The Case of the Sin City Sister (26 page)

Still holding Eve by the sleeve of her shirt. The nurse held the phone closer to her and dialed a number. She placed it to her mouth. “I need some help up here,” she said to whoever answered her call. “It’s Patsy from the fifth floor, room 515,” she added and then clicked the phone off.

“Do you think you could take this somewhere else?” The
patient in bed A had awakened. She sat up. “I’m trying to sleep. Isn’t that what you tell me I need to do? Get some sleep?” She paused. “What is going on?”

The nurse looked over at the patient. “I’m sorry, Mrs. White. We just have an after-hours visitor situation that I’m trying to handle.” And she pulled Eve back out into the hall and closed the door to the room.

“Are you the patient’s family?”

Eve shook her head. “I’m a friend,” she answered. “I was worried about her and came to check on her.”

“Why were you worried about her?” she asked.

The elevator bell sounded, indicating it was stopping on that floor, and Patsy, still holding on to Eve, glanced in that direction. “Now I can get some help,” she said, but then she seemed surprised when the door opened and it apparently wasn’t the person she’d expected. “Wait a minute.” She let go of Eve’s sleeve. “That’s not Peter.”

Eve looked down the hall and saw the person coming off the elevator. He was no security guard. He was the man on the motorcycle she had seen at the apartments earlier that day, the same man she had seen at Caesar’s the night before. He looked taller standing than he did sitting, but he wore his hair in the same slicked-back fashion and was still sporting the dark mustache.

She wanted to say something, but she couldn’t find the words.

“Who are you?” the nurse asked as the man headed in their direction.

He grinned. “Not who you thought,” he said, then he reached up and quickly and calmly placed a cloth over the nurse’s mouth
and nose. She dropped to her knees before she could respond. The phone fell beside her.

Eve watched in shock as the nurse slumped to the floor.

“Hey, who’s out there?” Mrs. White called from inside room 515, and as the man turned to see where the voice asking the question had come from, Eve took off in the direction of the exit stairs.

She could hear the footsteps following her as she hurried through the door and down the steps. She jumped down two stairs at a time, as fast as she could, but she could hear the motorcycle man gaining on her, and she suddenly became concerned that he would catch up with a frail Pauline and Dorisanne, who she assumed couldn’t be that far ahead of her.

She made a quick decision and opened the next door she came to, the one to the third floor, and sped down the hall. As she moved away from the stairwell, she tried several of the doors on her left and on her right, pushing and pulling, but soon stopped when she saw that there was a keypad next to every set of doors. She knew that she was going to have to keep running down the hall until she could find either an unlocked door that led to someone who could help or another stairwell or bank of elevators so she could get to another floor.

She heard the exit door open and close behind her. Two more sets of double doors were on her left, and as she hurried past them she pushed. One of the doors opened, and she ran inside and slid down behind it, landing on her heels. She looked above her head, saw the lock, and turned it, just before she felt the door being pushed from the other side. She sat for a moment, her heart
pounding. And as she closed her eyes and waited, she smelled a dank and familiar smell.

The door was struck and kicked a few times, and then the attempts to gain entry stopped. She could hear voices from farther down the hallway.

“I must have taken a wrong turn,” she heard the man just on the other side of the door saying.

She waited.

“The cafeteria,” she heard him say in answer to a question.

And then there was silence. She heard what sounded like a muffled conversation, then silence again. She suddenly worried that another hospital employee might have been harmed, rendered unconscious like Patsy on the fifth floor, but then she could make out some more conversation, directions being given to the cafeteria, she thought, and then footsteps leading away from where she was hiding.

She stayed where she was, sliding all the way down until she was sitting, her back against the door, her legs stretched out in front of her. She held her hands to her chest, thinking that might somehow slow her heart rate, heard nothing else, and finally looked around at the room where she was hiding. Suddenly, she remembered that smell from being in the hospital in Santa Fe when she was looking for the girlfriend of the dead Hollywood director.

Eve had landed in the morgue.

FORTY-THREE

Eve closed her eyes and remembered her unexpected visit to a hospital morgue when she was following Megan Flint, the Captain’s client and Hollywood star, and the hospital security guards as they hurried along the hospital corridors and down the exit stairs. She had been nosy and meddlesome then and gotten into a bit of trouble for her curiosity, and here she was again. Maybe not as nosy and meddlesome as concerned and involved—it was her sister’s well-being, after all, she told herself—but still, once again she was stuck in the room of the dead. She glanced around. There was a dim light that gave her some sense of what was around her. She could see a wall of small doors to her left, and in front of her and to her right a steel table, on which two folded sheets had been placed. It felt cold, even though she was sure the room was no cooler than the other places in the hospital. She shook her head.

“That was Dorisanne,” she whispered to herself, recalling what she had just witnessed, whom she had seen, and she dropped her
elbows to her knees and her chin into her hands. She found herself completely grateful that even though a man was chasing her and also very likely chasing her sister and Pauline, and even though she still didn’t understand what kind of trouble Dorisanne was in and wanted desperately to talk to her, she had seen her, laid eyes on her, and at least from the distance that was between them and by the way she was assisting Pauline, she seemed okay. She was unharmed, at least for that second.

