by Jason Dean
‘Of course.’
‘And?’
‘And nobody entered Mrs Philmore’s room immediately prior to the incident.’
‘Not that I doubt you,’ Bishop said, ‘but is there any chance I could see for myself?’
DuBay’s brow wrinkled as he studied him. Bishop thought he’d refuse, but he must have seen something in Bishop’s expression because he just sighed and said, ‘Okay, follow me, then.’
THIRTY-ONE
The security room was located on the first floor, in the east wing. There were no markings on the door. Just a spyhole at head height, and a square steel plate with a keycard slot at the top in place of a door handle.
Bishop stood to the side as DuBay knocked on the door. A few seconds later there was a brief buzzing sound and the door opened inwards. A wide-shouldered, blond-haired security guard stood there looking at them both.
‘Me again, John,’ DuBay said. ‘We’d like to see that footage again.’
‘Sure,’ the guard said and stood to one side so they could enter. ‘Come on in.’
The surveillance room was about thirty feet by thirty. No windows. Against one wall, a counter ran the length of the room with a couple of chairs underneath. Above that were two long rows of LCD monitors showing real-time colour footage of the hospital interior. Bishop counted twenty-four screens. Two of them were switched off. An older second guard was sitting at a large circular work desk in the centre of the room with a laptop in front of him. On the other side of the table was another open laptop.
The second guard watched as Bishop and DuBay followed John to the wall of security monitors. John took a seat and switched on one of the blank monitors. Then he turned to a large console on the counter and pressed some more buttons. Bishop saw three sets of red LED numerical figures light up at the top of the device. The first line read 018. Underneath that was an active clock readout showing the current time of 08.19.37. Another readout underneath read 05.44.02. This one was static, though. Under that were rows of switches and buttons, as well as a miniature joystick.
Bishop watched as a still shot of a familiar hallway appeared on the monitor. He could make out the small figure of Willard sitting in his seat. He had his legs stretched out as he watched something on his iPod. He was the only person in sight. The corridor was fairly well lit. Much further down on the left, Bishop could just about make out part of the nurses’ station. The time code in the corner of the screen matched that of the third readout. 05.44.02.
‘You know to work it all, right?’ John said, standing up.
‘Thanks, John,’ DuBay said and took his seat. Bishop watched the guard return to whatever he’d been doing on the open laptop.
Bishop turned to the monitor. DuBay pressed the play button and the footage began. The time code and the matching readout on the console both progressed simultaneously. The only evidence that this was actual footage was when Willard momentarily shifted in his seat at 05.44.37. At 05.45.08, the figure of a nurse appeared in the distance. She was standing about where the nurses’ station was. She seemed to be calling to Willard, because he turned his head in her direction, and then got to his feet and walked over to her. At 05.45.24, both figures turned into the next corridor and disappeared from view.
DuBay said, ‘Nothing else happens until five forty-eight.’
‘That’s when the doctor decided to check on room 32?’ Bishop asked.
‘Right.’ DuBay found the fast forward button and pressed it. ‘X2’ appeared in the corner of the screen and the footage began moving faster.
Bishop watched in silence. The corridor remained empty of people. Nobody went into Amy’s room. At 05.47.31, Dubay took his finger off the button and let it play out at normal speed. At 05.48.17, Bishop saw a man in a white coat emerge from the bottom of the screen and enter Amy’s room. At 05.48.27, the door opened again and the doctor leaned out and yelled something in the direction of the nurses’ station. A male and a female nurse quickly appeared and ran over to the room. A few seconds later, another doctor appeared from the bottom of the screen and joined them inside.
But Bishop had already seen what he came for. He wasn’t entirely sure, though. He’d need to double check. But not with DuBay present. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You can stop it now.’
DuBay grunted and paused the footage.
‘I guess you were right, after all,’ Bishop said. ‘No sign of foul play.’
‘That’s what I been telling you. Sometimes these things just happen.’
Bishop said nothing to that.
