Kilbrick stepped forward to ask a question, but Beckert was already striding away toward a dark-blue Ford Explorer idling in the circular drive just beyond the portico. She turned to the camera. “I’m Stacey Kilbrick at Mercy Hospital. I’ll be keeping you up to date with developments as they occur. Please, folks, remember to say those prayers.”
The video lights went out and the bitch face returned.
Gurney headed into the hospital lobby.
Although the exterior of the building came from the same 1960s manual of bleak design as the police headquarters, the interior had been renovated in accordance with more recent ideas about reducing stress in medical settings through the use of soft lighting, colors, and textures. A gently curved cherrywood welcome desk was staffed by three smiling senior citizens.
Gurney’s welcomer was an elegantly dressed woman with a snow-white permanent and light-blue eyes. He told her he’d come to see a patient in the ICU. She regarded him with interest and spoke in a lowered voice. “Are you a police officer?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so. They’re restricting access, but you probably know that. The media people are just so . . .” Her voice trailed off in disgust, as though media people were sewage that might seep into the building. She told him that the ICU was on the second floor and gave him directions to the elevator bank, adding with a frown, “Such an awful thing.”
Stepping out of the elevator on the second floor, he found himself in front of a waist-high partition enclosing an administrative island. On the partition was a sign telling him to turn off his cell phone and other electronic devices before entering the ICU. Behind the island was a nursing station with computer monitors, resuscitation equipment, and rolling IV stands. In a far corner of the station a grinning cop was chatting up an attractive nurse’s aide.
At a desk inside the island, a slim young man with short, gelled hair looked up at Gurney. His teal name tag said he was Bailey Laker. “Can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Rick Loomis. Or Mrs. Loomis.”
“And you are . . .”
“Dave Gurney. Mrs. Loomis asked me to come.”
The cop left the nurse’s aide, his grin fading, and came around to Gurney’s side of the island. His shiny brass name tag said he was C. J. Mazurk. “Hello, sir,” he said with that assessing look common to cops everywhere. “Who did you say you were?”
Gurney presented his ID.
He took it, studied it for a long moment, and handed it back. “DA’s office?”
“Right. Mrs. Loomis is expecting me.”
“She’s down that hall. Visitors area. Turn off your phone.”
Gurney complied. Halfway along the corridor there was a room with couches, chairs, and a wall-mounted TV tuned to a weather channel. When he stepped inside he saw at the far end of the room a sideboard with a coffee machine and next to it three women sitting at a small table. Heather Loomis, Kim Steele, and Madeleine.
His surprise at seeing Kim and his wife faded as he recognized a phenomenon he’d witnessed many times—the instinctive support police wives give each other in difficult circumstances. Heather and Kim were already well acquainted, of course, through their husbands. And it had been Madeleine’s sense of identification with Kim that had solidified his own involvement in the case.
He greeted them, then sat in the fourth chair at the table.
“There’s coffee,” said Heather, pointing to the sideboard.
“Maybe later. Is there any news about Rick?”
“They say he’s in stable condition.”
“Barbiturate-induced coma,” said Madeleine evenly. “To relieve the pressure on his brain. So it can heal. Like after my friend Elaine’s car accident. She was put in a therapeutic coma for a couple of weeks. And she’s perfectly fine today.”
Heather blinked and managed a small smile. Kim took her hand and held it.
A cleaning woman with striking almond-shaped eyes, a dust-mask over her mouth and nose, and a name tag identifying her as Chalise Creel came into the room pushing a janitorial cart. She steered it through the obstacle course of couches and chairs to the sideboard, emptied its waste container into one in the base of the cart, and steered her cart back out into the corridor.
Heather turned to Gurney. “You got my message?”
“It was patchy, but I got enough of it to know you wanted to see me.”
She reached into her sweatshirt pocket, pulled out an index card, and handed it to him.
Scribbled across the middle of the card were some unevenly spaced letters and numbers:
He examined it for a moment. “What is this?”
“It’s a message from Rick. When they brought him in from the ambulance and were attaching the monitor things to him, he was trying to speak. They wanted me to see if I could understand what he was saying, but he couldn’t get it out. I asked the nurse to get something for him to write on, and she came back with a pen and that index card. I put the pen in his hand and the card under it on the stretcher. It took him a long time to print those letters, lying on his back, barely conscious. But that’s what he wrote.”
