Boar Island Page 32

  “Bumps and bruises,” she said. “Other than that, nary a scratch.”

  “Oh my God! What happened to you!” came an exclamation.

  She opened her eyes. Lily Barnes.

  It finally occurred to her to wonder why, if she hadn’t called him, Peter was here, and why Lily was here at all.

  “What happened to you?” Anna countered, wincing as she dragged her butt over the plastic, pulling herself up straight in the chair

  “Olivia got real sick,” Lily said. “Vomiting, diarrhea, then a seizure. God, it was terrifying. The doctor thinks she may have an allergy or ingested something toxic. We’ve been wracking our brains. Paint on the bassinet? Dog fur? I’m going to have to go over the whole house with a Q-tip.”

  “Is she okay?” Anna asked, rubbing her eyes. Fine grit scraped across the sclera as if she’d spent the day at a windy beach.

  “Yes. She’s sleeping. The doctor thinks she’ll be fine. They just want to keep her overnight for observation because of the seizure,” Lily said. The young woman’s brave smile looked ragged around the edges. Sinking down, she settled on the edge of the chair next to Anna. Lily laid her hand gently on Anna’s arm and, with seemingly genuine concern, asked, “What happened to you?”

  A nurse pushed through the glass double doors on the far side of the waiting room. One of the doors flashed Anna’s reflection at her. The mystery of why people kept asking what happened to her was solved. In the fracas, her braid had come undone; her hair was hanging witchlike around a face drawn and white with fatigue. Unused to wearing makeup, she’d rubbed her eyes until they were ringed with black mascara. What lipstick remained on her lips was only in the crevices, like red stitches.

  Anna laughed abruptly. “I’m better than I look.” She laughed again. A worried frown formed two lines between Peter’s dark eyebrows. “No. I’m good,” Anna said to put him out of his misery. “Just tired and, obviously, frighteningly disheveled. No new wounds. I’m sorry about poor little Olivia.”

  “Why don’t you stay at our house?” Lily offered. “It’s nearly an hour’s drive to Schoodic. We have plenty of room.”

  Anna accepted gratefully. “I’ll be over after I check on Heath,” Anna said. “I’ll try and be quiet.”

  “Don’t worry,” Peter said. “I doubt we’ll be getting a whole lot of sleep until we have Olivia home safe and sound.” A pained expression crossed his face. “I hate to ask…” he began.

  “Ask,” Anna said.

  “Denise forgot a model in her office. She bought it when we went to Hawaii once. I was going to drop it by her apartment as a sort of good-bye peace offering. Given the situation, would you mind?”

  Anna would, but she didn’t have a baby in seizures, and a checkered past with the model’s recipient.

  “Not a problem.”

  “You go ahead and find your friend. I’ll stick it in your car.” Peter took her keys. “I’ll leave these at the front desk.”

  Anna nodded her thanks and went to find Heath.

  FORTY-SIX

  Denise watched Peter and Lily leaving the hospital. Hand in hand. Enough to make a person want to puke. When Denise and Peter had been together, Peter wouldn’t hold hands in public. Too much like a Hallmark card, he said. Big ranger man was self-conscious showing his softer side, he joked. What a load of crap.

  Didn’t matter. Tonight he was going to lose that softer side. She wasn’t after revenge, Denise told herself. The fact that Peter would suffer was just a perk. Denise was all about justice.

  The radio she’d conveniently forgotten to return to the NPS when she retired lay on the passenger seat. She looked from Peter Barnes to the radio. All day she’d had the thing on, waiting for the shit storm about the missing Anna Pigeon to hit the airwaves. Nothing. Either nobody noticed the pigeon’s comings and goings or they weren’t talking about it. Maybe they booted it upstairs and were quietly waiting for the FBI to come and save their collective ass. Denise didn’t believe that. The NPS considered itself the search-and-rescue experts. They would have mounted a search. Everybody would have been on the radio all day to show how important they were.

  Never mind, Denise told herself. Not her problem. Silence was golden.

  After the adorable Mr. and Mrs. Barnes had driven out of the parking lot, Denise punched a number into her disposable cell phone and waited. Three rings. Four. What was Paulette doing that was so important she couldn’t answer the goddam phone?

