When I reached the bottom of Campus Hill, I saw that two cars had recently collided at the intersection. They still blocked the roadway. In the glare of their dueling headlights, a hulking woman wearing bib overalls and a Tibetan-style goat-herder’s cap was poking her finger at the second driver, who was dressed like a Gloucester fisherman, with a yellow rain hat and matching slicker.
My wiper blades were fighting a losing battle to clear the windshield as I headed across Groton toward the hospital. A handful of drivers were still braving the elements, crawling along at about the same speed as the people walking bent over on the sidewalks.
At the end of the town square, I crossed over to Seneca Street. A few blocks farther on, the lights of the Groton Medical Center slowly emerged out of the rain. I headed up its treelined macadam driveway.
Built in the early part of the twentieth century, the place always reminded me of the military stockade at Fort Leavenworth, with dirty brick walls and forbidding windows. Up at the college, they were constructing one new building after another, thanks to wealthy alumni like Brian Razzano. But no one was ready to pony up the money for a new hospital.
The driveway that led to the emergency room was choked with vehicles, their yellow lights flashing and their sirens wailing thinly into the savage wind. Driving my pickup right over the curb, I parked it on the grass and headed inside.
A couple dozen people with storm-related injuries already packed the waiting area. A few were lying on rolling gurneys. Others filled the halls flanking the treatment rooms. The newest arrivals were sitting on the floor in the entrance foyer with their backs against the walls.
Several nurses were performing triage evaluations as they worked their way through the crush, sending the most serious cases into the emergency-care stations. When I showed my security badge at the front desk, the woman checked her intake log and told me that Hoyt Palmer had been moved to room 1326.
I trudged up the iron staircase that led to the central wing of the hospital building. On the third floor, a plastic-covered map showed the four nursing stations that could be found at each corner of the rectangular corridor. Room 1326 was on the hallway parallel to the one where I was standing.
Aside from the muted din of the wind and rain, things seemed relatively peaceful on the top floor. At the nursing station closest to room 1326, a Groton police officer was talking to one of the nurses. Behind them, a harried-looking staff doctor was filling out paperwork at a small desk. The individual patient rooms stretched back along a well-lit corridor.
The police officer seemed to shrink in height as I came toward him. Not more than five six, he had the steroid-enhanced development of someone who was out to maximize what little he had.
His neck was almost as large as his head, and his pale-blue uniform was sculpted to fit tightly over every muscle in his arms and legs. A black plastic nameplate above his right breast pocket read, “Schmidt.” A Sig Sauer .40 automatic bulged on his narrow hips.
Showing him my campus security badge, I said, “There’s a patient in 1326 who is supposed to be under your protective custody. His name is Hoyt Palmer.”
“You got any idea how long I’m supposed to be stuck on babysitting duty?” he said, rocking back and forth from heel to toe. “We got a hurricane going on out there, in case you guys up at the college didn’t notice.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s tough all over. Is your backup in the room with him?”
“Don’t need no backup . . . I got it under control.”
“Sure,” I said, already worried. “How long have you been here?”
“About fifteen minutes. The guy’s wife and another lady were in the room with him when I got here. I told him he was being put under police protection just like the sergeant told me to say.”
“That must have been comforting to him. Then what?”
“Then he asked me why he needed police protection, and so I told him about the other guy getting waxed in the same place the first guy did,” he said.
“So why are you standing out here?” I said.
“’Cause they asked me to leave.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I can understand that.”
He was oblivious to my sarcasm.
“There’s no back stairs down at the end of that corridor. The only way anyone can get to him is to come through me.”
He bulked out his chest.
“Has anyone come or gone since you got here?” I asked.
“The ladies that were with him left about five minutes ago. Otherwise nobody went down there.”
“Have you checked on him since?”
When he shook his head no, I said, “I see you’re a regular Dick Tracy.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.
“It means you’re an idiot,” I said, heading down the hallway to Palmer’s room.
I heard the tap of his heels coming after me.
“I don’t have to take your crap,” he called out.
Room 1326 was the fifth one down the hallway on the left. The door was closed. I shoved it open and stepped inside the room. The only light came from the wall fixture in the small bathroom, but it was enough to see that the big hospital bed was empty, its top sheet lying on the floor.
Turning on the overhead light, I looked toward the closet. Its plastic accordion door was squeezed open. A white shirt and khaki pants hung from the metal hanger rod. A pair of brown loafers rested on the floor.
“What the hell?” Schmidt said from the doorway.
“So no one came in or out since you’ve been here,” I said, going over to the narrow casement window. “He must have been the invisible man.”
The window was closed and latched from the inside.
“So what do you think, Dick?” I demanded.
“I . . . it’s impossible,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, heading for the door. “If I were you, I’d check every room on this corridor right now. Maybe you’ll still have a job in the morning.”
When I turned to look back at the end of the hallway, he was pushing open the first door, his Sig Sauer pointed and ready. By then I knew that if someone had been hiding in one of the other rooms, they were already gone.
On the way back to my truck, I thought about the possibilities. What if Hoyt Palmer was the killer? What if he had done it to silence whatever Wheatley and Massey had done to put his life in jeopardy?