Maybe I sounded more exasperated than I realized, or looked more pathetic. The clerk’s hands tapped against her keyboard. I took it for a dismissal- she was getting back to work, from what I could see- but she said, “You know, Park Christian is an excellent rehab facility for stroke patients.” Her smile was guileless.
“Is it?” I said, realizing what she was really telling me. “Thank you very much.”
Park Christian Hospital was outside Minneapolis proper, in a pleasantly verdant setting that must have been comforting to the relatives of the frail and stricken. Behind a set of automatic double doors, a rush of cold, conditioned air greeted me. Instantly, after the heat of the summer day and a long ride out there, I felt chills begin. But the pain in my ear was under control, held down by aspirin, and that was what mattered.
“Can I help you?” the receptionist said.
“I’d like to see Hugh Hennessy,” I said. Too late I realized I should have brought some sort of prop with me: flowers, a card. “I’m a friend of the family.”
I expected a runaround. You’re not on the visitors’ list, or some similar refusal. Instead the woman said, “I’ll have Freddy take you back.”
I almost said, You will? I’d just wanted to confirm where Hugh Hennessy was; now I actually had to face the man, with no excuse for being there. “Are you sure I won’t be disrupting a routine, or anything? I could come later,” I offered.
A door beside the desk swung open and a man appeared.
He was young, but with an older man’s mien. His face was soft and pouchy, his blond hair cut in a short, square style that few guys in their twenties would have chosen. His name tag read, Freddy. He looked at me. “Are you here to see Hugh Hennessy?”
“That’d be me,” I admitted.
He gestured to the door, for me to follow him.
“It’s too bad you didn’t get here a little earlier,” Freddy said. “You just missed his daughter.”
“Marlinchen was here?”
“A very pretty girl,” he commented, and I heard no lechery in it. “She’s been here quite often.”
We walked back through a hallway, then through a glassed-in breezeway to another wing. Outside the glass I could see open space, lawn and pathways, and beyond that a deep pond.
“Is Mr. Hennessy alert?” I asked. “Is he verbal?”
“Alert? I think he’s aware,” Freddy said. “Verbal, no. He has expressive aphasia. That means that we think he understands a lot of what’s going on around him, but when he tries to speak, it doesn’t make much sense.”
“Is that the extent of the damage?” I asked.
Freddy shook his head. “He’s in a wheelchair right now, for weakness on the right side of his body, but we’re working on that. And some neglect.”
“Neglect?”
“Where someone loses awareness of one side of the body, and one side of their surroundings.”
“I see.” For a moment I’d thought Freddy was telling me Hugh had been improperly cared for, elsewhere.
We stopped outside a door. “This is his room,” Freddy said.
Inside, the air was still and quiet. The room held two low beds, but Hugh Hennessy wasn’t in either of them. He sat in a wheelchair by the window, chin on chest, eyes closed.
“Is something wrong?” I asked, worried.
Freddy smiled at my alarm. “It’s all right. He’s just fallen asleep.”
He was slender of build, his hair light brown, cut sharply across the forehead in the style of a man who doesn’t put much stock in his looks. I wasn’t prepared for him to look so young, even in the ravages of poor health. The air-conditioning gave me another chill, and I wondered why they kept it so cold where old and infirm people were.
Freddy tipped his head to one side. “Are you feeling all right?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said. “Why?”
“You look a little off-color,” he said.
“It was hot outside,” I said, as if that explained everything.
Hugh Hennessy’s eyelids fluttered, and his pale eyes half opened. I couldn’t tell if he was awake, or saw me, but guilt stabbed me, as though he’d caught me in his room under false pretenses.
“Actually,” I told Freddy, “I’m not feeling so great. I’m going to get some air.”
“That’s fine,” he said gently. “Come back when you’re feeling better.”
The hospital’s parking lot had an Entry Only arrow at one end and an Exit Only arrow at the other. Following the prescribed direction, I had to make a right turn onto a side street to get back to the road I’d taken to the hospital. That’s why I saw the slight form of Marlinchen Hennessy, waiting on a bus bench.
I stopped the Nova and called from the window.
“Remember me?” I said.
She looked up, startled.
“I was just driving by and I recognized you,” I said. “Where are you going?”
“Home,” she said.
“Want a lift?”
“My house is a ways from here,” she said, still wary.
“That’s okay,” I said. “It’s a nice day for a drive.”
A criminal, someone with experience of the cops, would have known it was too coincidental to be true, a detective driving by and innocently offering a ride. But Marlinchen was young, and when I looked over my shoulder, feigning worry about another car approaching, she felt guilty.
“Come on if you’re coming,” I urged.
Marlinchen picked up her backpack and ran out to me. She jumped into the passenger side and slammed the door. I accelerated and we were on our way. Gotcha, I thought. She wasn’t going to be fleeing this interview, not at 65 miles an hour.
It was a sad day that I had to take pleasure in cornering a teenage girl as though she were a hardened perp, but you take your victories where you can get them.
“Roll down the window if you want,” I said. I was still alternating between too hot and too cold; it wouldn’t make much difference to me. Marlinchen rolled her window halfway down.
“Were you coming from school?” I said. “I didn’t think there were any out in this area.”
“No, I get out of school at noon,” she said. “I’m a senior, and all my graduation requirements were satisfied, so I took an abbreviated schedule.”
“That must be nice,” I said.
“I’m enjoying it.” Her tone sounded a little more relaxed and confident.
“So what brought you out to this area?”
“I was at the hospital,” Marlinchen said briefly.
“Really? Why?” I’m giving you a chance here. Tell me the truth.
“I volunteer there, when I can,” she said. She wasn’t looking at me.
Too bad, Marlinchen. There goes your no-hitter. “That’s nice of you,” I said. “Convenient, too. Gives you a chance to visit your father.”
For a moment, the only sound was the Nova’s rumbling engine. Then I heard Marlinchen sniffling. She laid her head against the door frame of the Nova, and her shoulders shook.
Suddenly it didn’t seem so funny to me that I’d been reduced to entrapping a teenage girl with her own evasions. I had pursued Hugh’s whereabouts as though it were just an intellectual exercise, not thinking of the human feelings underneath.
I spoke as gently as possible. “Your father’s had a stroke, your mother’s dead, you’re the oldest in the family, and your twin brother’s whereabouts are unknown,” I said. “That’s a lot of trouble to deal with, and usually the last thing I’d do is pile on, but I can’t help you if you keep lying to me.”
Marlinchen didn’t answer. She cried for a while as we got off the 394 and onto the secondary roads that threaded the wetlands around the big lake, where bait stores and diners ceded to houses set back from the road. I began to realize just how far Marlinchen had ridden on a bus to see me down at the detective division.