John Lutz - Pulse

He removed his sunglasses and turned toward the French doors leading back into the house. As he slipped the glasses into their soft leather case, and then his shirt pocket, he noticed that the lenses were rose-colored. Or maybe they were picking up sunlight reflecting off the bricks.

Rose-colored glasses. God sending a sly message?

The chancellor smiled. Could happen.

It didn’t occur to him that the message might be from someone else entirely.

Jerry Lido blew his nose into a white handkerchief, wadded the square of cloth, and stuffed it into his pocket. “Whatever dark secret there is in the little universe of subjects that you gave me to research, I didn’t learn it.”

He was at his sometimes desk at Q amp;A, slumped sideways in the chair. His thin body looked as if it might snake down onto the floor any second. His hair was a tangle, his shirt was only half tucked in, and he’d slipped out of his shoes and was in his stocking feet. There was a hole in one sock. There were bags under his eyes. Quinn figured he’d been drinking.

“I worked all night without a break,” Lido added.

“You look as if you worked all week,” Quinn said. He walked over and poured himself a mug of coffee. “Want some?” he asked Lido, holding up his steaming mug.

“I already had ten or twelve,” Lido said. “Stuff ’s beginning to taste like cow piss.”

Quinn went back to where the computer whiz was sitting and stood looking down at him. “So what went wrong, Jerry?”

“Nothing other’n that there’s protection at Enders and Coil, and at Waycliffe, like I never saw. Sophisticated stuff, and a lot of it.” Lido smiled slightly. “So much protection that there’s gotta be something there. We did learn that much. Friggin’ something exists. We know by its wake that there’s a big ship out there in the night.”

“And it’s damned important to somebody with the technical expertise to protect it,” Quinn said. “Who has that kind of expertise?”

“I can’t think of anyone but me,” Lido said. “That’s what’s bothersome.”

“I admire your grandiosity.”

“I got a right.” Lido sniffed and wiped his sleeve across his nose.

Quinn sipped his coffee, even though it was the dregs left by Lido. The grounds made his teeth feel gritty. “You think these are the same people who hacked into our system?”

“I do,” Lido said, “I admit I was bragging, but not by much. Sure there are places like major-league law firms and colleges with high-tech stuff that can stymie me, but the truth is there aren’t many people who can put up barriers I can’t get around.”

“And there aren’t many who can get around barriers you put up.”

“We both know what that means,” Lido said. “Same big ship.”

Jody knew she shouldn’t be at the hospital, but after giving yesterday’s lunch with Sarah a lot of thought, she decided to come anyway. Probably no one would know the difference. Even if Meeding Properties had someone keeping tabs on who came and went to visit Mildred Dash, it wouldn’t seem odd to them that a member of Enders and Coil would turn up at the hospital. So Jody told herself.

She was given Mildred’s floor and room number at the information desk; then she made her way to the elevators.

The temperature was a few degrees too cool for comfort, as it was in most hospitals. As the crowded elevator’s door opened on each floor, the familiar mingled scents of the hospital made their way in. It smelled as if everyone was chewing Juicy Fruit gum, and there was an underlying astringent scent like Lysol. Jody tried to block out this olfactory assault, but without much success. She wasn’t crazy about hospitals.

Four people were left in the elevator when it reached the Cardiac floor containing Mildred Dash’s room. Jody was the only one who got out on that floor.

She was facing a nurse’s center that was a rectangle defined by a wooden counter. Inside the rectangle there was a lot of activity involving people in white coats or pale blue nurses’ uniforms. A couple of doctors wearing green scrubs. Half a dozen people were leaning or standing at Jody’s side of the counter. There were computers on the counter, facing the interior of the rectangle. There were phones, pens and pencils, and racks with slick and colorful informational brochures.

Jody checked a sign with an arrow on it, indicating room numbers. Mildred Dash’s was among them. She nodded a friendly hello to a nurse who was smiling inquiringly at her, then made her way down the tiled hall in the direction the arrow pointed.

There were rooms to her left, most of them with their doors open to reveal patients lying beneath sheets. Sometimes there were pull curtains providing privacy. Several TVs were on, but with muted volume. On her right, Jody was approaching what appeared to be a spacious waiting area with chairs, sofas, and a couple of vending machines. There was a big TV there, too, mounted up near the ceiling and on mute. Somebody was playing a baseball game somewhere, but the uniforms didn’t look familiar.

The waiting room contained over a dozen people. About half of them were sitting. The other half were at the vending machines or milling around.

Jody broke stride in surprise.

Among those milling around was a familiar figure in a chalk-stripe gray suit, white shirt, yellow silk tie.

Jack Enders.

And he was looking right at Jody.

“What are you doing here?” Enders asked. He seemed not to know whether to smile or frown. Some of the others in the waiting room seemed to have stopped what they were doing and were staring at Jody. Waiting.

“I got this idea I might be able to do the firm some good if I dropped by here and talked to Mildred Dash.”

“Do the firm some good?”

Jody shrugged. “I guess it sounds crazy.”

Enders looked dumbfounded and tentatively angry, as if someone had unexpectedly punched him on the arm and then run away. He didn’t quite have this sorted out yet. “Jesus, does it ever sound crazy! You’re an intern, Jody.”

“I’m trying hard to use my initiative and become something more than that. I thought that was one of the purposes of the internship.”

Jody was working intently at this line of bullshit, but it didn’t seem to be impressing Enders.

“To begin with,” Enders said, “you wouldn’t be able to see Mildred Dash anyway because this part of the hospital is the intensive care unit. Almost everything is kept sterile beyond this point. You can’t even leave flowers.”

“I tried to buy some downstairs,” Jody lied.

Enders blew out a long breath and shook his head. What, oh what, were they going to do with Jody?

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” he said. “Mildred Dash is no longer in Intensive Care.”

Jody felt a stirring of cautious hope. “She’s been released?”

“She left the hospital two hours ago at the request of her family and under supervision of Hospice. I hadn’t known that when, like you, I came here to visit her.”

Jody knew her bullshit was now drawing bullshit in return. She cocked her head to the side and fixed Enders with a stare. “And?”

He put on a long face. “I got a call ten minutes ago saying she died shortly after returning home.”

R enz had his assistant send in Jim Tennyson immediately.

News of Olivia’s death weighed heavily on Renz’s overworked heart. And alongside it, anger.

Tennyson was in undercover garb and looked like a dope peddler. He had a two-day growth of beard, greasy unkempt hair, and was wearing grimy jeans and a black T-shirt. He also had on one of those vests with a couple of dozen pockets. Everything looked as if it had just been bought at Goodwill. He was wearing a long face that didn’t fool Renz.