Passage (90 page)

A message from the dead.

He got down off the chair, plugged in the phone, and found Kit Gardiner’s number. “Kit,” he said when she answered. “I need you to come to the hospital. And bring the book.”

T
HEY MET
in the cafeteria. Richard had called Vielle as soon as he hung up with Kit, and she had suggested it as being closer to the ER in case she was paged. “If it’s open,” she had added. “Which I doubt.”

Amazingly, though, it was. Joanna would never believe this, Richard thought, and it was the first thought of her that didn’t feel like a punch in the stomach.

The cafeteria was nearly empty. Because everyone assumes it’s closed, Richard thought, going through the deserted line for his coffee, but Vielle said, filling a paper cup with Coke, “Everybody’s at the Coping with Post-Trauma Stress Workshop.” They paid a put-out-looking cashier in a pink uniform and sat down at the table in the far corner where Kit was already waiting.

“So,” Vielle said, setting her Coke down. “Where do we start?”

“We reconstruct Joanna’s movements that day,” Richard said. “The last time I saw her was in her office. She was transcribing interviews. I went to tell her I was going to meet with Dr. Jamison at one, but that I’d be back in time for Mrs. Troudtheim’s session. That was at eleven-thirty. At a little after one she told Mr. Wojakowski she had something important to tell me, so important it couldn’t wait till I got back to the lab, even though I’d told her I’d be back before two.”

“I talked to her on the phone around eleven-thirty, too,” Kit said. “It must have been either right before or right after you saw her. I called to tell her I’d found the book she asked me to look for.”

“And how did she seem?” Richard asked.

“Busy,” Kit said. “Distracted.”

“But not excited?” Vielle put in.

Kit shook her head.

“Mr. Wojakowski says that when he saw her she was in a hurry, very excited,” Richard said. “And Diane Tollafson saw her then, too, going down the stairs to the ER, which leaves us with an hour and a half.”

Vielle shook her head. “An hour. I talked to Susy Coplis. She says she saw Joanna getting into an elevator at ten to one, also in a hurry.”

“And excited?” Richard asked.

Vielle shook her head. “She only saw Joanna from the back, but Susy was headed for the same elevator, and she was in a hurry, too, because she was late getting back from lunch, but Joanna was in so much of a hurry that by the time Susy got to the elevator, the doors had already closed.”

“Did she see which floor Joanna was going to?”

“Yes,”
Vielle said, pleased, “because she had to stand there and wait for it to come back. She said it went straight up to eight.”

“What’s on eight?” Kit asked.

“Dr. Jamison’s office,” Richard said. “She obviously went up there looking for me and found the note Dr. Jamison had left on her door, saying she’d gone down to the ER, and assumed I’d gone there, too.”

“So that she was on her way there when she ran into Mr. Wojakowski,” Kit put in.

“Yes,” Richard said. “What floor was Susy on when she saw her?”

“Three-west,” Vielle said.

“The ICU’s in the west wing, isn’t it?” Richard asked, and when Vielle nodded, “Did you call Joanna with any patients who’d coded that morning?”

“No, we didn’t have any codes in the ER that day . . . that morning,” Vielle corrected herself, and Richard knew she was thinking of the code alarm buzzing as they worked over Joanna.

He said rapidly, “But a patient could have coded after they were sent upstairs? Did you have any coronaries that morning? Or strokes?”

“I don’t remember. I’ll check to see if we had any life-threatenings,” she said, jotting it down. “And I’ll find out if anyone coded in the ICU or CICU that day. If they did, one of the nurses might have phoned her.”

“And when she interviewed them they told her something,” Kit said.

“Yes,” Richard said. “Is there a way to find out who coded that day, and not just in the ICU and CICU?” he asked Vielle.

She nodded. “Couldn’t Joanna also have talked to a patient she’d interviewed before,” Kit asked, “and they told her something new? Or she found something in the transcript and went to ask them about it? You said she was transcribing interviews when you saw her.”

Richard nodded. He asked Vielle, “Do you know if any of her previous subjects are still in the hospital?”

“Mrs. Davenport,” Vielle said, but Richard doubted very much if Joanna would have voluntarily gone to see Mrs. Davenport, or believed anything she had to say if she had. Who else had she mentioned? Mrs. Woollam. No, Mrs. Woollam had died. He would have to check her transcripts for their names. It was unlikely any of the ones she’d interviewed in recent weeks were still in the hospital in this age of HMOs, but he made a note to check the transcripts for their names.

“We’ve still got an hour unaccounted for,” Richard said. “Vielle, you haven’t found anyone else who saw Joanna during that time?”

“Not yet,” Vielle said.

“What about Maurice Mandrake?” Kit asked. Richard and Vielle both turned to look at her.

“At the funeral, he said he talked to Joanna.”

“He was lying,” they both said together.

“I know he lied about what Joanna said,” Kit said, “but isn’t there a possibility he was telling the truth about having seen her?”

“She’s right,” Vielle said. “Joanna might have run into him accidentally, and if that’s the case, he might be able to tell us which part of the hospital she was in and which direction she was headed.”

Away from Mandrake as fast as she could, Richard thought. “Okay,” he said.

“Joanna might have found something in the transcripts,” Vielle said, “and gone to ask someone about it, but couldn’t she have just found something in them and gone to look for you, in which case the answer would be in the transcripts?”

Richard shook his head. “She would have gone to the lab and then up to Dr. Jamison’s office on eighth, not down to three-west.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Vielle said. “Wait, Kit said she’d called and told Joanna she’d found a book. Joanna could have started over there to get it and gone down to the parking lot and then thought of something she’d seen in the transcripts. No, that wouldn’t have taken her to the west wing either.”

“And she told me she didn’t think she could come get the book till after work.”

