Live to Tell - Lisa Gardner [92]
Cameras would’ve been great, except, as Phil learned from security, the hospital used them mostly for the main-level entrances and exits, plus maternity. Radiology didn’t make the cut.
Which left them with a crime scene that, four hours later, might or might not be a crime scene.
D.D. arranged for a fresh homicide squad to take over canvassing for witnesses. She also got the hospital to agree to a twenty-four-hour security guard for the psych ward. Then she made it down to the hospital lobby before her shoulders sagged and her steps faltered from fatigue.
She took a minute in the parking lot stairwell, pinching the bridge of her nose and waiting for the worst of it to pass. She didn’t care what anyone said—the death of a kid never got any easier, and the second it did, she was quitting her job. Apparently, she didn’t have to retire just yet.
The night had sucked. She wanted to go home, take a long hot shower, then pass out on top of her bed.
Instead, her pager went off. She checked the number. Couldn’t place it. Then, given the early-morning hour and sheer curiosity, she entered the number on her cell phone and pressed Send.
“I’m worried about you.” A man’s voice immediately filled her ear.
“Who is this?”
“Andrew Lightfoot.”
“How’d you get this number?”
“You gave it to me, on your card.”
D.D. paused, searched her mental banks, and remembered that at the end of the interview, she’d handed Andrew Lightfoot her business card. Routine protocol—she’d already forgotten all about it.
“Little early to be calling, don’t you think?” She leaned against the stairwell wall, giving the conversation her full attention.
“I knew you were up. I dreamed of you.”
Lotta things D.D. could say to that. Given her shitty night, and her instinctive distrust of anyone who called himself a spiritual guru, she didn’t. “Why’re you calling, Lightfoot?”
“Please call me Andrew.”
“Please tell me why you’re calling.”
Hesitation. She found that interesting.
“There’s something wrong,” he said at last. “I don’t know how to explain it. At least not in terms you would understand.”
“A disturbance in the fabric of the cosmos?” she asked dryly.
“Exactly.”
I’ll be damned. “You talk,” D.D. decided. “I’ll listen.”
“The negative energies are building. When I visited the interplanes earlier tonight, I found entire pockets of dark, roiling rage. I could feel a hum, like a vibration of great evil. The light had fled. I’ve never seen so many shadows.”
“The negative forces are winning the war?”
“Tonight, I would say yes.”
“Has that happened before?”
“I’ve never encountered such a thing. Sometimes, when I’m leading group meditation, I’ll stumble across a particularly malevolent force. But the collective strength of the group, the exponential power of the light, enables me to confront such negativity and force it back into its small and insignificant space. Tonight … it’s as if the inverse has happened. Dark calling to dark. Feeding, growing, exploding. Alone and unprepared, there was nothing I could do.”
“You got your ass kicked on the spiritual superhighway?”
“I wouldn’t laugh about this, D.D.”
“And I don’t have jurisdiction over evil energies. What the hell do you want from me?”
Andrew’s voice changed. “You’re tired. You’ve suffered tonight. I apologize.”
Instantly, she was on edge. “What do you know of my suffering?”
“I’m a healer. I can feel it. Your aura, bright white when we first met, has turned to blue. You’re not comfortable with blue. You do better with red, though I prefer white.”
D.D. pinched the bridge of her nose again. “Why are you calling, Andrew?”
“Something is coming.”
“Evil wants to take over the universe.”
“Evil always wants to take over the universe. I’m telling