Marcia Muller - Vanishing Point

“She sent a card at Christmas of nineteen ninety-four. She was living in Klamath Falls, Oregon.”

“Did she enclose a note?”

“No. She just signed it. It was a special card, though, not one of the kind you buy by the box. A Hallmark with a long message about absent friends. That made me a little sad.”

“Why?”

“Because the two of us weren’t all that close-at least, not what I call close-and I knew the reason Josie went out and bought an individual card like that was she probably didn’t have many people to send to.”

“She was a loner, then.”

“Very much so. Ms. McCone, before we go any farther with this, I must ask you: why are you looking for her?”

“Her daughter hired me to locate her.”

“She has a daughter?”

“Two. They also haven’t heard from her in many years.”

“She never mentioned any children. I knew she’d been married and, from a few of the things she said, I gathered he’d been unfaithful to her. But now that you’ve told me about the daughters, it explains her rapport with the children who were brought in to the ER.” She frowned. “But her children would have been young then. Why didn’t she have them with her?”

“They remained with the husband.”

“He got custody, after what he did?”

“It happens.”

“Well, it shouldn’t!” Debra Jansen’s face grew pink with indignation.

I moved away from that line of conversation. “Do you have Josie’s address in Klamath Falls?”

“No. I sent a card the next year, but it came back as undeliverable, so I removed the address from my book. I assumed if she wanted to get in touch with me, she would. But she never did. Do you suppose she died?”

“It’s possible. Mrs. Jansen, would you mind telling me about your friendship with Josie Smith, from the beginning?”

“Of course not. There isn’t a great deal to tell.” She stood, poured us more tea, and returned to her chair. “I joined the nursing staff at what was then Seaside Hospital in nineteen-eighty. In eighty-six, the county leased it to Sutter Health, with the provision that a new hospital be constructed, and when it opened in ninety-two, we moved to the new facility. It was larger, and quite a few new people were hired; one of them was Josie. I’d see her in the cafeteria, always alone, always reading. She looked so sad and vulnerable. So one day when I saw she had a favorite book of mine-Steinbeck’s East of Eden -I plunked myself down and asked if she liked it. She did, and it turned out we liked quite a few of the same books, so we began talking about them during our lunch and coffee breaks.”

“Did you see her socially?”

“Occasionally we went out for drinks after work. When my husband was working night shifts-he was in law enforcement, a deputy with the county sheriff’s department-we’d sometimes go to dinner. I never went to her home, though; it was a studio apartment, and I gathered it was too small to entertain in. Once I had her over to the house for dinner, but it wasn’t too successful an evening; my husband didn’t like her, and she must’ve sensed that because she turned down my next-and last-invitation.”

“Why didn’t your husband like her?”

“He couldn’t pin it down. All he could say was that there was something ‘hinky’ about her. Suspect, you know? I had to respect his feelings, though, so after Josie turned down my second invitation, I kept my family life and my relationship with her separate.”

“Did you also feel there was something ‘hinky’ about her?”

“No. While my husband was used to dealing with criminals, I was used to dealing with sick and injured people; I knew that what he sensed in Josie was her underlying sadness.”

Sadness, yes. But the hinky feeling was also valid. Your husband sensed a woman on the run.

I said, “You were at Sutter Coast when Josie made the mistake that caused her to resign?”

Debra Jansen nodded.

“What’s your take on that?”

“It was an honest mistake any of us could have made-any day, anytime. Nurses, doctors, it doesn’t matter-the potential for deadly mistakes exist, and sometimes they happen.”

“And this one…?”

“Josie was on the ER in October of ninety-three when a patient who had sustained bad lower-body burns in an auto accident was brought in. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in an emergency room or watched any of the TV shows set there, but when trauma victims arrive, it can get pretty hectic. They were starting an IV, and Josie grabbed a bag of dextrose, rather than saline. The patient went into cardiac arrest and they couldn’t bring him back.”

“And she resigned.”

“Yes. She was deeply shaken by what she’d done, told me she’d never get over it, and that she didn’t deserve to be a nurse anymore.”

“And soon after that, she moved away.”

“Yes.”

“Did you see her before she left?”

“Once. We met for a drink at a motel bar on the highway. Not one of the places that the folks from Sutter Coast frequented. She didn’t want to see any of them.”

“What happened at that meeting?”

“We talked about what was going on in my life. She said she was leaving town. I asked her what she’d do; she said she didn’t know, but it wouldn’t be nursing. She didn’t even know where she was going, she was just planning to get in her van and drive. She had a garage sale the following weekend and got rid of everything that wouldn’t fit in the van, and then she was gone.”

I was listening to her, and yet I wasn’t, trusting the tape to do my job while I entertained a frightening possibility. I reached for my glass, drained the iced tea left there.

I said, “I won’t take up too much more of your time, Mrs. Jansen, but I wonder if you remember anything about the patient who died because of Josie’s mistake?”

“I’m not likely to forget. The man’s wife was litigious, and it took the hospital’s lawyers a long time to reach a settlement. They were a couple traveling through on their way to a family reunion in Seattle. Collingsworth, was the name.”

“And where were they from?”

“Somewhere down south. He was a retired chief of police, as I recall.”

“Was his full name Bruce Collingsworth?”

“That sounds right.”

Bruce Collingsworth-Roy Greenwood’s tennis partner, who had been chief of the Paso Robles force when Laurel disappeared.

I was willing to bet his death was no accident.

I was speeding toward Sacramento on Highway 99 when my cell rang. I fumbled the unit out of my purse, which lay on the passenger seat.

“Yeah, Shar. What d’you need?” Derek, returning the call I’d made to him before leaving Grass Valley.

“A couple of things. Seems Laurel Greenwood was living in Klamath Falls, Oregon, under Josie Smith’s name, in December of ninety-four. Will you see if there’s a current address for her in that area?”

“Closing in, huh? Sure thing. What else?”

“This is a lower priority, but still important. See if you can come up with any information on a death at Sutter Coast Hospital in Crescent City in October of ninety-three. The deceased’s name was Bruce Collingsworth.”

“You want I should call you, or e-mail the info?”

“Neither. I’m on my way back to the office, should be there in two, two and a half hours.”

“See you then.”

I broke the connection, dropped the phone on the passenger seat. Checked my rearview mirror for highway patrol cars and, when I didn’t see any, pressed harder on the accelerator.

It was after six when I got to the pier. Traffic on Interstate 80 had been brutal in both Sacramento and the East Bay, and I’d hit a major snag in Vallejo as well. As I passed Ted’s office, he called out to me, but I kept going to Derek’s. Mick was the only one there.