“Andy, how about putting together a complete sentence?”
“You need to see this. I found someone, an old employee. It’s bad, Ziggy. He knew your daughter.”
54
St. Anthony’s Medical Center Elkton, Maryland
“So you remember her?”
“With hair like that?” asked a very pregnant nurse named Sandie as she pointed at the photo of Nola. “She wasn’t exactly a talker.” Sandie had a square face, long fingernails with tiny rhinestones, and a necklace with a gold charm for each of her three children, all boys. “Plus, we don’t get many visitors around here,” Sandie explained as they walked down the hallway and she motioned to the other rooms they passed.
Waggs nodded, eyeing the patients through the open doors, every one frozen in bed, their mouths agape, their hands clenched, their legs curled in ways that legs weren’t meant to curl. In the previous hospital, Mrs. Silvestri looked bad. These patients looked worse.
“You get used to it,” Nurse Sandie said, reading Waggs’s mind.
From her years at Dover, Waggs knew it was true. It was the best and worst feature of the human brain—you can normalize anything.
“So when Nola showed up here . . . ?”
“She said she was a friend of Mr. Soule—asked for him by name . . . did a little painting of him . . . I thought it was sweet,” Nurse Sandie explained as Waggs made a mental note. If Nola was painting him, she was looking for something.
“And you didn’t think it was odd having someone just show up?”
“Like I said, it was sweet. No one had visited him in fourteen years.”
“Fourteen?”
“Our specialty is long-term care, emphasis on the ‘long.’ We’ve got one patient, she’s been here nearly thirty years. Truth is, we were just happy Mr. Soule had some company. When it comes to the coma ward, people aren’t exactly banging down th—”
“Coma? Another brain injury?”
“I’m not sure what you mean by ‘another,’ but you do realize that’s our specialty here . . . traumatic brain injuries.”
Waggs nodded, glancing around. That’s why the hall was so silent. “Do you happen to know how Mr. Soule got injured?” Waggs asked, her voice picking up speed.
“Not that I— He’s been here so long, I actually don’t.”
“What about Nola? When she came to visit, any idea what she was looking for?”
“You should ask him,” Sandie said.
“Excuse me?”
The nurse pointed to room 141, the open door on their left. “I thought that’s why you were here,” she explained. “Mr. Soule . . . he’s been awake for a few weeks now. You can ask him yourself.”
55
In ten minutes, the blood would be everywhere. But for now, the sun was in Zig’s eyes as he gripped the phone in his fist.
“C’mon,” Zig muttered, “pick up the damn—”
“It’s me,” Waggs’s recorded voice said. “No one answers their phone anymore. Send me a text if it’s important.”
Beeeep.
Zig hung up with one hand, holding the steering wheel with the other. The ride from Dover wasn’t long—a quick half hour—and he’d tried Waggs half a dozen times. Sent texts, too. No response. It wasn’t a shock. At the Bureau, Waggs was always getting called onto other cases.
Still, every few minutes, Zig glanced down at his texts. Not funny, Waggs—where are you? He wanted to talk things through, and after his visit with the head of Dover, he needed her tech help, too.