Blind Eye (21 page)

Waterbury Long-Term Care Facility
Connecticut

S
omeone wanted to kill Amelia.

The written message, intended to draw Mark Shaw away from the patient's room, sealed it. This wasn't some tired night-shift nurse's mix-up. There had been no one at the front lobby waiting for Mark.

Someone inside the care facility had planned the murder.

Sid stepped into Amelia's room and closed the door. Three Waterbury police cars had responded immediately, racing to the facility when they'd called it in. Mark and a couple of detectives were interviewing the nurse. She claimed that she was following what was on the prescription slip, and she didn't even know what the medication was for. Sid believed her and he thought Mark did, as well.

The rest of the police officers were combing the building, questioning everyone else who was working tonight. They were also searching for any unauthorized people who might be inside. There was no security to speak of in this place. Sid guessed there had never been much need for it.

The flashing lights from the police cars outside reflected off the walls of Amelia's room. Sid walked toward the windows. He could see two officers outside walking the perimeter of the building grounds. Dawn was about to break; the sky was just starting to grow lighter. He closed the shades.

Sid wondered how much Amelia had understood of what had happened, and he worried how much more helpless she might feel now because of it. He turned to her. She was awake, watching his every move.

Sid hadn't left the room since the chaos erupted following the attempt to give her the wrong medication. Still, police detectives and the night security man and Mark had been in and out of the room. The entire time, Amelia had observed everything going on around her. He wondered if perhaps…just perhaps…she knew exactly what was going on.

“Why would anyone try to hurt you?” Sid asked, walking to her bedside.

He remembered what Jennifer had told them about how they'd found Amelia six years ago. Someone had pushed her out of a moving car onto the highway. They had intended to kill her then. Sid couldn't help but wonder if word had gotten out, and now the same person was back to finish the job. She might recall the details of that night. She might even be able to tell them who was responsible.

He considered the possibility of connecting her to the test equipment again. He didn't know if she would communicate better with them that way. The last time she'd been connected, they'd only been able to record what she was actually seeing at that moment.

Too much was happening too soon. Sid understood there was the possibility that she might slip into a mini
mally conscious state at anytime, in the same manner that she'd come out of it.

“We're not going to let anything happen to you,” he told her. “Tomorrow, we're moving you to a new place where they'll start teaching you how to talk and use those muscles, maybe even walk. You can explain some of what's going on to us then.”

Lines that weren't there before creased her brow. He wanted to reach out and smooth them. There were dark circles under her eyes. She blinked as if agreeing to what he was saying. Despite the stress, she had the most beautiful eyes. Sid caught himself and looked at the IV drip hooked into her arm. He picked up her chart.

“There will be all kinds of new people working with you when you arrive at Gaylord Hospital.” He felt the need to talk, to let her know what the changes would be. But he had to remind himself that she was his patient. There were ethical lines Sid was willing to toe, but getting inappropriately involved was not one of them. “My team and I are going to stay with you. And Jennifer has already promised to come and see you every day. Gaylord is half an hour away from here, and she tells me it's only a ten-minute drive from her house.”

Sid hung the chart back up. That was when he saw her right hand. Her fingers were moving and not just involuntarily. They were repeating a pattern.

“You're going to get all better by yourself, aren't you?” he asked her. “You're not waiting for anyone else to tell you it's time to move your hands or your feet or anything.”

He looked at her face. Her gaze was focused now on her right hand. He tried to figure what she was doing.

“Are you tracing letters on the blanket?”

She blinked.

“Do you want a pen and paper?”

She blinked again.

He looked around him and spotted a pad of paper and a pen next to the room telephone. She was trying to communicate with them. She was ready to tell them things.

Sid raised the head of the bed to a forty-five-degree angle, then adjusted a pillow behind her so she had lower-back support. Jennifer had mentioned that Amelia had done well with that before. She was able to support her neck for short periods of time. He placed the pad of paper under her right hand. He positioned the pen between her fingers. She tried to hold it but it slipped through her fingers. He placed it in her fingers again. Her joints were weak and the muscles unresponsive. Finally she wrapped her fingers around the pen and held it.

“Excellent. Take your time. Write down whatever you want,” he said, pulling a chair next to the bed.

She stared straight ahead for a minute and then closed her eyes. Her fingers, though, continued to struggle to move the pen. It was obvious she wasn't going back to sleep but concentrating.

“You're doing it,” he told her. The ink started to leave a mark on the paper. She made some scratching marks before moving the tip of the pen an inch away. A letter started to form.

“W,”
Sid said aloud.

She opened her eyes and lifted her neck from the pillow, looking at what she'd done. She blinked, yes. He took her fisted hand and moved the pen to where she could write more.

He tried to think what the letter might signify, but she seemed already intent on the next letter.

This one was only a straight line. “
L?
” he asked.

She only stared at him.

“Is it an
I?
” he asked.

She blinked, yes.

“So far, we have
wi
,” he told her.

She blinked again.

She seemed to be struggling with the next letter. First, Sid thought it was
o
, but she gave no indication that he was right. She drew a line next to it.

“P?”
he asked.

She blinked again.

“Wip?”
he asked.

She made him understand that he was right. She immediately started writing again. This time Sid picked it up the first time. “
P
again?”

