Thomas Perry - The Face-Changers

“It will have to do. Work it out so that one of the staff talks to the orderlies and has him taken there. Then send her on an errand or something so somebody else talks to the cops. Don’t do either thing yourself.”

Carey held up his hand. “Wait. I’ll work out the details and excuses. Just tell me what you want to happen.”

She spoke patiently. “Get rid of the cuffs and get the cop to wait outside. Do your work in a half hour, and get him sent to his room. You keep everyone else assuming he’s still in the recovery room until, say, two hours are up. The longer the better. Now, what’s his room number?”

“It’s 3205. But how are you going to wheel him out of the hospital?”

Jane shook her head as though she felt sorry for him. “There are cops and reporters in the lobby with nothing to look at but each other. If they see any patient being moved from this hospital tonight, they’ll be all over him. He has to do what nobody thinks is possible. He has to walk out of here under his own power.” She frowned. “Can you get me one of these surgery outfits with the mask and headgear?”

“Sure.” He opened the door and went outside, then returned with a bundle of green cloth and plastic under his arm. “These should fit you.” He put them into a plastic bag and handed them to her.

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him, then threw her arms around his neck and kissed him again, harder. “I’ll get word to you somehow. But don’t expect to see me for a couple of weeks. I’m going to try to buy him enough time for the police to straighten it out and drop the charges. Now go tell him about me, so he has time to think it over.”

“I don’t have to.”

She looked at him, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

Carey shrugged. “He remembers me. He knew that I was on the staff of a hospital in Buffalo, but not specifically this one. Anyway, he didn’t come to Buffalo to get shot and admitted to a hospital. He was trying to make it to Deganawida. He was looking for Jane Whitefield.”

3

Jane Whitefield McKinnon climbed the stairs and emerged on the fifth floor. She had chosen the fifth because that was where they put the cardiac patients, and it seemed to her that they would provide the greatest proportion of men over fifty. She walked with an air of certainty, as though she knew exactly where she was going, but as she passed each open door she flicked her eyes to the left to study the room. In the first two rooms the patients were impossible to see, because there were visitors standing around the beds. In the third, the curtain was closed because a nurse was doing something to the patient. She turned the corner, and was in the blind spot from the nurses’ station.

The fourth door was closed. There was a sign on it that said, “Positively No Admittance.” That was what they did when somebody died. Jane opened the door quietly and slipped inside. They had not moved the body yet: the bed nearest the door was empty, but the bed beside the window was covered with a sheet. There were intravenous bags and feeding tubes on a tall metal stand, oxygen equipment, and several kinds of electronic monitors on carts, but none of them was connected to anything. On the stand near the bed were a pair of glasses and an open magazine with a picture of a hooked bass jumping out of a stream the way bass never did.

Jane opened the closet, feeling a little hope. The clothes had not been packed yet. The man had probably been in the hospital for a long time, because the clothes looked a little warm for this weather. She took the tweed sport coat, charcoal gray pants, a tie, a blue oxford shirt, a pair of shoes. She put them into her plastic bag, then opened drawers until she found underwear and socks. In the next drawer there was a travel bag. She opened it and saw the usual clutter of toothbrushes and combs and shaving gear, but there was also a little kit for shining shoes. She slipped the polish and a comb into her bag.

Jane carefully collected the other belongings of the dead man and put them in a drawer, closed the curtain around his bed, then took a last look at the room. She opened the door a crack to be sure nobody was near, then slipped back out into the corridor. She took the sign off the door, threw it into a trash can in the hall, and hurried to the stairwell. She made her way to the hallway outside the outpatient recovery room on the second floor. She looked inside to verify that there was no outpatient surgery at night. The lights were off. She pushed the automatic opener so the double doors swung open, walked in, and watched them close behind her.

She hurried to one of the little half-cubicles along the wall, closed the curtain, and turned on the light. There wasn’t much in the space: a straight-backed chair, a few cabinets. She changed into the lime-green pants and loose shirt Carey had given her, covered her shoes with the booties, stuffed her hair up under the plastic covering, and tied the face mask around her neck. When she hid her clothes and the bag in the cabinet, she found a box of tight latex gloves, so she put them on too. She went out into the central part of the big room, and looked around. There was a desk with telephones and incomprehensible monitors, and a few more cubicles. On the wall above one of them she noticed a television set like the ones in the patients’ rooms.

She found the remote control hanging from the bed, and pressed the switch. On the screen she could see the same newswoman standing in the lobby of the hospital. This time the woman was almost whispering. “Lieutenant Ballard, the police press officer, is here, and he’s about to issue a statement, so we’ll listen in.”

Jane heard a change in the sound, with microphones clanking together and some blips as switches somewhere were flipped, and then a man’s voice. The wide torso of a plainclothes policeman filled the screen. “At approximately six-thirty this evening, police officers at the Main Street Greyhound bus station encountered a man who fit the description of a murder suspect from Illinois. They attempted to question the man, who became nervous and attempted to flee. When they gave chase, he appeared to them to be reaching for a weapon. One of the officers fired his sidearm, wounding the suspect in the shoulder. That’s from the preliminary report, and it’s about all we know at the moment. When we have more—”

“Lieutenant!” came a reporter’s voice. “Can we talk to the officers?”

“Both officers have been relieved for the rest of the shift, and we’re not releasing their names just yet.”

“You said ‘appeared to have a weapon.’ Did he have one?”

“No weapon has been found yet.”

“Who is he?”

Lieutenant Ballard looked down at a sheet of paper. “His name is Dr. Richard Dahlman, age sixty-seven. He is being sought by Illinois authorities in the murder of Dr. Sarah Hoffman, and was considered armed and dangerous. I have no further details about that case.”

“Will he be sent back to Illinois?”

“No decision has been made about that.”

“Will there be an extradition hearing?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s his condition?”

“He went into surgery about twenty minutes ago, at eight-fifteen. I’m told he’s in stable condition and his chances of recovery are excellent.”

Jane turned off the television set and glanced at her watch. It was eight thirty-two. She wheeled a gurney out to the elevator so she would look as though she had something to do, and put on her surgical mask as she ascended to the third floor. As soon as she was in the corridor, she could see room 3205. There was a uniformed police officer standing in the doorway, watching two orderlies wheeling a patient inside on a gurney. She stepped quickly toward the room.