“Some,” Ben acquiesced as they went inside the building. The heaters were now on, priming the building for the costal winter weather, which never got freezing, but the chilly sea wind was enough to make the rush of heavy, warm air feel soothing.
“Mark phoned earlier from the road, said they’d be back in San Francisco in a few hours. I expect they’ll call you as soon as they get in.”
“I expect they won’t,” Ben said, jabbing the elevator button on the wall with more force than necessary. “I don’t expect Mark to go back to his job and his… affliction… quietly. My sister isn’t feeling well, either. I’m concerned, to be honest, and I’d like to get back home as quickly as I can.”
“What happened?” Greg asked as the elevator rushed to Greg’s office floor.
“I’ve noticed some troubling symptoms since we’ve been here. She’s been sleeping a lot, but her fatigue is extreme. She’s pale, nauseated, and she has all these bruises on her arm that she can’t remember getting.”
Greg stared at Ben as they marched down the hall towards his office. Being that it was later in the afternoon, the receptionist was in, but there were no patients around. They went back to Greg’s office and he shut the door.
“You’re thinking it’s cancer, but it’s not,” Greg said swiftly. He shook his head and let out a small groan. “I should have gotten in touch with Mark before he showed up here. This was a mistake.”
“What are you talking about?” Ben demanded.
“I think your sister…”
“You know what,” Ben said, holding up a hand, “don’t. Just don’t. I don’t want to hear anymore shit about my sister being at risk for some demon possession or whatever, okay? She’s exhausted and frankly there’s probably a medical explanation for it. I just had brain cancer, Greg, and it’s not unthinkable that my sister might be at risk herself. A lot of cancers are genetic.”
“A lot are,” Greg said slowly, “and a lot of symptoms that seem like cancer aren’t.”
Ben rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. “This is not what I need.”
“Get her checked,” Greg eventually said as he reached into his desk to pull out an extremely thick file folder. “There’s no harm, and you know what, if her health checks out, call me and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Yeah, okay,” Ben said, taking the folder out of Greg’s hands. “You’re not going to go all split personality on me right now, are you? I mean, can you feel the whole… change… coming on?”
“It’s an invited change, and no, he’s not making an appearance tonight,” Greg said with a small smile.
Ben settled down at the small table in the corner of Greg’s office and pulled out the first, stapled sheet of pages. “A heads up would be nice, just in case,” Ben muttered.
Greg said nothing as Ben dove into sheet upon sheet of signatures, times and dates. As Ben highlighted and circled names and dates associated with the John Doe’s room, he began to see a pattern. “These names aren’t nurses or doctors, are they?” Ben asked after a few minutes.
Greg looked up from his computer with a frown. “Doctors and nurses? Oh, no, those would be just housekeeping and cafeteria staff. Food delivery, tray pick-up, things like that. The medical assistants, nurses and physicians are logged into a computer. I suspect with that warrant, you’ll be able to obtain those records as well.”
“If she can get it,” Ben said. “Still, I’m noticing a trend that started just after John Doe was admitted, and it looks like it stops right around the time he disappeared. In fact, the last signature was two days after he was reported missing, but between then and the night he was gone, the person assigned to clean the room was only signed in once, and it was after midnight.”
“The hour isn’t entirely uncommon, but definitely something to look in to.”
“Do you recall someone in housekeeping going by the name of Shawn Thompson?” Ben asked.
Greg sat back, crossed his arms and frowned. “Possibly. As terrible as it sounds, I don’t find myself conversing with housekeeping very often, and I don’t usually retain their names. I would be better off with a description.”
Ben looked down at the sheet. “Well according to the logs, this Shawn Thompson was assigned to John Doe’s room for nearly two weeks straight. It looks like he was signed in nearly every night at seven PM and signed out around one AM. At one point, he worked what looks like a morning shift from six to noon, and then was signed back in at seven PM, and that went on for eight days in a row.”
