Remote Control

by Stephen White

  “She in X-ray or something?” Adrienne called out. Her accent seemed to twang in the empty halls.

  The nurse stopped in her tracks. “What?”

  “Where is she? Where’s my patient?”

  “In there. Treatment one.”

  “No she’s not. This room is empty.”

  “What?”

  He needed only a couple of minutes with Lauren, but he needed her awake.

  She awoke in confusion—was this a dream that her gurney was moving and that her arm was hooked to the bed?

  “Where are you taking me?” she mumbled, jangling the heavy cuff on her wrist and feeling it pull against the rail.

  She tried to look around. Everything was either dark or blurred. She remembered that she was losing her vision. It felt unreal.

  The person pushing the gurney stopped walking and moved alongside Lauren. She was on her side; he was behind her. He leaned in close and she smelled his sour breath. He touched the barrel of a gun to the soft tissue below her ear. “Stay quiet. I’ll hurt you if I need to. I would prefer not to need to.”

  In her postsleep fog, Lauren wondered why the police were treating her this way. She thought she recognized the voice, but wasn’t sure which cop it belonged to.

  The nurse handed Jonas back to his mother and sprinted down the hall to Lauren’s room. The nurse ran in, looked around, and came back out. She stood in the doorway, baffled. Her patient was gone. The gurney was gone.

  “Just a second, Doctor. Dr. Matthews must have ordered something I don’t know about.”

  The nurse marched past Adrienne, whose arms were wrapped around her son, checked the desk, and found nothing revelatory on Lauren’s admission paperwork or order sheet. She picked up the phone and punched the number for the room where Dr. Matthews was dictating.

  “Clark, did you order anything new for the patient in treatment one?”

  “No. The consults are ordered. Privates are coming in from outside. She’s stable. What’s up?”

  “I don’t know. The urologist is here to see her and the gurney is gone from T-1.”

  “Gone?”

  “Gone.”

  “Where’s the cop?”

  “He went upstairs to see the gunshot that came in earlier.”

  “He didn’t move her?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll be there in a second. Call X-ray, somebody must have taken her somewhere by mistake. And call security, just in case.” In a voice intended to be calming, he added, “I hate it when this happens.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Who?”

  “You know who.”

  Lauren was wondering how the police had found out about Emma. She said, “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t say anything to anyone about the disc. Not a word.”

  How could they know about the disc? She asked, “What disc?”

  He pressed the gun hard enough against Lauren’s skin to cause her to whimper. “Tell her to stay quiet about the disc. Or I’ll put the damn data out on the Web.”

  Her mind finally as keen as her terror, Lauren realized that this man wasn’t a cop.

  Scott Malloy was surprised to see Sam Purdy pacing the third-floor surgical waiting room, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his overcoat. Sam had been assigned to work the crime scene, not the hospital.

  “Hey, Sam.”

  “Scott.”

  “You’re still working? What brings you down here?”

  Sam said, “I’ve been spinning my wheels trying to track down the victim’s clothes. Paramedics say they don’t have them, that they’re here at the hospital somewhere. Surgical nurse says the guy came upstairs without his clothes. Said I should check downstairs in the ER. I asked her to bring me the trash from his operating room before I head back down. So I’m waiting, what else is new. Typical bullshit.”

  Both men looked exhausted, wishing all this could wait until morning. “You had any luck?”

  Scott knew that Lauren was Sam’s friend. He couldn’t tell from Sam’s question whether “luck” would include the discovery of incriminating evidence or just the discovery of exculpatory evidence.

  “Lots of lawyers but Lauren’s quiet as a church mouse. She’s scared, Sam, and…I think she’s hiding something.”

  Sam Purdy remembered how coy Alan Gregory had been at the crime scene, remembered thinking the same thing about him. That he was hiding something.

  Scott asked, “What did you find at the scene? Anything?”

