The Night Caller (28 page)

Most surgery is done in the morning. Afternoon and evening are for stabilization and recuperation. There were a few patients’ rooms on the surgery floor at Mercy, and an occasional visitor carrying packages or flowers. But when they left recovery, most patients were taken to rooms on the floor above.

There was only one woman behind the circular counter of the nurses’ station, a sandy-haired, efficient-looking nurse wearing curiously dated horn-rimmed glasses. She listened to Cara’s request, told her yes there was an Eileen Dampp with however many
P
s on duty, and asked Cara to have a seat in the waiting room. As Cara walked away, she saw the woman begin to make a phone call.

The waiting room, scene of daily impatience and angst, was now unoccupied. It was furnished in plush black vinyl, a sofa and two matching recliner chairs. A TV mounted high on the wall was playing CNN soundlessly. Sensitive Judy Woodruff looked highly offended and wracked with sympathy. There was the usual coffee brewer in a corner, a rack of dog-eared magazines next to it.

Cara sat down, picked up a
Newsweek,
then scanned meaningless words about a new biogenetic breakthrough. It mattered not at all what words were on the pages before her. She wasn’t concentrating on the text.

She didn’t move for the full ten minutes it took for Eileen Dampp to arrive.

She was a small, attractive woman who had bright blue eyes and an Irish face that another Irishwoman would recognize. There seemed about her a frenetic energy, even though she was standing still.

“Cara Callahan?”

Cara started to stand, but Eileen Dampp waved her back down and sat down herself on the arm of one of the recliners. “I’m Eileen Dampp. They told me you had some questions about your late sister Ann.” She had a nice voice, businesslike but kind. Cara guessed she was an exceptional nurse, one of those rare people born to the job of caring for others.

“I was told that something odd happened during Ann’s knee operation here nine months ago,” Cara said. “Were you assisting in the operating room?”

“Yes,” Eileen Dampp said, “but I’m guessing that what you were told about happened in recovery. When Ann was coming out of anesthetic she began to scream. She claimed she saw a horrible wooden mask staring down at her. Rather, the mask itself wasn’t so horrible. It was even handsome and pleasant. But she kept screaming about the eyes. Said the mask had malevolent, terrifying eyes. An unfavorable reaction like that isn’t all that unusual, but it was difficult to quiet her down. It seemed real to her, and for whatever reason it scared her a great deal.”

“Did anyone ask her what she thought the dream meant?”

“No, we assumed it meant nothing. People recovering from heavy anesthesia are liable to dream anything. The subconscious is a jumble for quite a while after a lengthy operation under general. You’d be surprised at some of the things we hear in recovery. It was the screaming that made this particular instance stick in my mind, because one of the doctors on staff happened to hear it and chewed out some of the duty nurses for not controlling the noise.”

“Ann never mentioned anything like that,” Cara said.

Nurse Dampp shrugged. “She probably realized it was like a simple childhood nightmare and put the incident out of her mind.”

“Probably,” Cara said.

Nurse Dampp started to stand up, then settled back down. “I’m sorry about your sister. I hope they catch whoever did it.”

“Thanks,” Cara said. “Catching whoever did it is the reason I’m here.”

The nurse looked at her as if about to say something. Instead she did stand up. “If I can help you any other way, just call and ask.”

Cara thanked her.

“Callahan. That’s obviously Irish.”

“Very obviously,” Cara said.

“As is Cara. In Gaelic it means
friend.
And here you are still trying to be a friend to your lost sister.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“My maiden name was Reilly.”

Cara smiled. “It shows. Thanks again for your help.”

Nurse Dampp returned her smile. “I’m going to a wake in Brooklyn after I get off work tonight. I’ll raise a glass to your success.”

And I to yours,
Cara thought, watching the compact, energetic woman hurry away to return to work.

She hadn’t felt so Irish since her last confession.
Say three Hail Marys and an Our Father.
For some reason, that made her think of Ann, and she held back tears.

The Night Caller took the elevator to surgery on the sixth floor of Mercy Hospital. There were three other people on the elevator. One woman smiled, but they all glanced at his face and looked quickly away, pretending not to notice the gift from his father.

It had happened long ago and yesterday.

