Patient 3944 visibly relaxed, and as the tension ebbed from one shoulder, the deformed one appeared to jut higher. “Good, then they got my message after all.”
“What message did they get? How did you get here?” Every minute Ethan spent in this room with the old man increased his feeling of disconnect. Where was this taking him?
A finger raised again, this time pointing at the yellowed wall where there was a series of letters and numbers written in no discernible pattern. The random markings had been made in dark rust colored paint, but wait — that couldn’t be right. A patient this unstable wouldn’t be given paint. Then the healing scabs on the old man’s arms made complete sense. It wasn’t paint on the wall, but blood.
Repressing a shudder, Ethan pulled out his pad and wrote down the jumbled sequence. “And what does all this mean?” he asked, not really expecting a coherent answer.
“Hope. We have hope now.” A gap-toothed smile spread across the sickly face, eyes staring at Ethan, looking through him and beyond to some place far away. “Yes, traveler — it’s all letters and numbers, quatrains and words. There is a message … a message that needs to be delivered. It is for me and me alone to know. The code is the key and the key is the code.”
Sweet Jesus, he’s talking in riddles! “Quatrains?” A thought occurred to Ethan and he reached into his trench coat, pulling out The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam. “Does it have anything to do with this?”
The man only smiled and continued to stare.
“What does it mean, and what does this,” Ethan waved the book, “have to do with that?” He jabbed it at the blood code on the wall.
The man stood up slowly, as if measuring his frail body’s reaction to the movement, then shuffled toward Ethan with an unstable gait from what appeared to be a damaged hip. “Can I borrow your pen?”
Ethan handed it over but readied himself for a surprise attack. These people could be like wild animals, lunging without notice. Not to be trusted.
But Patient 3944 just took the pen and moved to the wall, studying his handiwork. “I can go now. My mission is done.”
Ethan glanced down at his pad to compare the two messages and ensure their accuracy, but he remained confused. Everything was going around in strange circles, one coded clue here, leading to another, which wrapped back on itself. This was the most baffling case he’d worked on.
The sound of a dull thunk followed by a gurgle snapped Ethan’s head up in time to see the man drawing back the pen and plunging it into his neck again. “What the fuck?”
The man dropped to his knees but kept ramming the sharp end of the writing implement into his jugular again and again, blood spattering in disjointed patterns around him. Then he fell over, eyes frozen in death, a lop-sided smile stretched across his face.
23
Trace/Off
The cramped records room of St. Jeremiah’s made Ethan feel almost claustrophobic as he sat surrounded by volumes of books. The fiasco of Patient 3944’s suicide had died down hours before and in the aftermath Ethan had demanded to be taken to the archives.
Again, he battled with the frustration of knowing something huge was in motion, but he still had no clue how all the pieces fit. Not for the first time, Ethan wished his uncle was still alive so he could have his own personal interrogation with the man.
At last he came to the page he’d been searching three hours for: a sign-in guest registry dating back fourteen years.
Patient: 3944 | T. Keane 4/17/1972
So Tobias had visited St. Jeremiah’s — or at least someone signed in under his name. He examined the signature. It certainly looked like his uncle’s handwriting. Although Tobias’s visit had probably been just as unfruitful as the one Ethan just had, he was sure it wasn’t as dramatic.
He slammed the book closed and rose stiffly from the chair. He left the room and went back to the front office where he pressured the head nurse to borrow the phone. It didn’t take much effort. He was a cop, after all. She pushed the phone toward him and he punched in the number to the station.
“Maznicki,” came the terse answer.
Crap. Ethan suppressed a groan. He’d forgotten Art was off for the day. “Deac, it’s Ethan.”
“Yeah, whadda’ ya want?” No wisecracks came from the man this time. Ethan knew why, but he couldn’t let on now.
“Has there been any update on my uncle’s case?” he asked.
“Contrary to popular belief, Tannor, we got more important fish to fry. If you’d quit being so self-absorbed you’d know that. Fredericks was killed early this morning.”
“What? How?” Ethan forced shock into his voice. It didn’t sound convincing, but Deacon didn’t appear to notice.
“Got shot to pieces down at Jo Ann’s. Everyone’s been called in, including Hansen; he’s still at the scene. Now that I got you on the phone, maybe you should bring your happy ass in too.”
Ethan hadn’t even bothered to make a phone call in to the station after the shooting, opting instead to go straight to the morgue. His selfish motivations to prove Tobias had not killed himself were no doubt beginning to tarnish his character. Art could cover for him for only so long. Information would get out soon that Ethan had been sitting at the same table when the Captain was killed. Despite Dr. Cunningham’s comment about the fallibility of eyewitnesses, he preferred not to take any chances by interviewing people from the restaurant and getting himself identified on the spot.
By now Ethan was convinced there was more than just his uncle’s death to consider and he was barely scratching the surface. The Russian presence signaled an ominous front moving in, like a lurking black cloud in the distant horizon. Instinct told him that time was running out. “I can’t make it, Deac. I’ve got a lot on my plate just dealing with my uncle’s death.”
A loud scoff burst through the phone. “You need to hurry up and wipe the sadness out of your eyes.” Deacon’s tone was like a knife’s edge. “Stop nursing Mr. Keane’s suicide like a toddler on the tit. The teams working on that were pulled off; we were wasting resources with that shit anyway, and you can’t stop skirting the issue like a little girl. He killed himself, plain and simple. It happens every day. Get with the fucking program.”
“Look, jackass,” Ethan snapped. “Just tell Art I called when he gets in.”
“Sure, I’ll let big old Walking Midnight know,” Deacon sneered. “Oh, and call your dumbass lawyer back. He’s driving us crazy with all the damn calls. They’re coming in like clockwork, every hour on the hour. Like I said, we’ve got more important shit to do than be your personal answering service.”
Ethan hung up, not bothering to end the conversation in a civil manner. Screw him. But then he considered Deacon’s final words and wondered again why J.B. Wilcox seemed so enthusiastic about having a face to face with him.
That thought made him uncomfortable and Ethan began to suspect that Mr. Wilcox wasn’t just vying for a lawyer of the year trophy. He must have been compromised in some way. He imagined a similar group of soldiers like the ones at his uncle’s house tearing through the man’s office and forcing him to lure Ethan in for an easy catch. The promise of unknown millions in inheritance would have normally been a great incentive for anyone. Yet the forces after Ethan hadn’t counted on his being more guided by the strange circumstances involving Tobias’s past rather than claiming any inheritance, no matter how sizeable.