply aware of a sound that was distantly and vaguely familiar, and that for some reason filled him with sharp anxiety. Then he heard it again, and the sequence became brilliantly and undeniably clear.

Koo roo, clank, whoosh, it went. Koo roo, clank, whoosh, clank, whoosh, clank, koo roo.

I know what that is, Gregor thought suddenly. I’ve heard something make that noise.

The staff toilet suddenly felt very claustrophobic. He went to the window above the sink and tried to force it down. It wouldn’t go. He put his ear to the glass to see if he could hear better, but he wasn’t even completely sure the sound he was hearing was coming from outside.

Koo roo, clank, whoosh, it went. Koo roo, clank, whoosh, clank, whoosh, koo roo, koo roo.

It was definitely coming from the outside.

Gregor had his coat half on. He shrugged himself the rest of the way into it, unlocked the staff toilet door, and charged into the hallway. Philip Brye was waiting for him there, looking idly at the notices on a bulletin board while he did. Gregor grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around.

“What’s on the other side of that wall?” he demanded, pointing into the staff toilet.

“A street,” Philip Brye said, bewildered. “Gregor, what—”

“Come on.”

Gregor grabbed Philip Brye by the arm and pulled him a few steps before taking off on his own. All he could think of was that he had to get to that street fast, wherever it was. He still wasn’t sure what it was that made that noise, but for some reason he was convinced that if he didn’t hurry, it would disappear. He flew up the corridor, moving faster than he could remember himself doing since they had mustered him out of the army. He passed the Blood Brothers talking to a nurse and the woman and her children in an open examining room. He slammed through the swinging double doors into the waiting room—

—and got stopped, dead in his tracks, by Tony Bandero.

To say, as the uniformed officers had, that Tony Bandero was bringing a “circus” with him would have been putting it mildly. Tony Bandero had brought what looked like every piece of camera equipment in the Western world with him. The camera equipment and the people who operated it were blocking the doors to the emergency room. A nurse was running frantically around the lot of them, telling them in a shrill voice they had to get out of the way. Tony Bandero was holding court, like Muhammed Ali giving a press conference after a successful fight.