Spark

27

Adam Beed, wearing bib overalls, was driving a gigantic threshing machine toward Carver, grinning, standing up at the controls so he could look down and watch the blades snare and dismember his prey. Carver was trying to run through the wheat field with his cane, but he kept stumbling, falling, getting up to look back in terror and see that the whirring blades were closer. Beed raised his right hand and flailed the air with it, holding something-a bell! Carver could hear it now above the roar of the thresher’s engine. He tripped and fell, struggled to his feet. The bell . . .

Carver woke up sweating, snatched up the phone to quiet its nerve-grating jangle. He peered at the ghostly red numerals of the clock by the bed: three minutes past midnight. He’d been asleep only a few hours.

“Carver? You there?”

Rathawk Two. “Somewhere,” Carver mumbled, touching the cool plastic receiver to his ear.

“This is Val. I wake you up?”

“ ’S okay. You rescued me. Jesus, I hate farms!”

“Everybody does. You was up late filling out forms?”

Carver blinked his tired, dry eyes. Grimaced at the sandy feel of them. “What’s going on, Val?”

“Rescued you, huh? Well, what I called about, I can’t get Jane to help.”

Insects were droning outside; the air conditioner kicked in and drowned them out with its watery hum. “Jane your contact at the medical center?”

“Yeah, and she tells me what I want’s way too dangerous. She’s scared. Mainly of Nurse Gorham. Shame a beautiful woman like that has to be such a sadistic hellcat.”

“Shame,” Carver agreed.

“Reminds me of a wolverine,” Val said. “Wolverines are beautiful and cruel, kill other animals for no reason, just like we do sometimes.”

“We?”

“Not you and me, people in general.”

Carver slowly wiped his hand down his face. His palm came away slick with perspiration. “Friend Jane know where the files are kept?”

“Yeah. She agreed to help at first, told me all about the layout, before she got thinking too much and the fear set in. The main file room, patients’ records an’ all in folders, is on the first floor and’s in constant use. But she says financial and some duplicate files are computerized and on the fourth floor, in a room down the hall from the main offices. After nine o’clock nobody belongs on that floor, so she’d have no excuse to go up there. Elevator doesn’t even run up there after nine, and the door off the stairs is locked.”

“You were a volunteer worker at the medical center,” Carver said. “You got any idea of how to get around this?”

“If I had, I wouldn’t have asked Jane’s help. All I did when I worked there was escort released patients to the door in wheelchairs so nothing’d happen to them on the way out and the center wouldn’t be sued.”

“Does Jane have a key to the fourth-floor door?”

Val didn’t say anything for a while. “I know what you’re thinking, Carver.”

Carver shifted his weight on the bed. The springs whined. “See if she’ll unlock the door, that’s all. Then she’s out of it.”

“Well, expect I can get her to do that. She does wanna help, and she’d only be away from her station for a few minutes.”

“You near the medical center now?”

“Uh-huh. My unit’s parked right outside.”

It took Carver a moment to realize “unit” was Posse code for “car.” Hoo-boy! “I’m driving over there,” he said. “Leaving soon as I hang up. Meet me in the parking lot?”

“I’ll meet you,” Val said. He blew breath into the phone. “I’m thinking of Hattie.”

“So am I,” Carver said, and replaced the receiver.

He sat for a few seconds while the remnants of sleep faded from his mind completely, then he switched on the lamp and reached for his cane and his pants at the same time. Hurried to meet Rathawk Two.

He parked on the street instead of in the medical center lot, then limped to where Val’s Dodge Aries was squatting unevenly in an end slot near a white van. The night was hot and sticky. The lot was illuminated by overhead sodium lights that cast a sickly orange glow and made the dozen or so parked vehicles look as if they were coated with oil.

Carver opened the Dodge’s door and slid in to sit alongside Val, resting his cane between his thighs. “Talk to Jane again?” he asked.

Val nodded, staring straight ahead at the medical center’s brightly lit entrance. “There’s a side door used by Maintenance she’s left propped partly open so I can get into the building without being seen. Fire stairs are right there. I take ’em to the fourth floor, and that door’s propped open, too. It locks automatically when it closes so it can only be opened from the inside, so once I’m on the fourth floor I can get out okay.”

Carver was surprised. The power of love to inspire foolish deeds seemed to recognize no age limit. He said, “I’m going in, not you.”

“I wanna help Hattie, I told you.”

“I’m working for her, Val. This is my job. I need you to park a little closer to the building, watch the fourth-floor windows. If you see a light go on up there, honk twice then drive away. There’s no need for you to get involved in this any more than is necessary.”

Val said nothing, gnawing his lower lip and staring at the building. Nothing about the building changed.

“My way makes sense,” Carver said.

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“What about the file room door? That unlocked?”

“Jane says it’s never locked. She don’t know about the individual file cabinets or whatever’s in there. She said the file room door’s unmarked, but it’s the last one on the left, at the very end of the hall.”

Carver opened the car door. “Okay, I’m on my way.”

“Anybody sees you on the lower floors,” Val said, “try and look like you belong there.”

“I’m good at that,” Carver assured him.

“They see you on the fourth floor, get the hell away fast as you can.” Val glanced at Carver’s cane.

“It won’t come to that,” Carver said, trying to convince himself as well as Val.

