Thirty-Eight

This was the third hospital where Andrea was running her game, holding a bouquet of flowers, telling the woman at the reception desk that she wanted to deliver them personally to Lucy Finster for taking such nice care of her mother.

"Lucy Finster?" the woman said, tapping away at her computer. "What department does she work in?"

Andrea recalled that just before she put the clamp on Billy's tit, he'd said something about his wife Lucy working in a hospital cafeteria. Would have been nice if he'd said which fucking hospital. There was one in Milford, a couple in Bridgeport, two up New Haven way, one in Westport. If Andrea had thought to ask, she and Gerhard wouldn't be driving from facility to facility trying to find the elusive little bitch.

Because that was exactly what she was. Elusive.

They'd doubled back to the Finster place, after the police had arrived, mingled with the gawkers lined up along the yellow police tape. Listened to the gossip, how no one had seen Billy's wife.

Which got Andrea and Gerhard thinking that there might be a very good reason for that. She'd run off with their Flizzies. The carry-on bag was not there. Billy sure didn't have it, and he wasn't exactly in a state to tell them where it might have gone. But with Lucy in the wind, well, you didn't have to be fucking Sherlock Holmes to connect the dots.

They realized, of course, that if Lucy had their stuff and had gone on the run, she might not be showing up for work the next day. But if they could figure out which hospital she worked at, then they might be able to find some of her friends. Maybe one of them would lead them to her.

So here she was, at a hospital in New Haven, her second stop, holding a cheap bouquet she'd bought from someone on a street corner, asking for Lucy.

To the receptionist, she said, "I know it sounds funny, her being able to help my mom when she worked in the cafeteria, not being a doctor or a nurse, but Mom, bless her, in her last days, she'd come down to the cafeteria and Lucy always made time for her and she didn't have to do that. It just shows that everyone who works here, in whatever capacity, really cares about the patients."

The receptionist looked up from her screen. "I'm sorry, but we don't have anyone here by that—"

"Thanks for nuthin', bitch," Andrea said, heading for the door and hoping these shit flowers wouldn't completely wilt before she got to the next hospital.

By Tuesday afternoon, Marta was reviewing everything she had, so far, on the death of one William "Billy" Finster. He had died of a gunshot wound, at close range, to his upper abdomen. The bullet had gone right though his heart. It would have been quick.

A check of footage from neighbors' surveillance video turned up little. Only a couple of homeowners had tricked their places up with security cameras that captured street traffic, and what video that had been recovered had not proved useful. They did have a partial license plate and the make and model of a car that had been seen near the Finster house, and Marta had been waiting to hear back on that.

No cell phone had been found at the scene. Not on Billy, not in the garage, not in the house. If Billy'd been in the habit of carrying a phone, someone, presumably whoever had shot him, had taken it.

Before packing it in the night before, she had gone to Paulie's, the chicken wing place. She'd found a receipt tucked into the folds of the box and showed it to the manager. He said it hadn't been a delivery. The customer had come to the shop, placed the order, and waited outside in his pickup truck until it was ready.

"You get his name?" Marta asked. She already knew, from looking at the receipt, that it had been a cash transaction. No credit card to help with an ID.

The manager shook his head. "Nope. When it was ready I just waved and he came in and got it."

"He a regular? Seen him before?"

"Once or twice, maybe? I'm not sure."

When asked for a description, the manager was beyond vague. Height? "Kind of average." Weight? "Sort of average, I would say." Hair color? "Kind of average."

The best Marta could get out of him was that the guy was white, in his twenties, and, after Marta showed him a picture of the deceased she'd taken from his driver's license, definitely not Billy Finster.

"The truck?"

"An old Ford, I think. Look, I'm deep-frying wings all night. Don't have time to take notice of anybody."

Her next stop was the hospital in Bridgeport where Billy Finster's wife worked. The Finsters' neighbor had come up with that information. No one had seen Lucy since the discovery of her husband's body, so Marta wasn't counting on her being at her job, but it was a place to start in trying to find her.

As a courtesy, Marta went directly to the administrator's office to explain why she was there. She wanted to speak to Lucy Finster's coworkers. She was taken to a woman named Svetlana, who oversaw the cafeteria operation. Lucy, she said, had not shown up for her shift that morning.

"I called her but her phone went straight to message," Svetlana said.

"She ever just not show up for work before?" Marta asked.

"Never."

"How's she seemed lately? Anything different? Anxious about anything?"

"Not that I have noticed. What's going on? Does this have anything to do with Billy?"

"What makes you think that?"

"She talks about him all the time. Like, nothing specific, just, if she is acting like she is having a bad day, I will ask, and she just shakes her head and says, ‘Billy.' Have you talked to him?"

Clearly, Svetlana had not gotten the memo, Marta thought.

"Who are Lucy's friends here?"

Svetlana shrugged. "She does not have many. You could try Digby. I see her talking to him sometimes."

"Digby?"

She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "She might have something going on with him, but I don't like to start rumors."

"Where would I find Digby?"

Digby, it turned out, was an orderly, and Marta tracked him down on the third floor, wheeling a patient back to her room from the X-ray department. When he had her settled back into her bed and was coming out of the room, Marta held up her badge and introduced herself.

"I gotta help a guy take a dump," he said. "This important?"

"Digby's an unusual name. First or last?"

