Lifeblood (24 page)

“Thanks for the traffic report. How’s Hank doing?”

“As well as can be expected. At least that’s what they say. He was barely awake when I was there this afternoon and it was after visiting hours tonight by the time I got the pajamas to the hospital. The woman at the reception desk said she would send them up to his room. Why were you calling every twenty minutes?”

“I wasn’t going to tell you. I was just going to forget about it. But I changed my mind.”

“About what?”

“I just found out something I think you want to hear. Notice I said want to hear, not should hear.”

“You’re talking in riddles.”

“Maybe. This is gonna sound crazy, but I don’t want to say it over the phone. I don’t even know why I don’t want to say it over the phone, except my gut says maybe I shouldn’t. You being shot at and all.”

“Do you mean to sound that mysterious?”

“Meet me at the bench in half an hour. I’m bringin’ one of the kids with me.”

999

Rachel put three cans of cola in a Trader Joe’s bag and went down to the bench. A light breeze was blowing mist into pale haloes around the streetlights.

Two figures pushed through the entrance door to the InterUrban Water headquarters across the street. A car passed, kicking up droplets of water. The two waited, then crossed the street.

“This is Inez,” Goldie said.

The girl put out a hand. “Pleased to meet you, Missus.” She looked Asian, but a bit bigger boned. Her eyes were those of a street urchin, wanting to please but ready to run.

“Pleased to meet you, too.” Rachel handed out the cola.

“Gracias,” Inez said, and waited to pop the cap on her can until Goldie and Rachel popped theirs.

“This little charmer is an Indian,” Goldie said. “A Native American, if you want to be politically correct. A real one.”

“Really. How nice. What tribe?”

“The feds don’t recognize her tribe,” Goldie said. “Her people were more or less kicked off their land by the forest service or park service or some federal agency like that. She was only seven. Her pa was dead. Her mother got a job in San Marino as a maid and raised her there. Inez came to work for us as soon as she was old enough, which was about three months ago.”

The girl was nodding, endorsing Goldie’s words.

“The social workers call her learning disabled. No way. She’s just shy. She’s quick to catch on. She knows three languages, which is a whole lot better than me.”

“Or me,” Rachel said.

“Tonight she happened to mention something I decided you would want to hear.” Goldie turned to Inez. “Tell Rachel what you told me.”

The girl dropped her gaze to her feet. “Mama, she has, how you say, amigo.”

“Boyfriend,” Goldie said.

“Luis has a boy like I am Mama’s girl.”

“Luis has a son,” Rachel said. “Yes, I understand.”

“This boy…Ésteven,” Inez went on, “he has amigo, José.”

Beginning to feel she might lose the thread of the story, Rachel nodded encouragingly.

“José is the principal player in this tale,” Goldie said. “It’ll take a little patience but you’ll see why I brought her over.”

Inez looked up at Goldie. “You say it. No bueno, mi inglés.”

“No. I want Rachel to hear it from you.”

The girl fixed her eyes on Rachel and took a deep breath. “José, Méxicano. Muy fino.”

“He’s a nice guy. Inez here is dating him,” Goldie added.

“José, he come aquí go hospital.”

“Hospital?” Rachel asked. “Do you know when that was?”

The girl stared at her for a moment. “Uno año.”

“About a year ago,” Goldie translated.

“Un hombre in México say to José do he want be Americano? José say sí. So they make the deal. José go hospital. They….” Inez looked at Goldie. “Cut?”

Goldie nodded.

“They cut him.” Inez slowly finished her sentence.

Rachel frowned and stared, intent now on the girl. “Hospital? What do you mean, cut him?”

“Some kind of surgery, apparently,” Goldie said.

A deep frown swept across Rachel’s face. “Where did they cut him?”

Inez looked down and brushed an index finger across her stomach.

“Did he want to do this?” Rachel asked.

Inez shrugged. “He want be Americano.”

“Then what?” Rachel asked.

“After they cut, they send José to a casa where he meet compadres. Now José Americano.”

Goldie looked at Inez. “Tell her the name of the hospital where Jose went.”

“I not say it good.”

“Yes, you do,” Goldie said. “Tell her.”

“Hef-er-sun.”

