The Killer Is Dying (7 page)
NEXT TABLE, which was about hips-width away, a man in shorts and T and a woman in a freshly ironed cotton dress, both fiftyish, were discussing their relationship over yellow mugs of high-end coffee. Against the wall behind them, two young men in dress slacks, white shirts, and ties glanced up from their computers, spoke briefly to one another, resubmerged.
He looked at the card again.
Rankin had been moved to a regular room that morning. Christian, sitting in a chair nearby, seemingly lost in a book bought at the gift shop downstairs, had listened as an X-ray transporter reined his gurney up at the nurse’s desk to check in. “Here for Rankin, room 543, right? Chest, PA, and lateral?” Minutes later the laden gurney rolled by.
Christian stood and stretched. He laid his book open facedown on the chair, walked toward the bathroom, then took the turn into the hallway, pulling out a clipboard he’d found in a supply room and kept under his belt at his back.
Room 543 was halfway down the hall on the left. Nodding to housekeepers conferring at their cart, one Hispanic, one Korean, he held up the clipboard and went in.
The room smelled of cleansers and disinfectant. Sunlight, awash with dust motes, streamed through the wide-slat blinds. A tissue clung to the side of the otherwise empty trash can at bedside. Stains on the bottom sheet: brown for blood, yellow for Betadine, red or purple probably from spilled foodstuffs. Pillow oily and ripe with sweat, half a dozen dark hairs adrift on it. Ringers and a broad-spectrum antibiotic hanging, shut off for the trip. He’d have a hep lock, maybe a central line.
The TV in the next room went off. It had been all laughter and loud voices, one of the Spanish-language channels. Now other sounds moved in to fill: the gurgle of the toilet whose ball valve didn’t quite fit, the all but inaudible hiss of oxygen leaking from the room’s piped-gas coupling.
Nothing bearing witness to the man who occupied this room. Not the blood-smeared clothes in which he’d arrived; cut off him in ER, they were a crusty wad in a plastic bag on the floor of the closet, scarcely recognizable anymore as clothing. Not the misbegotten stack of magazines on the window ledge,
Field & Stream
,
Money
,
Star Talk
, brought him by well-meaning volunteers. Not the toothbrush at bedside, standard-issue institutional, clear plastic, twelve dozen to the case. From similar cases came the blue drinking cup with emesis basin and urinal to match. The urinal unused, since Rankin was still catheterized.
Christian had registered the footsteps when first heard, followed them with increasing portions of his attention as they became louder. He was standing by the oxygen outlet as a man stepped into the room. Christian bent close to the coupling as though to read something from it, made as though to scribble another something on the clipboard. Then turned to show mild surprise.
Steel-gray suit, blue dress shirt, leather loafers, and belt. Hair light brown and worn longish. Hands muscular, veins and tendons clearly visible.
“You’re not, I take it, Mr. Rankin?”
“Mr. Rank— Oh, the patient, you mean. That’s in here? Nope. Just doing my day’s work.” He brandished the clipboard. “Routine check of zone valves. That carry medical gases?”
“Of course,” the man said, though everything beneath the surface, posture, expression, tone, belied that.
A cop, Christian would have thought, but that wasn’t a cop suit. An easy athleticism about him, too, the way he moved. Doctor? Hospital official maybe. But he wasn’t wearing an ID badge the way all other employees were. Christian wasn’t either, of course.
“Mr. Rankin is …?”
“Search me.” Christian tilted his head back toward the wall. “Gases? Pipes? Probably down for tests, PT, like that.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“You could always check at the nurse’s station.”
“Of course.”
The man stepped to the side to allow him to pass. Christian didn’t glance back but knew he was being watched as he moved down the hall, away from the nurse’s station this time, to the stairway entrance. Remains of cigarettes on the first landing, a plastic cup that had served as ashtray. Hightop tennis shoe left behind on the next. One very confused sparrow perched on the sill trying to see out the frosted glass.
So the eyes-on was a bust. The sole thing of interest he had was what he’d carried away on his first visit.
This calling card.
The woman in the freshly ironed dress at the next table stood, saying “I’m sorry you feel that way, Charles.” She dropped her cup in the trash can by the door on the way out. The man sat watching as she walked to her car, a silver Volvo, got in, and pulled away. Then he looked quickly around, and left himself.
Sayles would be one of the cops he had seen outside ICU. More likely the one with well-worn, baggy pants. He’d be senior officer, be the one to leave the card. Past caring overmuch what impression he made. Work clothes for him, nothing more. Just get the job done.
Easy enough to check out. Call the station from a pay phone, say he had information, ask to be put through to the investigating officer. Maybe even pull vitals or a photo off the Internet—directories, newspaper archives, and the like.
That left the visitor back in the room. Who hadn’t appeared to know Rankin on sight, but it was hard to tell. Maybe a doctor or hospital employee, as he’d first thought. Someone from the business office, a PA or nurse practitioner, chaplain.
