‘From a preliminary look, the assistant medical examiner thinks Rink was killed between four and six o’clock this morning, though he wasn’t found until nine-forty-five. Now, if he was figuring to visit someone in the hospital at, say five o’clock in the morning, he’d almost have to try to pass himself off as a doctor, because visiting hours don’t start until one in the afternoon. If he tried to get on one of the medical floors in civilian clothes at that hour, there’s a good chance a nurse or maybe a security guard would stop him. But in a lab coat, with a stethoscope, he could probably breeze right through.
They had reached the front entrance of the hospital. Laura stopped on the sidewalk. ‘When you say “visit” you don’t mean “visit”.’
‘No.’
‘So you believe he intended to go into the hospital and kill someone.’
‘A man doesn’t carry a pistol with a silencer unless he means to use it. A silencer’s illegal. Law comes down on you hard for that. You get caught with one, you’re in deep sh … deep soup. Besides, I haven’t learned any details yet, but I’m told Rink has a criminal record. He’s suspected of being a freelance hitman for the past few years.’
‘A hired killer?’
‘I’d almost bet on it.’
‘But that doesn’t mean he came here to kill Melanie. Could be someone else in the hospital …’
‘We already considered that. We’ve been checking the patient list to see if there’s anyone here with a criminal record, or maybe someone who’s a material witness in a case that’s going to trial soon. Or any known dope dealers or members of any organized-crime family. We haven’t found anything so far. Nobody who might’ve been Rink’s target … except Melanie.’
‘Are you saying maybe this Rink killed Dylan and Hoffritz and the other man in Studio City — then came here to kill Melanie because she saw him do the others?’
‘Could be.’
‘But then who killed Rink?’
He sighed. ‘That’s where the logic falls apart.’
‘Whoever killed him didn’t want him to kill Melanie,’ Laura said.
Haldane shrugged.
She said, ‘If that’s the case, I’m glad.’
‘What’s to be glad about?’
‘Well, if someone killed Rink to stop him from killing Melanie, it must mean she doesn’t only have enemies out there. It means she has friends too.’
With unconcealed pity, Haldane said, ‘No. That isn’t necessarily what it means. The people who killed Rink probably want Melanie just as much as he did — except they want her alive.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she knows too much about the experiments conducted in that house.’
‘Then they’d want her dead too, just like Rink.’
‘Unless they need her to continue those experiments.’
Laura knew it was true as soon as he said it, and her shoulders slumped under the weight of this new fear. Why had Dylan been working with a discredited fanatic like Hoffritz? And who was financing them? No legitimate foundation, university, or research institute would give a grant to Hoffritz, not since he had been forced out of UCLA. Nor would any reputable institute fund Dylan, a man who had stolen his own child and was hiding from his wife’s attorneys, a man who was using his daughter as a guinea pig in experiments that had left her on the verge of autism. Whoever provided the money to support Dylan and to conduct that kind of research was insane, every bit as insane as Dylan and Hoffritz.
She wanted it to be over and done with. She wanted to take Melanie out of the hospital, go home, and live happily ever after, because if anyone on earth deserved peace and happiness it was her little girl. But now ‘they’ weren’t going to allow it. ‘They’ were going to try to snatch Melanie away again. ‘They’ wanted the child for reasons and purposes that only ‘they’ understood. And who in the hell were they’ anyway? Faceless. Nameless. Laura couldn’t fight an enemy she couldn’t see or, seeing, recognize.
‘They’re well informed,’ she said. ‘And they don’t waste time, either.’
Haldane blinked. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Melanie was here at the hospital only a couple of hours before Rink came after her. Didn’t take him long to find out where she’d gotten to.’