“She might have changed her mind,” Vielle said, but Kit was shaking her head again.

“She didn’t show any interest in the book at all,” Kit said. “The first time I found it she was excited, she said she’d come right over. This time I got the idea she didn’t even care.”

“What did she say?” Richard asked. “Her exact words?”

“She said she was really busy, and she didn’t know when she’d be able to get over,” Kit said slowly, trying to remember. “She said, ‘Things are really crazy around here,’ but she didn’t sound like that, like she was harassed and busy.”

“How
did
she sound?” Richard asked.

“Distracted,” Kit said. “When I first told her about the book, I got the idea she didn’t know what I was talking about. She sounded . . . distant, worried. Definitely not excited or happy.”

“And she didn’t say why she was busy or what she was working on?”

“No,” Kit said, but she had hesitated before answering, she wasn’t looking at him.

“She said something,” he said. “We have to hear it, even if it’s bad. What did she say?”

Kit tamped down the straw in her Coke. “She asked me if I’d found out if there were any fires on the Titanic.”

“Fires?” Vielle said incredulously. “The
Titanic
hit an iceberg, it didn’t burn down.”

“I know,” Kit said, “but she wanted to know if there had been any fires on board after it hit the iceberg.”

“Were there?” Richard asked curiously.

“Yes and no,” Kit said. “There had been a fire smoldering in the coal in Boiler Room 6 since before the ship sailed, and there were fireplaces in the first-class lounge and the smoking room, but no other fires.”

“You said she asked you if you’d found this out?” Richard said. “Had she asked you about a fire before?”

Kit nodded. “The day I found the book,” she said. “The first time, I mean. I’d found the book four days before, but when she came over to get it, my uncle had hidden it again.”

“And she asked you about the fires then?”

“Yes.”

And four days later she was still on the same track, Richard thought. Whatever it was.

“That was the day I saw her getting into a taxi,” Vielle said. “She looked like she was in a desperate hurry, and she didn’t have her coat on or her purse. Kit, did she have a coat on when she came to see you?”

“No, just a cardigan,” Kit said, “but she didn’t come in a taxi. She had her car.”

“And she asked you about fires on the
Titanic?”
Richard asked.

“Yes, and I said I didn’t know of any, but I said I’d check.”

“And you’re sure she came in her own car and not a taxi?” Vielle said.

“Yes, because she left in such a hurry. When I came downstairs from looking for the book, she said she had to go, and went out and got into her car without even saying good-bye. I thought she was upset because my uncle had said something to her-he does sometimes, he can’t help himself, it’s the illness-or because I couldn’t find the book—”

Vielle was shaking her head. “She was already upset when I saw her,” she said. “I wonder where she was going in that taxi? What time did she come to your house?”

“Two o’clock,” Kit said.

“Are you sure?” Vielle asked, frowning.

“Yes. I was surprised to see her. She’d said she didn’t think she’d be over till later on that afternoon. Why?”

“Because it was a quarter after one when she got in the taxi,” Vielle said, “and she would have had to go wherever she went, come back, get her own car, and drive to your house, which is how far from the hospital?”

“Twenty minutes,” Kit said.

“Twenty minutes, by two o’clock,” Vielle finished her sentence. “Which means wherever she was going in that taxi could only have been a few blocks away. What’s a few blocks from the hospital?”

“What are you getting at, Vielle?” Richard asked. “You think she found out whatever it was four days ago instead of the day she was killed?”

“Or part of it,” Vielle said, “and then she spent the next three days trying to find out the other part, or trying to prove what she’d discovered. And it had something to do with a fire on the
Titanic
.”

“But there wasn’t a fire on the
Titanic,”
Kit said, “at least not the kind she wanted. When I told her about Boiler Room 6, she asked me if it had caused a lot of smoke, and when I said no, she asked me if there had been any other fires. And she wasn’t excited. She seemed worried and upset. Was she excited when you saw her getting into the taxi, Vielle?”

“No,” Vielle conceded. “I saw her that night after she got back, and she looked like she’d just had bad news. I was worried about her. I was afraid the project was making her sick.”

And four days later, excited and happy, she had run down to her death in her eagerness to tell him something.

“Are you finished with this?” a voice said. Richard turned around. The cafeteria lady was standing there, pointing grimly at his coffee.

He nodded, and she snatched it and the Coke cups off the table and wiped at the table with a gray rag. “You need to finish up. We close in ten minutes,” she said, and went over to stand pointedly by the door.

“We need more time,” Vielle said.

Richard shook his head. “What we need is more data. We need to find out where she went in the hospital.”

“And in that taxi,” Vielle said.

Richard nodded. “We need to find out what she was doing on three-west, what she was looking for in the transcripts—”

“And what happened between her and my uncle while I was upstairs,” Kit said.

“Will he remember?” Richard asked.

“I don’t know,” Kit said. “Sometimes a direct question, if it’s casual enough—I’ll try.”

“I want you to go through the textbook, too,” Richard said, “and see if you can find anything in it about the Titanic.”

“But she’d lost interest in the textbook,” Kit said.

“Maybe, or maybe she’d remembered what was in it and no longer needed it,” Richard said. “And see what else you can find out about a fire. The ship was listing. Maybe a candle in one of the cabins fell over and caught the curtains on fire.”

“I’ll talk to the staff,” Vielle said, “and see if anybody coded that day, and if anybody else saw Joanna. And I’ll try to find the driver of the taxi she took.”

“And I’ll go through the transcripts,” Richard said.

“No,” Kit said, and he looked at her in surprise. “I can go through the transcripts. You’ve got to keep working on your research.”

“Finding out what she said is more important—” Richard began.

She shook her head violently. “There’s only one thing Joanna could have had to tell you that was so important it couldn’t wait, and that was that she’d figured out what the NDE is, and how it works.”