“Bless her heart, she was so upset, so excited, so relieved that I was okay. She hugged me, real hard, hurt my ribs, but I just hugged her back. She did really good. She saved my life.”

“She certainly did,” Sherlock agreed.

FORTY-THREE

Nurse Louise Wingo said from the doorway, “I’ve never been so scared in my life.” She looked down at her watch. “It’s after one o’clock in the morning, Dr. MacLean. You need to rest.”

“Rest? For what reason, I ask you? Please don’t tell me it’ll improve my quality of life. You can come here if you want to, Louise, and you can hug me some more. You should have seen her, Savich. She came running in, brought the gun up, and shot the guy, no muss, no fuss. No, Louise, don’t bother telling me I need to rest. My brain’s working at a great clip, and I’m fine.” He beamed a happy face at everyone. “I haven’t had this great an adrenaline kick in a very long time.”

Louise said to them, “Mine is probably higher than his.” She fanned herself, and grinned. “Wow, was that ever incredible! No way my husband’s going to believe it. He thinks the night shift is boring. Wait’ll he hears this.

“Thank God you’re okay, Dr. MacLean. I’m so relieved Mrs. MacLean wasn’t here. She left about eleven.”

“You’re right about that,” MacLean said. “Molly would have jumped on him, and he might have hurt her. I’m thanking you for her, too, Louise.”

Sherlock said, “Jack told us that Molly looks after her own. If she saw anyone trying to hurt anybody in her family, she’d go nuts.”

MacLean said, “That’s the truth. Usually I’m the one on her bad side. Louise, she’s going to bring you chocolate chip cookies for a year. Be prepared.”

Louise said to them, “Actually, Mrs. MacLean already brought us homemade goodies. She crochets afghans while she sits with Dr. MacLean. We let her stay as long as she wants to.”

MacLean said, “Molly fusses and nags, she’s always asking me how I’m feeling, what I’m thinking, as if she can stop the dementia from getting worse that way. I finally talked her into going home. She agreed, said I was someone else’s pain until tomorrow, and she kissed me good-bye.” MacLean closed his eyes, swallowed. “If she’d been here, that bastard wouldn’t have hesitated to kill her, too.” He looked over at Louise. “Thank you, Louise. Any of those yahoo doctors give you grief, you just give me a holler. I’ll take care of them for you.”

Sherlock said, “I’ll call Molly first thing in the morning, tell her you’re okay. No sense in worrying her tonight.”

“Careful, Dr. MacLean,” Louise said, “you’ve nearly dislodged the IV line.” Sherlock saw that her hands were steady as she worked on the line. She straightened, lightly ran her hand over his forearm. “You’re good to go now. Please, try to calm down.”

MacLean said, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll have enough time to be calm when I’m dead. How’s poor Agent Tomlin?”

“I heard one of the doctors say it was probably a load of sedative punched in his neck, but since he’s already beginning to come out of it, it either wasn’t much or he jerked away so not all of it went in. He’s stable, still really drowsy. He should be okay, just out for a while. That’s all we have so far.”

Sherlock saw Dillon speaking to Chief Hayward. He looked up and said to her, “Chief Hayward’s got all the hospital security searching the building and grounds, but he could use more people. I’m going to give Ben Raven a call, wake him up. He’ll get more cops down here to help the security people.”

They wouldn’t find the man, Sherlock thought, and she hated that she was so certain. This was well planned, he knew how to get in and out. But maybe—“What about video?”

Chief Hayward said, “I called down to set it up.”

Sherlock leaned down and whispered next to MacLean’s ear, “All in all, none of us can complain.”

“Poor Agent Tomlin can,” MacLean said.

Ten minutes later, Savich and Sherlock went inside the small hospital security room near the front entrance. There were twelve video screens, ten of them running live feeds from cameras at locations inside the hospital.

Chief Hayward said, “We’ve got a camera at the entrance to the hospital, one camera on each floor. I asked Fritz to pull up two tapes of where the assailant would have had to walk to get to Dr. MacLean’s room.”

Fritz said, “I couldn’t locate the assailant coming into the hospital. I will have to look earlier. This tape is from Dr. MacLean’s floor.”

They all watched the screen. Chief Hayward said, “Stop. Look, that must be him, the guy in surgical scrubs, a mask over his face, and a cap on his head. If it was during the day, someone would have wondered who the hell he was since no one wears a mask in the hallway. There’s no reason for that. He’s also wearing surgical gloves, so no fingerprints. Sorry about the quality of the film, but we should be able to make him out okay.”

They watched the man walk toward the camera. He turned a corner just past the nurses’ station and disappeared.

“Okay,” Chief Hayward said. “Fast-forward, Fritz.”

“Stop, there he is,” Savich said a couple of seconds later.

Fritz froze the screen.

Sherlock said, “Okay, three minutes have elapsed and here he comes. And she thought, It took so little time. In three minutes Timothy could have been killed. She said, “He’s walking really fast, and he’s holding his arm. There’s blood seeping through his fingers. He’s got his head down. About all I can say so far is he isn’t fat.”

“He’s still got the mask and cap on,” Fritz said. “Bummer.”

They watched him until he disappeared.

Chief Hayward said, “Okay, let’s see if he leaves through the front. Roll the other tape, Fritz.” The film sped up, then slowly, Fritz brought it back to real time.

Chief Hayward said, “Stop, Fritz, you got him. I think that’s him—the timing’s about right, five minutes have passed. He looks about the same size, same build, and the loose clothes.”

The man on the film was wearing a watch cap pulled low on his forehead, touching the rims of dark sunglasses. He was wearing loose blue jeans, a large pale blue shirt that hung outside his pants, a baggy off-white linen jacket, and moccasins. For an instant, they were looking directly at his face, only they couldn’t see him clearly.