Chapter 8 - Room 614
Marcus took the photograph out of Eli’s hands so fast the paper bent.
Quinn saw the writing.
Her face emptied.
“Eli,” she said, “go with Trooper DeRosier. Now.”
Eli did not argue.
That frightened Marcus more than if he had.
The woman on the floor said nothing while Quinn cuffed her. She was maybe thirty-five. No hospital ID in the database. No wallet. No phone.
The syringe under the bed contained enough fentanyl and midazolam to stop Arthur breathing if pushed quickly through the IV.
The hospital locked the floor.
At 5:41 a.m., Arthur was moved to Room 614 under a false name.
At 5:48, Eli was placed in an administrative office with DeRosier and an armed hospital security officer.
At 5:52, Quinn found twenty-eight hundred dollars in cash taped under the fake nurse’s shirt.
At 6:03, the woman finally spoke.
She asked for a lawyer.
Quinn gave her one.
At 6:17, she asked what she was being charged with.
Quinn said, “We’ll start with attempted murder.”
The woman closed her eyes.
At 6:22, she said, “Vale said the old man would be asleep.”
Marcus was standing on the other side of the interview-room glass.
He felt his hands go cold.
Quinn went in.
“Peter Vale?”
“I never met him.”
“You just said Vale.”
“I got instructions.”
“From who?”
“No.”
“Who gave you the photo of the child?”
The woman looked toward the glass without being able to see through it.
“Somebody who said the kid notices things.”
Marcus had to step away.
The kid notices things.
He heard Eli telling him Vincent looked annoyed at the knocks. He heard Eli saying the badge was wrong.
Somebody had been watching his son closely enough to understand what kind of danger an eleven-year-old could be.
DeRosier met Marcus near the elevators.
“We found your phone.”
“Where?”
“Hospital garage. Level three.”
Marcus stared at him.
“Here?”
“In a trash can beside the east stairwell.”
“Vincent?”
“Camera caught a man in a baseball cap coming in at 5:06. We’re pulling better angles.”
Marcus looked at the time.
5:06.
Peter had still been inside the hospital then.
Someone else had brought the phone.
The hospital camera footage came up twenty minutes later.
The man in the cap kept his head down until he reached the stairwell.
Then the automatic door hesitated.
He looked up.
Vincent.
His face was pale. There was blood on the cuff of his jacket.
He threw Marcus’s phone into the trash and walked back toward the garage.
A second camera picked him up crossing Level Three.
A black SUV waited with the passenger door open.
Vincent got in.
The driver never showed his face.
Quinn froze the plate.
Registered to Carrow Materials corporate security.
Marcus knew the vehicle.
“Mason Harlan,” he said.
“Who?”
“Director of security.”
Quinn wrote it down.
Arthur had hired Mason five years earlier after a warehouse theft. Former corrections officer. Forty-five. Quiet. Efficient. The kind of man Arthur liked because he did not explain the same thing twice.
Quinn called the company.
No answer at Mason’s desk.
His home phone went to voicemail.
At 7:01, a clerk from the hospital came upstairs with the visitor log.
One name had been handwritten at 4:38 a.m.
V. HARLAN.
Room requested: 614.
Marcus looked at it.
Arthur had not been moved to 614 until more than an hour later.
“How did he know the room?”
Nobody answered.
The clerk said, “That page was printed at four this morning.”
Quinn’s eyes narrowed.
The room change had not existed at four.
Someone inside the hospital system had entered it later and backdated the log.
Marcus’s work phone rang.
Unknown number.
He answered.
For two seconds there was only static.
Then Vincent’s voice.
“Marcus.”
“Where are you?”
“You need to stop the sale.”
“Where are you?”
“I didn’t know about the boy.”
Marcus looked through the office glass at Eli.
“Where are you?”
Vincent breathed once, hard.
“Ask Susan what she put under the floor.”
May you like
The line went dead.
