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Belief, Danny thinks. It’s all about belief. Isn’t it?
“No. Second floor. All of you. This will be over one way or the other in an hour. Until then, get out. Get safe.”
He goes to his contacts. For a moment he’s terrified that Davis isn’t in them, that he only thought he added her number from the card she gave him. But it’s there and he makes the call, praying her phone isn’t shut off.
It rings four times, then five. Just as he’s despairing, she answers. Sleepy, she sounds more human than ever. “H’lo? Who—”
“Danny Coughlin,” he says. “Wake up, Inspector Davis. Listen to me. I had another dream. This time it was premonitory. Do you understand?”
A moment’s silence. When she replies, she sounds more awake. “Do you mean—”
“He’s coming for me. Unless something changes it, there’s going to be shooting down the hall, I think at the nurses’ station. Screaming. Then he’s here. Dressed like he was when you first came to the school. Black coat, blue jeans. Only that time he wasn’t armed. This time he is.”
“I’ll call the police,” she says, “but if this is some kind of weird joke—”
“Do I sound like I’m joking?” He almost screams it. “The police won’t come, he’s sent them off on some kind of wild goose-chase, don’t ask me how I know that, it wasn’t in the dream, but I—”
“It’s what he’d do,” she says. “If he really means to come after you… yes, it’s what he’d do.” She sounds fully awake now. “I’ll call the cops in Dundee and Pawnee Rock and then I’ll come myself. I’m at my sister’s, only six miles from Regional.”
This second dream is as clear in his memory as the dream of County Road F, the Texaco station, and the constant tinka-tinka-tinka of those price signs against the rusty pole. As real as the dog and the unearthed arm. There were—will be—shots at the nurses’ station followed by a single scream. A man’s scream, so probably Chuck the orderly. And then the man in the black coat and the dad jeans was—will be—standing in his doorway. Looming in his doorway. That strange peninsular widow’s peak surrounded by white skin, those deepset, tired eyes.
For poor Miss Yvonne, he’ll say as he raises the gun. And just as he fires Danny turns his head on the pillow. He looks at the clock on his night table.
“I told the orderly to send everyone down to the second floor, but they’re not going. I can hear them down there. They don’t believe me. Just like him. Just like you.”
He looked at the clock in his dream; he looks at it now.
“Forget about Dundee and Pawnee Rock, Inspector. They’re too far away. He’s going to start shooting at a minute to three. You’ve got thirty-nine minutes to do something about it.”
67
Ella’s sister Regina is alone in the master bedroom. Her husband is away on one of his many business trips. Davis has her suspicions about those trips, and she supposes Regina does, too, but that is a matter for another time. The digital clock beside Regina’s bed reads 2:24.
“Reg! Reggie! Wake up!”
Regina stirs and opens her eyes. Davis is wearing jeans, sneakers without socks, and a KU tee-shirt, clearly without a bra. But it’s the sight of the gun on her hip and the ID laminate her sister is slipping over her head that wakes her all the way up.
“What—”
“I have to go. Right now. I’ll be back before Laurie wakes up.” She hopes so, at least. “There’s a problem.”
“What problem?”
“I can’t explain, Reg. I hope it’s nothing.” She doesn’t believe that, not anymore. She believes Coughlin. About everything. She can only hope it’s not too late. “I’ll call when it’s taken care of.”
Reggie is still asking questions when her sister leaves. Ella runs down the stairs two at a time and snatches her keys from the basket by the door. Her personal car is parked in the driveway and goddam, Regina parked hers directly behind it. Davis pulls forward until the collision monitor hollers and her bumper thumps the porch. She cranks the wheel and backs around Reggie’s Subaru, hitting the Subaru’s bumper hard enough to rock it on its springs. She misses the mailbox by inches when she reverses into the street. She looks at the dashboard clock. It’s 2:28.
The streets are deserted, and she ignores the stop signs, only slowing to look for headlights coming in either direction. She takes 7th, which proves to be a mistake. There’s construction, a line of smudge pots in front of a hole in the road probably meant for a culvert. The pots glow smoky orange in the night. She wheels into someone’s driveway, turns back, and takes 8th, hating the delay. She works her phone out of her pocket, and when she comes to a blinker flashing red at the McKinley Street intersection, she tells Siri to call the Great Bend PD.
Davis identifies herself and tells Dispatch there’s a possible shooter approaching Regional Hospital, send any and all available officers. Dispatch tells her she has no one to send. Someone has phoned in a bomb threat at the high school—three bombs, in fact—and the few officers working the night shift have gone there to close off the streets leading to the building. The Bomb Squad is on its way from Wichita.
“There’s no bomb,” Davis says. “This guy wants to draw your cops off until he finishes what he’s coming to do.”
“Ma’am… Inspector… you know this how?”
The clock on her dashboard reads 2:39. It occurs to Ella that lack of belief is the curse of intelligence. She throws her phone on the passenger seat without ending the call and turns onto McKinley. She floors it, then stamps both feet on the brake as a late-night shambler pushes a shopping cart into the street. She lays both hands on the horn. The shambler gives her a lazy middle finger, tick-tocking it from side to side as he continues on his way. Davis veers around him and tromps the gas, laying fifty feet of rubber.
Here, at last, is Cleveland Street and the bulk of the hospital. The red EMERGENCY sign over the portico is her beacon. It’s 2:46. Beat him, Davis thinks. If Danny was right about the time, I beat h—
