The Night Caller

by Lutz, John

  One of her doctors, a tall guy a nurse had identified as Dr. Lewellyn, Deni’s primary physician, entered the room and glanced over at Coop behind the window. Then he studied the chart at the end of the bed, made a notation on it, and left the room. Coop thought maybe he’d come to the other side of the glass and talk to him, but he continued on his rounds.

  Coop saw a uniformed cop slumped reading a magazine in the main waiting room, but he chose not to sit with him and make strained small talk. Instead he drank a bitter cup of coffee in the waiting alcove near the nurses’ station. Then he took up his position on the hard plastic chair where he would be easily visible, in case there was a change in Deni’s condition.

  Hospital personnel continued to pass in both directions, their footfalls making no sound on the tile floor. He was aware of their passing only because of the faint, flickering shadows created by the overhead fluorescent lighting. Or now and then someone whose shoes squeaked would stride past.

  Something made Coop look up. The cop who’d been in the waiting room was turning the corner near the nurses’ station, heading toward the elevators. One of the nurses was staring in Coop’s direction.

  The atmosphere changed. Time seemed to slow down. A sad-looking man in what looked like a gray maintenance uniform strode past Coop, his shoes squealing like anguished mice on the waxed tile floor. Coop would always remember the sewn-on name tag above his shirt pocket: REV. Curious. What might the letters stand for? Revere? Reverend? Revelations? From the opposite direction a tall, tired-looking man in green scrubs approached. Deni’s physician, Dr. Lewellyn. He was wearing rubber-soled shoes much like Rev’s, only his footfalls made no sound at all. He might as well have been a ghost.

  A suspicion, a possibility, grew in Coop like embers stirred to flame.

  “Mr. Cooper?” the doctor asked. “Denise Green’s friend?”

  Coop said he was. Denise.

  “I’m afraid she’s gone,” Dr. Lewellyn said. He reached out and gently touched Coop’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. There really never was much of a chance.”

  “Did she regain consciousness? Say anything?”

  Lewellyn shook his head no. “She was never even close to being able to do that.”

  Coop nodded. “Thanks for your efforts, Doctor.”

  “The nurse said you weren’t a relative…. Is there anyone the hospital should contact?”

  “Her agent, I guess.”

  “Agent?”

  “She was a writer. Her agent, her editor at Whippet Books…”

  “I’ll tell the nurses.”

  The nurse who’d been staring at Coop had followed the doctor but stayed at a discreet distance, where she stood very still with her hands folded in front of her. Now, sensing their conversation at an end, she approached.

  “Mr. Cooper?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s a phone call for you. You can take it at the nurses’ station.”

  Coop thanked Dr. Lewellyn again, then followed the nurse.

  Another nurse, seated behind the circular counter, lifted a phone on a long cord and set it on the countertop.

  Coop said hello into the receiver, turning away from the seated nurse.

  “It’s Art Billard, Coop. I have some more information on Deni Green.”

  “Art, she just—”

  “I’m calling you as a friend, Coop. But I’m still a cop, so be careful what you say.”

  What the hell was this about?

  “Everything on the hard drive of Deni’s computer was deleted,” Billard said. “Really deleted by someone who knew what they were doing. Our tech heads say there’s no way to recover anything.”

  “Like Georgianna Mason’s computer,” Coop said. He remembered Bette’s notebook computer was never located.

  “That might help.”

  What did Billard mean by that?

  “You were in New York when the Mason murder occurred, weren’t you?”

  “I believe so, sure.”

  “What about when Deni Green was attacked?”

  “Why?” Coop asked, moving cautiously now.

  “The lab boys discovered a bullet imbedded in the back of an upholstered chair by her desk. It appears whoever beat her also shot at her but missed.”

  “The bullet couldn’t be too misshapen. Have it run through the FBI computer, find out what kind of gun fired it. Maybe the barrel pattern is even on file with them and we can identify the individual gun and its owner.”

