Oberholzer’s eyes raked her desk in search of some kind of nameplate, but found nothing. “And you would be—?” he asked, leaving the question hanging.
“Ms. Nelson.”
“And your position is—?”
“Reception.”
Oberholzer took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, but the air in his lungs did nothing to soothe the fire in his stomach. Now he could feel the acid boiling up into his trachea. On television, the receptionists always cooperated with the cops — you never saw anybody but the guy at the very top stonewalling. “And is it the responsibility of the receptionist to decide what’s possible and what isn’t?”
The Nelson woman didn’t so much as flinch, but one of the inner doors opened and a man of about the same age as Ms. Nelson appeared, wearing a suit every bit as conservatively cut as the receptionist’s, but in a shade of blue so dark it was almost black. “I’m Harold Caseman,” he said, advancing toward Oberholzer with his right hand extended. “How may I help you?”
A buzzer, Oberholzer thought as he produced his badge one more time. Ms. Nelson keeps a bland face and a firm foot on the buzzer. “I’d like to see one of your patients,” he said aloud. “Caroline Fleming.”
Caseman’s brows knit into a worried frown. “First, we don’t refer to our clients as patients; and as for visiting, I’m afraid we have a policy—”
“The NYPD has a policy, too, Mr. Caseman.”
“Doctor Caseman,” the other man corrected.
“But one who has no patients,” Oberholzer reminded him. “And I guess if she’s not a patient, then doctor — patient confidentiality wouldn’t apply, would it?”
“Semantics, Sergeant Oberholz.”
“Oberholzer,” the detective corrected, giving exactly the same amount of weight to the last syllable of his name as Caseman had given to the first syllable of his title. “So what you’re saying is that she is a patient, but you just don’t call her one?”
Caseman sighed as if he were trying to educate a recalcitrant six-year-old. “The word ‘patient’ implies illness,” he began, but Oberholzer had finally had enough.
“So does the title ‘doctor,’ ” he interrupted. “So what do you say we cut the crap, okay? Is Caroline Fleming here, or not?”
“She is,” Caseman admitted, after a hesitation in which Oberholzer could see him calculating the chances of winning this particular battle. “Very well, if you insist.” He held the inner door open for Oberholzer, followed him through, and led him to an elevator that took them to the third floor. Stepping out of the tiny oak-paneled car, Oberholzer found himself in a corridor that ran the full length of the building. Like the reception area, it resembled a small and elegant hotel far more than a hospital, and another conservatively dressed middle-aged woman sat at a desk in an alcove very much like that of a floor concierge. “The key to Mrs. Fleming’s suite, please, Mrs. Archer.”
Opening a glass-fronted case, Mrs. Archer lifted what looked like an old-fashioned hotel key — from long before the days of computerized cardkeys — off a hook.
Less than a minute later, Oberholzer was facing Caroline Evans Fleming. She lay in bed, propped up against three pillows. Her hair hung limply around her ashen face, and there was a glazed look in her eyes. “Mrs. E—” Oberholzer began, but caught himself before he’d completed even the first syllable. “Mrs. Fleming?” he asked, but Caroline Fleming stared straight ahead, as if she neither heard nor saw him.
“She’s exhausted, and she’s had some sedation,” Caseman explained.
Oberholzer moved closer to the bed, and bent closer. “Mrs. Evans?” he said, this time deliberately using the name he’d known her by when he first met her months ago. “It’s Detective Oberholzer.”
For a moment there was no reaction at all, but then Caroline’s head slowly swung around until she was looking at him. Something flickered in her eyes, and she lifted a hand as if to reach out to him.
“Dead,” she whispered. “Every one of them. They’re all dead.”
Oberholzer took her hand. “It’s all right,” he said. “We’re going to find out what happened to your friend.”
Caroline’s lips worked for a moment, and her eyes darted around the room as if she were searching for some unseen enemy. “You don’t understand,” she breathed. “All of them — they’re dead.” Her voice began to rise as she repeated the word again and again. “Dead! Dead! Oh, God, why doesn’t anyone believe me? They’re all dead!” Her voice dissolving into a broken wail, her eyes flooded with tears, and a moment later she was sobbing.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Fleming,” Harold Caseman said, stepping closer to the bed and at the same time opening a cellphone, tapping a key, then speaking a few words so rapidly that Oberholzer couldn’t follow them. Almost as soon as he’d returned the phone to his pocket, a nurse appeared with a hypodermic needle.
A few seconds after that, Caroline Fleming went to sleep. But just before they closed, she fixed her eyes on Frank Oberholzer and reached out to him. “Help them,” she whispered. “Help—”
But before she could finish her words, the drugs silenced her, and her hand fell away to the bed.
“Mom?” the word drifted from Laurie’s lips like a wisp of mist, evaporating as quickly as fog in the morning sun. Except that there was no sun — indeed, there was almost no light at all; only a grayish half-light, just bright enough to let Laurie know she was no longer in her room, but not bright enough for her to identify where she might be.
She tried to sit up, but couldn’t. Despite the fact that she’d been asleep, she felt more tired now than she ever had before in her life. Her body felt as if all the energy had been drained out of it, as if someone had pulled a plug and all her strength had leaked away.
Once again she tried to call out to her mother; once again all that emerged from her throat was a faint murmur that even she could barely hear. And the simple act of trying to call out left her so exhausted she almost drifted back into unconsciousness. But then, just as she was about to surrender herself to the gentle arms of sleep, she heard something.
A sound, even fainter than the one she herself had just made, so faint she wasn’t really sure she’d heard it at all. Yet something about it gripped what little consciousness she still possessed, and she turned away from the comfort of sleep.
Twisting her head, she peered into the grayness to her right.
And saw something.
Indistinct in the dim light, she had to strain to make it out, and at first all she knew was that it looked vaguely familiar. Then it came to her — one of those tables they use to roll people around in hospitals. She’d seen them on TV hundreds of times. But what was it called? She groped in her mind, which felt as worn out as her body, then found the word.
A stretcher — no, there was another word. Gurney.
That was it. Exhausted by the effort to find the right word, she lay still, gasping for breath as if she’d just finished running a foot race rather than searching her mind for a word. And as she lay in the twilight recovering her breath, her fingers began to explore the surface on which she lay.
A hard surface, covered by a sheet, but feeling cold through the thin material.
Another gurney.
Was she in a hospital?
She began searching her memory again, but she was so tired that simply putting together the pieces of yesterday seemed more difficult than a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. But slowly they began to fall into place. She hadn’t been sick last night — she’d felt fine. It had been her mom who was sick. When she’d come home from school, her mom had been sick in bed, and she’d gone in to visit her. Had she caught the flu then? But she didn’t feel like she had the flu — with the flu, she always threw up a lot, and her bones hurt, and she got a fever. All she felt now was exhausted — more tired than she’d ever felt in her life.