Greg frowned, but his eyes lit up as he looked at Ben. “I think I know who you’re talking about. He was a tall fellow, a little slow, had that sort of sallow, nerdy look from a kid who spent most of his life in their parents’ basement. He was French-Canadian, if I recall correctly, bit of an accent, mostly kept to himself.”
“I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume he doesn’t work here anymore,” Ben asked.
“I haven’t seen him in a while,” Greg agreed.
Ben shut the file folder and crossed his arms. “I’m going to need a room to question some staff members. I think we might have our first official suspect.”
~*~
The problem with his impromptu investigation happened to be that most of the employees on the list who might have had contact with Shawn Thompson were either not on shift, or, like Shawn, had stopped working.
The few who bothered to take time out of their shift to talk with Ben either knew nothing, or were absolutely petrified that he was going to find out about their copious marijuana smoking habits and report them to human resources where they would be promptly fired.
It wasn’t until a short, middle-aged woman who worked in the kitchens stopped by, that Ben got any sort of lead in the case. She had heard a rumor that anyone who had seen or spoken to Shawn in the last two weeks needed to head up to the fourth floor where Ben was holding investigation interviews.
Ben was standing by the window, his hand on his forehead when she walked in. He turned quickly and sized her up. Kitchen scrubs, a smear of red marinara sauce on her arm, hair frizzy and unkempt from the hairnet and paper hat the cooks had to wear.
Ben immediately pinned her to her late forties, the grey streaks giving it away more than the few wrinkles she had near her eyes and mouth. Her smile was tense as she walked in, and she seemed a little unsure of herself.
“Are you the er… detective?” she asked. Her voice was rough, but quiet and her accent somewhere Midwest.
“Benjamin Stanford, but please, call me Ben,” he said, taking a couple of long strides towards her with an extended hand.
She took it briefly and then clasped her hands behind her back. “I was um, I was told that you needed to talk to someone about Shawn?”
Ben pulled a chair out and gestured for her to sit. “I’m looking for anyone who might have had contact with him in the last two weeks.”
She nodded, still looking fairly nervous, and perched on the very edge of the chair. “Well I saw him right before he uh, before he quit,” she said softly.
“He quit?” Ben asked.
The woman gave a nod. “My name is Nancy, by the way. Nancy Wilson. I’m the nighttime kitchen manager here.”
Ben quickly took down her name, and asked for her info and permission for the interview before he let her continue. “So, Nancy,” he said after she requested that he call her by her first name, “would you consider yourself Mr. Thompson’s friend?”
Nancy let out a little laugh and shook her head. “Oh no, detective. I don’t know that Shawn had a lot of friends. He worked here a long time, but he wasn’t exactly a social fellow, if you know what I mean. He was always a little awkward with people.”
“But you talked to him?” Ben pressed.
“From time to time. He liked to come down and grab a plate of left-overs after we finished delivering the patient meals. He was always polite, though, a good guy.”
“So you never suspected him of being a criminal?” Ben pushed.
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Nancy laughed. “I don’t think he had it in him. He was young, probably late twenties. I don’t think he ever had a girlfriend, but he was always very respectful with all the nurses and with all of my staff.”
“So if we run his background, we’re not likely to find anything?”
Nancy smiled and shook her head. “I doubt it, detective. This is a hospital, after all, the background checks for even the simplest jobs are fairly extensive. Random drug testing, and the moment something goes on your record, the human resources department is notified. That’s why there’s a lot of turn-over here, you see. A lot of the positions, medical assistants, housekeeping, once they have to do a random drug test, they usually leave.”
“And you think that’s why Shawn left?”
Nancy’s eyes went wide. “I figured he left because he was found dead.”
Ben nearly choked on a swallow of coffee, and he cleared his throat. “Found dead?”
“Isn’t that what this is about?” Nancy asked.
“I’m afraid I have no confirmation on Mr. Thompson’s whereabouts,” Ben said swiftly. “Do you know something that I should know?”
