The Timer Game (19 page)

“All shifts?”

“All of them”

Stu nodded and Warren turned back to Grace, his voice still hard. “You take Bill and show him where this happened.”

They went upstairs, first to the bathroom, where she pointed out the footprint next to the ladder, and then on to Katie’s room. Bill grunted as he stared at the spike impaling the note and reached into his brown shiny jacket, pulling out a pair of latex gloves.

“I’ll print these here.”

He squatted next to the bed and snapped on a glove.

“No.”

“I know it’s your territory, CSI and all, but I thought you’d want to be downstairs with Warren. My degree’s in criminology, I won’t screw this up.”

He pulled on the second glove and flexed his fingers.

She shook her head. “That’s not it. Warren’s allergic to latex.”

“Say what?” He clicked on a small flashlight and examined the spike in close light.

“Your gloves. Give me those and bag them and then wash your hands and the outside of the bag. Use my sink, not Katie’s. Warren’s allergic to latex, even airborne particles can cause a severe allergic reaction.”

“I never heard of such a thing.”

She was getting impatient. “You could kill him, close of his airway. I saw it happen to him once, when I was working at the Center. Scared the hell out of me.”

“No kidding.”

“My bathroom’s down the hall.” She pointed as she started down the stairs. “When you’re done, leave the baggie in the wastebasket. Wait right there. I’ll get you a different set.”

She ran down the stairs and through the kitchen out into the laundry room. Warren sat hunched over the charts, a look of tense concentration on his lined face.

She found the box of nitrile gloves on the laundry room shelf and when she carried them back through the kitchen, comprehension and horror flicked across Warren’s face.

“I didn’t even think about that,” he said. “Bill brought latex?”

She nodded. “Keep reading. I’ll be right back.”

She went upstairs, and there she left a chastened Bill, then joined Warren at the kitchen table.

“It’s the damnest thing.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “One of the keys to this mess is Jazz. She has to know more than she’s telling.” Warren called into the family room, “Stuart. You almost done in there?”

Stu came in carrying a length of cable, the front of his shirt smudged so it looked as if Bart sported a mustache. “About another five minutes.”

“Good. I’ve got a job for you. I need you to find a mentally ill woman named—”

“Jasmine,” Grace supplied. “Jazz Studio.” She told him where she’d last seen her and where she lived and Stuart took notes on a small pad he pulled from his hip pocket.

“What does she look like?”

“I’ve got a picture. I just remembered.” She ran to her shoulder bag and found it. Stu studied it and tucked it in his wallet. “Okay, boss. Where do you want her, when I find her?”

“Bring her to the Center. I don’t want her scared, Stu. So keep that in mind. She’s off her meds and definitely unstable so move carefully.”

Grace’s relief at knowing they’d find Jazz and that maybe she could supply information that would help them find Katie was cut short when she glanced at the timer.

“Thirty-nine minutes. What are we looking at?”

Warren shook his head. “So strange. These four charts.” He splayed a heavy, manicured hand across the top of them. “And then Katie’s.”

“Let’s start with Katie’s.” It was back again, that frantic thing in her that was saying they were running out of time and maybe calling him in was too costly, too time-consuming.

“What do we have here?” She positioned the chart so they both could read it and shoved the others out of the way. “Her ear surgery at the Center,” Warren said. His voice was staccato, the tempo speeding up. “That’s all this is.”

“Exactly.” She flipped the page to the face sheet. “A short admit, a
23:59,
meaning Katie was released less than twenty-four hours from her admission time.”

“And you knew the doctor, right?” Warren peered at the name. “Dr. Calderon.”

“Family doctor, dead now.”

“So he’s not a bad guy, at least not on the page.” Warren glanced at the timer and Grace followed his gaze. Her stomach tightened. Thirty-five minutes.

“We’re okay.” He put a calming hand on her arm. His fingers were ice. The stress was taking its toll on him, too.

“Think, Warren,” Warren said, talking out loud, “you’ve written down the names of the scrub nurse, circulatory tech, anesthesiologist.”

“Yes, yes,” Grace said impatiently. “Routine.”

