One-Eyed Jack (24 page)

I thought about calling Skees, but I
didn’t do it. I’d given him that heads-up earlier, and if he didn’t
follow up on it, it wasn’t my fault. He knew where Jack had gone
before, and where the maternity ward was. The U.K. hospital would
be the first one he’d try.

I glanced at the sky, and decided it
wouldn’t be dark for some time yet and I’d do better on a full
stomach. I turned north off Liberty onto New Circle Road, which was
lined with fast food and urban sprawl, and stopped at a place
called the Parkette Drive-In that was a relic of the era of
tailfins and rockabilly. I got a surprisingly tasty chicken
sandwich that I ate in the car, then headed on toward the hospital
on Rose Street.

Except I knew that it wasn’t really on
Rose Street, it was on South Limestone, or at least the parking
garage across the street was. I’d been a passenger when I’d been
there before, not driving, but I found it easily enough – the
hospital complex was huge, impossible to miss.

The sun was low and the shadows were
long when I got out of the car in the hospital garage. As Mel had
said, the place was on the University of Kentucky campus, and
everyone who’d mentioned it in my hearing called it the U.K. health
center, but the sign on the main building said it was the Albert B.
Chandler Hospital. It looked brand-new – at least, the part nearest
Limestone, which was about a dozen stories of glass and red
brick.

I didn’t ask directions; I just walked
across the pedestrian bridge from the garage and marched on in as
if I knew where I was going, then followed the signs to the
maternity ward – the birthing center, they called it – on the third
floor.

It was pretty spiffy, lots of gentle
lighting and soft colors, not much like the standard rows of
machines and clear plastic cribs you see on TV, but the basics were
unchanged – there were babies, mothers, and nurses, and fathers and
siblings were visiting.

I didn’t see Jack. I didn’t see any
sign of Jenny. Everything was calm and happy. I looked everywhere,
opening doors I shouldn’t have and apologizing when I intruded,
getting more and more frantic that I hadn’t found Jack.

I’d been there almost half
an hour when I finally concluded that he wasn’t there and wasn’t
coming. I thought I might have the wrong hospital after all – maybe
Jack had deliberately picked a different hospital
because
this one was so
obvious. I glanced out a window at the sun’s glow fading behind the
parking garage.

Had we picked the wrong hospital, or
had my entire theory been wrong? For all I really knew, Jack was
back under that damned tulip poplar – but I didn’t think so. I
thought I had the wrong hospital. I debated calling Mel and asking
her to choose again, or calling Skees to find out whether there had
been any new developments, but decided not to take the time to do
either one; the car’s GPS could probably find me other hospitals
faster than Mel could, and if Skees had anything to tell me, he had
my number. I headed for the elevator.

I’d been wandering around, though, and
wound up in a different elevator than the one I’d ridden before.
Also, I went down to street level, rather than heading for the
bridge to the garage, so that when I came out on the ground floor I
had no idea where I was. It was a big hospital, as I said, with
multiple wings and various outbuildings, and I hadn’t been in this
part of it before. I headed toward what appeared to be an exit, and
came out on a pedestrian plaza somewhere in the middle of the
medical complex. I looked around, trying to get my
bearings.

And I saw Jack, about fifty yards
away.

It was unquestionably him, even at
that distance; quite aside from that weird psychic sharpness, or
whatever it was, the eye-patch and injured hand were pretty
unmistakable.

I ducked back, making myself a little
harder to see, and watched.

He had just emerged from another part
of the hospital by yet another door, and was walking across the
plaza, looking in all directions as he moved.

All I had to do was keep him in sight,
and call Ben Skees to come get him. I reached in my
pocket.

My phone wasn’t there.

I froze, trying to think
what could have happened to it, and I remembered – I had been
driving on I-64 and talking to Mel, and when the call ended I had
focused on my driving, on getting the right exit and finding my way
to the U.K. campus. I had put the phone down – just
down
, not away in my
pocket. It hadn’t been there in my pocket when I ate my supper, or
when I got to the hospital. I’d left it on the front seat of my
rental, on the passenger side. It was probably still there, in the
hospital garage.

If I went to get it, I’d lose sight of
Jack and might never find him again.

That wasn’t going to happen. I
intended to keep him in sight. Sooner or later I’d have a chance to
make a run back to the car, or to borrow a phone from
someone.

Or maybe I could just grab him, and
drag him to the car with me.

I wasn’t about to just
dash out there after him, though; if I tried that, and he put up a
fight, strangers might misunderstand the situation and intervene. I
would follow him, get closer, try to find out what was going on. He
was here at the hospital, but he hadn’t been in the birthing
center; where
had
he been?

He was standing in the plaza now,
looking around as if waiting for someone, and I was pretty sure I
knew who the someone was. This was where he had arranged to meet
Jenny.

And at that moment I caught sight of
Jenny herself, black hair and white dress.

I couldn’t really see her properly
yet; it wasn’t dark enough, the sky was still blue and gold. I had
just caught a glimpse, a sort of flicker, like when you see
something from the corner of your eye, and when you turn to look
it’s moved on.

I didn’t try to watch Jenny; I watched
Jack, trying to decide whether he had seen her yet. I didn’t think
he had.

But then he
did
spot her, and waved
to her, and the next thing I knew they were both heading for a door
into the hospital – not the big front entrance, just a smallish
side-door into another part of the complex that opened off the
plaza. I wasn’t sure it was even the same building as the main
hospital. I hurried after them, hoping they wouldn’t spot
me.

They didn’t. They embraced, which
looked very strange, since Jenny was still a barely-visible flicker
rather than anything that looked like a real woman, and then they
spoke – I couldn’t hear what was said. I was able to gain some
ground on them, but before I got close they walked back into that
other part of the hospital.

