THREE TIMES A LADY (14 page)

Worse, it would have
excited
him. 

Short as Dana was – five-three even on her best day – each of the orderlies who’d applied for the job of acting as her human shields had been selected on the basis of their own, more impressive heights.  No doubt it marked the easiest employment interview process any of them had ever been through:

Are you taller than any one of
The Lollipop Kids
from
The Wizard of Oz?

Yep.

Great.  You’re hired.   

Dana heaved a grateful sigh of relief when the group finally reached a white hospital van fifty yards away from the press.  Seven of the orderlies immediately peeled off and headed back toward Fairview General’s main entrance, giggling to themselves and to each other like naughty schoolchildren as they passed by the reporters again.  Take
that
, Tom Brokaw.  Stick
that
in your newsreel and smoke it, buddy.

The job of actually driving Dana home fell to a young man of about twenty-eight or so.  Justin McNamara was the oldest son of a surgeon on staff at Fairview General, so Dr Spinks had decided that he’d probably be Dana’s best bet to not kiss and tell – aka go running off to the press with his story.  Anything about Dana and her personal life seemed to be a
very
hot commodity these days, so if any new information leaked out to the press after the
Fletch
routine the source wouldn’t be hard to trace.  Unlike an Agatha Christie novel, the pool of possible suspects here was laughably small.

Dana and McNamara had made it halfway home to Dana’s apartment complex in Lakewood on the western outskirts of Cleveland when her stomach suddenly lurched.  It hadn’t been very long ago that her
brother
had posed as an orderly to gain access to Dana’s hospital room – less than a week after she’d passed out from the sheer stress of investigating the Cleveland Slasher case.  Well, the sheer stress of it washed down by more than just a little Kettle One vodka.

Dana’s heartbeat pounded against her ribs as she studied McNamara carefully from the corner of her left eye, not wanting to alert him to her suspicions.  McNamara didn’t
look
like a killer to her, but then again neither had her brother.  Hell, Nathan Stiedowe had been so devilishly handsome he’d made Ted Bundy look downright homely in comparison; completely obscuring the horrendously ugly person he’d been inside. 

Dana clenched her fists in her lap and breathed in slowly through her nostrils, berating herself for not even
considering
the possible threat until it was too late.  Once again, it seemed, she was a day late and a dollar short – the same mistake she’d consistently made during the Cleveland Slasher investigation. 

Dana shook her head in exasperation. 
What in the hell was
wrong
with her these days?  Why couldn’t she
think
straight any more?  And if something was up, had Dr Spinks been in on it too?
 

Before Dana knew what was happening, her worst fears were suddenly confirmed.  Without warning, McNamara slammed down hard on the brake pedal, bringing the van to a screeching halt. 

Dana’s body slammed forward violently against her seat belt.  Pain like a knife wound ripped through her right shoulder.  A casual smile played across McNamara’s full lips as he turned in his seat to face her. 

Dana jerked back in horror – seeing Nathan Stiedowe’s face dancing in front of her eyes again – and lifted up her arms quickly to protect her own face.  It was a natural reaction in all humans, but one that no doubt made her look like a terrified vampire who’d just glimpsed the morning sun streaming over the dew-soaked horizon, who’d just glimpsed his own mortality with frightening certainty for the first time.

A confused look flooded across the young orderly’s handsome face.  ‘Whoa.  Take it easy, ma’am.  We’re here, that’s all.  You’re home.  Look.’

He gestured past Dana’s aching right shoulder and out her window.  Dana turned in her seat and blinked hard in confusion.  Fifty feet away, her apartment complex loomed up nine stories high into the late-afternoon winter sunshine. 

A wave of relief flooded through Dana’s veins, chasing away the confusion.  Without realising it, she’d gotten lost in her thoughts again, had completely lost track of time.  Worse, she’d also briefly lost track of the location of her
physical body
, had absolutely no idea where in the hell she’d been there for a moment.  If nothing else, she knew that the FBI shrinks would have a field day with her once they’d finally coaxed her onto the comfortable leather couches scattered around their plush offices down in Quantico.