The grotesqueness (though they hadn’t called it that) was not as noticeable as he thought (they’d told him yesterday and long ago). It was natural for him to exaggerate it in his mind, to assume heightened reaction in others. In time he would understand.

They were wrong but they were right. In time he understood everything. The simplicity beneath the complication. Horror and liberation. Always a price.

Two of the other passengers got off at lower floors. The Night Caller and a small, nervous man the lighted panel indicated was going up to eight, blood and radiology, were the only occupants by the time the elevator reached six.

As the doors slid smoothly open, The Night Caller stepped out and barely glanced at the knot of people on his right, about to board the adjacent elevator going down.

His step faltered and he did a double take.

Cara Callahan had just boarded the down elevator with half a dozen others!

He wasn’t imagining it! He was positive! Earlier he’d seen her with the Distraught Dad. Now at Mercy! Cara Callahan!

She must have been talking to people here—on the sixth floor!

Instead of continuing on his way to recovery, he spun quickly in a U-turn and entered the down elevator.

He made it just before the doors slid closed, cutting off the view of the duty nurse at the counter about to greet him, now staring curiously.

Coop walked the streets, head down, shoulders hunched, hardly feeling the cold. The shoe prints had finally yielded their meaning. He was sure now the killer was some kind of hospital worker. A doctor?

He had a hard time believing that one. Though most of the fatal wounds
had
been skillfully inflicted. He recalled the medical report in the Marlee Clark case describing how the deep hack at the back of her neck, just beneath the skull, had severed the ganglion, in effect separating body from brain as neatly as a guillotine blade. Theresa Dravic had been killed the same way. Ann Callahan had been taken with a precise knife thrust. And Georgianna Mason had been alive most of the time in her bathtub while the can opener was used on her, yet little blood or water had been splashed from the tub. That had to require some kind of skill, to render her alive but helpless to resist such a thing. And there was apparent skill in the knife cuts to allow deeper insertion of the plastic saints in the vaginal tracts. Medical skill.

Bette had gone into Mercy for diagnostic tests. Ann Callahan had gone there for her knee operation.

Coop stopped at another public phone. He looked around, realizing he was on Riverside near the park. He dug in his pocket for more coins, stuffed them into the phone with cold fingers, and called Maureen’s home number.

Her phone rang seven times before she answered.

“What do you want?” she asked gruffly, after he’d identified himself.

“A favor. For me and for Bette.”

“Describe it,” she said, sounding dubious.

“Can you go into your office at the insurance company tonight?”

“Tonight? At this hour? Why would I want to do that?”

“To check on something for me. For us. Using your company computer and software.”

“What about Deni Green? Doesn’t she have a computer?”

“Deni is dead.”

“Dead…” Maureen repeated numbly.

He told her what had happened, then said, “You’re the only one who can help now. And Deni wouldn’t have been able to get into the confidential information I—we need, anyway.”

“What kind of confidential information?” she asked weakly. Obviously Deni’s death had shaken her badly.

“Medical and insurance records. If you have access to the computer and databases, I need you to check the names of women I think might be victims of the same man who killed Bette. I need to know if they had any insured medical procedures performed on them during the last several years. Can you check through their medical insurance?”

“It would be easy if my company insured them. Possible if they had other insurance, but it would take a little longer. What specifically are you searching for?”

“I want to determine if they had hospital stays, at which hospitals, and who were the attending physicians and other medical personnel.”

“That last might be difficult. I’d have only the billing records to work with.”

“Will you try?” Coop pleaded. “Will you please go into the office and try?”

“No.”

He held his temper. “Why not?”

“I won’t need to go in. My home computer gives me access to the one at work. I can do what you want right here at my desk in my living room. Or at least I can try. I don’t guarantee results. Do you want me to phone you when and if I find out anything?”

“No,” he said hastily. “I’ll check back with you every hour or so. I’m going to be moving around. Do you have a paper and pencil handy?” he asked, before she could question him about his whereabouts.

She told him to wait a moment, then returned to the phone.

He gave her the names and exact spellings of the victims, working from memory, even supplying her with some of the addresses. He would have added the names Dickerson had given him, but the napkin he’d copied them on at Starbuck’s was in his apartment.

