The Inn(64)

She turned and fell into Vinny’s arms, and he patted her back as she cried, looking at me for help, but I didn’t have anything to offer.

I was still trying to decide if I should console or congratulate Angelica when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I answered, and Sheriff Spears spoke before I could say a word.

“There was a killing spree last night,” he said.





CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT





NICK DROVE TO the VA hospital while I sat in the passenger seat and talked to Clay. The sheriff sounded colder, less emotional than I had ever heard him. I sympathized with his plight—he was unable to trust his men, and his little patch of New England was steadily growing night-marish. I followed Nick into the foyer of the hospital. The muscles between my shoulder blades were tight and hot with tension.

“You remember that woman from Addison Gilbert, the one with the crush on me?” I asked. Nick looked like he wanted to smile at the memory but my expression forbade it. “They found her dead in the hospital parking lot last night. She was shot walking to her car.”

Nick reached for a stand of information booklets but managed to stop himself before he grabbed it and smashed it to the ground. The veins in his arms rose beneath his brown skin.

“She didn’t even know anything,” Nick snapped.

“Cline might have been looking for one of his guys,” I said. “He found Christopher ‘Simbo’ Jackson in a shitty motel in Amesbury and took him out. They don’t know where Russell Hamdy is.”

“Has Clay picked Cline up?”

“He can’t,” I said. “All they’ve got is a shadowy figure on the security camera in the hospital parking lot, and they know the area has been the site of a few assaults and robberies lately. The footage is not good enough to be connected to Cline. Simbo left a suicide note. The guy put a cable tie around his own throat, or that’s how the Amesbury cops saw it.”

“What about the other guys?” Nick asked.

“Tray ‘Bones’ Ramirez has disappeared,” I said. “He and Stanley Turner split from the ambulance that picked them up after Clay beat the shit out of them. The paramedic at the scene thought Bones had internal injuries, and he was pretty sure Turner had a skull fracture and a broken arm. Bones is probably being seen to by one of the doctors on Cline’s payroll, and we both know where Turner is.”

Nick exhaled. I tried to shake off visions of Susan and me dragging Stanley Turner’s corpse out of the back of my car. If Clay didn’t find him that afternoon, I would have to call in an anonymous tip.

“What about the big guy?” Nick said. “The one whose kneecap Vinny blasted out.”

“That’s Hamdy. He went to Addison Gilbert and then they lost him,” I said.

“They lost him?”

“They literally lost him.” I nodded. “He had checked in and was waiting for surgery when he disappeared. He’s either hobbling around somewhere with a shattered knee or Cline got him too.”

Nick walked away from me, rubbing his neatly shaven head, blowing air out in angry huffs. We took the elevator to the psychiatry clinic on the third floor. Nick signed in, and then we stood in the empty waiting room. The tiles were sticky and the magazines on the low table offered exclusive pictures of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston’s wedding.

“I can’t do this, man,” Nick said, turning to leave. “Cline’s coming for us next. Once he’s gotten rid of his old crew, he’ll assemble a new one, and we’re the only loose ends in this thing. We gotta go.”

I put a hand on his arm, stopping his progress. “You’re not going anywhere. An hour or so isn’t going to make a difference.”

“You kidding me?” Nick pushed away my hand. “Cline wrapped up half his business last night. We’re—”

“We’re fine without you for the moment,” I said. “Malone and Effie have got the house. Clay’s on the murders. I’ll stay out of trouble until you talk to the people here. Nick, you’re doing the right thing. You need this.”

“Mr. Jones?” The woman behind the front desk stepped out, holding a clipboard. Nick looked at me like he’d just been shut in the gas chamber and I was the guard about to turn the lock and walk away.





CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE





I WASN’T WORRIED about Nick. He was doing the right thing. I was sure he had PTSD, and now the veterans hospital would take care of him, schedule therapy, maybe put him in a support group. That had to be the hospital’s bread and butter. But as I wandered the halls, I began to feel an aching concern in my stomach. There were elderly men in wheelchairs staring out the windows at the parking lot; one was sleeping with his head at an awkward angle, the front of his shirt soiled with food stains. At a counter on the second floor, an exhausted-looking nurse was having a shouting match with a patient on crutches. She stopped to bat away a fly that had been buzzing around her face. I watched the fly go, strangely disturbed by its presence in the hospital. The smell of this place wasn’t the same nostril-tingling, disinfectant freshness of Addison Gilbert. It was faintly sour and tainted with something unmistakably biological.

I wandered the corridors, thinking about Cline, my head down, tracing the smudgy footprints of others on the linoleum. After a while I came into a hallway and witnessed another argument, a nurse trying to reason with four very large men standing outside a darkened ward.