Desperate Measures

THREE
1

Pittman stood across from the Emergency entrance to the hospital. It was shortly after midnight, and the same as two nights earlier, a drizzle created a misty halo around streetlights. His mind continued to reel from the trauma that so much had happened to him in the brief time since he had last been here. Chilled by the rain, he shoved his hands into the pockets of a wool-lined navy Burberry overcoat that Sean had pulled from a crate. In his right pocket, he touched the.45. It was the only thing that he had taken from the gym bag, which he’d left with Sean at the loft. He peered up toward the pale light in the tenth-floor window of what had once been Jeremy’s room. Determination overcame his weariness. Necessity insisted. There were so many things he needed to learn, and one of them was why Millgate’s people had taken the old man from the hospital that night. That was when everything had started. After waiting for a gap in traffic, Pittman crossed toward the hospital.

At this late hour, the front lobby was almost deserted. The few people who were slumped in the imitation leather chairs in the lobby seemed to pay no attention as he headed toward the elevators. Nonetheless, he felt exposed.

His nerves troubled him for another reason, for he knew the memories he would have to fight when he got off the elevator near the intensive-care ward on the sixth floor. He tried not to falter when he glanced toward the large area on his left, the intensive-care waiting room. A group of haunted-looking men and women sat on uncomfortable metal chairs, their faces haggard, their eyes puffy, struggling to remain awake, waiting for news about their loved ones.

Grimly recalling when he had been one of them, Pittman forced himself to concentrate on his purpose. Past the entrance to the children’s intensive-care ward, he turned to the right and went down a short corridor to the door for adult intensive care. He had never been in that area, but he assumed that it wouldn’t be much different from the children’s area.

Indeed, it was virtually identical. After pulling the door open, he faced a pungent-smelling, brightly lit ten-foot-long hallway, at the end of which was a counter on the left and glass cabinets behind it. The counter was covered with reports, the cabinets filled with equipment and medicines. Amid the hiss, wheeze, beep, and thump of life-support systems, doctors and nurses moved purposefully in and out of rooms on the right and beyond the counter, fifteen rooms all told, in each of which a patient lay in urgent need.

Pittman knew the required procedures. Automatically he turned toward a sink on the left of the door, put his hands under a dispenser of disinfectant, and waited while an electronic eye triggered the release of an acrid-smelling red fluid. He swabbed his hands thoroughly, then put them beneath the tap, where another electronic eye triggered the release of water. A third electronic eye activated the hot-air dispenser that dried his hands. He reached for a white gown from a stack near the sink when a woman’s grating voice stopped him. “May I help you? What are you doing here?”

Pittman looked. A heavy set woman was marching down the hallway toward him. She was in her middle forties, had short gray hair that emphasized her strong Scandinavian features, and wore white shoes, white pants, and a white hospital top.

Pittman couldn’t tell if she was a doctor or a nurse. But he understood hospital mentality. If this woman was a nurse, she wouldn’t mind being called a doctor. She would correct him, of course, but she wouldn’t mind the error. On the other hand, if she was a doctor, she’d be furious to be called a nurse.

“Yes, Doctor, I’m with the team investigating Jonathan Millgate’s death.” Pittman opened a flip-down wallet and flashed fake police ID that Sean O’Reilly had given him.

The woman barely looked at the ID. “Again? You people were here last night, asking questions, interrupting our schedule.”

Pittman noticed that the woman hadn’t corrected him when he addressed her as doctor. “I apologize, Doctor. But we have some important new information we have to check. I need to speak with the nurse who was in charge of Mr. Millgate’s care at the time he was taken from the hospital.”

Pittman tried not to show his tension. Pressured by time, he couldn’t be sure that Millgate’s nurse would be working this weekend. What he was counting on was that in a hospital, conventional weekends didn’t apply. If each nurse took off Saturday and Sunday, no one would be available to watch the patients. So schedules were staggered, some of the staff taking off Monday and Tuesday, others Wednesday and Thursday, et cetera. Conversely, nurses tended to have the same shift for several weeks in a row: seven to three, three to eleven, eleven to seven. That was why Pittman had waited until after midnight-because he needed to speak with the nurse who had been present when, at this time two nights ago, Millgate had been whisked away.

“That would be Jill,” the doctor said.

“Is she on duty tonight?”

“Yes.”

Pittman didn’t show his relief.

“But she’s too busy to talk to you right now.”

“I understand, Doctor. The patients come first. But I wouldn’t be troubling you if this wasn’t important. When she takes a break, do you think you could-?”

“Please, wait outside, Mr.…”

“Detective Logan.”

“When she has a moment, I’ll ask Jill to speak with you.”