Pulse

76

C hancellor Schueller stood on the red stone veranda at the back of his house and stared through sunglasses into a cloudless sky. He could see the campus and a distant carpet of green treetops from his vantage point, but he couldn’t see the grass airstrip itself. Off in the distance was a windsock on a tall pole, hanging limply in the still and humid summer air. That was the only indication that the strip was there.

The twin prop engines on his small plane sputtered to life, then settled into a soft drone. The chancellor knew the plane would soon be taxiing toward the end of the airstrip.

It was being flown by Hal Kelly, a ferry pilot the chancellor sometimes hired when he was too busy to fly, and carrying a guest speaker on pre-Columbian art back to his home city of Pittsburgh. Schueller thought it would be nice if he was also in the plane, flying away from lies and problems.

The police had never viewed anyone in particular on the Waycliffe faculty as suspicious in the death of Macy Collins, or in the similar deaths that followed, but the chancellor and some of his fellow faculty were no less accomplices in the crime of silence. They had lied to the police about their whereabouts and perhaps those of a killer. Then they had told the police more small lies, knowing they were probably covering for a killer. Nothing could help them now, or prevent them from getting into deeper and deeper potential trouble. Their silences condemned them. Each subsequent murder after that of Macy Collins served to tighten the noose around their necks.

And talking at this late date? Sending the police on a course they knew was wrong? That would serve no one and be a tragedy for many.

Everyone was trapped in the same isolated cabal, whether they liked it or not. No one could discuss the murder without the picture enlarging.

After a few minutes the plane’s drone became much louder, then softer again. Schueller saw the small twin-engine craft lift above the trees to the north.

It made a graceful, sweeping turn as it climbed, as if the pilot were considering starting an orbit around the sun. Still climbing, it disappeared in the east. The distant drone of its engines faded.

The chancellor wished again that he was on board.

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.”