The Face-Changers jw-4

by Thomas Perry

  “I’ll do my best. Then what?”

  “Give the cops a little preparation. Tell them he’s going to stay unconscious and the cops will contaminate his wound or hamper his recovery if they bother him before morning. Tell them where he’s going to be afterward. Where would that be?”

  “The recovery room.”

  “No good. We need to send him someplace else. Where would that be?”

  “Intensive care—”

  “Someplace where there won’t be a million nurses watching him.”

  “His room, I suppose. I’m sure the police would like it if he were in an isolated place where he wouldn’t attract attention.”

  “It will have to do. Work it out so that one of the staff talks to the orderlies and has him taken there. Then send her on an errand or something so somebody else talks to the cops. Don’t do either thing yourself.”

  Carey held up his hand. “Wait. I’ll work out the details and excuses. Just tell me what you want to happen.”

  She spoke patiently. “Get rid of the cuffs and get the cop to wait outside. Do your work in a half hour, and get him sent to his room. You keep everyone else assuming he’s still in the recovery room until, say, two hours are up. The longer the better. Now, what’s his room number?”

  “It’s 3205. But how are you going to wheel him out of the hospital?”

  Jane shook her head as though she felt sorry for him. “There are cops and reporters in the lobby with nothing to look at but each other. If they see any patient being moved from this hospital tonight, they’ll be all over him. He has to do what nobody thinks is possible. He has to walk out of here under his own power.” She frowned. “Can you get me one of these surgery outfits with the mask and headgear?”

  “Sure.” He opened the door and went outside, then returned with a bundle of green cloth and plastic under his arm. “These should fit you.” He put them into a plastic bag and handed them to her.

  She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him, then threw her arms around his neck and kissed him again, harder. “I’ll get word to you somehow. But don’t expect to see me for a couple of weeks. I’m going to try to buy him enough time for the police to straighten it out and drop the charges. Now go tell him about me, so he has time to think it over.”

  “I don’t have to.”

  She looked at him, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

  Carey shrugged. “He remembers me. He knew that I was on the staff of a hospital in Buffalo, but not specifically this one. Anyway, he didn’t come to Buffalo to get shot and admitted to a hospital. He was trying to make it to Deganawida. He was looking for Jane Whitefield.”

  3

  Jane Whitefield McKinnon climbed the stairs and emerged on the fifth floor. She had chosen the fifth because that was where they put the cardiac patients, and it seemed to her that they would provide the greatest proportion of men over fifty. She walked with an air of certainty, as though she knew exactly where she was going, but as she passed each open door she flicked her eyes to the left to study the room. In the first two rooms the patients were impossible to see, because there were visitors standing around the beds. In the third, the curtain was closed because a nurse was doing something to the patient. She turned the corner, and was in the blind spot from the nurses’ station.

  The fourth door was closed. There was a sign on it that said, “Positively No Admittance.” That was what they did when somebody died. Jane opened the door quietly and slipped inside. They had not moved the body yet: the bed nearest the door was empty, but the bed beside the window was covered with a sheet. There were intravenous bags and feeding tubes on a tall metal stand, oxygen equipment, and several kinds of electronic monitors on carts, but none of them was connected to anything. On the stand near the bed were a pair of glasses and an open magazine with a picture of a hooked bass jumping out of a stream the way bass never did.

  Jane opened the closet, feeling a little hope. The clothes had not been packed yet. The man had probably been in the hospital for a long time, because the clothes looked a little warm for this weather. She took the tweed sport coat, charcoal gray pants, a tie, a blue oxford shirt, a pair of shoes. She put them into her plastic bag, then opened drawers until she found underwear and socks. In the next drawer there was a travel bag. She opened it and saw the usual clutter of toothbrushes and combs and shaving gear, but there was also a little kit for shining shoes. She slipped the polish and a comb into her bag.