  “Hello,” came a whisper in Denise’s ear.

  “Time to take a smoke break,” Denise said. “Bring a face mask, hairnet, and one of those sterile coat thingies.” She punched the END CALL button without waiting for her sister’s response.

  From various trips to Mount Desert Hospital on EMT business, and, once, to have her tonsils out—a thing like mumps or measles, a real bitch when you were an adult—Denise had a fairly good idea of the layout. What she needed from Paulette was specific locations of patients, things that were fluid and couldn’t be easily predicted. That, and where there were cameras, if there were any.

  Ten minutes later by the dashboard clock in the new SUV, Paulette finally saw fit to emerge from the rear door of the hospital beside the Dumpster. In the wan light of the single security bulb, she looked around furtively, the items Denise had asked for clutched to her breast. Even in pink teddy-bear scrubs she managed to look as guilty as hell.

  “Holy shit,” Denise breathed. Paulette had to be kept out of any kind of heat that might be generated by this night. She probably lacked the capacity to lie about her age or weight, let alone a felony murder and all the rest.

  Denise tried to tell herself that this was good, this was the honest half of herself, this was her innocence lost, but she wasn’t buying it. Paulette needed to grow a backbone if they were going to have a good life together. At least for the first couple of years. After that they could let down a little, relax, and enjoy themselves.

  Finally deciding the coast was clear, Paulette trotted toward the Volvo.

  Denise leaned across the console and pushed the passenger door open. Paulette climbed in. “What are we doing? Oh my gosh! Look at you! In scrubs and the new hair color you could be me.” She laughed.

  Paulette had a lovely childlike laugh. Denise smiled, feeling better for the moment. They looked more alike. That meant they were more alike. It was the ravages of the world that had driven them apart, even in Denise’s mind. This felt better. Them laughing. Or at least, Paulette laughing.

  “Did you come to show me the new outfit?” Paulette asked.

  Annoyance returned.

  Like she’d call her out of the hospital in the middle of the night when the world was about to stop spinning to show off her new hair and matching scrubs. The ignorance wasn’t Paulette’s fault. Denise’s decision not to share tonight’s activities with her sister had been a hard but necessary one. She wouldn’t change her mind now.

  “No,” Denise answered, and was proud at how upbeat and normal she sounded. “There’s one last thing I have to do before we can—” She started to say, “Leave this shithole,” but that, too, was not something Paulette needed to know at this point. “Get on with things,” she finished.

  This next part was key to her plan working well. Without it, the plan would still work, but it would be a good deal riskier. “Are there any women in the maternity ward who have babies, born babies, I mean, not fetuses?” she asked, trying for nonchalance and managing only monotone.

  “There’s Mrs. Frazier in 307,” Paulette said. Then, “Oh no! You don’t mean to take that poor woman’s baby! She was in labor for twenty-two hours. The baby is only a day old. Not that it matters how old she is. Honey, I love you for thinking how much I wanted a baby, and I did, but you can’t take her baby.”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” Denise lied. “I just wanted to know if you had extra duties or anything that would keep you away from the infant care ward.”

  “No. Mother and baby are resting comfortably,�
� Paulette said, parroting a phrase she’d heard the real nurses use, Denise assumed.

  “There’s a camera at the ER doors and one on the nurses’ station on the second floor that I know about,” Denise said. “Are there any others?”

  Paulette thought about that for a moment, then ticked a list off on her fingers. “There is one at the main entrance. One in ICU. One in the infant care observation room. I don’t know about the adult rooms on the first or third floor. There aren’t any in the patient rooms—patients don’t like that. None in the operating rooms or halls—the doctors don’t like that. I think that’s all. Maybe one in the pharmacy, but I don’t know for sure. I’ve never seen it. Why? Denise, what are you going to do?”

  “Where is the infant care observation room?” Denise asked.

  “Second floor, between the nurses’ station and the stairs. Why? Denise, tell me what you’re going to do.” Paulette was demanding. That was new. Though she’d wanted her sister to show a little spunk, Denise didn’t like it.

