The Inner Circle - Brad Meltzer [135]
The road isn’t long. Within ten seconds, we’re rolling past the main gate. Dallas offers a casual wave to the man in the guardhouse. The fact that he waves back tells us the guard in the parking lot still hasn’t found the barber’s body. Word’s not out yet.
“That guy with the knife… the barber—” I say.
“I know. I could hear,” Dallas says, holding up his phone as we pull out of the gate and reach the main street. “I think I was able to get most of it on tape.”
“Then we should—”
“No,” Dallas says, twisting the wheel as we speed toward the highway. “Right now, there’s only one place we need to go.”
94
From the front seat of the white van that was parked down the block, it wasn’t hard to spot Beecher.
Or Dallas.
There are two of them now, the driver of the van thought, watching their black car bounce and rumble as it left St. Elizabeths. Two of them to deal with.
From the look on Beecher’s face, he was terrified, still processing. Dallas wasn’t doing much better.
It was no different for the driver of the white van.
It had all gone so bad, so quickly.
But there was no choice. That’s what Beecher would never understand.
For a moment, the driver reached for the ignition, but then waited, watching as Dallas’s car coughed up a small choke of smoke and disappeared up the block.
This wasn’t the time to get spotted. More important, the driver wanted to see if anyone else was following.
For a full minute, the driver sat there, watching the street and every other parked car on it. No one moved.
Beyond the front gate, up the main service road that ran inside St. Elizabeths, there was a swirl of orange sirens. On-campus security. No doubt, Nico was already being medicated for whatever mess the barber’s panicking had caused.
The driver was tempted to go up there, but again, there was no choice.
There was never any choice.
Not until the one problem that had caused so many others was dealt with. The problem that she could only blame on herself.
Beecher.
By now, the black car was long gone, zipping toward its destination.
With a deep breath, Clementine pulled out onto the road and did her best to stay calm.
Beecher’s head start didn’t matter.
Not when she knew exactly where they were going.
95
Four months ago
St. Elizabeths Hospital
The man with the black leather zipper case was never late.
He always came on Thursdays. At 4 p.m. Always right on time.
But as Clementine glanced down at her watch and saw that it was already a few minutes past four…
“Heya, Pam,” the older black man with the silver hair and silver mustache called out as he shoved his way through the swinging doors, approached the nurses’ station, and eyed one of the many open rooms. Like an ICU, the rooms of the Gero-Psych Unit didn’t have any doors. “How’s your Thursday?”
“Same as my Wednesday,” the nurse replied, adding a flirty laugh and crumpling up the foil wrapper of her California Tortilla burrito.
Over by the sinks, Clementine pretended to fill one of the cats’ water dishes as she watched the same exchange she’d witnessed the week before—and so many weeks before that. By now, she knew his patterns. That’s how she knew when to send her dad upstairs for more cat food. She knew the old black man wouldn’t be late. Like all barbers, he knew the value of keeping an appointment.
“They ready for me?” the barber asked.
“Not like they got much choice,” the nurse added along with another flirty laugh.
Dumping and refilling the same water bowl and strategically using the room’s pillars to stay out of sight, Clementine watched as the barber unzipped the leather case that held his sharpened scissors. It had been nearly two months since she first saw him enter the unit, saying he was there to give haircuts to patients. No reason to look twice at that—until Clementine noticed that although he rotated through a few of the rooms, he