  “No need to check the FBI files. We had the pattern in the NYPD computer database. It fits the barrel of a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight Police Special. Your gun, Coop. The one you kept when you were pensioned off.”

  Coop said nothing. He was trying to grasp what he’d just heard. The purse stolen from Cara had been returned minus cash and credit cards, and her gun. Coop had given her his gun to replace the one that had been stolen. Now it had been used by whoever attacked Deni. Coop was sure the shot had been fired into the chair precisely so the police would run their ballistics tests and suspect him.

  “You still got that gun, Coop?”

  “No.” He could hear Billard’s hard breathing.

  “If Deni comes to, she can ID her assailant, set this straight.”

  “Deni just died.”

  More ragged breathing. “We’ve got murder, then.”

  “You didn’t make this call, Art.”

  Coop hung up.

  He turned to the nurse who’d told him he had a phone call. “Humor me on something?” he asked.

  She put down her pencil and smiled. “Sure.”

  “When I was sitting there waiting for word from the doctor, I noticed that most of the medical people here wear shoes that don’t squeak on the tile floors. Is there a reason?”

  “Other than it drives us nuts, it can be very distracting in the operating room. And it can cause what someone says beneath a surgical mask to be misunderstood.”

  “So you buy special shoes?”

  “Soft-soled shoes, usually. For comfort.”

  “But they squeak worse than leather on a tile floor.”

  “Some of them do. But you can cut the soles so they’re sectioned and won’t squeal on tile.”

  “Really? Is that fairly common in hospitals?”

  “It is here at Mercy, so I’m sure it’s done in other hospitals. Especially among operating room personnel. You in the shoe business or something?”

  “Sort of.”

  Coop thanked her. Then he left Mercy Hospital as fast as he could without actually breaking into a run. The rubber soles of his shoes squealed on the waxed tile floor with every step, as if in agony.

  Chapter Fifty-three

  There was risk now in everything. Coop didn’t pause outside the hospital to hail a cab. He wanted to walk, anyway. To think. Finally he stopped at a phone booth on East 57th, fed it a cold coin, and called Cara’s apartment.

  He stood with the receiver to one ear, a finger in the other to block the sounds of traffic, and listened to the phone ring over and over on the other end of the connection.

  By the tenth ring he knew she wasn’t going to answer. He told himself she’d worked late, or gone somewhere after leaving the bank. Or maybe she’d simply gone somewhere for supper.

  A siren warbled shrilly and a police cruiser turned the corner and immediately got bogged down in traffic. Dirt-crusted gray snow was banked on one side of the street, narrowing it. As the patrol car sat and the driver worked the siren for repeated soprano howls, Coop hung up the phone and walked on.

  The Night Caller finished showering and began dressing carefully, almost ritually. Jockey shorts, then pants, belt buckled before seating himself on the foot of the bed. One sock and shoe on, shoe tied, before slipping on the next sock and shoe. The day’s bright sun and the heat from the loft apartment had melted all the snow on the skylight, and the resultant glare lay harsh on everything it touched. So much so that after combing his hair he avoided glancing into the mirror, knowing
and loathing what he would see.

  Time to look ahead, the Night Caller decided, choosing a tie from the many in his closet.

  He settled on a red silk Moschino with a subtle woven pattern.

  He stood still for a few seconds, the tie draped over his extended forefinger.

  A Windsor knot, he decided.

  He could tie one without looking in the mirror.

  Cara took a cab to Mercy Hospital and had the driver let her out in front of the nearest entrance to the physical therapy wing.

  She paid the fare, then wearing her new purse strapped across her torso as Coop had suggested, strode through one of the revolving glass doors into the lobby.

  It was warm in there. A large rubber mat had been laid just inside the door and was puddled with melted snow from people’s shoes and boots. In the center of the lobby was a tall artificial Christmas tree with only red ornaments and an aluminum stepladder nearby. A woman at the reception desk directed Cara to the floor where Ann had been treated as an outpatient for several months after her knee operation.

