I closed my fingers over the wet manila cardstock, dragging it into the hollow of my palm as my knuckles scraped against the asphalt. Vance stayed on the curb above me, his thumb hooked into his utility belt beside his pepper spray canister, watching to see if my sixty-eight-year-old joints would fail me. I gave him the satisfaction of a slow recovery. I planted my right boot on the macadam, took the weight onto my artificial knee until the titanium stem ground against the scar tissue in my femur, and rose with my head bowed. Rain dripped from my wool cap into my collar, but my left hand stayed buried deep inside the ripped lining of my coat, working the stiff paper into the inner pocket where my grandfather's pocketknife kept it flat against my ribs.
"Move along, Sterling," Vance called out, his voice flat with the cheap authority of an eight-dollar brass badge. "You cross that yellow perimeter line again before sunrise and I won't bother with the front doors. I'll cuff you to the dumpster gate and let the city wagon haul you to central booking."
I did not answer him. Words in a parking lot do not stop an ambulance, and they do not deter private guards who believe their badges grant them immunity. I turned my back, letting my shoulders slump into the posture of a defeated vagrant, and shuffled toward the lower service loop where the county buses turned. Behind me, the pneumatic hiss of the automatic doors signaled that Vance had gone back inside to the dry lobby.
The moment the glass sealed, I straightened my spine. The ache in my knee was real enough, throbbing against my temple, but the fog was gone. I cut left across the wet grass separating the visitor lanes from the commercial apron. Mercer Memorial had once been Saint Jude’s County Hospital, an eight-story fortress of pale limestone built in 1964 with public bonds. I had walked its tunnels, morgue corridors, and autopsy suites for thirty-one years before the county board sold the facility to Mercer Health last winter. I knew every blind spot in the camera grid, including the dark alley behind the three nitrogen tanks flanking the south loading bay.
I slipped between the frost-coated tanks, my shoulder brushing the cold steel, and looked across the concrete apron toward Dock 4. An unmarked white sprinter van with an auxiliary refrigeration unit over the cab was backed flush against the rubber bumpers. Its dual exhaust pipes puffed gray vapor into the chill, the engine vibrating through the soles of my boots. Two orderlies in dark gray coveralls—the pair who had wheeled the gurney down Corridor B—were manhandling the heavy black neoprene pouch onto the hydraulic liftgate. They moved with hurried desperation, glancing toward the perimeter lights as if waiting for a siren.
They were not using the hospital's bonded transport contractor. County code required every deceased transfer leaving an acute care facility to be handled by a licensed mortician or a sworn deputy examiner in a marked county vehicle. This van carried private freight plates from across the state line, and its cargo doors bore no registration decals, no placards, and no state permits. They were moving an adult human body out of an accredited hospital like a pallet of spoiled produce. Across the access lane, parked beneath the dripping branches of a willow tree at the dark edge of the employee lot, sat a rusted blue Subaru hatchback. Its parking lights flickered twice. Evelyn Harris was still there.
I crossed the empty asphalt beneath the rain and reached the passenger side of the hatchback. The lock clicked open. I pulled the door wide, slid my soaked coat onto the bucket seat, and pulled the frame shut until the latch caught. Evelyn sat behind the steering wheel, her hands gripping the rim so hard that her knuckles were white. She was fifty-two years old, twenty-four of those years spent running the graveyard shift in Saint Jude’s intensive care unit, but this morning her face looked collapsed, hollowed out by fear. The dashboard clock glowed a cold, digital green: 5:48 AM. The ferry carrying the state accreditation inspectors would dock at 7:30.
"Did they hurt you, James?" she asked, her voice cracking. She reached over, her scrub sleeve smelling of antiseptic and stale coffee, and touched my torn shoulder. "I saw Vance drag you through the lobby from the breakroom window. I thought they were going to lock you up."
"Vance is twenty-four and takes orders from whoever signs his check," I said, reaching into my coat. My fingers were stiff from the wind, but I drew out the torn manila cardstock and laid it flat against the dashboard. "What did Vanessa Cole do in the basement at midnight, Evelyn? Tell me what you saw before she stripped your badge."