Page 158 of Deadline

“He said—”

“Ten minutes and I will.”

“Gary.”

“Eva. Just because you’re the most popular girl on the third floor, don’t think you can boss me.”

“I do have my admirers, it seems.”

> “A little old man? Humph. You’ve already got one.”

She sighed. “You’re right. I guess I’m stuck with you. Besides, it sounded like he was as interested in Dawson as he was in me.”

Headly was about to make a wisecrack about that when suddenly it felt as though an electrical charge had shot through him, jolting his brain and body out of lassitude. “Eva!”

She tossed her magazine aside, lunged from her chair, and was at his side in a blink. “What? Are you in pain?”

“Get her back.”

“What?”

“The nurse, get her back in here!”

She didn’t waste time on questions but dashed from the room and, within seconds, was propelling the startled young woman back through the door. Headly said, “What did he look like?”

She just gaped at him.

“The man. The little old man you were talking to about Eva and Dawson. He asked questions about them?”

She nodded, swallowed. “He recognized Mr. Scott.”

“What did he look like? Describe him.”

“He was a little old man,” she said in a helpless tone. “A cancer patient.”

To Eva, Headly said, “Get Knutz on the phone.” Going back to the nurse, he asked her the man’s approximate height and weight, age, what he’d been wearing. By the time Knutz answered, Headly had a description.

Eva held the phone to his ear as he rattled off information. “Carl’s disguised himself as a cancer patient. Shaved head. No eyebrows. Baggy clothes and a blue baseball cap. He was in the hospital, on this floor, around ten thirty or eleven this morning. Check the security cameras.”

Knutz began putting up a reasonable argument, but Headly cut him off. “Goddammit, of course it could’ve been a little old man with cancer,” he shouted. “But this is like something Carl Wingert would do, and I fucking know it was him. It feels like him. Yeah, yeah, I’ll hold.”

He secured the phone between his ear and shoulder and said to Eva, “Call Dawson. You have his new number?” She fished her phone from her handbag and called the number Dawson himself had programmed into her speed dial. Headly added, “Tell him to take this as a serious threat. Not to be macho and blow it off.”

The nurse was crying and wringing her hands. “If I did something wrong, I’m sorry. We were just talking.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Headly said. She was about to lose it, and he knew that if he applied the pressure he wanted to, she would probably collapse and he’d get nothing more from her. Gentling his tone, he said, “Did you get his name?”

She shook her head.

“Did he tell you where he lived?”

“No.”

“Where he was going?”

“He…he was taking flowers to a sick friend and had gotten off on the wrong floor.”

Like hell a sick friend, Headly thought. He’d been reconnoitering the hospital. “You’re doing great, sweetheart. Now, start at the beginning and tell me exactly what you said, what he said, as best as you can remember.”