But maybe someone with a more exacting reason to seek out John Rankin.
Two days later Christian is in the half-alley running behind Sayles’s house. Having decided he can’t let this go, he’s sniffing the wind. No way he’s getting near the police station, and he wouldn’t be able to learn much of anything if he did, but maybe Sayles brought his work home, maybe there’s a notebook, files.
Sayles pulled out of the drive thirty minutes back. In his dress shirt, tie, and baggy slacks. Heading in to work.
Eleven ranchstyles lined Juniper Street, most of them white or some shade of brown, distinguishable one from another primarily by the level of disrepair. Spiny, garish limbs of bougainvillea soared above rooflines. Grass and weeds flourished in cracked driveways and at curbside.
Sayles was thoughtful enough to have a fenced backyard, a great boon to the enterprising B&E-er wishing to go about his job unseen. It took five minutes, tops. Sliding glass doors of the patio had pipe in the inside runners, windows appeared to be nailed shut. But the narrow door to the utility room didn’t quite meet the casing; its lock popped when he ran a knife blade in. Chances were excellent that he’d be able to come out the same way and reset the door, leaving no trace of his visit.
Interestingly enough, the living room looked to be used primarily as a place to sleep. No litter of glasses, food, newspapers. Just blankets folded and stacked at one end of the couch with a pillow atop them. The bedroom, on the other hand, looked as though it were waiting for a photo shoot, bed made, everything in place, white tile gleaming from the small bath beyond.
Woman’s house, no doubt about that from the shelves of figurines and trinkets in the living room, curtains, matched furniture, reproductions of paintings on the walls. None of it recently dusted, though. And that bedroom looked unused. Some unusual smells behind those of cleansers and a plug-in room freshener.
The kitchen was getting most of the action these days. A little settlement of cup, coffeemaker, coffee can, and measure on the long mesa of counter. Two-cup pan and lid, bowls, spoons in the drying rack by the sink, four cans of Progresso soup in the trash. Couple of bottled beers, jug of water, cold cuts, and eggs in the refrigerator. Half the cold cuts missing and the rest in need of medical attention. The eggs were two weeks past sell-by date.
The table meanwhile had gone home office. Bills removed from envelopes and in a neat stack, checkbook as paperweight. Not a lot of interest in the checkbook entries—the usual City of Phoenix, APS, Qwest, Southwest Gas, two credit cards—except for the medical. Man paid bills on time and, when he could, in full. Monthly partials, though, to two doctors, an online pharmacy, and Good Samaritan Hospital. Occasionals to LabCorps and a medical imaging firm in Tempe.
That accounted for the missing woman and the smells in the bedroom. Also for the balance of $376.92 in the account.
So where was she? Not dead, or there’d be indications: photos, service card, sympathy cards, mortuary bill, deposit check. Back in the hospital, then?
A pocket-size leather-bound notebook sat beside the bills and checkbook, Sayles’s name embossed in gold on its cover. Christian opened it. The single entry was on the inside cover,
From Josie, Christmas ’04
.
A third of the pages were missing from the legal pad alongside. The topmost of those remaining had a listing in Sayles’s handwriting of hospices in and about the valley. That page, with others, had been rolled back and tucked under.
J. Rankin
Louis = nothing Hector alerted G ? out of town
A cipher shooter’s a cipher
non-lethal!
accountant 0 military married
midwest—how long out here?
Check with organized crime units FBI ??
Barrow says it’s like those lawyer jokes, someone’s going after accountants, one at a time.
Hector: Nothing to hold onto, he says, but.
Dolls
That was the page showing. And not good.
Christian stood looking back at a photo on the refrigerator, the wife he supposed, the missing woman, with a copse of bamboo behind her, holding a snub-nosed monkey.
Bending over the legal pad, he wrote:
Please contact me. This is for you alone.
I sell dolls.
He added one of his e-mail addresses.
“YOU DOING OKAY, though. Right?”
“Fine. Police were here?”
“I saw them in the front yard and came on over, to be sure you were all right. Someone reported a prowler in the neighborhood.”
Mrs. Flores had waved from her porch and started toward Jimmie when he turned onto the street.
“They weren’t trying to get in the house?”
“Checking yards is what they said. Just going down the line.”
Pausing at the door, he said, “If you’ll wait, I can get that pan for you,” but she followed him in and stood by the front door. He went to the kitchen and came back with the pan. “Sorry it’s taken so long to return it. The enchiladas were great. Delicious.”
“Your mother doesn’t cook much?”
“Sure she does. But not Mexican food.”
“I could show you how to make them, just the same as me, if you’re interested.”
“Thank you.”
Her eyes had been glancing around the room. Now they met his.
“How long have they been gone?” she said.
“What?”
“Your parents. How long?”