  Jane carefully collected the other belongings of the dead man and put them in a drawer, closed the curtain around his bed, then took a last look at the room. She opened the door a crack to be sure nobody was near, then slipped back out into the corridor. She took the sign off the door, threw it into a trash can in the hall, and hurried to the stairwell. She made her way to the hallway outside the outpatient recovery room on the second floor. She looked inside to verify that there was no outpatient surgery at night. The lights were off. She pushed the automatic opener so the double doors swung open, walked in, and watched them close behind her.

  She hurried to one of the little half-cubicles along the wall, closed the curtain, and turned on the light. There wasn’t much in the space: a straight-backed chair, a few cabinets. She changed into the lime-green pants and loose shirt Carey had given her, covered her shoes with the booties, stuffed her hair up under the plastic covering, and tied the face mask around her neck. When she hid her clothes and the bag in the cabinet, she found a box of tight latex gloves, so she put them on too. She went out into the central part of the big room, and looked around. There was a desk with telephones and incomprehensible monitors, and a few more cubicles. On the wall above one of them she noticed a television set like the ones in the patients’ rooms.

  She found the remote control hanging from the bed, and pressed the switch. On the screen she could see the same newswoman standing in the lobby of the hospital. This time the woman was almost whispering. “Lieutenant Ballard, the police press officer, is here, and he’s about to issue a statement, so we’ll listen in.”

  Jane heard a change in the sound, with microphones clanking together and some blips as switches somewhere were flipped, and then a man’s voice. The wide torso of a plainclothes policeman filled the screen. “At approximately six-thirty this evening, police officers at the Main Street Greyhound bus station encountered a man who fit the description of a murder suspect from Illinois. They attempted to question the man, who became nervous and attempted to flee. When they gave chase, he appeared to them to be reaching for a weapon. One of the officers fired his sidearm, wounding the suspect in the shoulder. That’s from the preliminary report, and it’s about all we know at the moment. When we have more—”

  “Lieutenant!” came a reporter’s voice. “Can we talk to the officers?”

  “Both officers have been relieved for the rest of the shift, and we’re not releasing their names just yet.”

  “You said ‘appeared to have a weapon.’ Did he have one?”

  “No weapon has been found yet.”

  “Who is he?”

  Lieutenant Ballard looked down at a sheet of paper. “His name is Dr. Richard Dahlman, age sixty-seven. He is being sought by Illinois authorities in the murder of Dr. Sarah Hoffman, and was considered armed and dangerous. I have no further details about that case.”

  “Will he be sent back to Illinois?”

  “No decision has been made about that.”

  “Will there be an extradition hearing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s his condition?”

  “He went into surgery about twenty minutes ago, at eight-fifteen. I’m told he’s in stable condition and his chances of recovery are excellent.”

  Jane turned off the television set and glanced at her watch. It was eight thirty-two. She wheeled a gurney out to the elevator so she would look as though she had something to do, and put on her surgical mask as she ascended to the third floor. As soon as she was in the corridor, she could see room 3205. Ther
e was a uniformed police officer standing in the doorway, watching two orderlies wheeling a patient inside on a gurney. She stepped quickly toward the room.

  “Hold it,” she said, and the two young men stopped and looked at her, puzzled. She spoke loudly enough so the policeman would hear too. “His room’s been changed. Let’s get him up to the fifth floor so he’ll be near the cardiac unit.”

  The two orderlies wheeled the gurney out of the room, then pushed it to the elevator. Jane was aware of the policeman standing beside her in the elevator, but didn’t look into his eyes. He was young, at least a head taller than she was. His belt was so festooned with equipment—gun and ammunition, handcuffs, folding knife, and pepper spray, all in their own leather holsters—that she heard leather creaking every time he shifted his weight.

  The door opened and the orderlies pushed the gurney out into the fifth floor hallway and followed Jane to room 5895. She opened the door and said to the policeman, “Excuse us for a moment.” He lingered in the doorway for a second to glance into the room, then stepped aside.

