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CHAPTER 18
Whimstick General was a madhouse.
As expected.
Tate parked two blocks over as all the nearby lots were full. Once he’d slid his RAV4 into a spot near the icy curb, he double-checked information on his phone, skimming news stories and the social media platforms dedicated to the release of Jonas McIntyre.
Not only had the news of Merritt Margrove’s murder and the near-fatal accident in the mountains rippled through the local restaurants, cafés and shops of Whimstick, the information had spread like a wildfire in tinder-dry grass. The ex-con’s fan pages on social media had erupted with concern, “prayers,” “good vibes,” and emojis and memes filled with sad faces and hearts and praying hands. Apparently there was already a vigil staged near the hospital, the most active of his fans who lived nearby collecting at Whimstick General. The news outlets were buzzing about the accident and the fact that McIntyre and his sister were survivors, though there was little information on the driver of the other vehicle. The story of the accident was not just local but showing up online throughout the Northwest. God only knew how far it would go.
Probably national and, nowadays, of course, likely viral.
The good news was that Kara McIntyre, who was driving her Jeep, hadn’t been seriously injured. Thank God. Even though he barely knew her, there was a part of him that found her intriguing. Yeah, he wanted to interview her and needed her help in his quest for the truth, but there was more to it than that. More than he wanted to admit.
As for her brother, so far it seemed that Jonas McIntyre had survived.
Tate hoped so.
And he hoped the son of a bitch was coherent enough to give one last interview.
No time like the present to find out.
He checked his watch. 4:48. Perfect timing for a shift change. Though some of the nurses worked ten- or twelve-hour shifts, a majority of the staff, admin workers and the like, including some of the nursing and clinical staff, worked the 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. schedule. After grabbing the small satchel he’d packed before leaving his apartment, Tate locked his car and hiked through the snow-crusted sidewalks to Whimstick General.
About forty or fifty people had gathered on the walkway, the beefy security guard and the makeshift barricade holding them away from the sliding glass doors while others lobbied to get inside.
There were more milling around in the building. Through the wide glass windows, Tate spied patients in wheelchairs or on crutches, loved ones hovering nearby. The vestibule with its long couches and chairs situated between potted plants and small tables was full; the information, registration and admission desks surrounded by people. He thought he caught glimpses of some of the people he’d seen online, those who had clamored for Jonas’s release, members of his Internet fan club, but he couldn’t be certain.
Since he didn’t want to deal with the crowd, he headed toward the emergency entrance located on the far side of the building. It, too, was being patrolled, a security guard posted inside, another bundled up outside and posted under the portico, making certain the lane for emergency vehicles was clear.
Tate hurried along the concrete pathway that rimmed the building. Though it had recently been cleared of snow, a thin film was already collecting over the path, piling thick on the surrounding shrubbery and stretches of grass separating the walking paths.
He knew this hospital all too well. Not only was this the place where his own father had been brought, dead before the emergency room doors had slid open, but Tate himself, due to his own injuries—a bike accident that screwed up his ankle, a broken arm from falling out of a tree and an emergency appendectomy—had landed here while growing up. But that wasn’t the reason he knew all the ins and outs of Whimstick General. Nope. Only later, when he’d returned to help out his mother, had he learned about the ins and outs of the hospital.
He’d not only pushed his mother’s wheelchair along the glossy floors shimmering under the fluorescent overhead lights of the hallways, but he’d spent hours within these halls. During Selma Tate’s lengthy stays and continual visits for tests and rehab appointments, Wesley had discovered the shortcuts and tucked-away elevators, the back stairways and connecting rooms between the clinic, labs, cafeteria, locker rooms and rehabilitation areas. He’d even located the mechanical rooms and the morgue in the basement, along with restricted areas where equipment and supplies were kept under lock and key. He’d had hours to explore and he’d taken advantage of the free time, once looking up the schematics for the plans of the hospital. The original building was eighty years old, the south wing added in the sixties and the north at the end of the eighties, which created a little bit of a hodgepodge and more than a few odd spaces and connections. Wesley Tate knew most of them, and now decided to use that knowledge to his advantage. Otherwise he would be shut out from Kara McIntyre and her brother. He knew it. And this—their tragedy—was his story.His.His father had died saving Kara. The way Tate figured it, she owed him. Big time.
As he knew the hospital like the back of his hand, he slipped into a side entrance that opened to the hallway connecting to the wing housing clinics, then took a back hallway that converged with the surgical section of the hospital. Rounding another corridor, he made his way behind several operating rooms and ended up in a wing that housed a bank of elevators and beyond which was the cafeteria. One story below housed the morgue, the two stories above were dedicated to patient rooms. Somewhere on one of those floors was Kara McIntyre. And, he suspected, in a more isolated area, her half brother. He doubted it would be hard to find Jonas; there would probably be guards posted outside his door because, no doubt, he would be a prime suspect in Merritt Margrove’s murder, though that didn’t make much sense to Tate. Kara would be more difficult, but he figured he could handle it.
He went to the basement and found an unlocked closet wedged between the mechanical room and the morgue. He pulled a set of scrubs and a fake ID tag from the bag, changed quickly and emerged, careful to avoid the major hallways. As far as he knew there were cameras posted in the main corridors, near the elevators and at every major entrance to the building, but he didn’t think all were monitored 24/7, or that there was surveillance in the minor areas or any of the patient rooms due to budget concerns and privacy laws.
But he couldn’t be certain.
He strode confidently, as if he belonged inside the building, slipped through a doorway markedSTAFF ONLY,then took a set of back stairs two at a time. At the third floor, he opened the door and peered down the hallway. As expected, he spied a uniformed deputy seated in a chair near the doorway of a room at the end of the hallway. The deputy was around twenty-five and doing a deep dive into his cell phone.
No way to get past him.
Tate slipped into the stairwell again and descended to the second level, where he suspected Kara might be housed. He stepped into the hallway, all too aware of the cameras mounted in the ceiling. He knew there was a good chance he’d be found out, but he hoped to put it off as long as possible, so he walked confidently, checking his clipboard, avoiding looking at the cameras or coming into contact with anyone. However, he couldn’t locate her room and so returned to the stairwell, made his way to an area off the cafeteria where he knew a lot of the staff convened, bought a soda and a sandwich from the deli counter, then took an empty table near a group of nurses. His back to them, and while pretending interest in his phone and a newspaper he’d grabbed from a table on the way in, he listened to their conversation.
Since Jonas McIntyre was the news of the day, Tate was certain to hear something. It didn’t take long.
“It’s flipping chaos out there,” the male nurse was saying over the buzz of conversation and clatter of utensils. “Like this is just what we need—chaos at the workplace.” Tate saw him and the rest of the table from the corner of his eye. The nurse took a bite from an apple. Tall and reedy, with a nest of receding gray curls and thin-rimmed glasses, he was tanned despite the fact that it was the middle of winter in the Pacific Northwest.
“Things will die down,” one of the women replied, brushing her bangs from her eyes. She was a short redhead with freckles and rosy cheeks who opened a small bag of chips.
“Not if that freak show group has anything to say about it. They’ve been calling the hospital ever since the word got out.”
“What group?” The third woman, in her midthirties, Tate guessed, with doe eyes and thin brown hair scraped back into a ponytail, was already picking at a salad and sipping from an oversize cup of some dark soda.
“Some fans, I think.” Male Nurse took another bite of the apple.