He was going to finish the job.
He was going to hurt me bad.
Pretty easy to figure out what he meant.
I got my cell phone out, tried Kara Miles.
Went straight to voicemail.
No time to waste on leaving a message, hoping she’d pick it up.
“Sir?”
I called the Exonia Hospital switchboard, asked to be connected to the ICU.
A burst of static, and then nothing.
Lost cell coverage.
“Sir?”
Went back to the phone, my fingers feeling as thick as sausages, pressing down the keys.
Still no service.
“Sir!”
I looked up. A sharp-faced woman was staring at me from an opposite seat, wearing a khaki jacket, khaki slacks, sensible black flat shoes, and a multi-hued terrycloth bag at her feet.
“Yes?”
She pointed to a sign. “This is a no-cell-phone car! Can’t you read?”
“I can read,” I said. “This is an emergency.”
She turned, sniffed loudly. “That’s what they all say.”
So many responses tumbling through my mind, no time to choose one.
Focus.
Dialed the number to the Exonia Hospital again, and this time it rang through to the switchboard. I asked for the ICU and, after a few seconds that seemed to last a few hours, the phone was picked up.
“ICU, Eva speaking.”
“Eva, this is an emergency. My name is Lewis Cole, I’m from Tyler, and I need to speak to Kara Miles, right away. She’s the partner of Diane Woods, a patient there.”
Eva, God bless her, didn’t waste my time, didn’t ask me questions, didn’t demand to know more.
“I’ll put you on hold. I’ll get her.”
There was soft music that seemed better suited for a slow-moving elevator, and then there was a satisfying click and Kara’s voice: “Lewis, what’s going on?”
“Kara, listen to me, and please don’t waste time, all right?”
“If you’re trying to scare me, you’re succeeding.”
“Good. I just got a phone call from Curt Chesak, the—”
“The guy who tried to kill Diane? What did he want? Where is he? Did you call the cops?”
“Kara, shut up.”
“Lewis—”
“Kara, somebody is coming to kill Diane. In a very few minutes, if not sooner. Is there a Tyler cop there, guarding Diane’s room?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know him?”
“What?”
“I said do you know him, do you recognize him, have you ever seen him before today.”
No answer. Had I been cut off?
A slow response. “No… he said he was new to the department. Said he hoped Diane would get better… said it was a shame what had happened to her.”
“Kara, when we’re done, I want you to call Captain Kate Nickerson and get her to send some cops over from the Exonia police, and then have her send a couple more off-duty cops from Tyler. Then have Eva, the ICU nurse, have her get hospital security up to Diane’s room. I don’t want that rookie within ten feet of her, all right?”
Even with the lousy cell phone connection, I could tell she was weeping. “Okay… okay, I get it. How do you know someone’s coming to kill Diane?”
“Because Curt Chesak told me so, that’s why.”
I hung up, sat back in my seat, wondered why the train was moving so damn slow.
The sharp-faced woman across the way with the sensible shoes frowned at me again.
“That seemed to be one very long emergency,” she pointed out with a cutting tone in her voice.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was thinking locally, acting globally.”
Puzzled, she said, “What?”
“Exactly,” I said.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
As we passed through Newburyport with our next stop Exonia, I cursed myself for being as stupid as those recommending back in 1960 that we nuke the Russkies and get it over with, and I fumbled around in my luggage. I took out the special cell phone that Lawrence Thomas had given me, a day and several hundred miles earlier. I pressed the SEND button and waited.
It was picked up on the second ring. “Thomas.”
“Lawrence, this is Lewis Cole.”
“Yes?”
Even with the provenance of the phone, I still wanted to be careful. “Recall that person we were talking about? The one with the mutual interest?”
“Of course.”
“He talked to me some time ago.”
His voice was sharp. “In person?”
“No. Via cell phone.”
“Did you get anything actionable?” His voice was still sharp.
I had to flash back to my previous career, wasting precious seconds. Actionable intelligence: a piece of information that could be used to break a code, identify a covert site, or locate a suspect.
“No,” I said. “But you need to tell me something.”
“Proceed.”
“When you gave me this cell phone, you talked about being able to track and trace a call. Can you track where Curt Chesak was when he made that call?”
“Do you have his incoming number?”
“No. It was blocked.”
“I don’t think so.”
I pressed on. “You don’t think? Does that mean there’s a possibility? Is there some way you can trace a phone call that came in to my cell phone, even without knowing the source number?”
A slight hissing of static. The woman across the aisle was giving me a look, like she was wishing me to choke on a free-range cheeseburger or something.
Lawrence said, with hesitation, “I don’t know. Maybe. I haven’t been retired that long, but so much can change so quickly when it comes to technology.”
“Can you find out?”
“I damn well will. I’ll call you as quick as I can. Where are you now?”
“About ten minutes away from Exonia, New Hampshire.”
“What’s up there?”
“Someone I’m trying to save.”
“Then get off the phone and go do it, Lewis.”
Good advice. I hung up.
At Exonia I didn’t have a lucky arrival. My friendly taxi driver Maggie was nowhere to be seen. I fumbled through my receipts and such and found her business card, but the phone rang and rang with no answer. My aislemate who had a longing for cell-phone-free train cars strode by me and got into a Prius. I wasn’t about to ask her for a ride, because I didn’t want to be hectored for the next several minutes or, worse, be made to apologize for what I had done.
At the far end of the parking lot, I saw a woman approach her parked Volvo, and then looked away. Wasn’t about to work, not with night approaching. I went over to the diner and inside, where two young men were working at a small island counter. Magazine racks stretched off to the right, and there was a small grocery aisle to the left, and seating for the diner was behind the two young men, both bearded, wearing T-shirts commemorating musicians I had never heard of.
“Excuse me, guys,” I said. “I need a ride to the hospital.”
One head snapped up. “You sick or something?”
“No, I just need to get there.”
The guy on the right said, “Exonia cab can pick you up. Payphone’s out back.”
“No one’s answering the phone.”
The other guy laughed. “Bet Eric’s on duty right now, and he’s sleeping something off. Poor bastard’s working three jobs, trying to keep his house.”
From my wallet, I took out a ten-dollar bill. “The hospital’s only a couple of miles away. Any chance one of you can give me a ride?”
They were quiet at seeing the ten-dollar bill, and I put another down on top of it. “Twenty bucks. Less than ten minutes. What do you say?”
The one on the right slipped the money away. “Sounds like you’ve got an emergency.”