  Jane let the two orderlies lift the old man onto the bed, then said, “Thanks, guys.”

  One of them whispered, “Did he really kill somebody?”

  Jane said, “That’s what I hear.” Her voice was an uninterested monotone that made the two men retreat out the door. Jane pulled the privacy curtain to screen the patient’s bed from the door, then knelt down and released the brake on the wheels, and did the same for the bed with the dead man in it. Then she pushed the patient’s bed aside, pushed the dead man’s bed into its place, and pushed the living patient to where the dead man had been.

  She looked around her until she found the oxygen mask, slipped it onto the dead man’s face, slipped a surgical cap over the dead man’s head, and looked at him. He was lying peacefully with his eyes closed. His hair and lower face were invisible. Jane began to search in the drawers around the room. At last she found what she had been looking for: two long, white Velcro strips. She tried to lift the dead man’s arm, but it was stiff. She tugged him closer to the railing on the bed and tethered his arm to the rail at the wrist, then did the same to the other wrist.

  She returned to the living patient by the window, then heard a knock on the door. She rushed to open it. The policeman was standing in the doorway, looking a bit sheepish. “I wondered—”

  “Just a few more minutes,” she said.

  “I’m supposed to be sure he’s restrained.” He was fiddling with his handcuffs.

  “Oh, you can’t use those,” she said. “He’s been in surgery, and they’re not sterile. He can’t get out of the regular wrist restraints we use.” She stepped aside to let the policeman look in and satisfy himself that the dead man in the bed was not going anywhere. He nodded. “I’ll be right out here.”

  She closed the door and went to the bed by the window. She leaned down, and stared into the open eyes of Richard Dahlman. The pupils were dilated and the face had a drug-induced calm. She took the mask off her face and whispered, “You awake?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Did Carey tell you about me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then sit up.” She pulled his good arm and watched him strain to raise himself. She felt frightened. He seemed too weak to do anything, but she had to try. She spoke quietly and firmly. “This is going to be hard, so concentrate. We’re going to try standing. If you fall, we’re lost. If you feel faint, warn me.”

  She pulled his legs over the edge of the bed so they dangled a few inches from the floor. “Are you ready?”

  He seemed to hesitate a long time, his eyes focused on the floor. “Yes.”

  She helped him down and held him for a moment. The hospital gown made him look old and frail. He was thin, but his bare back looked soft and boneless, and his buttocks were shrunken with age. She put her left arm around his waist and pulled his right over her shoulder, then began to move. Each movement of Dahlman’s feet was fraught with risk and uncertainty. At first each shuffle gained them only two or three inches, but then something about the feel of the cold terrazzo floor on the soles of his bare feet brought back to him a sense of balance, and his shuffles became steps.

  She talked to him in soft murmurs as she moved him into the bathroom. “You can do this,” she said. “I can tell you can. If I sit you on the toilet, can you keep from falling?”

  “Yes.”

  It occurred to her that his brain might be so far shut down that no matter what a human voice said, he would answer “yes,” but that didn’t change what she had to do. She eased him down on the toilet. “Just sit here for a few minutes, and I’ll be back to get you out.”

  She closed the door of the bathroom and returned to the doorway. She opened the door to the hallway and beckoned to the policeman. He stepped inside.

  “We’ve got a little problem,” she said. “This room doesn’t have a good oxygen connection. We’ll have to move him back to the first room. Can you get me that gurney?” She pointed down the hall at the gurney she had left there.

  The young policeman looked pleased. At last, he had something to do. He hurried down the hall and brought it back with him into the room. He prepared to reach for the body on the bed, but Jane stopped him. “Don’t touch,” she said. “You’re not wearing scrubs. Go out and wait for me.”

  She pushed the gurney up beside the bed, removed the restraints from the dead man’s arms, lowered the railing, and tugged the body onto the gurney. She re-adjusted the oxygen mask and the cap, restrained the stiff arms again, and took a couple of breaths.