Dana felt ridiculous as she lowered her arms and tried to smile at McNamara.  ‘So we are,’ she said, trying her best to sound casual about the whole thing but no doubt falling miserably short.  ‘Sorry about that.  I guess I’m just still feeling a little bit jumpy.’

The concerned look in McNamara’s eyes let Dana know that even
he
could see that she’d lost her marbles – and he was just a lowly orderly.  Told her he thought that they might as well start fitting Dana for her white coat right now – and not the kind she was currently wearing as part of the elaborate
Fletch
ruse.  The kind of white coat that restricted the free movement of your arms, for both your own safety and the safety of those around you.  The kind they passed out right along with the psychotropic meds over in the mental-health wing at the Cleveland Clinic.

McNamara forced the semblance of a smile onto his lips.  ‘No problem, ma’am.  Welcome home.’

Dana exited the van and stood on the curb until McNamara had driven away.  The young orderly adjusted his rearview mirror in order to keep her in his line of sight as he swung the van out of the parking lot before disappearing into the traffic streaming down Clifton Avenue.  No doubt he wanted to make sure that Dana didn’t slit her wrists right then and there on the snow-covered sidewalk.  Truth be told, though, Dana didn’t blame him in the least little bit for his vigilance.  She probably would have reacted the exact same way had she been in his shoes. 

Dana shook her head mournfully, knowing the poor kid had no idea just how close he’d come with his silent diagnosis of insanity.  The truth of the matter was that Dana
did
feel like she was starting to go a little bit crazy lately, just a smidge
Looney Toons
, a textbook case of PTSD if she’d ever seen one. 

Then again, when had crazy people ever been trusted to make their own diagnoses? 

A biting cold delivered by a howling wind sliced effortlessly through Dana’s white lab coat and swirled her recently re-grown short blonde hair wildly around her scalp as she made her way quickly up to the main doors of the apartment complex before fishing out her magnetic key card from her purse and sliding it through the electronic reader.  Cleveland in the wintertime had never been an especially pleasant place to be under even the best of weather conditions, but today’s lake-effect winds were making things that much worse, that much more unbearable.  It was the kind of cold that hurt you all the way down to the bone.  The kind of cold that made you want to curl yourself up into a tight little ball and simply
cry
yourself to death. 

Dana shook her head to chase away the temptation and stepped inside the building, pausing a moment to shake off the cold and luxuriating in the warmth of the space that went to work on defrosting her frozen cheeks.  Taking a breath, she then headed for her landlady’s apartment on the first floor, deliberately ignoring her mailbox located in a honeycomb arrangement in the middle of the lobby.  No doubt the damn thing had been crammed full of credit card bills and Publisher’s Clearinghouse letters that breathlessly informed her that
she
could be the next lucky winner of the million-dollar prize.  Pulling open another door at the northeast end of the lobby, Dana made her way down the hall and knocked lightly on her landlady’s door.  A moment later, Maggie Carter fiddled with the chain on the inside and opened up the door.  ‘Dana!’ the old woman pronounced happily in her thick Polish accent.  ‘Welcome home, honey!  We were so worried about you!  How are you feeling?’

Dana smiled – a
real
smile this time.  It was hard not to when you looked at Maggie Carter.  Eighty years old if she was a day, she’d escaped her home country and its Nazi persecution during World War II and had subsequently changed her name from Magdalena Abrahamowicz to the more American-sounding Maggie Carter in an effort to fit in better with her new surroundings.  The name change had been made to honour her adopted country of the United States, but the simple truth of the matter was that Maggie Carter would have fit in
anywhere
she went.  She possessed a smile that lit up the room like a sunburst every time she showed off her false teeth and – even at her considerably advanced age – still moved around town like an eighteen-year-old girl brimming over with enthusiasm and good cheer.  Dana knew that she could probably learn a thing or two from the old gal.  Life wasn’t
all
just gloom and doom and serial killers, after all.  There was some
good
stuff about it, too – however hard that good stuff might be for her to see sometimes.