The younger guard let them out and locked the door behind them. Bishop and DuBay began walking towards the front of the building where the elevators were. They were almost at the end of the corridor when Bishop saw the universal male and female signs a few yards ahead.
‘I need to make a stop here,’ Bishop said. ‘You go on without me.’
DuBay shrugged and carried on walking towards the elevators.
Bishop went into the restroom and spent a minute washing his hands. When he came out again, DuBay was gone. He was walking back to the security room when his cell phone began ringing. He brought it out and took the call. ‘Bishop.’
‘This is Scott Muro,’ the familiar voice said. ‘I’m on my way to the hospital now. Where do I go once I get there?’
‘Intensive Care. Room 32. And just so you know, somebody made a second attempt on Amy’s life this morning.’
‘No shit? Christ. Is she okay?’
‘Yeah, the doctor got to her in time. I’ll tell you all about it when you arrive. If I’m not there, wait for me. I’m following a lead right now.’
‘Ten-four,’ Muro said, and hung up.
Bishop kept on walking. He reached the door to Security and knocked twice.
After a few seconds, John opened the door and smiled at him. ‘Maybe we should start selling tickets,’ he said.
Bishop smiled back. ‘Maybe you should. My partner had to go back upstairs to do some more interviews, but I wanna take a second look at that footage. I think I saw something before, but I can’t be sure.’
‘Sure, why not?’ He led Bishop to the counter and said, ‘Want me to set things up the same as before?’
‘If you could,’ Bishop said. ‘But do it at normal speed this time.’
‘No problem.’ John sat down and played with the console controls again. He began the footage at 05.43.13.
‘And pay particular attention to the time code,’ Bishop said.
The guard nodded and they both watched the screen. Seconds turned into minutes. At 05.45.56, Bishop said, ‘Right around here.’
The corridor on the screen was still empty of people at this point. The time code advanced to 05.45.58 . . . 05.45.59 . . . 05.46.00. Then it stayed on 05.46.00 for an extra beat before continuing to 05.46.01, then 05.46.52 . . .
‘Hey,’ John said, ‘did you see that?’
‘I did,’ Bishop said. ‘I assume it’s easy enough to pause a camera while it’s recording, right?’
John shrugged. ‘Ain’t nothing easier. Select a camera number, press pause and that camera stops recording. Press it again and it continues without a break.’
While he’d been talking, the other guard had come over to listen. He was standing behind John, watching the monitor. Now he said, ‘But the time readout would still carry on as normal. Like, if you started up again thirty seconds later, there’d still be thirty seconds missing in the time code when you viewed the footage.’
‘Right,’ Bishop said. ‘Unless there was a way I could also reset the current time readout before continuing. Like taking it back thirty seconds, say. Then it would carry on recording as if I hadn’t paused at all. Or close to it. Is that possible?’
‘Well, it could be done,’ John said, ‘but the corridor would have to be empty both times or it wouldn’t match up. And doing it that way would mean Camera 18’s time code would now be running out of sync with all the other cameras. Check for me, will you, Phil?’
&n
bsp; The other guard walked over and checked one of the screens near the end. ‘Uh uh,’ he said. ‘Eighteen’s showing the same time as all the others.’
Bang went that theory then. Or maybe not. Bishop leaned against the desk. He rubbed his palm over his scalp, trying to come up with an answer that would cover all the variables. A few moments later he had one. And it was simple, too, as the best solutions usually are. He turned to the guards and said, ‘You were both here at the time, right?’
‘Right,’ Phil said. ‘We relieved the two night guys at five a.m., like we usually do. Our shift starts an hour before the nurses’ changeover, so we don’t miss anything.’
‘And who else was in this room during the next hour?’
‘Well, the cleaner.’ John stared up at Bishop. ‘It’s usually a guy called Mike, but today it was some guy we hadn’t seen before. He told us Mike was off sick.’
‘This new guy, was he light or dark-skinned?’
‘Dude was white.’
‘And what time did you let him in?’