  Cara walked past a line of newspaper machines and a small gift and flower shop to the elevators. With a man wheezing laboriously and a young volunteer tending a woman in a wheelchair, she rode the elevator to the seventh floor.

  Cara had helped Ann during one of her first visits here, accompanying her in a cab and aiding her as she used crutches to enter the hospital and limp on and off the elevator. After that visit, Ann had quickly become more proficient with the crutches and insisted on coming alone for her therapy sessions.

  None of the nurses looked familiar to Cara, until she glanced into an employees’ lounge and saw a heavyset dark-haired woman sitting at a table drinking a cup of coffee.

  Cara stuck her head into the room and looked around. The nurse was alone. Cara saw a large mole on the side of her nose and was sure she was the one who had greeted Ann on the visit when Cara was along.

  “Mind if I come in?” Cara asked. “I’d like to talk to you for a minute about my sister.”

  “They’ll help you at the nurses’ station,” the woman said. “Just down the hall and around the corner, near the elevators.”

  “I know. It’s you personally I want to talk to. I think we met the time I brought Ann in for a therapy session.”

  The nurse sipped coffee, wondering how to deal with this. “We treat a lot of Anns, ma’am.”

  “Ann Callahan. Her knee had been operated on.”

  Now the nurse looked interested. “The Ann Callahan who was…”

  “Yes.”

  “Come in and sit down. Pour yourself a cup of coffee.”

  “I’ll skip the coffee but I’ll sit,” Cara said, and settled into one of the molded plastic chairs across from the nurse.

  “I’m Justine,” the nurse said.

  “Cara Callahan.”

  “You said. Did they ever catch the man?”

  “No. That’s kind of why I wanted to talk. Was there anything about Ann’s visits here that you remember as being unusual?”

  “You a cop?”

  “No. Just a sister.”

  Justine smiled. The mole made her nose crinkle. Her round face was tanned except for her forehead, as if she’d recently returned from wearing a hat on a Florida vacation. “Nothing unusual I can recall. I helped train and monitor Ann for her exercise regimen. She was always cheerful. Nice person.”

  “Am I the only one who ever accompanied her here?”

  “Yes, as far as I know. And you only that once. Ann was the independent type that didn’t want to be a bother. She came here alone by cab. Later, when she was off the crutches, she said she rode the bus.”

  Cara jotted down her phone number on a napkin for Justine and gave it to her, in case Justine remembered something that might prove useful. Then she thanked the nurse and stood up.

  “Come to think of it,” Justine said, when Cara was at the door, “I do recall something. But you oughta talk to somebody in surgery, where they did the knee operation.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I don’t exactly recall what the deal was, but there was talk over there about something odd happening in the recovery room.”

  “Something odd?”

  “Well, not all that odd. Don’t get your hopes up. This was just some of the normal hospital gossip. And not very interesting at that, or I would have remembered.”

  “Is there anyone in particular here at the hospital I might ask?”

  “Eileen Dampp, with two Ps. She’s an OR nurse. That’s if she’s on duty this evening. You know where surgery is?”

  Cara listened to Nurse Justine’s directions to turn this way and that, take this elevator, those stairs, follow the signs…

  She thanked the woman and left her to her coffee break.

  After stopping twice to ask directions, Cara found surgery on the sixth floor of the opposite wing, in a newer-looking part of the building constructed above the parking garage.

  Hospitals, Cara decided, had more twists and turns than the mind of a madman.

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Most surgery is done in the morning. Afternoon and evening are for stabilization and recuperation. There were a few patients’ rooms on the surgery floor at Mercy, and an occasional visitor carrying packages or flowers. But when they left recovery, most patients were taken to rooms on the floor above.

  There was only one woman behind the circular counter of the nurses’ station, a sandy-haired, efficient-looking nurse wearing curiously dated horn-rimmed glasses. She listened to Cara’s request, told her yes there was an Eileen Dampp with however many Ps on duty, and asked Cara to have a seat in the waiting room. As Cara walked away, she saw the woman begin to make a phone call.