Chapter Forty-six

“Good girl,” Goldie told Inez. “You said the whole thing very well. I told you, you could.”

Inez was nodding, looking shyly pleased.

“Now you go on back to the crew, sugar. Rachel here and I need to talk.”

Inez crossed the street, then turned to wave at the two women.

“Jesus Christ.” The words burst from Rachel. “Maybe you were right when you said there might be some kind of ghoulish thing going on at that hospital. Something experimental. And illegal.”

Goldie looked up and down the street as if she expected someone might be lurking. “I don’t know about ghoulish, but it seems pretty clear there’s something weird going on. And somehow they’re able to trade American citizenship for the right to do it.”

“Whatever it is, I think it happened to that Mexican kid I took to the emergency room. That’s where he disappeared to. I’d stake my garage on it.”

“I figured you would say that.”

Rachel stood up. “I’m going up there. Now.”

“Good idea. Wake everyone up. Why not get yourself arrested for trespassing? Might as well add that to your rap sheet.”

Rachel sat back down. “You’re right. I’ll wait till morning.” She turned to look at Goldie. “Wait a minute….” She paused, considering the unthinkable. “No. It can’t be as bad as I think. That would be grotesque, almost like vampires.”

Goldie’s eyes widened until the whites showed all the way around the dark irises. “Of course not…. Nah. Vampires do the neck, not the gut.”

Rachel was nodding slowly and steadily, as if in time to something in her head. Finally, “No, it all fits,” she said quietly, more to herself than to Goldie. “I just have to prove it.”

“Prove what?”

“I think I know what Dan Morris was shipping by chopper four or five times a week.”

999

Rachel’s alarm clock got her up at 4:30. She wanted to be fully awake and alert when she got to the hospital. And she wanted to get there a little after 6:30. The night shift should be getting ready to go home, and the day shift wouldn’t have arrived yet.

She sat on the sofa in the dark, in the oversize tee shirt she wore for a night gown, listening to the chug of the coffee pot. Clancy stood in her lap, put his paws on her shoulder, and purred in her ear as she thought about what she wanted to do, and how she would do it.

“Is it worth the risk?” she asked the cat.

He only watched the ceiling intently as if he could see something that wasn’t there.

The choice, she decided, had already been made for her by whoever had planted that bottle of OxyContin in her jacket, then had her arrested; by whoever had tried to kill or at least disable her; by the person who shot Hank.

She had been fairly sure the shooter in the Angeles was after her, not Hank. But it had been a fuzzy gray sureness. Now she was certain. A white-outlined-in-black certainty.

Something seriously shady, and probably criminal, was going on at Jefferson Medical Center. And she had gotten way too close.

Rachel drank her first cup of coffee as the light outside the window grew a little brighter. Hoping they provided the energy their wrappers claimed, she ate two trail bars. Then she put on sweats, changed tees and went out to jog for twenty minutes on city sidewalks that were blessedly empty at this hour. Only two cars and an SUV passed her.

Jogging helped. So did the shower she took after. She dried her hair and toweled off.

Is this how suicide bombers feel on the morning of their big day?

Dressed in jeans, she took another half cup of coffee, but it tasted of the pot, so she poured it down the drain.

She petted Clancy, who was certain he had done something to earn this attention, then told him goodbye and went down to open the garage. It was early, but she couldn’t take the chance of not getting back soon enough to do it later. With any luck, the local criminals would sleep late.

Yellow rays of sun were just beginning to make their way between the high-rises. A few more cars roamed the street, but the air still smelled sweet.

What would she do once she had proof?

Go to the police? Yes. She would have to. They’d think it was trumped up because of her arrest for the OxyContin. She would insist someone accompany her back to the hospital and up to that ward. Maybe she should start by telling her attorney. Something should be done very soon. Maybe today.

What would she do if she was caught in that ward?

I’ll have to wing it.

Would whoever caught her try to kill her?

In a hospital there must be dozens of interesting ways to do that.

Chapter Forty-seven

Rachel entered the hospital through the side door and took the stairs up four flights. A male nurse passed her going down. She smiled at him and nodded. He followed suit. If she got caught at this stage, the hospital would claim she was intent on stealing drugs.

But she went on climbing.

At the entry to the ward, the door made a metal-on-metal shriek when she pushed through it.