"First name," he said. "My parents are from Nova Scotia."

Marta looked at him blankly, not making the connection.

"It's a place there," he said. "That's where they, like, you know, conceived me, when they were on a vacation. So they named me Digby. My last name's Wentworth."

"You seen Lucy Finster today, Digby?"

"Who?"

"Digby, some days I have lots of time for bullshit, but I'm on a tight schedule today."

"Oh yeah, Lucy," Digby said. "Didn't hear you right the first time. Haven't seen her, no. Not sure she's on today. You should talk to the Russian chick runs the caf."

"She a friend?"

Digby pursed his lips. "We talk once in a while, but other than that, not really. She's got a husband. Billy."

"When you do talk to her, what do you talk about?"

Digby shrugged. "Like, how are you today? What shows you watching? Shit like that."

"If you hear from her, I'd like you to give me a call right away," Marta said, handing him a card.

He gave it the quickest of glances and tucked it into the front pocket of his white pants. "Anything else?" he asked.

Marta shook her head slowly.

She took the elevator back down to the first floor and was twenty feet from the reception desk, on her way to the front doors, when she stopped dead.

That woman asking questions at the desk. Holding a bouquet of flowers.

If it wasn't the woman from the bar Saturday night who'd knocked her out, it was her twin sister.

And then Marta looked down at her shoes.

Converse sneakers.

Marta placed a reassuring hand on the weapon attached to her belt. She held her ground another moment, waiting to see whether the woman would turn this way, give Marta a better look at her face.

She could hear some of the conversation.

"So she does work here?" the woman said.

"Yes," said the receptionist, tapping away at her computer. "If you'd like to leave those with me I can make sure she gets them."

"I'd really prefer to give them to her in person."

"Why don't I call down to the cafeteria and see if she's on today. No sense sending you all the way down there if she hasn't come in for her shift yet."

"Thanks, I appreciate—"

The woman must have noticed someone was standing off to her left. She glanced that way and saw Marta.

The glint of recognition didn't take longer than a millisecond.

Marta said, "Nice shoes."

The woman dropped the flowers and bolted.

"Stop!" Marta shouted. "Police!"

Others in the reception area froze, looked around, watched as the woman was forced to wait half a second for a set of sliding glass doors to retract, only to encounter an elderly man on crutches in her path. She shoved him out of her way and he went down, collapsing on the floor in front of Marta, who was torn between helping him and continuing her pursuit.

It's a fucking hospital, she thought. Someone will tend to him.

In the moment it took to make that decision, the glass doors had slid shut. They began to retract again as Marta took a step toward them, but goddamn, they were slow. Marta squeezed through before they'd fully reopened, and came tearing out of the building at a gallop.

Would have really helped Marta if those Converse sneakers had been on her own feet.

She lost sight of the woman as she reached the bottom of a set of concrete steps and turned right onto the sidewalk.

"Stop!" Marta shouted again. She didn't know whether the fleeing woman was armed, but Marta had her gun at the ready. Not that she was likely to be able to use it. She couldn't shoot a suspect in the back. She couldn't risk hitting someone else on the street.

The woman was sixty feet ahead of her, arms and legs pumping hard. She was a scrawny thing, Marta thought, and fast. But Marta was no slouch herself. She ran three mornings a week, usually four miles, and believed she could keep up this pace for as long as it took.

But then the game changed.

A black Audi had barreled up the street and was riding along right beside her. Then, with a squeal and a large thump, it jumped the curb, aiming for Marta.

"Shit!" she cried, and moved sharply to the right. She'd been running so quickly she lost her balance and fell, thinking, in the two seconds it took to hit the sidewalk: Not your head. Don't hit your fucking head.

The car kept going until it reached the woman, screeched to a stop long enough for the woman to leap in, then sped off, burning rubber.

Before Marta slowly got to her feet, she looked at the car, hoping she'd be able to get a glimpse of the plate, but it was already too far away.

She limped her way back to the hospital and went straight for the reception desk.

"What did that woman want?" she asked, struggling to catch her breath.

The woman at the desk said, "She wanted to deliver some flowers."

"To who?"

"A woman who works in the cafete—"

"Who?"

"Lucy Finster."

Marta was continuing to catch her breath, trying to absorb the significance of what she'd just been told. The woman who'd sold Cherise Fowler fentanyl, who'd knocked Marta out, who had stolen her goddamn shoes, was looking for the wife of the guy who'd been murdered the night before.

Her cell phone rang. Marta got it out, tapped the screen, and managed to say, "Harper."

"Got a hit back on that plate and car description," a man at the other end of the line said.

Still shaken from nearly being hit by the car, it took a moment for Marta to figure out what this was about. That plate number one of the officers had come up with after talking to the Finsters' neighbors. "Right," she said finally. "Hang on a second."

She snapped her fingers at the receptionist. "Pen. Paper."

The woman quickly handed her something to write with and a pad.

"Shoot," Marta said into her phone.

The caller read her the information. Marta looked at what she'd scribbled, and blinked. She said, "That can't be right."

"That's what came back."

"Check it again. I'll wait."

Marta heard the clicking of keys in the background. The man came back on a few seconds later and said, "Yep, that's it."

Marta ended the call without so much as a thank-you, stared at the notepad, and said, "Fuck me."