“No,” Nancy said quickly. “Look, I saw Shawn the last night he was here to um… say… to say thank you, for a favor he did for me. He was really shaken up by something, and he said he was being followed. I just assumed with you here asking questions about him, whoever had followed him had killed him.”
Ben stared at Nancy with narrowed eyes. She was holding something important back, and whatever it was, it revolved around the favor. Her hands were trembling when she said it, and she was starting to look even more nervous.
“Tell me about the favor he did for you,” Ben said after a long, tense pause.
Nancy’s eyes went even wider and she looked around. “Oh he just helped me with something, it’s not important,” she said, waving her hand.
Ben closed the notebook he’d been scribbling in and folded his arms, leaning towards her. “Mrs. Wilson, if you’re holding anything back, and it turns out that Mr. Thompson is responsible for a crime, you can be charged with a felony. You’d lose your job, and believe me, you’ll find it difficult to recover. I don’t want to do that to you, and in order to do my job properly, I need all of the information. So please, tell me what this particular favor is.”
Nancy wrung her hands and went even more tense than she was before. “Look, detective, it’s nothing bad, or illegal, I swear. If I tell you, you won’t believe me, and if anyone finds out they’ll probably send me to a psychiatric hospital.”
Ben felt his stomach sink and he had a dark feeling this was going to be related to John Doe’s supposed powers of healing. He sighed and leaned back. “I include the information in my reports that I find pertinent to the case. I’m not writing anything down right now, and unless it’s criminal, you won’t be sent anywhere. I’ve seen some really strange things from the moment I started investigating this case, Mrs. Wilson, so please, just tell me what happened.”
Nancy looked around, as though to ensure no one was listening in, and when she spoke, her voice was low and rapid. “A few nights before Shawn disappeared, he was on duty. There was a patient here that no one liked to deal with, a comatose guy who had been in an accident or something. No one had been able to identify him, and everyone called him the Sleeping Jesus, because he kind of had that look, you know, with the long hair and beard.”
Ben nodded, though part of him wanted to stop the interview right there. “Go on,” he eventually said.
“I wasn’t there when Shawn was cleaning the room. He came down to the kitchens, as usual, but that night he looked really shaken up. His face was all pale and his hands were trembling. I asked him what was wrong but he just sort of mumbled something and then left.
“The next night I was out collecting trays because one of my girls had called in sick, and he was standing in the hallway just sort of staring into space. I said his name a few times but it was like he couldn’t hear me. When I walked up, he suddenly turned around and grabbed the sides of my face.”
Nancy trailed off and shook her head. Ben could see her eyes welling with tears, and when she spoke again, her voice was thick and heavy. “I don’t really know what happened. There was this sort of noise, like a buzzing, and my vision went white, and my head was spinning. I felt like I was going to fall, and when I finally came to, I was on my knees and Shawn was standing against the far wall just staring at me.
“I felt really tired after that,” Nancy went on, wiping her eyes quickly with the back of her hand. “Eventually my relief came in and I went home and slept for almost eighteen hours straight. The next day…” Nancy trailed off and shrugged. “I never told anyone, detective Stanford, but I was sick. I was in stage three kidney failure and the doctor was getting ready to start dialysis. He told me that unless I could get a donor, I was probably going to die. The list for kidney donors is really long, and you know, I’m just some middle-aged woman with no money. I don’t know anyone, and my only remaining family member wasn’t a match.”
“I’m sorry,” Ben said softly.
Nancy laughed and didn’t bother to wipe the tears that were spilling freely from her eyes. “You see, that’s just it. The next day I felt… better. I felt like I hadn’t felt in years. I was worried, you know, so I called my doctor and they started to run tests and… and… somehow I was cured. No one could explain it, but they ran test after test and eventually the doctor said that somehow I was fine. I had the kidney function of a teenager.” Nancy laughed and swiped her hand along her wet cheeks.