  “Snow and blood. Like Dracula spilled a Slurpy. But so far, no shell casing, no slug. One of the CSIs swept the area around the body and photographed the tire tracks that had compressed in the snow. He thinks whoever drove over this guy backed up and did it again for good measure. Basically, though, the scene is shit. It’s like trying to find a snowflake in a snow cone. Soon, everything will be heading down the sewer. After the sun comes out tomorrow, hell, I don’t need to tell you, we’re going to need to get real lucky with forensics.”

  “But the CSI thinks two passes with the car, huh? He get pictures?”

  “Tried. We’ll know in the morning what shows up on film. I’d say fifty-fifty, given the conditions.”

  Scott nodded at the big doors to the OR suite. “Tartabull inside?”

  Purdy said, “Yeah,” with a smile. He knew about Detective Tartabull, too.

  “I’m going in to ask the doc when I can see the guy. Maybe he saw some evidence of more than one pass by a car.” Scott hesitated, then decided he needed to apprise Sam of what was going on. “Lauren’s downstairs in the emergency room, Sam. She has some eye trouble. A doc is coming in to see her.”

  Eye trouble? “Why not just have the nurse see her at the jail?”

  “Demain took a look. Thought it was serious enough to send her here.”

  That perplexed Sam. Demain Jones didn’t transport prisoners on whims. “Do you mind if I say hello to her? I’m on my way down to try and find this guy’s clothes.”

  “No, go ahead. Don’t forget the Edward’s. The line is glowing.”

  “Not to worry. Just going to say hi. Who’s with her down there?”

  “Damn storm, dispatcher hasn’t been able to free a woman officer to guard her. Lauren’s sleeping, I just hooked her to the bed. She’s not much of an escape risk, I don’t think. Which way’s the recovery room?”

  Sam raised his eyebrows a little at the breech in protocol from Scott Malloy, who was not known to bend the rulebook. “Once you’re inside the door, follow that line on the floor. It’ll take you right to the nursing station. See you tomorrow, Scott.”

  “Yeah, Sam, thanks.”

  Sam Purdy rode down in the elevator with a hospital security guard who wanted to be a homicide detective when he grew up. The man peppered Sam with questions about the police academy and whether they would really hold stuff against him from when he was a kid, barely a teenager, really, when he didn’t know any better. Purdy didn’t want to answer any of the man’s questions. Especially the one he assumed was coming about putting in a good word for the ex-delinquent with the department.

  To distract the guard, Sam said, “What about you, what do you have going on a night like this?”

  “Usually, nothing Bupkiss. Walk some nervous nurses to their cars. Jump-start some dead batteries. Occasionally—heh, big time—we get to subdue a drunk. Right now, the folks in the ER seem to have misplaced a patient. It’s my job to find out where they left her. Probably some old lady whose flower’s missing a few petals, know what I mean?”

  “Her? You have a name?”

  “Nah. But if you’re curious, you’re not doing anything, come on. Spend five minutes on my shift and you’ll find out the true meaning of the word ‘dull.’”

  Since Sam was going there anyway, he followed the annoying man to the ER nurses’ station.

  “Who’d ya lose, Marian?” the guard asked with a cocked-hip smirk and a wink to Sam.

  The nurse looked up from a paper on whi
ch she’d been writing. She wasn’t in any mood for the security guard’s attitude. “We’re looking for a patient named Lauren Crowder. Dark hair, thirty-something. She shouldn’t be too hard to find since apparently she’s handcuffed to a gurney.”

  When the guard turned around to commiserate with his new buddy about this amazingly stupid state of affairs, he discovered that Sam Purdy was already gone.

  As Sam ran down the closest corridor, sticking his head into every room large enough to hold a gurney, he radioed upstairs to get Malloy and Tartabull in on the search. Then he radioed dispatch and requested squad cars to watch for vehicles leaving the hospital. Then he yelled for the damn security guard and told him to get his ass outside and get his friends’ asses outside and begin to secure the perimeter of this place.

  “Hey, Sam, how ya doin’?”

  Purdy spun around and had to look down to see who had spoken to him. It was Adrienne, who stood a good foot shorter than him.

