Vanishing Point

Sunday

Sutter Coast Hospital was reasonably well staffed for six-thirty on Sunday morning. I stood near the cafeteria doorway, surveying the various tables, and after a moment spotted one at which two women wearing nametags and dressed in scrubs were seated. They looked fresh and rested, probably having breakfast before going on the day shift, and they were old enough to have been working here at the same time as Laurel Greenwood, a.k.a. Josie Smith.

I crossed to the food line and got an English muffin and a cup of coffee, paid the cashier, and went over to the table. Plopped down and said, “Hi.”

One of them, a short brunette in pink, nodded to me.

I asked, “Are either of you in Pediatrics?”

“No,” they both replied.

“Can you direct me? I just came from registry. I don’t know where anything is.”

The other woman, tall and blonde, sighed. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

I’d been warned by Patrick’s friend that some RNs were unfriendly to the registry nurses, considering them more trouble than they were worth because they were unfamiliar with the hospitals they were sent to, and always asking questions. It also didn’t help that they earned top dollar.

Quickly I said, “I felt the same way you do when I was on staff at Santa Rosa Memorial, but, hey, I’ve got two kids at home and need to make a living.”

“Sorry. Yesterday was a rotten day, and I’m not expecting today to be any better.” She looked back at the brunette. “As I was telling you, I said to him, ‘Dr. Strauss, this patient is very anxious.’ And he says to me, ‘You think the patient’s anxious? I’m the one who’s anxious. If I don’t finish my rounds in ten minutes, I’ll miss my tee time.’ The worst thing was, he meant it.”

The other woman rolled her eyes.

In the vernacular provided by Patrick’s friend, I said, “Docs!”

“Yeah.” The woman in pink nodded emphatically. “Dedicated, huh?”

I sipped coffee, then asked, “How long have you worked here?”

“Twelve years.”

“Then you might’ve known my aunt, Josie Smith. She was an RN in the ER.”

She thought, shook her head. “Name’s not familiar. When was she on staff?”

“She started in ninety-two, when the hospital was brand-new.”

“Then she must’ve left before I came. Hey, Linda,” she said to the woman on the other side of the table, who was staring into her coffee cup, “were you here in ninety-two?”

“I didn’t move here till ninety-four.”

“And you never heard of a Josie Smith?”

“No.”

“Sorry,” the brunette said, glancing at her watch. “Got to run. You want, I’ll walk you toward Pediatrics.”

Well, at least I’d proved to myself that I could walk the walk and talk the talk-even if I hadn’t found out anything.

After the nurse had pointed the way to Pediatrics, I left the hospital, went to Patrick’s car, which I’d parked a couple of blocks away, and read the morning paper. It was still too early to go back to the hospital, so I did the crossword puzzle, then took a walk. The morning was clear, but strong offshore winds gusted through the town and, from long experience with the vagaries of coastal weather, I sensed the fog would be in by evening.

When I got back to the car, I still had time to kill. One of my occupational hazards: too much waiting. Fortunately, I’d brought my briefcase along, so I opened it and reviewed the Laurel Greenwood files until lunchtime. Then I returned to the cafeteria, where I struck up conversations with various personnel, and in the process learned some interesting and not-so-interesting things.

Dr. Martin was getting a divorce from his wife of twenty-three years; she had run off with her personal trainer. Diane, in the pharmacy, was marrying her ex-husband-for the third time. Judy, one of the receptionists in the ER, was having an affair with an EMT, but nobody knew which one. An unnamed advice nurse spent her lunch hours in her van in the parking lot, working on a novel on her laptop; it was rumored to be something involving knives and guns. Marie was developing bunions; Nell had sold her home at a fifty percent profit; Dan had bought a new motorcycle; Trisha’s cat had puked again-but on the hardwood floor, not on the white rug, thank God; Mike was goddamn glad to be starting his vacation tomorrow; Kim’s mother-in-law was coming to dinner next Sunday, and she was considering seasoning the roast with strychnine.

I learned nothing about Laurel/Josie. Most of the people I spoke with hadn’t been on staff in 1992.

When the cafeteria began to clear out, I escaped the hospital and drove to a city park, where I sat on the grass, leaning against a tree trunk; I’d go back at two-thirty before the swing shift started. My mind was cluttered with idle chatter, and I tried to clear it.

Usually I found nothing wrong with idle chatter: we indulged in plenty of it at the pier, over coffee and sandwiches or just hanging out on the catwalk; it helped us get through the days that were mundane, boring, or just plain tedious. But today my ears were ringing with voice-noise, and it kept me from focusing. After a while it faded, but something worse took its place.

I’ve been thinking about your house, and I just may have come up with a solution to our living-space problems.

And what’s that?

I don’t want to go into it until I check some things out.

What things?

Well, I’ll need to look it over carefully, but-

My God, what had I gotten myself into?

I shook my head to clear it, tried a few deep-breathing exercises. They didn’t work. I was glad when it was time to go back to the hospital.

“Just leave me the hell alone,” the thin, poorly kempt woman said.

All I’d done was set down my tray-more coffee, another snack-across the table from her. I looked closely at her face, saw eyes with dilated pupils and facial muscles drawn taut with strain. A relative of a patient with a life-threatening condition? No, she wore scrubs and a nametag.

“Sorry.” I picked up the tray, turned.

She muttered something unintelligible.

A hand on my arm. I looked around at a kind-eyed, dark-haired woman in blue scrubs. “Come sit with me,” she said, and led me to a nearby table.

“What was that all about?” I asked.