“I know it’s crazy,” she continued. “It’s crazy, but it’s true. Whatever happened, it was Shawn. He cured me, just by touching me. I took a few days off from work to deal with what had happened, and I went out and I bought him some flowers and a card, just to say thank you, you know. I even put in a gift card from the electronics store because I figured a kid like him could find some use for it.”
“Did you confront him?” Ben asked.
“Well the night I went back to work, he had called out sick. In fact, he called out the next three nights. Just when I thought I wasn’t going to see him again, he showed up, but he looked awful. His face was pale, he had dark rings around his eyes, and he had all these bruises on his arms that he said he didn’t remember getting. He was just sort of standing in the hall, a few feet away from the Sleeping Jesus’s room when I found him. I asked him if he was okay, and he started muttering like a crazy person. He said he’d lost his memory of the last few days, said that there were invisible people talking to him, and that someone was after him.
“I offered to help, but he just sort of laughed and walked away, and that was the last time I saw him. He didn’t come back to work after that, and Helen from HR said that he was a no-call no-show so they fired him. They sent a welfare check to his house a few days later, but it didn’t turn anything up. I figured… I figured he was dead.”
Ben licked his lips, his hands pressed together, the tips of his fingers pressed to the underside of his chin. “And no one heard from him after that?”
“I figured that’s why you were here. Shawn wasn’t the kind of guy to just abandon a job. He was a weird kid, but he was a good employee. Dependable. Obviously he was capable of amazing things, and I can only assume that someone wanted to get their hands on those things.”
Ben gave a little hum to show he was listening, but inside his head was reeling. For the briefest moment, he entertained the idea that Mark, Greg and Abby were right. That this man was Judas Iscariot, and he had powers, and as in the Bible, was able to transfer those powers to others.
If, somehow, Shawn had suddenly been gifted with the powers, it was likely that the things Greg was warning them all about would use the kid to take Judas out of the hospital and take him somewhere. The only real question was, where?
“Thank you, Mrs. Wilson,” Ben said after several long moments.
“Is that it?”
Ben
nodded and stood up, offering her a hand up. “I don’t feel it’s necessary to include the sensitive information in my report.”
“Oh, thank you,” she breathed, looking like she might suddenly be sick. “Look I know it sounds crazy, but…”
“Like I said, over the last several weeks, I’ve seen a lot of crazy,” Ben replied to her, touching her shoulder lightly. “The only advice I can offer is that you move on with your life and appreciate this second chance.”
“Oh believe me, I will,” Nancy said. “This is a gift from God, I’m convinced, and I’m not going to squander it.”
Grimacing, he showed Nancy to the door and assured her that if he heard anything about the missing employee, she’d be the first to know.
That was a lie, of course. Ben had no intention of ever speaking to Nancy again. The similarity between her story and his was too much for Ben to handle right then, and he decided to head back to Greg’s office to find something distracting.
Greg was with a patient when Ben got in, so the detective waited patiently in the back room until Greg had finished up. “Done for the day, it looks like,” Greg said as he walked in. “Did you have any luck?”
“Possibly,” Ben said with a shrug. “I think this Shawn character is our guy, I just need to track him down.”
“Any luck with the warrant?” Greg asked as he shrugged off his lab coat and sat behind his desk.
Ben shook his head and checked his phone for good measure. “Not a word. I’m afraid she might not be helping me after all, but I might not need her help.”
Just as the sun started to set and Ben was on the road back to his hotel room, his phone rang. As he was driving, he couldn’t look down to see who it was. “Stanford.”
“Are you busy?” came a somewhat unfamiliar female voice.
It took Ben several seconds to realize who was on the line. “Ah, detective Horvath, I wasn’t sure you’d be calling,” he said, pulling over into a grocery store parking lot. He put the car into park and put his free arm behind his head.
The Awakening (The Judas Curse Book 1) Page 24