Sleep No More (19 page)

“Really? From whom?”

He shrugged. “People from the apartment. Coworkers from the hospital where he works. Look, I’ve no idea what he did, but I’d lay odds that Jessie is clean. That guy who did this must be a complete nut.”

“Good chance. May we see him now?”

“Sure.” He turned away. “Second door on the left.”

“Coworkers,” Eve murmured as she walked with him down the hall. “Pierce?”

“If he’s the one who hired Drogan, the man who did this. Drogan might have called him with a report.” He checked his phone. “No info on a Drogan yet. Maybe Newell will be able to tell us more.”

“I didn’t get the impression that he knew much more than his name, but I could be wrong.”

When they entered the recovery room, Jessie Newell was lying in bed, swathed in bandages. “It’s about time. You’ve got to get me out of here.”

“I thought you’d changed your mind and were going to let them check you into the hospital,” Eve said. “Your intern friend said you were waiting for the next available room.”

“You can’t argue with hospital personnel. I know that from experience. You just have to agree, then do your own thing.” He struggled up in bed. “Get me something to wear. They stripped everything off me.”

“They had no choice,” Eve said dryly. “Your clothes were bloody and ripped in dozens of places.”

“I have to get out of here. Now.” He met Eve’s gaze. “I’m vulnerable here. Doctors and nurses all belong to the same club. Pierce is well-known all over Santa Barbara. He or one of his cohorts could come in here, and they’d welcome him with open arms.”

“You think he’d try to kill you?”

“Not if he could arrange for someone else to do it. But he’s scared, and he might get desperate.”

“Can you prove that he’s behind this attack on you?”

“I can’t prove shit. Why do you think that I was still hanging around the hospital after Beth got away?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about you or your motives.”

“Then get me out of here, and you might find out.” He added firmly, “Clothes.”

“Why should we help you?” Joe asked. “What if you split the minute we get you out of here?”

“You take the risk. Because if you don’t, I’ll find a way to get out of here on my own. I’ve wriggled my way out of tight places before.”

“Not looking like a mummy from a grade-B movie.” Joe hesitated, then turned away. “You’d better be worth the trouble. I’ll see if I can float around the area and grab some scrubs.”

“You expect us to smuggle you out of here?” Eve asked Newell as Joe left the room.

“Yes.” He sat up in bed. “Because you want me to talk about Beth Avery, and I won’t do it until you spring me from this place. Why not do what I need? You must know that woman in the hospital they’re calling Beth Avery is a phony. So you must know there’s something nasty going on.”

“I have suspicions,” she said. “Were you the one who helped Beth hide the pills in her mattress?”

“You found out about that? Yes. I had to do it myself for the first couple weeks. After that, she had the clarity to help me hide them.”

“Was it Drogan who tried to kill her that night?”

“I didn’t know his name. Just that he was hired to do the job. But from things he said while he was working on me tonight, I’m sure that he was the one. He was angry with her. He expected a victim, and she was strong enough to fight him.” He smiled. “Hell, she was strong enough to beat him.”

And he was proud of her, Eve realized. It mattered to him that Beth was no longer the drugged, mindless creature she had been told about. The knowledge brought a rush of warmth toward him. “She was bedridden, wasn’t she? I would have thought that her muscles would have been too weak to function after all those years.”

“She wasn’t in bed all that time. It depended on what doctor was on Pierce’s favored list. From what I can glean from her medical history during most of her stay, the orders were to keep her fit and well exercised.”

“That sounds like training a horse.”

“Except they don’t keep a horse drugged and under hypnosis for the majority of their waking hours.”

“Hypnosis?”

“She had regular sessions with Pierce and an expert from Berlin from the moment she arrived here in Santa Barbara.”

“Some kind of therapy?”

“You might call it that. I understand the expert from Berlin was a Dr. Hans Gelber who specialized in erasing the damaging memories of vets who suffered trauma during wartime. I thought it curious that Pierce thought that a skiing accident would cause that serious a trauma.”

Memory erasure. She shuddered at the thought. Losing a part of your life as if it had never been. “How do you know all this?”