  “Nothing scary,” Denise said. “Tying off a few loose ends.”

  “Do I have to do anything?” Paulette asked. “I wouldn’t like to do anything that would be against doctors’ orders or hospital policy.”

  Denise stifled a sigh of exasperation. This part would soon be over. From then on it would be smooth sailing. “Not a thing,” she assured her sister. “All you have to do is stay near the nurses’ station where you will be on camera for an hour or so.”

  “I can’t just hang around. People will wonder. I have work to do,” Paulette whined.

  Whined.

  Denise couldn’t believe it. They were on the cusp of their new life, with all the things they’d always wanted, and her twin—her twin, for Christ’s sake—was whining about what people might think.

  “Just stay there, or go to the ER, or find an excuse to go to the main entrance foyer. All that matters is that you stay on camera so you can prove where you were.”

  “What are you going to do?” Paulette asked again. Tears welled up in her eyes, green and glowing in the light of the dashboard, lending them the sinister effect of eyeballs floating in a poison soup.

  “I’m going to save a life,” Denise said. “Don’t forget to wedge open the door.” She handed Paulette an old flip-flop she’d purloined from Paulette’s closet. Planning was everything. Rushing was an invitation to disaster. Too bad one seldom got a choice.

  She waited until Paulette was back inside the building, then waited five more minutes to give her time to reach the nurses’ station. Having squirmed into the sterile yellow paper jacket, Denise used the lighted mirror on the back of the sun visor to tuck all of her hair beneath the hairnet—a white paper cap—then put the face mask on, securing the straps firmly behind her ears and pulling the cap down until not so much as a lobe showed.

  She’d overthought this portion of the plan. Cameras wouldn’t matter. The fact that she was identical to Candy Striper Paulette Duffy wouldn’t matter. The sterile gear hid her identity far better than the Lone Ranger’s mask hid his. Surgical gloves finished her preparations. She let herself out of the Volvo, beeped it locked, and walked toward the back door of the hospital.

  Denise retrieved the flip-flop Paulette had used to keep the door from closing, tossed it into the Dumpster, and slipped inside. The fire escape stairs were as expected: metal treads, pipe hand-railing, concrete floor and walls and ceiling, no windows, dim lighting, and devoid of human life. Like most people, nurses avoided physical effort in even its most modest guises. Moving quietly, she climbed to the second floor. Opening the heavy metal door an inch, Denise peeked out.

  Nothing but a long hallway with doors to either side. Some were open, the light from televisions and reading lamps spilling out along with the desultory murmur of TV shows. A nurse carrying a tray with half a dozen miniature paper cups, the kind hospitals put meds in, walked past the semicircular desk where two other nurses sat, eyes on computer monitors. As far as Denise could see, Paulette had been telling the truth. There were no cameras at either end of the hallway, just a single round black eye pointing at the space in front of the desk. Halfway between the fire stairs and the nurses’ station, just as Paulette had said, was a large window beside a glass door.

  The observation room.

  For no apparent reason, Denise’s foot shot out, smacking into the door with a hollow thud. The nurse with the tray of pills stopped. She looked back over her shoulder as if she’d heard. Holding her breath, Denise waited, afraid to move the door even the half inch it would take to close it. Finally the woman shrugged and went about her business.

  No worry, no worry, Denise chanted silently. Hospitals had to be full of things that went bump in the night. Bedpans falling, patients banging on their bed rails, doctors dropping wads of cash on the polished floors, interns fornicating in broom closets. Maybe that was only on television; still, hospitals had to have noises.

  No worry.

  Denise stood stock-still until her breathing slowed, then silently closed the door and began to ascend the steps. Between the second and the third floors was a smell of cigarette smoke. Midstride, she halted. A nurse or doctor too lazy to walk down to the parking lot might have stepped into the fire stairs for a quick puff. Denise waited for the sound of an inhalation, a butt hitting the floor, a door opening or closing. Nothing.

  The smoke smelled stale. Maybe it was from earlier, even a day or more earlier. Cat piss had nothing on cigarette smoke when it came to the staying power of the odor. That was a habit Paulette was going to have to break.

