“Oh, I see.” Dr. Nan ripped off the bandages, making everyone wince. She was wonderful with children; she just didn’t suffer fools, which meant Hal. Poor Nigel was suffering from association. “Oh, no. You call this clean? Saurus are meat eaters. They have nasty stuff living under their claws, which they embed deep into any wound. Salmonella. Botulism. Leptospirosis.” She started to assemble supplies on a stainless steel tray beside the bed. To a nurse, she said, “I’m going to need two grams of Ceftriaxone.”
“Two grams?” everyone echoed. Experience had taught Jane that shots were usually given in milligrams.
“These wounds are inflamed. Infection has already set in. You can’t pussyfoot around once these babies get started. You got to slam the door shut on them hard.”
Having Nigel treated was supposed to be a pretense. That he was seriously at risk made Jane feel guilty. She should have made sure he was fine last night, or this morning, before heading to Sandcastle. She had noticed him slowing down. She should have checked him earlier.
“Do you mind if we film this?” Nigel explained that he was in Pittsburgh for his show, Chased by Monsters, hence the reason he’d been attacked by the saurus. “The show name is misleading. Ouch. We really want to focus on what it’s like to live on Elfhome. Ow. Your experience in emergency medicine must be extraordinary. People like myself attacked by exotic plants and animals. Treating elves and oni.”
“Elves are verboten!” Dr. Nan ruthlessly scrubbed at the long, inflamed scratches while she talked. “They go to the hospices out beyond the Rim. Even human adults and children react differently to drugs. There’s no way we could safely treat elves.”
“Oni?” Hal asked. “Have you treated any of them?”
“Oh, you just missed that circus. We got a tengu in this evening along with half a dozen EIA grunts. They were digging her out when the building collapsed on all of them.”
“Were any of them badly hurt?” Nigel asked.
“Various broken limbs, concussions, cuts and bruises. I think two of the grunts are still on their feet and pulling guard duty. I tossed the tengu to the surgeons; let them figure out what to do with her. I do not do birds.”
Which meant that Dr. Nan probably didn’t know where in the hospital the tengu was now. Security, though, would know where a prisoner was located.
The guard on duty was new to Mercy Hospital. His boyish face made him look impossibly young despite a sparse beard, probably grown in the attempt to appear older. Jane nearly felt bad unleashing Hal on him as Dr. Nan finished cleaning and bandaging Nigel.
“You’re Hal Rogers!” the guard cried.
Hal beamed with happiness at being recognized. “So a fan of the show?”
“Am I ever!” The guard patted his pockets until he came up with a little pad of sticky notes and a click pen. “Can I have your autograph?”
“Sure!” Hal took the paper and pen. “Who do I make it to?”
“Jade Tinnerman. It’s spelt like it sounds. T. I. N. N. E. R. Man.”
“Jade?” Hal said.
Tinnerman gave an embarrassed smile. “My mom was saved by an elf at Startup, so she named me after him.”
“So you’re a real Pittsburgher: born and bred!” Hal had a practiced signature that included a little cartoon likeness of himself in a pith helmet and safari jacket. When he had a chance, like now, to take his time giving out his autograph, he went big.
“This close to being an half-elf.” Tinnerman held up his thumb and forefinger nearly pressed together. “But then my mom met my dad and I got stuck being only human.”
“Oh cruel fate,” Hal cried.
Jane kicked Hal to get him to hurry up.
Hal edged away from Jane. “I heard that the EIA brought a wounded tengu in tonight. Did you see her?”
“Oh yeah, that was freaky.” Tinnerman held up his hands, curling his fingers into claws. “She had big chicken feet! And she was wearing these, these, things—they were like Freddy Krueger’s gloves but for her feet or something. She had on blue jeans and in her pockets were car keys, a driver’s license, and a pack of Marlboro 100s. And get this, the license says she’s from California.”
It took all of Jane’s control not to ask if she was from Pasadena.
After a patient’s clothes were taken off, their personal effects went to security. (Unless there was a spouse in attendance, or in Hal’s case, Jane.) Jane wasn’t sure what security normally did with the items, but it was possible that Tinnerman still had access to them.
Luckily, Hal realized that too. “Are you sure it’s a real license? When I was a freshman in college in California, the big thing was fake ID. The drinking age is twenty-one. There you are, in college, everyone drinking around you, and you can’t buy beer until you’re almost ready to graduate.”
Pittsburgh conformed to European legal drinking ages instead of those of the United States, a reflection of the EIA influence over the local laws. At a private residence, there was no minimum age, and sixteen-year-olds could buy beer and wine.
“Get out!” Tinnerman cried in disbelief. “You have to be twenty-one to buy beer?”
Hal spread his hands in a “what are you going to do” gesture. “Right. Beer?”
“That’s unreal,” Tinnerman said.
“So this tengu’s ID might have been fake,” Hal said. “If you want, I could look at it and tell you if it’s real or not.”
Tinnerman looked uncertain.
Hal pressed the boy. “Once the EIA gets ahold of it, they’re not going to tell us anything. They’re keeping us in the dark for most of this oni thing. We were at Sandcastle this morning because the oni have been releasing monsters into the rivers. Lots of them. And the EIA is too busy looking for Tinker domi to deal with them, so they called us in. Pittsburgh has a right to know what’s really going on. We can tell them.”
The young guard nodded slowly, glancing around to see if anyone was listening. “Yeah, you’re right. Let me grab it.”
“Make sure you show the camera,” Jane whispered while the boy fetched the ID.
Hal nodded, still focused on the guard.
Tinnerman returned and furtively showed Hal the ID. “Does it look real?”
Hal didn’t grab it from the boy. “At first glance, yes. But not everything is what it appears. Rub your finger over the signature. With a real one, you should feel the letters because they’ve been raised.”
Tinnerman’s eyes went wide. “You’re right!”
“Also there’s an outline of a brown bear when you shine a line from behind it.” Hal produced a small flashlight and twiddled his fingers for Tinnerman to hand him the ID. Hal shifted slightly so Taggart could film the card and pressed the light to the back of the card. The dotted outline of a grizzly appeared on the right hand side. “Yup, there. See.”
Tinnerman whistled and took out his wallet to find his Pittsburgh’s driver’s license. “Do we do anything that fancy?”
“That’s nothing. Watch this.” Hal flipped the flashlight over. “It looks like her picture is on here twice, right? But actually it’s on the card three times. The third only visible under ultraviolet light.”
Jane read the name on the card as Hal demonstrated the hidden photo. It claimed that the pictured woman with black hair was Yumiko Sessai. Jane hadn’t thought to ask Joey if the rest of his family shared his last name of Shoji. His cousin’s aunt, though, definitely wouldn’t have his name. Yumiko looked like she could be related but she also looked like she could be related to most of the people in Japan. Her address was Pasadena. It wasn’t Startouch drive, it was Ranch Top Road.