Eve said a prayer of thanks, offered another petition for divine assistance for her sister, and then began to reassess where she was and what she needed to do. She could stay hidden for a while longer. She could try to find another way out of the room. She could take her chances and step out through the door she had entered, the one that was locked and secure behind her. Or . . .

She reached into the pocket of her pants and pulled out her cell phone. Why hadn’t she thought of that in the first place? She dialed Daniel’s number. There was no answer. She left a message: “I’m at the hospital. I need your help. Call me when you get this.” And she hit the End button. And suddenly without giving her action much thought, she punched in another number, the number she was most familiar with. There was just one ring.

“Hello,” came the response. His voice sounded startled and sleepy.

And suddenly, Eve felt the tears forming in her eyes. “It’s me,” was what she said.

There was a hesitation and then a barrage of questions. “Are you okay? Where are you? Did you find your sister? What time is it?”

Eve cleared her throat and looked down at her watch. She could barely make out the time. “It’s five in the morning here.” She thought for a second. “Six there.” She paused. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

“I was awake.”

She knew he was lying.

“Where are you? What’s wrong?”

“I saw her. I saw Dorisanne. I’m at a hospital here in Vegas.”

“A hospital? Is she hurt? What’s happening?”

“No, no, she’s not a patient here. Her neighbor is . . . was a patient . . . and I got here and saw Dorisanne helping her leave. I couldn’t get to them because some man is chasing me or maybe them. I don’t know.”

“Evangeline, where is Daniel?”

She shook her head, then realized he could not see her response. “I don’t know.”

She heard labored breathing and figured he was trying to get out of bed. “Are you safe right now?” he asked. “Are you in a secure place?”

“Yes, I think so,” she replied. “I think I’m in the morgue. The door is locked and I think he left.”

“Okay, I want you to hang up, call 911, tell them exactly where you are and what has happened. And then you wait until somebody comes, a police officer or a hospital employee. Don’t leave that room until you are sure you’re not in jeopardy.”

Eve nodded.

“Evangeline, do you hear me? Are you able to do that?”

There was a ragged cough from his end.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Allergies,” he said. “Just allergies.” He coughed again. “Did you hear what I said, Eve? Can you do what I said?”

“Yes. I will hang up and call 911 and tell them where I am and what has happened.”

“And then you’ll call me right back and let me know you’re safe.”

It was not a question. Eve nodded.

“I’m sorry I called and worried you,” she said. “I know it’s late . . . or . . . early, and I know it’s not helpful when you’re so far away. I shouldn’t have called. I’m fine now.”

“Evangeline, I’m your father. Who else should you call?”

“I know,” she said softly.

“Before you hang up and call the police, tell me about the man who is chasing you. Have you seen him before?”

“He’s been in a couple of places where Daniel and I have been. He was at the hotel where Dorisanne’s neighbor works. That was last night. And then this morning he was at the apartments when we were there to meet with her, to get a key and search Dorisanne’s place.”

“Did he speak to you? Did you meet him?”

“No,” Eve replied. “I just saw him.”

There was a pause.

“You still there?” the Captain asked.

“Yes,” she answered. “I think he’s the one Dorisanne is hiding from. I think she and Robbie stole from him or turned him into the police.” She recalled what she had discovered earlier. “I think Dorisanne is working with the FBI,” she said. “There are two men who have been following me and Daniel, and I think they’re agents.”

“What makes you think that?”

Eve stopped. There was a noise outside in the hallway.

“Evangeline, are you still there? Is everything okay?”

“I hear someone,” she whispered. She felt the door behind her slightly pushed.

“Okay, stay calm. Hang up and call 911,” he instructed her.

She waited. There was no more noise, no more pushing on the door.

“It’s okay,” she told him. “I think whoever it was is gone.”

“Why do you think Dorisanne is working with FBI agents?”

She heard the cough again.

“She had a kind of code in her address book. I called one of the numbers and a guy, one of the two following us, picked up. It was his phone. And I think that’s where Daniel is now. Both cars were gone out of the parking lot. I think they must be together. Maybe they’re figuring this whole thing out.”

Eve stopped. There were more sounds coming from the hallway. Voices, several people shouting, heavy footsteps. She froze.

“Evangeline . . . what’s going on?”

She hit the End button on her phone and jumped to her feet.

FORTY-FOUR

“Who’s in there?”

She could hear a voice just behind her.

“Give me the key!”

Eve looked around, trying to find a spot to hide or another exit, but there were no other doors and there was no good place that she could see and there was no time to keep searching. She jumped onto the steel table by the door and pulled both of the sheets over the top of her. She had no idea who was on their way into the morgue, and she only hoped they weren’t going to look where she had landed.

The door flew open. The overhead lights came on.

“What makes you think somebody’s in here?” It was a man’s voice, sounding to Eve like a person in charge, strong and commanding.

“It was locked. I checked all the doors on this floor when I came down a few minutes ago. The morgue doors aren’t ever locked. So I came to get you before entering on my own.”

“You want me to check the coolers?” somebody asked from behind them.