WHC
Rm # 214
It had been written in the same blue marker, the ones we used in chem lab. The same handwriting as the message in the box with the dead cat and under the bleachers at North Hampton.
I shoved the letter in my locker and slammed it shut. I’d wanted to visit Posie, but I’d heard she’d been flown to the burn unit at Washington Hospital Center and had spent the last four days in ICU. No visitors allowed.
Flowers delivered to Room #214 . He was tipping me off. Posie must have been moved. And if she was out of intensive care and had her own room, I could talk to her. I could ask her what she remembered, if she had seen who had done this to her. I knew she would tell me if she could. I had to try.
I shook my head, split down the middle. Who was I kidding? That’s exactly what the killer wanted me to do. Exactly where he wanted me to be. This note felt like a set-up. I’d be playing into his hands again, and I hated myself for it. But I had no choice. It was time to pay Posie a visit.
I hopped the Red Line downtown, then took the H4/Tenley Town bus to the hospital. Once inside, I crossed the main lobby and headed straight for the elevator.
“Excuse me,” said the woman at the desk behind me. I turned to see her holding out a clipboard and a visitor’s pass. “I’ll need you to sign in, please.”
The elevator doors closed. I approached the desk and took the clipboard, hesitating before writing my name. If the note was a set-up—if someone really did want me here—then maybe I shouldn’t use my own name. At the very least, it wouldn’t hurt me to use someone else’s. I wrote “Mary Jones” in the space marked Visitor. The pen hovered over the space for the patient’s name, warnings whispering in my head. If the police were keeping tabs on Posie’s visitors, something told me I shouldn’t use her name either.
“What’s the last name of the patient you’re looking for, dear?” She was a kind-looking older woman with smiling wrinkles. I felt guilty lying to her.
“Smith,” I answered.
The attendant henpecked the name into her computer and stared down her nose at the screen. “Would that be Ronald, Evelyn, or William?”
My shoulders sagged with relief. Smith had been a safe bet. “Ronald,” I said.
She handed me the pass and said, “He’s in 263. You can go ahead up.”
I clipped my pass to the hem of my shirt and darted into the first open elevator. Posie’s room was easy to find. I peeked in the small window inset in the door, relieved to find Posie alone. A jacket hung over the back of an empty chair beside her bed. I didn’t have much time. I rapped softly on her door and pushed it open a crack.
She replied in a jagged whisper, as though she were talking through broken glass. “Come in.”
I stepped quietly inside. Posie sat propped on a mountain of starched white pillows, her eyes taped shut with cotton pads. A clear tube hung below her nostrils and an IV dripped from a stand near her headboard. A clip hugged her finger, and a monitor beeped steady with the rhythm of her heart. Her other arm, the burned one, was concealed under a sleeve of bandages.
“Posie?”
She tipped her head, turning in my direction. “Leigh?” She smiled weakly. “You made it. I knew you were coming.”
I stopped halfway to her bed. A cold sensation slithered over me. “Yeah, it’s me,” I said quietly, my throat dry. “How did you know I was coming?”
She pushed a button, elevating the bed. “One of the nurses said you called.”
I didn’t answer. I hadn’t called or spoken to any nurses, but I didn’t want to scare her.
Her smile faltered. “You didn’t call?”
My mind raced. I looked at the clock. “I don’t have much time, Posie.”
She drew her call button tighter against her hip and pulled herself straight against the pillows. I heard the strain in her breaths.
“I know,” she rasped. “The police have been asking all kinds of questions about you. I told them there was no way you could be involved in something like this. But they keep asking, like I might change my mind. I told them I won’t.” She took a few thin breaths and sunk back into the pillows. “I’m glad you’re here, but it’s probably better if you go. My mom will be back any minute and I’d hate for you to get in trouble.”
I looked between Posie and the door. Someone called the nurses’ station pretending to be me. I knew I should leave, but I had so many questions. “Is there anything you remember . . . anything at all that might help me figure out who did this to you? Did you see anyone? Talk to anyone?”
She shook her head. “I don’t remember a thing. The police said I was drugged. They said someone put something in my soda. I remember eating lunch, and then feeling dizzy and sick to my stomach. I left my friends to find the bathroom, and then everything just went blank. I woke up here. They said I have to stay until my burns are better.” Her brief recollection seemed to drain all of her energy, and I helped settle her back on her pillows. She couldn’t help me. It had been a mistake to come.
“It’s okay,” I said, as much to comfort myself as to ease the worry on Posie’s face. “You don’t have to say any more.” I straightened her blankets. A medical chart hung at the foot of her bed. “Posie? Would it be okay if I looked at your chart?”
She nodded and I hurriedly flipped through the pages of a toxicology report. Posie’s bloodwork had tested positive for ketamine, the same drug Nicholson said they’d found in Emily Reinnert’s water bottle.
The rest of the report held no surprises. Just as I’d expected, hydrofluoric acid burns. The fumes were strong enough to damage her respiratory system, but as long as there was no direct contact with her eyes, the cotton and tape should be temporary and her lungs would get stronger and heal over time. I couldn’t say the same about her arm. That scar would stay with her for the rest of her life. I thumbed through the rest quickly—her vitals, which seemed fairly stable, and a treatment plan showing an estimated discharge date a few days from now. She’d be fine.
A series of loud beeps erupted from her IV monitor and we both startled. Her bag hung empty, the last drops sinking close to her hand. “You should probably go,” she said. “The nurses will be in soon to change my IV.”
A stack of fresh gowns and surgical caps were folded neatly on a chair. I grabbed a set quietly and pulled them over my clothes.
Posie wheezed and started coughing. I didn’t think, just reached for her hand, needing to know she would be okay. “I’ll be fine. Just go. I won’t tell anyone you were here.” Her strength ebbed through my fingers in steady, reassuring waves. Posie would be fine, and now I was one step closer to understanding the person who’d done this to her. Emily, Posie, and Marcia had all been drugged.
I gave her hand one last squeeze and cracked the door before slipping into the hall. I walked quickly toward the end of the hall, away from the nurses’ station, looking for emergency exit signs that might lead me another way out. A police officer emerged from the stairwell and walked toward me. Every nerve ending screamed at me to run. He was on his phone and didn’t seem aware of me, so I kept my head down and shuffled past. I took the stairs fast and threw open the door, emerging in a hallway near the hospital chapel. I darted into the nearest bathroom, stripped off the gown and tucked it into the trash bin, plucking the visitor’s pass from my shirt. I was about to toss it in the can and find a less conspicuous exit than the one in the main lobby, but then I paused. Would it be suspicious if Mary Jones never signed out?