I didn’t think there were any babies
over there; it certainly wasn’t anywhere near the birthing center.
I hurried after them.

I was so focused on not losing sight
of Jack that I had walked right past the sign before I realized
what it said.

Pediatric oncology. We were in the
cancer wing.

Suddenly it all made
sense. I’d guessed wrong, and it was sheer dumb luck I’d found
them. Maybe
Jenny
knew she wanted to eat a baby, but
Jack
didn’t. Jack hadn’t gone
looking for a baby; he had gone looking for kids who were dying
anyway, and who might not mind dying a little sooner to help
someone else. I didn’t know whether any of them actually
were
willing to die for
Jenny, but I could understand Jack’s thinking. For a kid his age it
probably made perfect sense – logically, a kid with late-stage
terminal cancer didn’t have much of anything to lose. It wasn’t
like Katie, with her entire life ahead of her.

I was old enough to know that people
aren’t logical, but it was possible Jack might find a willing
victim all the same. Not many kids Jack’s age or younger were
suicidal, not when they still had their entire lives ahead of them,
but some desperate cancer patient might decide that throwing away a
few months of pain was worth doing.

I didn’t think the patient’s family
would agree, and I didn’t think feeding Jenny was a good idea in
the first place. I picked up my pace, intending to catch Jack
before he could introduce Jenny to anyone.

And I lost them. They went around a
corner ahead of me, and when I turned that corner they were gone.
There was only an empty corridor. There were stairs on one side,
and a dozen doors opening off the passage beyond, but I didn’t see
Jack anywhere. Had he made it to the next corner, or gone up the
stairs, or into one of the rooms? Had Jenny hidden him,
somehow?

I stopped, stunned.

I hesitated; should I go back to my
car to get my phone, and call Skees to let him know where I’d seen
Jack? But that would take several minutes, and that might cost some
poor sick kid a few fingers or worse. Or I could call a nurse –
we’d passed a nurses’ station – but then I’d have to explain the
situation, and nobody was going to believe a story like that
without some pretty serious evidence. I had convinced Ben Skees and
Jenny Derdiarian that I was a psychic because I knew things they
couldn’t explain any other way, but what could I say to prove to a
nurse that I wasn’t a pedophile, or a raving lunatic?

No, I had to find Jack and Jenny and
stop her myself.

Not that I knew how I could stop
her.

I hurried to the stairwell and looked
up, but I didn’t see any sign of them. I started trying
doors.

The first one was locked; the next two
opened on empty rooms, with bare beds and unused tables.

As I tried the fourth door it was
beginning to register, despite my near panic, that I might not need
to explain anything to a nurse beyond, “I saw a missing kid in here
just now; can you call Detective Ben Skees and let him know?” I
didn’t need to say anything about psychics or cannibal ghosts.
Except I wasn’t sure I had Skees’ phone number on me; that might be
back in the car with my phone.

This room wasn’t empty, but the little
girl in the bed, and her haggard mother in the chair beside her,
clearly weren’t expecting company. “Sorry,” I said. “Wrong room.” I
started to close the door, then asked, “You haven’t by any chance
seen a boy in an eyepatch, have you?”

“
No,” the mother
said.

“
Very sorry to bother you,
then.” I closed the door and took a deep breath.

And that was when I heard the first
scream.

It was a shrill, high-pitched scream,
a child’s scream, and it was followed an instant later by another
scream, a little lower, an older boy’s scream.

Jack. I didn’t know who the first
screamer was, but the older boy was Jack.

I was too late. I’d failed again. I’d
let the monster get at its prey.

I followed the sound, up the corridor
and around the next corner, and almost collided with a young man in
scrubs. There were nurses, as well, all of us converging on the
room the screams came from.

One of the nurses got there first, and
added a brief scream of her own to the racket.

I couldn’t see what was happening; the
door was jammed with hospital personnel, blocking the entrance and
blocking my view.

I could
feel
something, though;
I could feel Jenny’s presence. I could feel hunger and fear and
guilt – and a horrible satisfaction, a warm, comfortable pleasure
in what she was doing.

Jack was still screaming, but the
nurse had stopped after a single brief outburst, and the original
childish shriek had trailed off to nothing. Someone was barking
orders, and I was shoved aside as one of the other nurses pushed
past me, heading for somewhere else.

I staggered slightly, then leaned
against the corridor wall. Jenny’s emotions were still reaching me
in a dark, hideous cascade of feelings that I couldn’t
name.

Even though there was definitely
pleasure in there, Jenny was definitely enjoying it, I don’t ever
want to feel anything like that again.

I decided to stay out of the way;
there wasn’t anything I could do. Hospital staff was rushing in and
out, carrying various kits, calling instructions to each
other.

One instruction was, “Get him out of
here!”

“
But don’t let him
leave!”

A moment later the young man in scrubs
emerged from the room, dragging a sobbing Jack by one arm. Jack’s
face, arm, and shirt were wet with blood, but I didn’t think it was
his – I saw no sign of any new injuries. He looked as if he was on
the verge of hysteria.

I felt sick myself. The wave of
emotion had faded, and I knew I hadn’t been in time. Jenny had
attacked some other kid, and by the look of that blood, she hadn’t
settled for a finger this time. “Jack!” I called.

He turned at the sound of his name and
saw me, and the orderly or male nurse or whoever he was – I didn’t
think he was a doctor, but I could have been wrong – noticed me, as
well.

“
You know him?” he
demanded.

“
His name’s Jack Wilson,”
I said. “He’s a runaway; I’ve been helping the police look for
him.”