‘I’m fine, Mrs Carter,’ Dana said, catching a whiff off freshly baked bread coming from the kitchen that made her stomach growl.  ‘Feeling much better.  And how are you and Mr Carter doing?  How’s his colitis these days?’

Maggie Carter rolled her eyes halfway around her face and waved a frail arm in front of her painfully thin body, jiggling the loose skin hanging off her right biceps like a rooster’s comb.  ‘I’m wonderful, sweetie – thanks so much for asking.  And for Mr Carter, well, Bob’s sleeping again, but what’s new, right?  His health is fine, though.  He might not look like much, but that man’s as healthy as a horse.  Eats like one too.’ 

The old lady cackled at her own joke, and Dana soon found herself laughing right along.  She just couldn’t help herself.  Maggie Carter’s laugh was
infectious
.

The old woman stepped to one side and motioned for Dana to come inside.  ‘Anyway, get the heck out of that cold hallway already and get your pretty little butt in here.  You’ll catch your death of pneumonia if you’re not careful.  Kind of reminds me of Warsaw in the wintertime.’ 

Maggie Carter paused then and shook her head, no doubt in an effort to chase away what must have been
extremely
unpleasant memories of Warsaw in the wintertime.  ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘I’ve got some hot tea on the stove and I know that there’s somebody here who’s just
dying
to see you.  Oreo’s been doing nothing but crying for his mama all day and all night ever since you’ve been gone – not that I’m complaining, mind you.  To tell you the truth, the company’s been kind of nice, what with Bob usually sleeping all the time.  I swear to sweet Jesus above, that man could sleep through a
hurricane
.’

Dana laughed again and stepped inside the old woman’s apartment, even though what she
really
felt like doing right now was getting back up to her own apartment and taking a long, hot shower.  A chance to scrub the antiseptic smell of the hospital out of her hair and skin and fingernails.  A chance for her to be
alone
for a while. 

Dana stopped herself mid-thought and gave herself a swift mental kick in the butt.  Not only was she already looking forward to ending her visit with Maggie Carter, she’d also had the poor taste to show up on the woman’s doorstep empty-handed.  She wished like hell she’d thought to bring along a gift for her as thanks for watching Oreo for so long, but it was too late to worry about that now.  She’d need to do it later.  Dana knew that the old lady was fond of chocolate and cheese, so she made a mental note to stop by Godiva and the deli tomorrow morning.  Even with Godiva’s exorbitant prices, it was a small price to pay for the old woman’s kindness.  As far as Dana knew, most kennels didn’t offer unlimited pet-sitting services for comatose pet owners who were stuck in the hospital following horrific plane crashes.

Dana stretched her neck eight inches to the left and finally felt some of the tension residing there loosen up a little bit.  Then she paused and looked around the place. 

The Carters’ apartment looked exactly like one might suspect an octogenarian couple’s living quarters to look like.  Plastic-covered couches littered the living room.  Matching, fabric-covered recliners sat in front of an old, cabinet-style television on the south side of the room.  A teetering stack of
National Enquirer
tabloids was piled three feet high on top of the dining-room table, featuring such news on the covers as that of a two-headed alien being born out in Utah and Elvis Pressley being spotted stuffing his face at a donut shop in Sacramento. 

Maggie Carter lifted the magazines off the table and placed them on an old wooden chair three feet away.  ‘Have a seat, dear,’ she said.  ‘I’ll be back with the tea in just a minute.  Then we’ll go get Oreo for you.  He has his own room, you know.’

The old woman beamed with this revelation, and Dana immediately knew that her cat couldn’t have been left in more capable – or loving – hands.