AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yeah, sorry, I’m booked,” I said, and experienced a pleasant echo of the happiness that lit the sheriff’s face.
chapter 19
EXPERIENCE
Elliot Foster encountered several people at the hospital yesterday morning, but it didn’t take long to crown an evident and obvious champion of suspicion.
On the monitor, a tall, dark skinned man in black robes walked from door to door on the third floor. A cross swung from his neck. In his left hand he gripped a vintage floral carpet bag. One of the dayshift nurses confronted him, but not until after he’d spent ten minutes with Elliot.
The dayshift nurse, a brunette by the name of Leona, was working on patient transfers when Caelan and I stopped her after lunch for a brief interview while we awaited Mila’s return.
“Snuck in as a soft-spoken French pastor and peddled religious icons,” she told us. “Rosaries, prayer beads, dream catchers, feathers painted with animals and an assortment of oddball tokens. None of my patients or their families bought any. I talked to him after a woman complained about her mother being bothered.”
“Cameras never caught his face. Could you please describe him for us?” I asked, feeling more confident after Jorge and Caelan had humored my various footage requests (neither of them heard the laughter, and I didn’t either on the next replay, which troubled the sheriff far more than his friend, who reasoned I heard someone in the hall).
“He’d scratched the back of his left hand raw. I’d say that’s what made my inner alarm ring, but the way he stood…he would go completely unblinking still. You’d think a man his size, when he got to rolling it’d be a crawl, but his gestures were quick, short, and precise. Reminded me of a spider, and worse, the minute I took my eyes off him to call security, he disappeared.”
“What can you tell us about his facial features?”
“Narrow chin, high cheek bones. Skeletal. Hazel eyes, not near as kind as our sheriff’s.”
The man flashed her a polite smile, but his focus was all business as he displayed Ingram Hayes’ college ID on his phone and asked if this was the man.
She tapped the screen. “My mother used to say dimples come from angel kisses. He must’ve gotten a big smooch! And his smile, oh, wow, that changed! Knowing this is what he was makes me feel as if I’d met a corpse. If you’d been close enough to experience the stench oozing past his lips, you’d feel the same.” She held the phone closer. “Yep, what a sorry change. Can’t believe he’d ruin such a nice smile.”
“Ruin how?”
“His teeth were pointed.”
“Like a vampire’s?”
Shaking his head, Caelan stepped lightly on my toe.
Leona ran a finger along her gum line. “No, every tooth. Once he’d caught me staring, he talked more softly so as not to open his mouth wide. Made him near impossible to understand, and I did not want to move closer to hear him better.”
Caelan explained how Mr. Hayes was a dangerous cult leader responsible for the massacre in Avon and stressed how lucky Leona had been (and should she announce her encounter to the press, Mr. Hayes or his fanatics would see to it her luck was drained drier than a desert creek).
“Is there anything else you can tell us? Which organization he claimed to work for, where he's from . . . ?” I prompted, eager to redeem myself after the vampire slip.
She shrugged. “Hospitals admit his sort now and again. He’s one of them strange fellows you want forgotten before you’re alone in the parking lot, you know?”
Caelan made her an appointment with a sketch artist at the local police station then let her return to work. When he finished writing his thoughts, I plucked the pen from his grasp.
He was more intrigued than annoyed as I scrawled 'Warren Benjamin - 1940s' across the top of a separate page and passed it back.
“Case-related?”
“My grandmother’s husband. Was part of the Allied troops to take Dachau.” From my worried expression, Caelan knew better than to press the matter in public. “Similar voice to James.”
“Consider it done,” he promised, sliding the pen into the binding. “My team and I have a fair few more interviews to conduct. Get Mila out of here. Pup deserves a more comfortable environment to settle in.” He fished the truck keys out of his pocket and forty bucks from his wallet. “Buy her a stuffed animal, an ice cream or whatever makes kids her age happy for a minute. I'll commandeer a vehicle and meet you at your residence later this evening.”
“To do what?”
We were alone to the side of the hospital lobby and leaned together conspiratorially and still his voice dropped. “Listen, Marcy. To me, you are uncharted waters. It’s my own damn fault if I drown, but adding a child into the mix makes me nervouser than a cat in a room of rockers.”
“Think she'll be safe?”
“Can you rustle up your watch dogs for tonight?”