  They were acquainted. Sam had investigated her husband’s homicide.

  “Adrienne, hi. Listen, I’m kind of busy, I—”

  “I know you are. Just tell me where to look. I’ll try to help you find her.”

  The man had pushed Lauren’s gurney into an ultrasound room. The room was dark, lit only by the screens of some computer equipment that had been left percolating overnight, and from the inch-wide slit at the doorjamb. Neither Lauren nor the man could see anything more than each other’s outlines.

  He reminded himself he had to hurry, told himself he would allow one minute to complete this warning.

  Lauren was having a vision of tremendous clarity. Unless that weapon that is pressed into my neck is silenced, he can’t afford to shoot me in here. As quiet as this hospital is tonight, everyone will hear it. I have to buy time. They’ll be looking for me soon.

  “One more time. Where is she?”

  The man’s voice was impatient, but it was also unnatural, Lauren thought, as though the man was trying to disguise it.

  Both victim and captor were aware of the seconds ticking away. Lauren considered screaming but feared he was close enough to quickly muffle her plea for help.

  There had to be a way to make some noise.

  “Just keep checking rooms, Adrienne. Holler if you see her.”

  The nurse called out to Sam from the desk. “She’s not in X-ray. She’s not in the lab. And the OR hasn’t seen her.”

  In the waiting room, Cozy Maitlin was fast asleep, once again, on a bench in the children’s play area. Casey Sparrow was watching the production unfolding at the nurse’s desk and was just beginning to figure out from all the yelling that something was up that shouldn’t be.

  She hustled down the hall and confronted Sam Purdy.

  “What’s all the shouting about? Something going on involving my client?”

  He considered lying to her, decided not to. “Lauren’s missing, Casey. We can’t find her.”

  “Oh, Jesus. She ran? Why the hell did she do that? If anyone should know better—”

  “I don’t think it’s too likely that she ran, Casey. She was cuffed to her bed when she disappeared.”

  Casey felt a stab of dread. “Cuffed to her bed? Oh boy, you’ll have to explain that to me later. Sam, something’s going on that I don’t know anything about. Do you guys know what it is?”

  He shook his head.

  Lauren managed to reach the power cord of a computer monitor with her free hand and she yanked the monitor from the top of a portable ultrasound machine. A crash echoed as the tube imploded.

  Adrienne was closest. She was the one who heard the equipment shatter.

  Fifteen seconds later, she rushed into the ultrasound room. She found Lauren alone in the dark.

  Lauren felt as much as saw the bright light sweep the room as the door opened, and she tried to scream, but the sound caught in her throat. She pulled feebly at her cuffed wrist. The futility sapped her of all of her remaining strength.

  Oh God, he’s back.

  “Honey. Baby, it’s me—Adrienne. Are you okay? Don’t worry. It’s going to be fine. You’ll be fine.”

  Adrienne hurried across the room, leaned over her friend, and held her tightly until she stopped shaking, asking only if she’d been hurt. Adrienne kissed Lauren’s limp hair and stroked her back and wished she knew what the hell was going on.

  Erin Rand thanked Lois warmly for her hospitality, promised to call her tomorrow, and descended the front steps to the street. She was praying that she would see Cozy’s car waiting to drive her home, but she was not really expecting him to be there. Instead, she was steeling herself for the disagreeable but possibly necessary task of engaging in some serious flirting with whatever cops were left up here guarding the crime scene.

  She was thrilled to see Alan Gregory walking toward her through the snow. Although the storm was abating, having begun its slide down the foothills toward Denver, she thought the temperature had dropped another ten degrees. She glanced at her watch. Another twenty minutes and her baby-sitter would be spitting nails.

  Alan said, “Hi. I came back up here to give you a ride home.”

  With an aromatic belch evocative of smoked trout, she said, “Excuse me, that’s wonderful. I didn’t expect Cozy to remember I needed a ride.”

  “I felt like I needed to do something. The police have already transferred Lauren to the jail and they won’t let me see her. Cozy and Casey are with her.” He kept walking. “My car’s at the end of the block. Come on, I’ll take you home.”