‘About twenty to six, wasn’t it?’ Phil said. ‘Something like that?’
John was nodding his head. ‘Sounds about right. He was here until six, or just before. And come to think of it, he was spending a lot of time on the carpet in this part of the room.’
‘And you were over there working on your laptops the whole time?’
Phil looked sheepish. ‘I guess we were. We both take evening courses, and . . .’
‘Sure, sure,’ Bishop said. He was thinking it could work, but only if the cleaner was in constant contact with his partner on the third floor. ‘Was he wearing earphones?’
‘Yeah,’ John said. ‘Most of the cleaners listen to music while they work.’
‘This guy was also wearing a surgical mask,’ Phil said. ‘And a baseball cap.’
Bishop grunted. A surgical mask in a hospital. What could be more natural? He took a moment to go through everything, step by step, to see if it had legs.
‘So the cleaner’s watching the monitor for Camera 18 while he works,’ Bishop said quietly to himself. ‘At the same time he’d have to be in constant communication with his partner, probably via the hands-free on his cell phone. At five forty-five or thereabouts, he phones the duty nurse and asks her to bring the guard to the phone. He then makes out he’s . . . somebody the guard recognizes and calls him away from that floor. Meanwhile, the second guy’s close by and makes his way to that same corridor and waits just outside the camera’s range. Soon as the corridor’s empty, the cleaner presses the pause button on the console at exactly five forty-six and tells his partner to proceed to room 32. He goes in, resets the volume on the alarm and removes the respirator tube. As soon as the patient starts experiencing breathing problems he exits, and his partner up here resets the clock back to 05.46.00 and continues recording.’ Bishop nodded to himself. ‘Very nice. It was planned right to the second.’
‘Okay,’ John said, ‘but that still don’t explain how Camera 18’s time readout is still in sync with the others, does it?’
Bishop turned to him. ‘Right. Which means the cleaner would need to stick around here for a short while, then do the same thing again. Except when he paused the recording the second time, he’d need to set the clock forward to bring it back into sync with the others.’
They all stared at the monitor. It was 05.52.45. There was a lot of motion in the corridor now. People walking back and forth. Others running.
‘Fast forward if you want,’ Bishop said. ‘I have a feeling the join will be a little more obvious this time round. Our boy would have figured nobody would bother watching the footage for too much longer after the incident.’
John found the fast-forward button without taking his eyes from the screen. The footage began to speed up and they all watched in silence.
Bishop was right. When the moment came it couldn’t have been more obvious.
At 05.57.04, a man and a nurse were standing by the row of chairs, discussing something. In the next frame they had both simply disappeared. Just vanished. And the time had jumped forward to 05.57.51. Forty-seven seconds. That must have been the amount of time the killer was in Amy’s room.
Bishop turned to John and said, ‘Okay, next step is to see where our guy went next.’
THIRTY-TWO
‘I take it there’s a camera in the hallway outside?’ Bishop asked.
‘You know it,’ John said, and pressed a switch on the console. The monitor above them went blank. The 018 number at the top of the console was immediately replaced by 009. He used the keyboard for a few seconds, and said, ‘I’ll start it at five fifty-seven a.m.’
Bishop watched as the screen filled with an image of another corridor running off into the distance. The time was 05.57.18. Bishop spotted the distinctive keycard panel on the third door up on the left. The security room. This corridor was busier than the one upstairs, with people walking back and forth, going in and out of doorways.
The door to Security opened at 05.59.02. A man wearing a black baseball cap and a surgical mask exited, pulling a well-stocked cleaning cart. The man was dressed in dark blue overalls that looked a size too small. He also looked to be wearing gloves. He kept his head down as he left the room. Bishop couldn’t make out any features. He turned and walked away from the camera, pushing the cleaning cart ahead of him. He continued down the hallway at a casual stroll. Just before he reached the end, he positioned the cart next to the right-hand wall and entered a passageway on the left. He was too far away to be anything but a silhouette.