She sighed, sat down, nodded at the place opposite her. “What d’you think?”

“I don’t know. I only came today from the registry.”

“Well, she’s up to her old tricks, and pretty soon she’ll be outta here for good.”

“Drugs?”

The woman hesitated, then her eyes flashed with anger. “Yeah. She’s been through the rehab program once, and one chance is all you get.”

“Too bad.” I glanced over at the thin woman. She was crumbling the bread from a sandwich into tiny pieces and casting narrow-eyed glances at us.

“Yeah, it’s too bad. She used to be a good nurse, till she started forging prescriptions.” The dark-haired woman’s mouth closed firmly; she’d realized she’d said too much to an outsider.

I said, “My name’s Patsy Newhouse, by the way.”

“Barbara Fredrick.” She extended her hand. “How’s it going so far?”

“Okay. This is a nice place, people are friendly. My aunt always said so.”

“Your aunt worked here?”

“Yes, maybe you remember her-Josie Smith. In ER.”

“Josie?” The smile took on a frozen quality.

“She started here the year the hospital opened.”

“… Right. But she left a year later.”

“D’you know where she went after that?”

“She’s your aunt, and you don’t know where she is?”

“She broke off all contact with the family about that time.”

“Oh.” Barbara Fredrick looked down into her coffee cup. “That’s a shame. I liked Josie.”

“Were you a friend of hers?”

“Not really. She was kind of a private person.”

“Why’d she leave, d’you know?”

Fredrick shrugged. “I guess she just needed to move on.”

“Is there anybody else on staff who might’ve known her well?”

She thought, compressing her lips. “As I said, she was kind of a loner, didn’t socialize much, but she had one friend on the staff, Debra Jansen. I think she mentioned to me that Josie had moved after the-”

“After what?”

Fredrick ignored the question, finished her coffee.

I asked, “Does Debra Jansen still work here?”

“No. She retired and moved away about seven, eight years ago. I think she and her husband bought a place up in Grass Valley.”

Grass Valley-an old Gold Rush town in the Sierra foothills, now a popular destination for both retirees and people attempting to escape the crowded Sacramento and Bay areas. The last time I’d driven through the area, the proliferation of malls and subdivisions had attested to the concept that when you move you take your baggage with you.

I said, “Do you have a phone number for Debra Jansen, or an address?”

Fredrick was about to rise from the table, but she paused, looking into my eyes. “No, I don’t. But if you do locate her and talk about your aunt, you should remember this: people make mistakes. Josie’s was a bad one, but mistakes happen.”

“A bad mistake? Did somebody die?” I didn’t know why I asked that particular question, but I saw confirmation of its answer on Fredrick’s troubled face.

She looked at her watch, grasped her tray, and stood. “I’ve got to get back. Good luck.”

Remember this: people make mistakes.

Josie’s was a bad one.

“How’s your head?” I asked Patrick.

“Still hurts. I can’t believe I needed stitches.” He was stretched out on his back on the bed in his motel room, looking pale and squinting in the light from the TV.

“What in God’s name did you do to that woman?”

“My assailant? Damned if I know. One minute she was beating me at pool, next she was beating me with her cue.”

“You must’ve said or done something.”

He rolled his head against the pillow and winced. “Not that I remember.”

A rap at the door. I went to answer it, let Hy inside. He hugged me, turned to Patrick, and said, “Still feel like shit, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Women, whiskey, and wildness’ll do that to you.”

“Woman, beer, and what I thought was a civilized pool game. You talk to the cops?”

“I did. Seems this sort of episode is business as usual with Crazy Mary.”

“Who?”

“The lady who bashed you. She was winning, you wanted to quit, she took offense.”

“Well, have they arrested her?”

“No.”

Outraged, Patrick tried to struggle into a sitting position, but fell back against the pillows. “Why not?”

“Because she fled the scene, and they haven’t been able to locate her. Plus I told them you didn’t want to press charges.”

“What?”

“You don’t. I guarantee it.”

“Why not?”

“Because Crazy Mary is not only a pool shark, but a habitual filer of nuisance suits. Gets into altercations, takes her victims and her sleazebag lawyer to court, and lies-convincingly. She’ll manage to turn this one around, say you sexually harassed her, and keep it tied up in the courts for years.”

I exclaimed, “I hate litigious people!”

Hy looked at me, lines around his eyes crinkling in sympathy with my anger. “Me too, McCone, but what’s to be done? Your health plan’ll cover the costs of this doofus’s injuries”-he motioned at Patrick-“and he’ll never mess with anybody like Crazy Mary again.”

From the bed came a moan of agreement.

“So now that we’ve got that mess cleared up,” Hy said, “how did it go at the hospital?” He was lounging on the bed in our motel room, a beer in hand.

“Fine. I have a lead to a friend of Greenwood’s in Grass Valley. Derek’s trying to locate her.”

“You going down there?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure how. Patrick’s in no shape to drive. I considered borrowing his car, but that would leave him without transportation. Besides, I’m not sure it would make it.” Patrick’s car was an ancient Ford Falcon that spent more time in the shop than on the road; frankly, I was surprised it had made it as far as Crescent City.

“Here’s a solution: why don’t I fly you there first thing in the morning. You could rent a decent car, drop it off when you get back to the city.”

“It won’t make you late getting the Citation back to Dan?”

“Nah, it’s only a slight detour. Plus it’ll give us more time together. And now what d’you say to getting some dinner?”

“Fine, as long as we don’t follow it up with a stop at Tex’s.”