As they walked, she said, ‘What’s happened to Melanie?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Tell me the truth!’
‘That is the truth. She’s in her room. Safe. Just the way you left her.’
They stopped, and she stood with her back to the fence, staring past Haldane toward the pulsing emergency beacons. She saw a morgue wagon with the patrol cars.
No. It wasn’t fair. To find Melanie after all these years and then to lose her again so soon — it was unthinkable.
A tightness in her chest. A throbbing in her temples.
She said, ‘Who’s dead?’
‘I’ve been calling your house—’
‘I want—’
‘—trying to get hold of you—’
‘—to know—’
‘—for the past hour and a half.’
‘-who’s dead!’ she demanded.
‘Listen, it’s not Melanie. Okay?’ His voice was unusually soft and gentle and reassuring for a man his size. She always expected a roar, but he purred. ‘Melanie’s fine. Really.’
Laura studied his face, his eyes. She believed that he was telling her the truth. Melanie was all right. But Laura was still scared.
Haldane said, ‘I didn’t get home until seven this morning, fell into bed. Eleven o’clock, my phone rings, and they want me at Valley Medical. They think maybe there’s some link between this homicide and Melanie because—’
‘Because what?’
‘Well, after all, she’s a patient here. So I’ve been trying to get hold of you—’
‘I was out shopping, buying new clothes for her,’ Laura said. ‘What happened? Who’s dead? Are you going to tell me, for God’s sake?’
‘A guy in his car. That Volvo over there. Dead in the front seat of his Volvo.’
‘According to his ID, his name’s Ned Rink.’
She leaned back against the chain-link fence, her pulse rate gradually slowing from the frantic beat it had attained.
‘You ever heard of him?’ Haldane asked. ‘Ned Rink?’
‘No.’
‘I wondered if maybe he was an associate of your husband’s. Like Hoffritz.’
‘Not that I’m aware. The name’s not familiar. Why would you think he knew Dylan? Because of the way he died? Is that it? Was he beaten to death like the others?’
‘No. But it was odd.’
‘Tell me.’
He hesitated, and from the look in his blue eyes she could see that it was another particularly brutal homicide.
‘Tell me,’ she said again.
‘His throat was crushed, as if someone gave him one hell of a whack with a lead pipe, caught him right across the Adam’s apple. More than one whack. Lots of damage. Literally pulverized the guy’s windpipe, crushed the Adam’s apple, the vocal cords. Broke his neck. Cracked his spine.’
‘Okay,’ she said, dry-mouthed. ‘I get the picture.’
‘Sorry. Anyway, it’s not like the bodies in Studio City, but it’s unusual. You can see why we might figure they’re connected. In both cases, the murders involved an unusual degree of violence. This one wasn’t as bad as those, not nearly, but nevertheless …’
She pushed away from the fence. ‘I want to see Melanie.’
Suddenly she had to see Melanie. It was a strong physical need. She had to touch the girl, hold her, be reassured that her child was all right.
She headed away from the parking lot, toward the front entrance of the hospital.
Haldane walked beside her, limping slightly but apparently not in pain.
‘You have an accident?’ she asked.
‘Huh?’
‘Your leg.’
‘Oh. No. Just an old football injury from college. Banged the knee up pretty bad my senior year. Sometimes it acts up in humid weather. Listen, there’s more about the guy in the Volvo, Rink.’
‘What?’
‘He had an attaché case with him. Inside, there was a white lab coat, a stethoscope, and a pistol fitted with a silencer.’
‘He shoot his assailant? Are you looking for someone with a bullet wound?’
‘Nope. The piece wasn’t fired. But do you see what I’m driving at? The lab coat? The stethoscope?’
‘He wasn’t a doctor, was he?’
‘No. What it looks like to us is that maybe he was going to go into the hospital, put on the lab coat, hang the stethoscope around his neck, and pretend to be a doctor.’
She glanced at him as they reached the curb and stepped up onto the sidewalk. ‘Why would he do that?’