She blinked, and Sid thought he saw the trace of a smile on her features.

“I'm not so dumb after all.” He smiled to himself. “So far we have
wipp.
”

Amelia closed her eyes for few moments and opened them again.

“Okay, tell me what's next?”

With an effort, she opened her hand and let the pen drop through her fingers onto the blanket.

She laid her head back on the pillow and turned her face away.

Washington, D.C.

J
oseph Ricker felt the disposable phone vibrate in the inside pocket of his jacket. Taking it out, he looked at the display. The call was from his contact in Connecticut. Instead of answering, he looked around Nebraska Avenue. The traffic was light.

“Right there,” he told the driver, pointing. “Pull over and stop there.”

They were very close to the American University campus. The driver did as he was told.

Joseph moved across the back seat and got out of the car. The cell phone had stopped ringing, but he knew it'd be only a matter of minutes before it rang again.

He moved across the sidewalk up onto a lawn. The grass was wet. He didn't like that his shoes were getting wet. The phone in his hand came to life as he'd expected. He checked the number. The same contact.

“I expect good news,” he said without greeting.

“Not yet.”

Joseph swore under his breath.

“Being discreet is a problem,” said the man at the other end.

“What do you mean?”

“We tried it. It was a damn good setup, too. The autopsy would have written the death off as medical staff error. But it didn't work.”

“Why not?” Joseph asked, frustrated.

“You didn't tell us she has guard dogs.”

“She's a vegetable, practically in a coma. Of course, there are people who look after her.”

“I'm not talking about nurses. She's got a cop and an M.D. who burn the midnight oil in her room.”

The cop Durr had mentioned. Joseph didn't know the son of a bitch was still hanging around.

“Listen, you're getting paid a lot of money for this. You should be able to handle any kind of complication that comes up. Are you professionals or not?” The best defense was offense.

Joseph immediately looked around, realizing he'd been talking far too loudly. A woman passing by on the sidewalk was staring at him. He felt like giving her the finger but decided against it.

“We
are
professionals,” the caller replied coolly. “There's no job that we can't handle—so long as we have all the details. You didn't give us enough information.”

Joseph rubbed his neck. He'd given them everything he knew. Martin Durr would not like this. Joseph had to take this woman out of the picture. Simple as that. Durr would never expose himself to criminals like this one, but he wanted the job done.

Joseph would face serious consequences if these men failed. He knew it would not be a matter of decreased salary or diminished perks associated with the job. And there would be no looking for a comparable position anywhere else. Even if he could, there would be no job postings out there for someone with exactly his experi
ence. No, he thought, there would be consequences, but not the kind an ordinary employee faces. Durr would never let him go.

Joseph had never been able to find out anything about his predecessor. He'd been told the position was new when he'd moved into it eight years ago. Joseph hadn't believed it then, and he still didn't. Someone as powerful as Durr needed middlemen to handle the pawns. To manage the dirty work.

The man or the woman who'd been Durr's personal assistant before Joseph had disappeared off the face of the earth. He sure as hell didn't want to go there.

Joseph walked farther away from the sidewalk and softened his tone.

“Okay. You have a suggestion about how you are going to complete this job?” he asked, enunciating every word. He wanted to make sure the man understood he was still expected to finish the contract.

“I have a couple of ideas.”

“What are they?”

“The first one is messy.”

“How messy?”

“We can blow up the place.”

Joseph coughed to hide his shock. “That's bit much, isn't it? Aren't there a lot of people that work there? Aren't there patients?”

“I told you it would be messy. But it would work. They've been working on the gas line in that section of town for a month now. It would be easy to set it up.”

“No,” Joseph said firmly. There were way too many variables that he couldn't control. They'd have half of the Connecticut State Police
and
the FBI
and
Homeland Security on their tail. “What else?”

“I-84.”

“I assume that's a highway,” Joseph said.

“Yeah, it is,” the man told him. “They're moving her today to some bigger hospital. They'll take I-84 to get there. People die every day in accidents on I-84.”

“She'll be in an ambulance,” Joseph reminded him.

“My men have taken care of a number of jobs involving transportation. Today's front page of the Waterbury paper has a picture of a jackknifed truck. Three people died as the result of it. On I-84. We've arranged accidents just like it. Taking care of an ambulance will be easy.”

Joseph wasn't convinced. Also, Cynthia Adrian's mishap in California had been handled as an automobile accident. He wasn't crazy about patterns. Still, he had no plan of his own to suggest.

“Remember, I don't want any major disasters. No explosions. No mass murder. Nothing that brings in the feds. But the job
has
to get done.”

“Even if it isn't discreet? Or accidental?”

“Even if it isn't. She
has
to die.”

“How about bodies? Do they have to find her?”

“What are you going to do to her?” Joseph asked.

“Answer the question. I want a backup plan. We might have to change the details depending on how things go.”

“Go for it,” Joseph told him. At the last minute, he remembered what his boss was having him arrange for in New Mexico. Durr wanted proof that Marion Kagan was dead. “But if the body is going to disappear, I'm going to need proof that you've actually done the job.”

“You're a strange bird, man,” the caller had the nerve to say.

“You're getting paid a lot of money,” Joseph reminded him again.

“No problem. I'll send you an early Christmas package…but don't open it in front of the missus.”