  Denise did a quick peek around the bend in the stair. No smoking gun. She crept up to the third floor and opened the door a crack for surveillance.

  The door closest to the fire escape, from where Denise watched, had a square metal plate with the number 311 on it in black numerals. If the numbers followed the rule of even on one side and odd on the other, 307 would be four doors down and to the right.

  The hallway was empty. Denise’s fingers scampered over her face and head, reassuring her that the mask and hairnet were in place. They were. Forcing herself not to walk too fast or too slow, Denise went down the hall, noting the numbers on the doors. Room 307 was where it was supposed to be. No light showed from the little rectangular window in the door. Peeking in, Denise could see it was a private room. This was good. Retirement was making her stupid; she hadn’t thought what she’d do if it was a double. It wasn’t. This was a sign this was meant to happen.

  In the single bed was a woman-sized lump limned by the pink of a nightlight. Between the woman and the door was a low crib bed. In it was an infant lying on its belly, a hand no bigger than a quarter spread like a starfish on its cheek. Denise took a deep breath, stepped briskly in, gathered up the infant, turned, and stepped briskly out.

  “Point of no return,” she whispered as she carried the baby toward the stairs.

  The new mom hadn’t woken. The child didn’t scream.

  All good. All signs this was meant to happen.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Heath’s burns had been dressed, and, as Anna had surmised, they weren’t severe. There was bruising of her lower limbs, and a hairline fracture of her left shin. Both her palms were skinned and one finger broken. Given the night’s events, all of them had gotten off lightly.

  Anna should have taken her leave after the reassuring results of Heath’s exam were delivered, but she’d stayed on, feeling a sense of comfort in the company of Heath, Elizabeth, and Gwen. When she’d been younger—like last week—she’d craved solitude and silence, the peace of wide open spaces and infinite sky. Now the small room, crowded with people she cared about, all alive, all warm, fed, and sheltered, wrapped comfortingly around her like a soft blanket.

  A loud click announcing the opening of the door startled Anna’s eyes open. She had dozed off in the chair beside Heath’s bed. A nurse in pale green scrubs stuck her head in. Maybe a hospital shift change; Anna hadn’t seen this woman before. She was in h
er fifties with small, brown, very bright eyes in a narrow lined face. Frowning, she glanced around the room.

  “What is it?” Gwen asked.

  “Nothing, not a thing,” the nurse said. “Sorry to bother you.” She pulled her head back and closed the door softly.

  “Odd,” Gwen said.

  “She probably can’t remember where she left her last patient,” Elizabeth said. “That or visiting hours are over.”

  “Visiting hours have been over for a while,” Heath said.

  “Then why—” E began. Heath raised her eyebrows and tilted her head toward Gwen. “Right,” E said. “It’s who you know.

  “I’ve been thinking, it’s going to be weird seeing Tiff,” E said after a moment. “After us getting her mom arrested and what not, I don’t think we can really be friends anymore. I mean, how would that work?”

  “It probably wouldn’t,” Anna said. “Too much blood under the bridge.”

  “Too bad,” Heath said. “Tiffany is a nice girl. None of this is her fault or,” she said, looking pointedly at her daughter, “yours.”

  “I know,” E said. “Even though I know it, it feels like I could have done something.”

  No one argued with her. Anna felt as if there must have been something she could have done or seen or sensed that would have kept things from going as far as they had. Only the fact that Elizabeth wasn’t in ICU, blinded with severe acid burns to her face, kept her from dwelling on what might have been.

  “What will happen to Mrs. Edleson?” Elizabeth asked Anna.

  “She’ll be charged with assault—not just attempted; the acid got on Heath. That’s a charge she’ll have to face here in Maine, I expect. It was Maine law she broke. As for the cyberbullying, I’m not sure if there are statutes in place for that in Colorado or Maine state law. It’s my guess she’ll get a slap on the wrist. Community service. I doubt she’ll do any jail time. If she does, I expect it will only be sixty days or so. If she gets a halfway decent lawyer, he will plead her out with time served and probation. Maybe an order not to go within X number of feet of you or your home.”