“I don’t know nearly enough.” His gaze narrowed on her face. “But evidently more than you. What are you doing nosing around here? What’s Beth Avery to you? You said you didn’t know her.”

“I don’t. I’ve never met her.” She paused. “But she’s my sister.”

Newell went still. “I didn’t know she had a sister. No one told me.” He shook his head. “Beth would have told me.”

Eve’s lips twisted. “We appear to be in the same boat. No one told me either until she disappeared. My mother had to sign papers that Beth’s birth was not to be disclosed. And I doubt if Beth knew about me. My mother kept her word. Beth belonged to the Averys and not to her.”

“Interesting.” His gaze focused on her face. “You don’t look like her.”

“No. But there’s a slight family resemblance.” Bonnie’s curly hair that was so like that of Beth in the photo. “And I’m sure that she looks more like her father. He was very good-looking, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Beth said he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen. She only saw him a few times a year, but she loved him. She still loves him.” He was carefully taking off the bandages on his face and neck. “The bastard never visited her since she came to that hospital.”

“What are you doing with those bandages?”

“Quinn called me a mummy. The bandages attract too much attention. They’ll stop me if I try to walk out of here with them on my face. I can cover the ones on my chest and arms.” He frowned impatiently. “If Quinn gets a move on and brings me—”

“Shut up,” Joe said as he came into the room. He tossed a bundle of blue-green scrubs on the bed. “It takes time to walk in and steal surgical garb from under the noses of everyone in the ER. We’re just lucky it’s a busy night. Tunic, pants, slippers. Do you need any help getting dressed?”

“I can manage.” Newell swung his feet to the floor. “But I’ll need to hurry. I can’t take the chance of—” He inhaled sharply as he stood up. “Shit.”

“Sure?” Joe asked.

Newell nodded and reached for the tunic. “I’ll slip out the door where the ambulance brings in the patients. Bring your car around and wait for me there.”

Eve gazed at him skeptically. “You don’t look very well. There’s a good chance someone will stop you.”

He shook his head. “Not if I do it right and look as if I know where I’m going. If I seem to have a purpose and appear a little impatient, no one is going to get in my way.”

“Will they put out an alarm when they find this room empty?”

“No, they’ll just assume someone else has come in and taken me to an available room. Hospitals aren’t always efficient, and it may take them a few hours just to find out I’m not here. Believe me, I know.” He was carefully working the tunic over his head. “Get out of here. I’m okay.”

“If you say so.” Eve turned away. “But if you go out another door and try to give us the slip, I’m coming after you, Newell.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not well enough to be deceptive. Though I might have tried that if I thought I could get away with it.” He added grimly, “But I’m not the one who is going to suffer if I move too slow. Just have that car at the entrance. I’m not going to be able to do much for a few hours beyond getting to the front door.”

“It will be there.” Joe took Eve’s arm as they left the room. “Tough. I believe we’d better look beyond the personnel record he gave to the hospital.”

“I’m glad he’s tough. He would never have been able to get Beth out of there if he weren’t.” She added as they walked out of the hospital and headed for the parking lot, “He told me that he’d found out that she was attended by all kinds of different doctors during the years. One of the first ones was a German doctor who specialized in memory erasure by hypnosis. It was the principal treatment during her first year at the mental hospital.”

“Did you get his name?”

“Yes, Gelber, but won’t it be in the records?”

“It depends on whether they wanted to have the details of that particular therapy documented.” He opened the car door for her. “And what memory they were determined to erase.”

“You mean the memory that someone tried to kill her on that ski slope?”

“I’m not sure they did.” He shook his head. “I’m not sure of anything right now. We’re only putting together the pieces one by one.”

“And Newell should be able to give us a few more pieces to add to the puzzle.” Eve’s gaze was on the emergency door. “I think he cares about her, Joe.”

“We’ll see. When he first came around her, evidently she was almost a vegetable. It’s difficult to develop any feeling for a woman in that condition.” Joe’s tone was noncommittal. “It could be that he just hates her enemies. It would have the same effect.” He started the car. “There he is. Bold as brass. He’s right. No one is going to stop him.”