  Jane pushed the gurney along the hallway. She and the policeman moved the gurney into the elevator again, got out on the third floor, and pushed the gurney into room 3205.

  Jane reversed the procedure she had followed the first time, hauling the body off the gurney onto the bed, pulling the covers over it, and then closing the curtain before she opened the door for the policeman. She said, “He’s resting peacefully. Make sure that nobody disturbs him unless they have explicit permission from Dr. McKinnon.”

  “That’s what I’m here for,” said the policeman.

  Jane wheeled the gurney down the hallway, into the elevator, and back to the room on the fifth floor. She opened the bathroom door and turned on the light with trepidation. She had been afraid that Dahlman would be lying on the floor unconscious, but he simply turned and blinked at her.

  “All right,” she said. “Climb aboard.”

  She helped him sit on the gurney, then swung his legs up and helped him lie down. She pushed the gurney back to the elevator, then punched the button for level B, below the ground floor, and pushed the gurney into the outpatient recovery room. She took three deep breaths, then turned on the light in the cubicle she had visited earlier.

  “Time to get up,” she said. She eased Dahlman’s feet to the floor, then helped him to the chair. She retrieved her bag from the cabinet where she had hidden it. “Just rest and get your bearings, and let me do all the work.” She knelt in front of him and slipped the shorts and pants over his feet and up to his knees, then put on the socks and shoes. She removed the hospital gown and gently slipped the shirt on over his useless left arm, then his right, and buttoned it.

  His voice seemed to acquire some authority. “There will be nurses up on the fifth floor looking for me in a minute.”

  “No, there won’t,” she answered quietly. “They didn’t know you were coming.”

  “Of course they did.”

  “Believe me, they didn’t.”

  “But I’m a doctor. I know how—”

  “Tonight you’re not a doctor, you’re a passenger. Do exactly as I say and you’ll be outside in a minute,” she said. “Do anything else, and you won’t.” She slipped the necktie over the back of his neck and quickly tied it.

  “A tie?” He seemed wide awake now. His eyebrow raised.

  “When somebody looks at you, if he thinks, ‘patient,’ then he might think, ‘Which patient?’ If he
does, we’re in trouble.” She took his left wrist and removed the hospital’s plastic ID bracelet, then slipped it into her bag. “Now we’re going to stand up.”

  She raised him to his feet and knelt to pull his pants up. She buttoned and zipped them, then carefully slipped the sport coat over his left arm, then his right. She could tell that he was hurting, in spite of the painkillers, so she eased him back down before she opened her bag and took out the polishing kit she had stolen from the dead man.

  “What’s that?”

  “Hair coloring,” she lied.

  “Do we have time for that?”

  Jane moved around behind him and opened the can of brown shoe polish. “We’ll make time. It combs in, like this.” She began at the top of his head and worked downward, sticking the comb into the dark brown shoe polish and combing it into his hair. “When I asked Carey to describe you, the gray hair came up. He’s not very observant—at least the way a cop is—because he’s never been afraid, never looked at people suspiciously. And the hair is about all any of the others know about you, so put up with it.”

  Jane took off her plastic gloves, then stayed behind him while she took off the pale green hospital clothes and put on her skirt and blouse.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Disguising myself as a normal person.” She stuffed the surgical clothes, the hospital gown, the shoe polish, and the gloves into the bag Carey had given her, and raised Dahlman to his feet again. “Do you think you can walk?”

  He said, “I think so.”

  Jane held his good arm and steered him out into the hallway, then around a pair of sharp corners and into another wing. She kept whispering in his ear. “We’re going out through oncology. They don’t schedule chemotherapy or radiation at night here, and any cancer specialists would be upstairs, where the patients are. But we might meet someone. If we do, can you walk by yourself?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Not very well, but I can present like a chemo patient. Notable pallor, physical weakness, nausea.” He moved forward for a few seconds, then added, “Hair that looks like a toupee.”