Routine but agonizing. Being with Katie, holding her hand while the anesthetic glided like an eel down the IV, had taxed all Grace’s resources and left her soaked in sweat, sending her into a full-blown attack. She’d thrown up when Katie was safely in surgery.

“Can you remember anything out of the ordinary?”

Grace squeezed her eyes shut. “No, nothing.” She snapped her eyes open. “Yes, yes! Remember? Katie disappeared.” She grabbed Warren’s arm. “Oh, my God, remember, they’d moved her after surgery during a shift change. Stuck her on another floor and nobody knew where she was.”

His face clouded. “You’re right. I fired the nurse over it, too. I couldn’t believe the incompetence. Never got to the bottom of it, either. How she’d been wheeled out of recovery and stuck on another floor.”

It had been terrifying. It had taken two frantic hours of searching before they located Katie on the surgical floor looking dazed, skin damp and buttery, wailing when she recognized Grace. Grace scooped her up with such force Katie had shrieked in pain, and later, Grace found a bruise the size of a bullet on her toddler’s back, where she’d inadvertently banged Katie against the metal crib bar in her haste to pick her up.

She and Dr. Calderon had each called Warren; he’d been livid, insisted he’d get to the bottom of it. Pilot error is what he called it later. Simple pilot error. Never happen again
.

It never had with her. Grace never let it. All it did was reinforce that Warren was spread too thin to monitor the hospital side. She vowed never to use the hospital again. She threw down her pen and glanced at the timer. Twenty-nine minutes.

“What are we missing? We’re missing something,” Warren muttered. She could see his anxiety growing as he tapped a pen sharply against the pages.

“Charts always are supposed to follow the patient,” Grace offered. “Track exactly where they went and what was done.”

“You’re right.” Warren scanned the pages at the end of the ear surgery. “An ID number’s supposed to track every test, every room transfer.”

“Katie was moved to a hall, Warren, and left there.” After four years, it still rankled.

His gaze snapped up and held. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

Grace closed Katie’s chart. “Okay, the others, this is the weird thing, Warren.”

She pulled out the Bettles and Miasonkopna charts. “This first one is the boy who got the heartin-a-box last year
,
Lee’s first patient.” She tapped the second chart. “And this chart belongs to the girl who will get the heart I just saw growing in the lab.”

“We have twenty-one minutes left, Grace.”

“Yeah, I just think it’s a little—”

She was interrupted by a sharp pounding on the door.

The men laying cable immediately sprang to their feet and joined Bill as he stealthily crept down the stairs into the living room. They were all holding guns. Bill motioned to Warren and Grace to keep their heads down. Warren pulled Grace down to the floor.

“You expecting anybody?” he whispered.

She shook her head. The pounding increased and Bill inched toward the door. He was carrying a five shot .500 Smith & Wesson magnum, a big gun that would leave a big hole.

“If you’re there, Mrs. Descanso, can you open up? I’m Arlen, down the street.”

Bill stepped away from the door as Grace peered through the viewfinder. Arlen stared up, nose flared, wearing a baseball cap, hardware glinting in his teeth. She opened the door. He was fourteen, in baggy red shorts and a Chargers jersey. His shoes were boats.

“I got your paper.” He held up the
Union-Tribune
. She checked her watch: 4:41
.

“I already got the Saturday paper you delivered this morning, Arlen.”

He shook his head. “All I know is, somebody paid me fifty bucks to put this one into your hands. Come on, please, Mrs. Descanso, I got to do the right thing. I got an algebra test first thing Monday, that’s bad enough.” He looked ready to cry. On the street, his mother waited in the car, motor running. He handed her the paper and raced down the steps.

“Arlen?”

He turned. Pimples flecked his cheeks and his jaw looked suddenly too angular.

“Was it some guy?”

“What do you mean?”

“Gave you the fifty dollars.”

Arlen shook his head. “Some skater. Seen him around but I don’t know him. I go to St. Charles, so I’m not sure of the Correia kids.” The horn tooted. “Just a kid, okay?”

He turned and darted into the car, and Arlen’s mother gave a half wave as she drove off. Grace waved back cheerily, pretending her life still had meaning and order. Still had Katie in it.

The paper felt like lead in her hands. She closed the door and locked it.

Chapter 21

Saturday, 4:43 p.m.

