He picked up the black attaché case from the seat beside him. It contained a white lab coat, a white hospital towel, a stethoscope, and a silencer-equipped Walther .45 semi-automatic loaded with hollow-point cartridges that were coated with Teflon to ensure penetration of even bulletproof vests. He didn’t have to open the attaché case to make sure that everything was there; he had packed it himself less than an hour ago.
He intended to walk into the hospital, go directly to the public rest rooms off the lobby, slip out of his raincoat, put on the white lab coat, fold the towel around the pistol, and head straight to Room 256, where they had taken the girl. Rink had been told to expect a police guard on duty. All right. He could handle that. He would pretend that he was a doctor, make up some excuse to get the cop out of the hallway and into the girl’s room, where the nurses couldn’t see, then shoot the jerk, shoot the girl. Then the coup de grâce: a bullet in the ear for each of them, just to make sure they were stone dead. The job done, Rink would leave immediately, return to the public rest room, pick up his raincoat and attaché case, and get the hell out of the hospital.
The plan was clean and uncomplicated. There was almost nothing about it that could go wrong.
Before opening the door and getting out of the Volvo, he looked carefully around the parking lot to be sure that he wasn’t observed. Although the storm had passed and the rain had stopped falling half an hour ago, light fog marked the direction of a gentle breeze and eddied in lazy patterns off from the main current, shrouding some objects, distorting others. Every depression in the macadam was filled with a pool of rainwater, and the many wind-stirred puddles shimmered with yellow reflections of the light from the tall sodium-vapor lamps.
Except for the drifting fog, the night was perfectly still. Rink decided he was alone, unseen.
To the east, the gray-black sky had a pale, opalescent, pinkish-blue tint. The first faint flow of dawn’s radiant face. In another hour, the quiet night routine of the hospital would begin to give way to the business and busyness of the day. It was time to go.
He was looking forward to the work ahead. He had never killed a child before. It ought to be interesting.
9
Alone, the girl woke. She sat straight up in bed, trying to scream. Her mouth was open wide, the muscles in her neck were taut, the blood vessels in her throat and temples throbbed with the effort that she was making, but she couldn’t produce a sound.
She sat like that for half a minute, her small fists full of sweat-soaked sheets. Eyes wide. She wasn’t looking at or reacting to anything in the room. The terror lay beyond those walls.
Briefly, her eyes cleared. She was no longer oblivious of the hospital room.
She realized for the first time that she was alone. Remembered who she was. She desperately desired company, someone to hold, human contact, comfort.
‘Hello?’ she whispered. ‘S-s-somebody? Somebody? Somebody? Mommy?’
If people had been with her, perhaps her attention would have been altogether captured by them and drawn permanently away from the things that so frightened her. Alone, however, she could not shake the nightmare that had its talon in her, and her eyes glazed over again. Her gaze fixed once more on a scene elsewhere.
Finally, with a desperate, wordless whimper, she clambered over the safety railing and got out of bed. She tottered a few steps. Went down on her knees. Breathing hard, wheezing with panic, she crawled into the darker half of the room, past the untenanted bed, into the corner where friendly shadows offered consolation. She put her back to the wall and faced into the room, knees drawn up. The hospital gown bunched at her hips. She wrapped her arms around her thin legs and pulled herself into a tight ball.
She remained in the corner only a minute before she began to whimper and mewl like a frightened animal. She raised her hands and covered her face, striving to block out a hideous sight.