  The waiting room, scene of daily impatience and angst, was now unoccupied. It was furnished in plush black vinyl, a sofa and two matching recliner chairs. A TV mounted high on the wall was playing CNN soundlessly. Sensitive Judy Woodruff looked highly offended and wracked with sympathy. There was the usual coffee brewer in a corner, a rack of dog-eared magazines next to it.

  Cara sat down, picked up a Newsweek, then scanned meaningless words about a new biogenetic breakthrough. It mattered not at all what words were on the pages before her. She wasn’t concentrating on the text.

  She didn’t move for the full ten minutes it took for Eileen Dampp to arrive.

  She was a small, attractive woman who had bright blue eyes and an Irish face that another Irishwoman would recognize. There seemed about her a frenetic energy, even though she was standing still.

  “Cara Callahan?”

  Cara started to stand, but Eileen Dampp waved her back down and sat down herself on the arm of one of the recliners. “I’m Eileen Dampp. They told me you had some questions about your late sister Ann.” She had a nice voice, businesslike but kind. Cara guessed she was an exceptional nurse, one of those rare people born to the job of caring for others.

  “I was told that something odd happened during Ann’s knee operation here nine months ago,” Cara said. “Were you assisting in the operating room?”

  “Yes,” Eileen Dampp said, “but I’m guessing that what you were told about happened in recovery. When Ann was coming out of anesthetic she began to scream. She claimed she saw a horrible wooden mask staring down at her. Rather, the mask itself wasn’t so horrible. It was even handsome and pleasant. But she kept screaming about the eyes. Said the mask had malevolent, terrifying eyes. An unfavorable reaction like that isn’t all that unusual, but it was difficult to quiet her down. It seemed real to her, and for whatever reason it scared her a great deal.”

  “Did anyone ask her what she thought the dream meant?”

  “No, we assumed it meant nothing. People recovering from heavy anesthesia are liable to dream anything. The subconscious is a jumble for quite a while after a lengthy operation under general. You’d be surprised at some of the things we hear in recovery. It was the screaming that made this particular instance stick in my mind,
because one of the doctors on staff happened to hear it and chewed out some of the duty nurses for not controlling the noise.”

  “Ann never mentioned anything like that,” Cara said.

  Nurse Dampp shrugged. “She probably realized it was like a simple childhood nightmare and put the incident out of her mind.”

  “Probably,” Cara said.

  Nurse Dampp started to stand up, then settled back down. “I’m sorry about your sister. I hope they catch whoever did it.”

  “Thanks,” Cara said. “Catching whoever did it is the reason I’m here.”

  The nurse looked at her as if about to say something. Instead she did stand up. “If I can help you any other way, just call and ask.”

  Cara thanked her.

  “Callahan. That’s obviously Irish.”

  “Very obviously,” Cara said.

  “As is Cara. In Gaelic it means friend. And here you are still trying to be a friend to your lost sister.”

  “I suppose that’s true.”

  “My maiden name was Reilly.”

  Cara smiled. “It shows. Thanks again for your help.”

  Nurse Dampp returned her smile. “I’m going to a wake in Brooklyn after I get off work tonight. I’ll raise a glass to your success.”

  And I to yours, Cara thought, watching the compact, energetic woman hurry away to return to work.

  She hadn’t felt so Irish since her last confession. Say three Hail Marys and an Our Father. For some reason, that made her think of Ann, and she held back tears.

  The Night Caller took the elevator to surgery on the sixth floor of Mercy Hospital. There were three other people on the elevator. One woman smiled, but they all glanced at his face and looked quickly away, pretending not to notice the gift from his father.

  It had happened long ago and yesterday.

  The grotesqueness (though they hadn’t called it that) was not as noticeable as he thought (they’d told him yesterday and long ago). It was natural for him to exaggerate it in his mind, to assume heightened reaction in others. In time he would understand.