“I’ll get back to you,” he said when he was finished. “And thanks, Maureen.”

“I’m doing it for Bette,” she said, and hung up.

What Maureen hadn’t told Coop was that the last time she’d talked with Deni, in the writer’s apartment, Deni had shown her a list of several other probable victims in different parts of the country. While Deni was in the bathroom, Maureen had taken the opportunity to run off a duplicate of the list on her office copy machine. She’d planned on using the list to goad Coop into more aggressive action.

She turned away from the phone and switched on her computer, then began rummaging through her desk drawers to find the list. Along with the names Coop had supplied her, it would be interesting to match its names with on-line insurance claim files.

Standing behind and very near to Cara in the crowded elevator, the Night Caller studied her slightly distorted reflection in the gleaming steel sliding door. Her image was dreamlike, wavering with her slightest movement as if she were underwater. Perhaps the dream image was accurate. There were Eastern religions that considered God real and life an illusion, a dream.

She hadn’t noticed his face, he was sure, when he’d crowded onto the elevator. Her back had still been turned and she was apologizing to someone, perhaps for stepping on his toe. Now, in the reflecting door, his own distorted features seemed much like hers. Only he knew the distortion was more than simply reflection. Yet only he saw the distortion. In reality his cosmetic surgery performed years ago had been as effective as possible. The scars, the nerve-damaged, droopy eyelids that made him appear always weary, the jagged discoloration along the edge of his jaw that pulled one corner of his mouth sideways, lending him a sardonic, smug expression even in his sleep, all had been repaired. The problem was that such extensive surgery had left his face handsome to perfection, but with a masklike wooden quality that drew stares. It was as if the perfectly carved head of a puppet had been fitted to a human being. Pinocchio, but with a perfect nose.

He’d heard about Cara’s sister Ann’s terror and screaming in the recovery room while under anesthetic for a simple knee operation to remove loose cartilage. Though a local would have been acceptable, on his advice she’d opted for general anesthetic. First the relaxant and amnesiate to dispel anxiety and ensure she’d have no recollection of the procedure, then the Demerol—more than required—all administered intravenously. Perhaps he’d somehow underdosed the amnesiate. The Night Caller was sure the grotesqueness of his face, magnified in the anesthetic haze, was what had frightened Ann Callahan so in the recovery room.

Now he strongly suspected that Cara Callahan had heard about Ann’s terrible vision. It would be remembered because several of the nurses had been chewed out by that asshole Evans for not controlling Ann. The dreamworld attempting to influence yet another dream.

The elevator descended toward hell and the lobby. Elevator etiquette was still being observed, everyone staring straight ahead or upward at a slight angle. Would Cara glance in his direction as passengers got out?

At the fourth floor the elevator stopped and three people got out. At three, two more departed. The remaining passengers spread out, seeking the natural space around them that made fools feel safer. They thought the elevator was getting larger when it was actually getting smaller, warmer.

When the elevator stopped at two, four people piled in, two women and two men. One of the men was immense, so heavy he was having difficulty breathing and the bellows sound of his ongoing struggle filled the elevator. Everyone already on the elevator moved to the rear. The Night Caller edged away from Cara, toward the opposite steel wall, so he could continue standing slightly behind her.

The elevator plunged to the lobby, slowed, found its level, and the doors slid open. Those last to board got out first. The obese man laughed and slid his arm around the shoulders of one of the women. A nurse whose name might have been Amanda stood aside and let an older man and woman file out, then got out herself.

That was when Cara glanced over at the Night Caller.

Looked at him again, then quickly away.

But he knew. He knew them all and had seen the divine spark in her eyes.

She knew who he was. From the street, the cathedral, the description of her sister’s vision, the mating of minds in space, she knew they’d met before.

In a brief suspension of time the Night Caller took it all in. No passengers were waiting at lobby level to board the elevator. A woman had just pushed through the revolving doors, noticed the elevator, and was picking up her pace across the lobby so she might get in. Cara Callahan, studiously not looking at him, was stepping forward to get out.

To do what? Scream? Hurry to a security guard? Phone the police?

We know each other too well for that,
the Night Caller thought, and reached for her.