That’s when we got word from a nurse that they were finishing up surgery and would be taking Lien-hua to post-op. Relief swept over me.
“So she’s alright?”
The nurse gave me a slight smile meant to reassure me. “If there were any immediate concerns, they would address them in surgery.”
“Can I see her then? In post-op?”
“I’m sorry, we don’t allow visitors in there.”
“I’m not just a visitor.”
“I’m sorry.” And she sounded like she was. “It’s just not allowed.”
I texted Tessa to tell her what I knew, and then, hoping to finish up here while Lien-hua was recovering, I went back to work with a renewed sense of focus.
The first two sites came up empty, and I was thinking I might be on the wrong track entirely when Cassidy informed me that an officer had just located Lien-hua’s car at the third location, a mechanic’s garage six blocks away.
As soon as Cassidy arrived on-site he relayed the video. There was a fresh oil spot three meters from her car.
Hoping that it might be a unique blend of motor oil or tell us something about the type of vehicle that it was used in, I told him to take a sample and get it to the Lab right away to have them analyze it.
He took footage of the interior of Lien-hua’s car, but there was nothing immediately evident that might lead us to Basque. However, there was a large smear of blood across the backseat and a bullet hole through the front and back seats. That explained the bloody bandages at the apartment.
So, she’d shot him.
Yes, Lien-hua. Nice work.
Would Basque chance going somewhere to have the wound treated?
I doubted that he would. Almost certainly he’d know that police are dispatched to the hospital whenever someone comes in with a gunshot wound, but still, checking hospitals couldn’t hurt. I had Doehring call it in.
Cassidy took me on a video walk-around of the garage, but I saw nothing else that might indicate where Basque had gone.
Doehring returned from the hallway and told me he’d gone down to the nurses’ station to get word on Lien-hua. “After post-op they’re taking her to 414 in the ICU. Hopefully within the next fifteen or twenty minutes.”
I checked my texts and saw that Tessa hadn’t replied.
Considering how quickly she usually responded to texts, and taking into account that she’d told me to contact her right away when I knew anything, I was surprised. The girl was so proficient at texting that she could do it without even looking down at her phone. Maybe she was praying and had turned her text notifications off, but why would she do that if she was expecting to hear from me?
I told Doehring, “I’m gonna go touch base with Tessa. I’ll meet you in the ICU.”
He acknowledged that, I texted her again that I was on my way to the waiting room, then I stepped onto the elevator and punched 1 to get to the first level of the hospital, where I’d left my daughter.
7
Tessa wasn’t there.
In fact, only one couple — an elderly man and woman with matching wedding rings — sat in the waiting room. The woman had a bloodied dishrag draped over her arm from some sort of cut, but apparently not one serious enough to get her in right away. When I asked them if they’d seen a teenage girl in here, they told me they’d just arrived and were sorry, but no, they hadn’t.
After checking my texts again and finding that Tessa still hadn’t replied, I spoke with the receptionist and she told me that she remembered a girl sitting in the corner but couldn’t remember her leaving.
“When did you last see her?”
“Just a few minutes ago. I think.”
Of course, it was possible that Tessa had turned off her phone, but considering the circumstances, I found that highly unlikely. I tried calling her but she didn’t answer and I left her a voicemail to call me.
A few thoughts began to form in my head and none of them were good.
A woman was leaving the restroom just down the hall and I asked her if there was a girl in there. “Eighteen, about your height, black hair?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t see anyone.”
“Do you mind checking again? Please?”
It looked like she did mind, but she returned to the bathroom regardless and a moment later reemerged. “Nope. No one.”
I walked outside to see if Tessa might’ve left to get some air or to sneak a cigarette, a habit she’d picked up recently and tended to slip into when she felt stressed or overwhelmed.
Once she’d said to me that smoking is suicide, it just takes longer than a gun, but now that she’d given up cutting, it seemed she still had the need for some self-destructive behavior, though, to me, cutting might actually have been preferable to lighting up. I’d confronted her about the smoking; she told me she was trying to stop.
In any case, she wasn’t outside, but a Metro PD officer was. With the attack on Lien-hua it didn’t surprise me that Doehring had upped the law enforcement presence here at the hospital. The officer told me he hadn’t seen anyone leaving, just going inside. “This older couple. And another officer. Just a little while ago.”
“Another officer?”
“Yup.”
“Do you know him?”
He shook his head. “No.”
I felt a shiver that I couldn’t contain.
A disguise? Could Basque have been that second officer?
It was inconceivable that Basque would have come in here, or that he would be able to get to Tessa. She never would have stepped outside or left by another hallway with him.
But still…
I quelled the thought.
After a quick call to hospital security to have them review the footage of the front entrance, I phoned dispatch and asked them for the name of the officers at the hospital. They told me there were two — Langston Honeycutt and Aleck Kane. Officer Kane was the man beside me.
I told the dispatcher to send some cars to comb the area near the hospital and gave them a description of Tessa. Then I called Doehring to see if Honeycutt was with him.
“No. I’ll look into it, though. Find out where he is.”
“Any word on Lien-hua?”
“I haven’t heard anything else.”
At the moment there wasn’t much more I could do down here in the lobby. Obviously, Tessa wasn’t here and standing around waiting for her to come back wasn’t going to help anything. I texted her again, telling her to call me right away, then asked the receptionist to keep an eye out for her.
“Where’s post-op?” I asked.
She pointed. “Third floor, halfway down the hall on the east wing. But they don’t allow visitors in with the patients.”
“Okay.” I turned to go.
“I said they don’t allow visitors.”
“Good.” I held my creds up to her. “I’ll make sure there aren’t any there.”
A group of people had gathered in front of the elevators and I shouldered past them, threw open the door to the stairwell, and took the stairs two at a time toward the third floor.
8
Four minutes ago Tessa had left the lobby.
Earlier she’d told Patrick that she would pray, and she had. But the whole time she’d been unsure what to say. And even though she was usually pretty good with words, that’s not really how her prayer had come out. It was more like a screech in her soul that went beyond language — sort of like fear wrapped in a desperate kind of love, but she hoped that God wouldn’t hold her lack of eloquence against her.
Her mom was dead.
Her dad was dead.