“They—”
“Lots of people don’t notice what doesn’t have to do with them. Some do. I’ve suspected for a while now. You’re a smart boy, you’ve done good.” She shook her head. “People up here baby their children so much. But don’t worry, no one will hear it from me. Where I come from …” She didn’t say anything for a moment. “The way you’re brought up, the way you think, a lot about that doesn’t change. But listen.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“You need anything, you have a problem, whatever it is, you come to me, okay? Can you do that?”
“Yes, ma’am, I can.”
“That’s good.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Flores.”
He watched her go down the walk, thinking how she got around like a much younger, much thinner woman than she was. Back on the porch, in her rocker, she waved and bent over to retrieve her glass of iced tea. Jimmie went inside, picking up the scatter of mail by the door. A thick 4 × 8 envelope remained lodged in the mail slot, and he looked at the return address, typed, cavities of the
o
’s and
e
’s dark with old ink. Slowdown Time, a collector’s site and occasional supplier, and one of the few to still put out a print catalog.
Hungry, he went into the kitchen and poured a glass of milk. He was standing looking in the refrigerator when he heard floorboards creak.
Someone was on the back porch trying to look in. They couldn’t see much, of course, not with the tight-gauge screen door and curtains. But they shouldn’t be there. She shouldn’t be there.
A woman.
Who now had stepped off the porch and, hands cupped around her face, was trying to see in through the windows above the sink. Her hair was gathered on top somehow.
She tapped on the window.
“Hello? I can see you in there. James—is that you?”
Someone who knew him, then. Or knew about him. Someone who had come looking for him. A tumble of thoughts went through his mind, none of them good.
First the police, now this.
When he opened the door and saw her, he knew. She’d changed, but not that much. She looked younger than he remembered. Had on loose jeans, a T-shirt with a dressy jacket over it, flat-heeled black shoes. He remembered the hair thing now, a French twist, she always wore her hair like that when she got dressed up. There seemed an odd lightness to her.
“Jimmie? Is that you? My God, how you’ve grown!”
He stepped back from the door, and she came in. Limping? Favoring her left leg, at any rate. She reached up to smooth her hair. Nails cut short, not long the way he remembered them.
“Where’s your father? Where’s Jim?”
“He’s not around.”
She took a glass out of the cabinet, ran it full from the tap, and turned, leaning against the sink. The glass was one of his from when he was much younger. It had bears on it.
“I guess I can’t hope that you’re glad to see me. But it sure makes me smile to see
you
. You look good, Jimmie.”
She drank the water in one long swallow.
“You’re in, what, the eighth grade now? High school?”
“Something like that.”
“And I bet your grades are good.”
After a moment he said, “Why are you here? What do you want?”
“I did want to see you.” She rinsed the glass and put it in the sink. “But I need to talk to Jim, to your father.”
“After all this time.”
“It’s not really that long, Jimmie.”
“And you two haven’t been in touch?”
“Why would we be in touch?”
He looked away.
“Jimmie …” She took a single step toward him. “What was between your father and me, it stays there, okay? Between us.”
“If you say so.”
“Is he still working at Ralph’s? I can swing by there. I have to be getting back pretty soon.”
“He’s not there.”
“Okay. Where, then?”
“You think you’re the only one who can leave?”
She looked around, a scatter of visual clues coming together behind her eyes. “It’s just you, isn’t it?” she said.
Jimmie nodded. “He didn’t stay too long after you … left. Went away. Whatever you did. It’s been a year now.”
“And you’re okay? How did you get by? What are you living on?”
“I sold your silver dollars.”
“My what?”
“Your silver dollars, the ones your grandfather gave you. In the bottom of your chest of drawers. And Dad’s car. And some other things.”
“I’ll bet you did. Oh, Jimmie! What have we done, how did this all happen?”
“I’m okay with it. I’m good.”
“So it would seem. The need for parenting is obviously overstated. Not that you ever had much of that.”
She took another step toward him, saw him struggle to avoid instinctively stepping back, and stepped back herself.
“You don’t know where James has gone, then? He hasn’t written, called?”
“No idea.”
“Well … I guess that either complicates things or simplifies them.”
She had idled about the kitchen and now stood by the refrigerator, finger lightly on a sheet of composition paper layered with faded crayon. Buildings jutted dark-eyed above empty streets. The entire upper third of the sheet was heavily scribbled with black. He had held the crayon on its side and pushed hard, back and forth.
“I remember this. You’d seen some movie on TV, aliens who looked like giant rutabagas come to destroy the world. They started taking over people’s minds, one by one. You drew this the next day and told us ‘
This
is how it’s really going to happen.’ You were five. As you got bigger we kept moving it up on the door. Now just look where it is.”
She went back to the window. “And look where
we
are.” Then, turning, “I can’t stay, Jimmie. But is it okay if I come back from time to time? When I can?”
“If you want to.”
“Good. I’ll see you soon, then. You take care of yourself. But that’s exactly what you have been doing, isn’t it?”
He stood inside the door after she left, looking out into the bare backyard. Had he really played out there? It seemed so unlikely, or so long ago. He saw that the screen on the door was pushed in at the bottom. He’d have to fix that.
