The Hollow Ones(80)

Inside, two nurses knelt on either side of the ambulance driver, lying facedown on the floor. Solomon’s bed was empty.

“Where is he?” asked Odessa.

The nurses were still in shock at what they had found. One of them stood. “He’s dead,” she said, referring to the ambulance driver.

Odessa gripped the nurse’s shoulder. “The patient in this room,” she said, “Earl Solomon. His bed’s here. He’s not.”

The nurse looked at the empty bed, slow to understand.

A male nurse came running to the door, drawn by the red alarm light, stopping when he saw the ambulance driver’s body.

The nurse said to him, “Earl Solomon. Patient in this room. Where is he?”

The male nurse backed out of the room, looking up and down the hall. “Stroke victim, right?”

The nurse said, “He couldn’t have gotten far…”

Odessa stared at Blackwood. She was terrified suddenly, desperately afraid for Solomon, and starting to panic. “Did it come here for him?” she said.

“We need to find Solomon,” said Blackwood.

“Did it come here specifically for him?” she said.

The nurses looked at her strangely. Blackwood grasped her wrist and guided her out of the room, a few steps down the hallway, before she shook him off.

“Answer me,” she said.

“We need to find him.”

“There are no coincidences,” she said, with a sharp edge, feeling hysteria creep into her voice.

“It came here for him,” admitted Blackwood. He looked a little shaken himself. “We need to find him now.”

“And then what?” she said—but Blackwood pulled her toward the stairs rather than answer.



“He could be anywhere,” said Odessa as they rushed down the final flights, back out into the first floor. It was still bedlam due to the ambulance crash. Police were on the scene, dealing with hospital administrators as they tried to restore order. Blackwood followed signs for the emergency room, which was still taking patients despite the presence of news media.

Odessa stopped to talk to a cop in the middle of the hallway. “Have you seen an elderly black man in a hospital gown go past here?”

The cop nodded. “Yeah, lady, like seven of them.” Then his radio squawked and he reached up to bring his shoulder-clipped handset closer to his ear in the crowded, noisy hall. “Holy shit!” he exclaimed in response to what he heard, and took off running for the door.

Blackwood looked at Odessa. They followed him outside, past the crashed ambulance, into the parking lot, running toward the street. They were just in time to see a police cruiser careen out of the lot, swerving wildly into a passing SUV, impacting it with a terrific crash, the SUV ramming into a parked mail truck and rolling backward across the two-lane street—where it was struck by another vehicle unable to brake in time.

The police cruiser avoided the pileup, fishtailing down the street with roof rack lights spinning, its siren wailing into the distance.

A few cops ran into the street toward the accident to assist victims. Others, like the cop from the hospital hallway, jumped into their vehicles to start a pursuit—the cruiser obviously stolen—but the multiple-car accident blocked both lanes of the avenue, preventing them from giving chase.

Blackwood and Odessa moved into the street, watching the cruiser getting away, swerving in and out of traffic.

Blackwood said, “We must follow him!”

As they looked up the street, a black Rolls-Royce with gunpowder-gray styling nosed out of a cross street just beyond the pileup.

Blackwood said, “Good man, Lusk!”

Odessa ran with him, past the traffic accident, hurrying to the idling Phantom. They leapt into the back and Mr. Lusk pulled away before their door was closed.

Mr. Lusk said, “The driver of that police vehicle…”

“Yes,” said Blackwood. “It’s Agent Solomon.”

“His eyes…they weren’t right,” said Mr. Lusk.

“Get after him,” said Blackwood. “Do not let him get away.”

The Phantom’s engine rose from a purr to a growl, lifting the vehicle forward. The cruiser moved with great speed, but its lights and sirens made following it easy—as did the trail of cars left in its wake, either parting for the onrushing police vehicle or run off the road by it.

They raced through Jackson Heights, passing collisions and weaving around fender benders on the trail of the screaming car. At times they would see the blue lights spinning ahead; the Phantom was neither gaining on the police cruiser nor losing ground.

Blackwood watched out the window, his manner intense but cool. Odessa was distraught about Solomon, and Blackwood’s steady demeanor pissed her off. With anger came a sudden clarity.

“The Hollow didn’t come for Solomon,” she said. “It’s coming for you. Using him to get to you. And you knew it.”

“Did I?” he said, without looking at her.

“You knew he was vulnerable.”

Blackwood turned his head her way, still not meeting Odessa’s eyes. “I suspected it,” he admitted. “Nothing like this ever occurred to me…until I saw him in that hospital bed.”

“It’s drawing you out. All this…the Peters shooting, the Long Island spree…there was no pattern. It was designed to summon you…to bait you into coming out into the open. Thanks to me. Thanks to my letter.”