He set the cane’s tip outside the car and scooted out to stand up. After shutting the door as quietly as possible, he limped toward the service entrance Val had indicated. It was a small gray door that was barely noticeable in the shadows. His stomach felt hollow. His mouth was dry. He understood habitual, professional burglars; always had. When he reached for the doorknob the real apprehension set in and he began to enjoy himself.

He was inside quickly, standing at the base of a dim stairway that led to a small concrete landing and another door. He picked up the small block of Styrofoam that had been used to prop open the outside door half an inch and stuck it in his pocket. It had a jagged end and seemed to have been broken off a solid form used to pack electronics or some other delicate product. Probably some sensitive medical paraphernalia. Hoping Jane had thought to deal with the door on the landing, he limped up the concrete steps.

That door was propped slightly open with a similar block of foam. Carver eased through and was on a small, square concrete landing. He craned his neck and could see up the zigzag, brightly lighted stairwell all the way to the fourth floor. Since he’d entered the building he’d seen no one, and presumably no one had seen him. His heart was pounding like a mad carpenter’s hammer. Sweating coldly, he smiled and began to climb the stairs.

The fourth-floor fire door was also propped open just wide enough to prevent the latch from catching. Carver edged it open wider and peered into darkness. From his hip pocket he drew the penlight he’d brought and switched it on. The narrow yellow beam jumped out at eye level, and he quickly brought it down to focus on the hall carpet. He wasn’t sure if light could be seen through a window from down in the parking lot or street, but it was wise to minimize risk.

It was quiet in the dark hall. The antiseptic hospital smell from below had permeated the third floor. It was a scent Carver hated; it reminded him of pain and the death of people who’d been integral parts of his life. Some of them were people he’d despised; still, their passing more clearly defined his mortality and in his way he mourned them.

Holding the narrow yellow beam low, he limped along the hall. All the doors were closed. Most of them were lettered with doctors’ names, or words like ADMINISTRATION or FINANCE. Carver recognized the door he’d passed through a few days ago to talk to the redheaded receptionist and Dr. Wynn. And Nurse Gorham, the beautiful Marquise de Sade, R.N.

As Val’s friend Jane had said, the door at the end of the hall was unlettered. Carver turned its knob and pushed.

No give.

The door was locked.

He quickly made his way to the door that said ADMINISTRATION and tried it.

Ah! Unlocked.

He went inside and limped around behind the receptionist’s desk, then began searching through the drawers.

He found everything but keys.

As he straightened up with a soft groan, something gleamed in the flitting penlight beam. He focused the light and saw a thick ring of keys dangling from the lock of a gray metal file cabinet. It looked like a complicated insect that had been surprised and frozen by the light on its climb up the steep wall of steel.

He smiled and wiped the damp back of his hand across his lips. The odds were good, with that many keys.

He went to them and pulled the file cabinet’s key from the lock. Carrying the key ring, he limped back into the hall and down to the file room’s locked door.

He counted carefully. The ninth key he tried opened the file room door. He played the penlight beam over the floor to make sure there were no obstacles, then entered.

There were no windows in the room, so he located the wall switch and flicked it upward.

Fluorescent tubes buzzed and flickered to life, then light flooded the room and Carver felt a rush of disappointment.

There were no file cabinets.

The room was only about ten feet square. There was a small gray metal table in its center, with an IBM computer on it, a box of disks, and some pens, pencils, and erasers. A gray folding chair was at one end of the table. There was some sort of cabinet that took up most of one wall and had louvered metal doors.

Carver opened one of the doors and saw a bank of small, square filing drawers. He slid one of the narrow drawers out on its casters.

It was lined with 3¹/₂-inch computer disks.

He cursed anew the age of the microchip. If anywhere in the medical center there were printouts of whatever was on the disks, he didn’t have time to search for them.

He saw that the drawers were labeled alphabetically. When he pulled out the K drawer, he saw more disks. All of them were labeled in blue ink. Under K he found “Keller” and started to remove the file.

Then he decided someone might notice it was missing.

He limped over to the computer on the table, and the open box of disks. He got the Keller Pharmaceutical file from its drawer and laid it on the table next to a disk he drew from the box. Carefully he peeled the adhesive label from the Keller disk, then pressed it onto the other disk. Placed the substitute under K in the file drawer.

He remembered a “Deceased” heading in the file cabinet. Quickly he found Jerome Evans’s file disk and substituted for it as he had the Keller disk.

He took the genuine disks with him as he made his way out of the building the same way he’d entered.

Still on an adrenaline high, he felt good when the night air hit him.

In fact, great.

“Get what you wanted?” Val asked eagerly, when Carver was standing outside the Dodge.

“I think so. It’s on disks.”

“Computer disks, I guess you mean.”

“Yeah. So it’ll take a little time before I find out whatever there is to know.”

“With the world all complicated the way it’s gotten, you’re gonna need a computer.”

“I know somebody who’s got one,” Carver said. He looked at his car parked out on the street. “Right now, I need to get back to the Warm Sands and get some sleep.”

“Was tonight worthwhile?” Val asked, as he hunched forward in his seat and started the Dodge’s engine.

Carver said, “I’ll let you know.”

He watched as Val cranked up the window to hold in the air-conditioning, then drove slowly from the lot.

Carver limped toward the Olds, feeling the thickness of the humid night as if he were plodding underwater, the stolen disks heavy in his pocket.

Val was right. The world got more complicated every day. Somehow, while Carver wasn’t paying attention, it had been turned into an electronic jungle.

Making it an ever more dangerous place for hunted and hunter.