‘Is that the men’s room he’s heading for?’ Bishop asked.
Phil frowned. ‘Hard to make out at that distance, but it looks like it, yeah.’
‘Any more cameras down that end of the building?’
‘Once you turn the corner at the end,’ John said, ‘you’re in the main reception area. Cameras 6 and 7 cover that part of the building. Seven points the other way, but 6 might help us.’
John switched on the second unused monitor and pressed some more buttons on the console. Bishop kept his attention on the first screen. He watched a thin, long-haired girl enter the corridor from the reception end and turn into the same passageway as the cleaner.
Then the other monitor came online. The static image showed the main reception desk on the left of the screen and the entrance to their corridor on the right. There were about six people in shot. Three at the desk, two sitting behind it, and another in the foreground about to exit stage left. The time code in the corner read 05.58.45.
‘Keep that one paused for the moment,’ Bishop said. On the first monitor the long-haired girl exited the passageway at 06.01.32 and walked towards the reception area. At 06.01.54, a male figure in a baseball cap appeared, then moved off in the same direction.
‘Okay,’ Bishop said, ‘let’s see Camera 6 now. Take it to just before the girl came out of the restroom.’
John turned to the other screen and fast-forwarded until he reached 06.01.28. Then he let it play at normal speed.
At 06.01.36, the long-haired girl exited the corridor at a brisk pace. She wore loose-fitting pants and a T-shirt. She continued past the reception desk and soon went out of shot.
At 06.01.59, the man in the baseball cap also exited the corridor, wearing dark glasses. No surgical mask. He was also wearing tan pants, a dark blue sweatshirt and a faded black denim jacket. Bishop knew it was the same man, just from the way he moved. He had the same casual walk as the cleaner. With his head angled down, he walked towards the camera and immediately disappeared at the bottom of the screen.
‘I assume he just left via the front entrance,’ Bishop said.
‘That’s right,’ Phil said.
Bishop sighed and shook his head. ‘It was worth a shot, but he clearly knew where all the cameras were. Can one of you check the trash in the men’s room?’
‘I’ll go,’ Phil said, and left the room.
John said, ‘Don’t you think it’s worth tracking
the second guy, too?’
Bishop shook his head. ‘We don’t know what he looks like, or even from which direction he came. And he probably did an even better job of avoiding the cameras than this one.’ He thought for a moment and said, ‘Do you keep the contact details for hospital employees here? Specifically, your cleaner Mike?’
‘Sure do,’ John said, and went over to a filing cabinet set against the wall. He unlocked it and started going through the drawers. A short while later, the door opened and Phil came in holding what looked like a set of dark overalls.
‘Found these,’ he said. ‘Also this.’ He reached into a pocket, pulled out a hospital ID card and passed it to Bishop.
The card listed the owner as Michael Esteban. The photo showed a Latino guy in his forties with a wide neck and slicked-back hair. ‘This is his genuine ID card?’ Bishop asked.
Phil nodded. ‘It’s genuine.’
John was turning pages of a ring-bound folder. ‘Okay, Darwood . . . Easton . . . Here we go, Esteban, Michael. Got a phone number and an address out in the Bronx.’
‘Good,’ Bishop said. ‘You wanna give him a call?’
John went over and picked up one of the phones on the desk. After consulting the folder, he dialled a number, put it on speakerphone and replaced the handset. They all listened to the ringing tone. A minute passed. Two. John was about to hang up when there was a loud click on the line. Then a hoarse male voice said, ‘Yeah?’
‘Mike?’ John asked.
The sound of a phlegmy cough echoed through the room. Then, ‘Yeah. Whosis?’
‘John over at hospital security. Look, I got a detective here who wants to talk to you.’
Bishop stepped closer to the speaker and said, ‘How you feeling there, Mr Esteban?’
‘Shitty.’ He coughed again. ‘Look, what’s this about? I done nothin’ wrong.’
‘I know you haven’t. Tell me what happened to you.’
