After an hour or so of talking, Jack’s mouth was dry and his vocal cords felt on fire. He stepped into the bathroom to get a drink of water. As he was finishing his second cupful his peripheral vision caught a flash of white. He turned to see a nurse approaching his dad’s bed. She hadn’t been around before; he was sure he would have noticed her if she had. She was pretty in an odd way. Very slim, almost to the point of boyishness, and with her dark skin—made all the darker by the contrast of her white uniform—prominent nose, and glossy black hair trailing most of the way down her back in a single braid, Jack thought she might be part Indian—not the Bombay kind, the American kind.
She had her hand in the pocket of her uniform—little more than a white shift, really—and seemed to be gripping something.
Jack was about to step out of the bathroom and say hello when he noticed something strange about her. Her movements were odd, jerky. She’d slowed her progress toward the bed and seemed to be straining to move forward, as if the air was holding her back. He saw sweat break out on her forehead, watched her face flush and then go pale as she forced herself forward another step. He watched her throat working, as if she was trying to keep from vomiting.
Jack stepped out and approached her.
“Miss, are you all—?”
She jumped, twisted toward him, staring with wide, confused, onyx eyes. Her hand darted from her pocket to a thong tied around her neck, and Jack thought he saw something move in the pocket.
She shook her head, pulling on the slim leather thong around her neck. It snapped but she barely seemed to notice. She was drenched in sweat.
“Who—?”
Before Jack could reply she turned and staggered out of the room. He started to go after her but heard a groan from the bed.
“Dad?” He rushed over to the bed and grabbed his father’s hand again. “Dad, was that you?”
He squeezed the fingers—gently at first, then harder. His father winced, but Dr. Huerta had said he was responsive to pain. After shaking his father’s shoulder and calling to him, all with no response, he backed off. Nothing happening here.
He went out to check on that nurse. Something wrong about her…besides looking sick.
At the nursing station he found a big, brawny, gray-haired nurse who seemed to be in charge. Her photo ID badge read R. SCHOCH, RN.
“Excuse me,” he said. “A nurse just came into my father’s room, then turned and ran out. She looked kind of sick and I was wondering if she was okay.”
Nurse Schoch frowned—or rather, her frown deepened. It seemed to be her only expression. “Sick? No one said anything.” She looked around at the assignment board. “Three-seventy-five, right? What was her name?”
“I didn’t get a look at her badge. Come to think of it, I don’t think she was wearing one.”
“Oh, she had to be. What did she look like?”
“Slim, dark, maybe five-three or so.”
Schoch shook her head. “No one like that here. Not on my shift, anyway. You sure she was a nurse?”
“I’m not sure of a lot of things,” Jack muttered, “and that’s just been added to my list.”
“She could have been from housecleaning, but then she would have been in gray instead of white—and she’d still have to have a badge.” She picked up a phone. “I’ll call security.”
Jack wished she wouldn’t—he didn’t want rent-a-cops messing into this—but couldn’t think of a reason he could tell Schoch.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll be back in my father’s room.”
He’d been keeping an eye on the door, making sure no one else went in there. When he returned, he checked his father to see if he’d moved—he hadn’t—then went to the window and looked out at the parking lot. He saw a slim woman in white walking away through the lot. Heat from the late-morning sun made her shimmer like a mirage.
It was her. Couldn’t mistake that long braid. And now she was climbing into the passenger side of a battered old red pickup.
Jack dashed into the hall in time to see the elevator doors closing. Too slow anyway. He found the stairs and raced down to the first floor. By the time he hit the parking lot, the pickup was gone. But he kept moving, running to his Buick and gunning out to the street. He flipped a mental coin and turned right, telling himself he’d give this ten minutes and then call it quits.
He’d traveled about half a mile when he spotted the truck, stopped at a red light two blocks ahead.
“Gotcha,” he said.
When the light changed he followed the truck out of town and into the swamps. Somewhere along the way the pavement ended, replaced by a couple of sandy ruts flanked by tall, waving reeds. He lost sight of the truck for a while but wasn’t going to worry about that unless he came to a fork. Better to stay out of sight. Luckily there were no forks, and before too long he was pulling into a clearing at the edge of a small, slow-moving stream.
The red pickup sat there, idling, while the woman in white rode downstream in a small, flat-bottomed motor boat piloted by a hulking man in a red, long-sleeved shirt. Jack jumped out of his car and ran to the bank, waving his arms, calling after them.
“Hey! Come back! I want to ask you something!”
The woman and the man turned and stared at him, surprise evident on their faces. The woman said something to the man, who nodded, then they both turned away and kept moving. He saw the name on the stern: Chicken-ship.
“Hey!” Jack shouted.
“Whatchoo wanner for?” said a voice from behind.
Jack turned and saw a man with a misshapen head leaning out the driver window of the pickup. With his bulbous forehead, off-center eyes, and almost non-existent nose he reminded Jack of Leo G. Carroll from the opening scenes of Tarantula. This guy made Rondo Hatton look handsome.
“I want to talk to her, ask her a few questions.”
“Looks to me like she don’t wanna talk to you.” His voice was high and nasal.
“Where does she live?”
“In the Glades.”
“How do I find her?”
“You don’t. Whatever it is, mister, leave it be.”
Suddenly another guy, thinner and only marginally better looking, jumped into the pickup’s passenger seat.
Where’d he come from?
The new guy slapped the driver on the shoulder and nodded. Neither looked too bright. If someone suggested playing Russian roulette with a semi-automatic, they’d probably say, “Cool!”
The driver gave Jack a little two-finger salute. “Welp, nice talkin to ya. Gotta go now.”
Before Jack could say anything the guy threw the truck into gear and roared off. Jack raced back to his car. If he couldn’t follow the girl, then he’d tail these two. Sooner or later they had to—
He skidded to a halt when he saw the Buick’s flat front tire, and the gash in its side wall.
“Swell,” he muttered. “Just swell.”