Newell’s skin was pale against the blue-green scrubs, but his step was firm as he came toward their car as they pulled up before him. “It’s about time.” He opened the rear door and climbed into the car. “I told you it was an emergency.” He sat up very straight on the seat until they had driven out of the hospital zone. “Okay.” He slumped back on the seat and closed his eyes. “Give me a minute. Get on the highway and head north.”

“Suppose we talk first,” Joe said.

“I can’t talk right now. And I can’t wait for you to interrogate me.” His hands closed into fists at his sides. “Drive, dammit. There’s no time. Look, he got my cell phone. I tried to get one of those EMTs to let me use his phone to call Beth, but he wouldn’t do it.”

“I imagine they were too busy trying to save your life,” Eve said dryly.

“I have to warn her, and they wouldn’t listen to me. By the time I got to the hospital and persuaded the intern to let me use his phone, it was too late. She didn’t answer.”

Eve stiffened. “You think Drogan managed to find her?”

“I don’t know, but there’s a possibility. He could locate the nearest tower from her GPS if he has the right equipment.” His lips twisted. “And he impresses me as a person who’d have the right equipment. He takes both pride and pleasure in his work. I learned that when he was cutting my flesh with such precision.”

“Could he con her into telling him where she’s located?” Joe asked.

Newell shook his head. “She’s inexperienced, but she’s not stupid. She’d see through him.” He added half beneath his breath, “I hope.”

“But you’re not sure?” Eve asked.

“How can I be sure? Look, Beth has had years of being told she’s a mental cripple and had to be cared for. They reinforced it with hypnosis and drugs. I’ve only had her for the last eighteen months. She’d grown accustomed to trusting everyone with whom she comes in contact. Do you know how hard it was for me to break that trust?”

“Tell us,” Eve said. “And while you’re at it, tell us why you bothered to do it.”

He didn’t answer for a moment. “I … like her. At first, I just felt sorry for her and pissed at those sons of bitches who were making her into a living corpse. She was like a little girl lying in that bed and smiling at me whenever I came into the room. She smiled at everyone, even Pierce’s whore, Stella Lenslow, who liked to come in and taunt her. The bitch was even cutting her medication during the last six months. She was hoping that Beth would suffer withdrawal from the drugs.” He shrugged. “She didn’t realize that I’d begun weaning her off them nine months before that. But Stella’s viciousness made Beth’s increasing alertness more plausible, and since she was Beth’s principal nurse, it worked into my plans. Toward the end, I had to make Beth pretend to be in pain a couple times when Stella was in the room to make Stella happy and not give away the fact that the decrease in dosage had little effect.”

“We’re on the freeway,” Joe said as he entered the ramp. “Now where are we going?”

“Seventeen Mile Drive. Near Carmel.”

“That’s where she is?” Eve asked.

He nodded. “I used to work for a man who has a house there. He always spends this time of year in the south of France, and the house is vacant. I knew it would be safe for Beth.”

“How? It’s too close to Pierce and the hospital. I would have thought it would be safer for her to get out of California entirely.”

“It was better if she was close enough so that I could help her if she needed me.” He paused. “Besides, she wasn’t ready.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean?” he asked harshly. “Beth’s like someone from that fairy tale who’s been asleep in a tower while the whole world grew up around her. There were hazards out there that she couldn’t imagine. I tried to fill her in a little, but our time together was too damn limited, and my main objective had to be to get her out of that hospital. But I knew she had to catch up before she could fit in somewhere and hide out until we found a way to keep her safe.”

“You’ve gone to a lot of risk to save Beth,” Joe said. “Why? And don’t tell me it was just because she was appealing and helpless. How did you know she had anything beyond that sweet smile to save? Most orderlies would have assumed that the doctors were right, and Beth Avery was a lost cause. Why didn’t you? And why did you spend eighteen months as an orderly anyway? It’s not exactly the kind of job a Marine with your record would embrace on a long-term basis.”

Newell didn’t answer.

“I’m not going to go any farther until I know,” Joe said.

Newell shrugged. “Oh, what the hell, I guess it doesn’t matter any longer. My uncle sent me here to check out what was going on with Beth Avery. He thought that she might have been railroaded in there, and he asked me to snoop around and find out.”