The Sisterhood - Michael Palmer [124]
“God damn it,” he cried softly. “God damn it … God damn it!” Louder and louder until he was screaming.
Several men rushed toward him just as the trooper took his arm.
“Mister, please calm down,” he said in more of a plea than an order. He led David to the side of the road and helped him lean against the trunk of a half-dead birch.
After a minute, David managed to speak. “Wh … where’s her body?” he stammered.
“What?”
“Her body, damn it,” he screamed. “Where have they taken it?”
The young man broke into a relieved grin. “Mister, there isn’t any body. No dead one, I mean. Not from this car anyway.”
David sank to one knee and stared up at him.
“Passerby found the lady wanderin’ down the road,” the trooper explained. “Pretty battered up, with a nasty cut or two, and probably a broken arm, but nowheres near dead. Now, can you calm down enough to tell me who you are?”
Kensington Community Hospital, a twenty-minute drive according to the trooper, took thirty-five in the jeep. David had stayed at the accident scene for a short while, learning what he could. Christine’s survival was miraculous. A couple had come upon her, bloodied and incoherent, wandering along the road. Later the rescue team found her Mustang wedged upside down against a tree fifty feet down the rocky slope and nearly half a mile from where she was picked up.
David remained long enough to watch with total dispassion as Leonard Vincent’s mangled corpse was pried from his car and transferred to an ambulance. He left during the commotion that followed discovery in the wreckage of a silenced revolver and a variety of knives. Throughout his drive to the hospital he sensed renewed hatred building—hatred no longer directed at Leonard Vincent, but at those who had hired him.
The hospital was fairly new and very small—fifty beds or less, David guessed. He paused momentarily inside the front door, trying to develop some feel for the place. The lobby was deserted save for the ubiquitous salmon-coated volunteer behind the desk, rearranging the contents of her purse. To her right an impressive brass board listed the two dozen or so physicians on the hospital staff. Beside each name was a small amber bulb that the physician could switch on when he was “in the house.” Only one had a glowing amber light. No one could accuse Kensington Community Hospital of being overstaffed, he thought sardonically.
The emergency wing was labeled with black paste-on letters above a set of automatic doors. As they slid shut behind him, David heard the volunteer say, “Can I help you, sir?” He shook his head without bothering to look back.
The physician on duty, an Indian woman with dark, tired eyes, met him hallway down the corridor. She wore a light orange sari beneath her clinic coat and had a White Memorial Hospital name tag that identified her as Dr. T. Ranganathan.
“Excuse me,” David said anxiously, “my name is David Shelton. I’m a surgeon at Boston Doctors. A friend of mine, Christine Beall, was brought in here a short time ago?”
“Ah, yes, the automobile accident,” she said in sterile English. “I saw her only briefly before Dr. St. Onge arrived and … ah … took over the case. She has a fractured wrist and possibly some fractured ribs on the left side. Also two scalp lacerations. However, at the time Dr. St. Onge dismissed me she seemed in no immediate danger. You will find her in there.” She pointed at one of the rooms.
In addition to St. Onge, three others were in the room with Christine—an orderly, the lab technician, and a second nurse. David ignored them all and rushed to the examining table.