The 5th Horseman

Chapter 64

JACOBI AND CONKLIN had just headed out to Nordstrom on the perfume detail when Brenda called me on the intercom.

“Lieutenant, there’s a lady on the phone, says she needs protection. Won’t talk to anyone but the head of Homicide.”

“What’s her name?”

“Mrs. Anita Haggerty. Calling from Municipal Hospital. She’s a patient there, she says.”

The woman spoke in a low voice, just above a whisper.

“Lieutenant Baxter?”

“It’s Boxer. How can I help you?”

“Have you ever been so scared you’re throwing up? That’s how scared I am.”

“Back up, Mrs. Haggerty. Start from the beginning.”

“Okay, but I might have to suddenly hang up.”

I took down the woman’s room number and encouraged her to get to the point.

“I was in a hospital in Raleigh with a concussion three, four years ago. My roommate was in for a bleeding ulcer. Dottie Coombs. That was her name.

“Dottie was ready to go home when she suddenly went into seizures and died. Right in front of me.”

“Go on, Mrs. Haggerty.”

“She shouldn’t have died. The nurses closed my curtains, but they were very upset, saying, ‘How could this happen?’ And I heard her doctor say something to those nurses that I’ll never forget as long as I live. It was burned into my brain.”

“I’m listening.”

“He said, ‘Sometimes a bad wind blows.’”

“What did that mean to you?”

“It meant Friday the Thirteenth. It meant Nightmare on Elm Street. I don’t know, Lieutenant Baxter, but my friend was dead, and her doctor’s reaction was creepy and sick. And now he’s here. He poked his head into my room, and I think maybe he remembers me. I’ve got surgery tomorrow for a hernia,” Haggerty continued breathlessly. “Supposed to be a simple operation, but as God is my witness, I’m scared for my life.”

I was having the kind of premonition where you know what someone’s going to say before they say it. Cold sweat trickled down the sides of my body.

I pressed the receiver hard to my ear.

“Do you remember the doctor’s name?”

“I’ll never, ever forget it,” Haggerty said. “It was Garza. Dr. Dennis Garza.”