  “Don’t you want to know what I found out?”

  Alan was assuming that Erin, like he, had been on a fool’s errand. He didn’t expect that she had learned a thing. For a moment he wondered if Lauren would consider these assumptions sexist. Probably, he allowed. He would disagree. He’d love to have the opportunity to argue the point with her.

  “Of course I do. What did you learn?”

  “It’s…provocative. A witness saw the gunshot. But it wasn’t from where the police are thinking. Might be important. I’ll fill you in on the way into town. But it could be good, I think. I wish we knew what the cops knew. Cozy tell you anything helpful?”

  “No.” Alan’s voice was small. “Where am I taking you?”

  “I live near Valmont and Folsom.”

  He unlocked his Land Cruiser and opened the passenger door for her. She got in and he walked around and climbed in the driver’s side and started the car. She started telling him about a videotape the witness had taken after the gunshot. Although he was intensely interested, he had driven less than a minute when his curiosity got the better of him.

  “Erin, have you been smoking dope?”

  She laughed and sniffed at her clothing. “Before this is over,” she said, “you just have to meet Lois. The lady is a trip, an absolute trip.”

  Two blocks from Erin’s house, Alan’s pager went off. He looked at the message and said, “It’s your ex-husband.”

  Purdy and Malloy unhooked Lauren and stood by while she was transferred to a new gurney so they could secure the old one for the crime scene investigators. They taped off the initial examination room and the ultrasound room. The dispatcher told them things were hopping elsewhere in the city and that it might be a while before the CSIs could get to the hospital.

  The detectives were left pacing outside while the physicians—Arbuthnot, Adrienne, and the ER doc—examined Lauren as though she were the president of the United States and Community Hospital were Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

  Sam Purdy and Scott Malloy were arguing with each other and with any of their supervisors who would answer their phones in the middle of this snowy night about what to do next. No one could decide whether Lauren’s decision to invoke the Edward’s doctrine regarding the crime for which she was a suspect meant that they couldn’t question her about the kidnapping that had just occurred.

  Frustrated, Malloy placed yet another call to the police department legal counsel, Lewis Skiles, reque
sting his opinion.

  Casey Sparrow and Cozy Maitlin had already informed the detectives that their client was not going to be interviewed until she was medically stable, and unless they could be present with her during the questioning. Casey Sparrow and Cozy Maitlin didn’t much care what Lewis Skiles had to say about Lauren’s Edward’s situation; their instructions to Lauren were to stay mum.

  Alan arrived at the hospital frantic with concern for his wife. He immediately ran into Casey, who said, “She’s all right, Alan. She’s okay,” before Alan even opened his mouth to ask. Casey calmed him down and told him what had happened.

  “She wasn’t hurt? You’re sure.”

  “Terrified, but not hurt.”

  “Someone’s with her now?” He couldn’t believe what Lauren was going through. Every bit of strain was going to aggravate her medical condition. This night was like an avalanche of stress.

  “Three doctors and there’re cops right outside the door,” Casey said.

  “I want to go see her. Right now.”

  “I’m sorry, I really am, but it’s not possible, Alan. She may be in the hospital, but she’s still in custody. I need your help. Can you focus for a second? Medically, what’s about to happen to Lauren?”

  Alan tried to collect himself enough to respond. “Assuming the problem with her eyes is what I think it is, Arbuthnot, her neurologist, is going to be aggressive. He doesn’t mess around with visual symptoms. I think he’ll start her on IV steroids as a way of minimizing permanent damage to her optic nerves. But she has a history of susceptibility to blood pressure jumps on Solu-Medrol—that’s the steroid they use—so she’ll have to be monitored for a while, couple of hours at least. She’ll get a big infusion of steroids once a day for five days, then oral prednisone for a few weeks after that. You gave her the medicine I brought for her?”

  “Yes, I gave the ER doctor everything you gave me.”

  Alan, mystified, uneasy, said, “But I don’t know about any bladder problem. That’s news to me.”