able seat he’d ever parked his butt in, and the antiseptic smell of the
hospital always made him a bit queasy, and the chili rellenos he’d eaten
for dinner were still coming back on him, but the book was so involving
that eventually he forgot all of those minor discomforts.
He even forgot Frank Pollard for a while, until he heard a brief hiss,
like air escaping under pressure, and felt a sudden draft. He looked
away from the book, expecting to see Pollard sitting up in the bed or
trying to get out of it, but Pollard was not there.
Startled, Hal sprang up, dropping the book.
The bed was empty. Pollard had been there all night, asleep for the
last hour, but now he was gone. The place was not brightly lighted
because the fluorescence behind the bed were turned off, but the shadows
beyond the reading lamp were too shallow to conceal a man. The sheets
were not tossed aside but were draped neatly across the mattress, and
both of the side railings were locked in place, as if Frank Pollard had
evaporated like a figure carved from Dry Ice.
Hal was certain that he would have heard Pollard lower one of the
railings, get out of bed, then lift the railing into place again. Surely
he would have heard Pollard climbing over it too.
The window was closed. Rain washed down the glass, glimmering with
silvery reflections of the room’s light. They were on the sixth floor,
and Pollard could not escape by the window, yet Hal checked it, noting
that it was not merely closed but locked.
Stepping to the door of the adjoining bathroom, he said, “Frank?”
When no one answered, he entered. The bath was deserted.
Only the narrow closet remained as a viable hiding place. Hal opened it
and found two hangers that held the clothes Pollard had been wearing
when he’d checked into the hospital. The man’s shoes were there, too,
with his socks neatly rolled and tucked into them.
“He can’t have gotten past me and into the hall,” Hal said as if giving
voice to that contention would magically make true.
He pulled open the heavy door and rushed into the corridor. No one was
in sight in either direction.
He turned to the left, hurried to the emergency exit at the end of the
hall, and opened the door. Standing on the sixth floor landing, he
listened for footsteps rising or descending and heard none, peered over
the iron railing, down into the well then up. He was alone.
Retracing his steps, he returned to Pollard’s room an glanced inside at
the empty bed. Still disheveled, he proceeded to the junction of
corridors, where he turned right an went to the glass-walled nurses’
station.
None of the five night-shift nurses had seen Pollard on the move. Since
the elevators were directly opposite the nurse station, where Pollard
would have had to wait in full view of the people on duty, it seemed
unlikely that he had left the hospital by that route,
“I thought you were watching over him,” said Grace Fugham, the
gray-haired supervisor of the sixth-floor night staff. Her solid build,
indomitable manner, and life-worn but kin face would have made her
perfect for the female lead if Hollywood ever started remaking the old
Two Gun Annie or Ma an Pa Kettle movies.
“Wasn’t that your job?”
“I never left the room, but-”
“Then how did he get past you?”
“I don’t know,” Hal said, chagrined.
“But the important thing is… he’s suffering from partial amnesia,
somewhat con fused. He might wander off anywhere, out of the hospital,
God knows where. I can’t figure how he got past me, but we have to find
him.” Mrs. Fulgham and a younger nurse named Janet Soto, helped make a
swift and quiet inspection of all the rooms along Pollard’s corridor.
Hal accompanied Nurse Fulgham. As they were checking out 604, where two
elderly men snored softly, he heard eerie music, barely audible. As he
turned, seeking the source, the notes faded away.
If Nurse Fulgham heard the music, she did not remark on it. A moment
later in the next room, 606, when those strains a rose once more,