If there’s a staff person nearby, I’m dead.

But no sound of footsteps came from the adjacent hall.

She inched her head around the corner of the wall. No one was in sight.

One of the rooms must serve as a nurse’s station. Which? Hard to know. And there was no point spending any more time in the hall than necessary. Rachel swung around the corner and entered the first room on her left.

Three beds. Three boys. Smallish. Early teens, probably. Two sleeping, one yawning.

“Hello,” Rachel said.

The yawner closed his mouth and gave her a puzzled stare. “Hola?”

Trying to look friendly and non-threatening, Rachel asked, “Do you speak English?”

He sat up, shook his head. Which meant he must have understood the question.

“Por favor.” Please. “English. Inglés.” That rounded out about a quarter of Rachel’s Spanish vocabulary.

The boy shook his head again.

“He speaks inglés?” She pointed at one of the sleeping boys.

“No.”

Rachel looked over at the occupant of the third bed, who was beginning to stir.

“No.”

The frustration must have shown on her face.

The boy who had just awakened got out of bed. Barefoot, hospital gown flapping about his narrow flanks, he took Rachel by the elbow. “Inglés. Sí.” He took her arm and walked her into the hall, down two rooms and toward a door on the right. Rachel was suddenly terrified that he might be leading her to a nursing station.

But the room was like the other: three beds, three boys.

Her escort led her to the bed next to the window, where he shook the shoulder of the boy asleep there. “Miguel,” he commanded. “La señorita, de necesidad, inglés.”

The eyes of the boy in the bed slowly focused and he sat up. He looked a little older than the others. “Está bien.” He turned to Rachel. “Yes, Miss. I help you?”

“Thank you,” Rachel breathed. “Yes, please. First, are there nurses or doctors near here?”

“Now?”

“Yes, now.”

Miguel started to get out of bed. “I find for you?”

“No!” Rachel said quickly. “I do not want to meet a nurse or a doctor.”

“Ah.” He seemed to recognize furtiveness and relate to it. “Someone here all night, then she go and another come.”

“Is she here now?”

The boy looked at a clock on the wall near his bed and shook his head. “I think no.”

“How long…. ” Rachel hesitated.

“One hour, más o menos.”

Rachel nodded, trying to be sure she understood. “When did that hour begin?”

He stared at her frowning, and she decided the question had outstripped his English. She would have to assume it was roughly the hour that overlapped the two shifts.

“I am looking for a boy who was brought—who came here,” she tried to keep the verbs simple, “about a month ago. He was unconscious.” With her hands and cheek, she mimed sleeping. “Small. Smaller than you or that other boy.” She touched the top of her head, then brought the flat of her hand down below her shoulder.

“Sí. I understand,” Miguel said. “But is no boy like that.”

The other two boys in the room were awake now and listening intently. He turned to them and spoke in rapid Spanish. When he finished, one boy shrugged. The other nodded slowly, then let out a short rush of Spanish syllables. “Inconcienti?”

“Sí,” Miguel said.

There was a long pause, then, “Soledad,” came the reply.

“Ah, sí. Quizá. Es posible.” Miguel turned to Rachel. “No boy like you speak of is here.”

Rachel, who had been sure the exchange was the news she sought, frowned. “No? I thought….”

“Esta niña.” Miguel said. “Is a girl.”

Chapter Forty-eight

“No,” Rachel said. “Thank you for trying, but no. This was a boy.”

“How you know? You see?” Miguel stood up and tugged his hospital gown an inch or two above his knees.

“Good heavens, no. Of course not.” Beginning to wonder herself what made her so sure, she frowned, thinking back. “I’m not sure.” Was it just the hair?

“Boy or girl, why you want this person?”

“I own a parking garage down the street. I found two kids locked in a van. I brought them to the emergency room here. They told me one was dead. When I came back the next day to see how the other was doing, they said there was no one like that here. But I know better. I brought him here.”

“Aaah….” The sound was collective, from all three. It was hard to know how much they had understood. They began jabbering quickly in their own language.

Rachel glanced at her watch and knew she had little time left, if any.

“Come.” Miguel drew her to the door of the room and gently pushed her against the wall. “You stay.” He and his cohorts padded out into the hall.