“Okay, we’re in business,” Bill barked. He was dividing the paper into sections and thrusting them into various hands. “Let’s get this thing laid out and see what it has for us. Stu, you take this section, Brian, you start with these. Lay them on the floor page by page. Grace, Warren, you take these. I’ll check out the classifieds. We’re looking for cutouts, anything marked up, underlined, or any headlines with the following words.”

He turned to Warren and Grace.

“Timer, game, kidnapping, missing medical charts,”
Grace shouted.

“Spike,”
Warren suggested. “Look for
spike
, too.”

“Or
Katie,
” Grace added.

They worked feverishly, laying out pages across the floor until it was covered in islands of newsprint. The only sounds were the rustle of pages, breathing, and the labored repositioning of their knees in front of fresh pages.

“Eight minutes, guys,” Warren said.

Grace looked at the paper helplessly. Two hours had incinerated into eight minutes.

A despair was beginning to burrow into her heart. She was falling into some black maelstrom where nothing was as it seemed, and Katie was always just one tantalizing step away.

“Found it,” Bill said abruptly. He snatched up a page of classifieds and the group crowded around as he punched a square finger at an ad in personals:

THE TIMER GAME

The rules are simple, clean and dry

You beat the timer; she won’t die

At least not yet, and that’s the key.

What box unlocks? Move fast, and see

Underneath, there was a tagline:
Our job is making you look good. Oh, and take the timer with you.

Grace paced. “She’s going to die in seven minutes if we can’t figure this out.”

“Box
,
you have a safety deposit box?” Bill snapped.

She shook her head. “Clean and dry, clean and dry.”

“Laundry,” Warren said. “Doesn’t that sound like a laundry slogan? Where do you go?’

She was already snatching up her purse, the charts, and the timer and racing for her car.

“Wait, I’m coming with you.” Bill labored after her.

“No, you can’t! He’s going to be watching! He sees you and that’s it. He’ll kill her.”

“I’ll take a different car. I’ll park a ways away. Don’t worry. He’s not going to see. But I’m going to see him,” Bill said grimly. “We’re going to nail this asshole.”

The laundry was two blocks away on a side street. Bill pulled to the curb and Grace drove past him and skidded into the strip mall. She ran into the laundry and banged on the bell. Past the hanging racks she glimpsed a young Asian woman bending over a steam table, pressing clothes. Grace dinged the bell over and over until the woman trotted around the racks, wiping her hands on a towel and smiling.

“Do you have anything for me? Grace Descanso.” She dug into her shoulder bag and found her wallet, spilling cards and money onto the counter. The timer dropped out onto the counter and the frond clicked over another notch. Less than three minutes left.

The young woman frowned in confusion. “Do you have the ticket?”

“No, no. Grace Descanso. Please. You must have something for me. Here.” She found her driver’s license and held it up. “Please.”

Time stopped. There were only the sound of churning washing machines and the imperceptible quiver of the enamel frond as it slid again.

Two minutes left.

The woman’s face cleared. “Ah. Yes. I remember now.” She went to the rack directly behind her and ran her fingers lightly along the hangers. She was a tiny woman, with long glossy hair and a short skirt that bagged over her small rump. Her fingers slowed and she detached the hanger, and Grace felt her knees buckle.

It was a single item, bagged in plastic, the wrapper printed with the phrase:
Our job is making you look good

In the plastic was Katie’s jacket. Blue, a zipper. Katie’s warm-up jacket, soft flannel on the inside. Last week they’d torn the house apart, trying to find it, Grace sure Katie must have left it at school—
check Lost and Found!
He must have taken it out of Katie’s closet. Stood there in the dark, breathing, running his hands obscenely over Katie’s things. His boldness stunned Grace. He’d been in the house. He’d taken the jacket. He’d planned this out.

“When was this brought in?” Grace was ripping off the plastic wrapper, checking the cuffs, the pockets of the jacket. Nothing. The palm tree itself was beginning a slow twirl, counting down the seconds. A minute thirty. Twenty-nine. The woman frowned and checked the tag. “That’s odd. It doesn’t say.”

“How much? How much money?” Grace’s fingers checked the seams. Nothing.