Tania started to apologize, then changed her mind. “That detective is dead, Leydon’s in a coma, and now one of our orderlies is dead, too. I understand the issues, but I really think the time has come to bend a little bit. Garrett McIntosh is the guard who let Leydon into the forensic unit. If you can get him to talk to you, he may know what she did when she was over there.”
Alvina glared at her, but her cell phone rang before she could say anything: her next patient was arriving. She and Tania were both spared an unpleasant confrontation.
35.
A HARD DAY’S HUNT—WITH PEASANTS
WHEN I WENT TO THE FORENSIC UNIT’S GATE AND ASKED TO speak with Garrett McIntosh, the guard on duty made it clear that I needed permission from Ruhetal’s security chief if I wanted to talk to any of the staff. This wasn’t the same guy who’d pocketed my twenty last week; today’s guard got pretty starchy when I casually held out a bill.
I went back to the hospital to see if Tania Metzger would help plead my case in the security office. Fortunately, Alvina Northlake was with a patient, and Tania had a few free minutes. She took me to the back of the hospital, where Vernon Mulliner, the security director, oversaw the hospital complex on a bank of monitors. Tania tried her hardest with Mulliner, telling him it was important for therapeutic reasons that we find out who Leydon had talked to when she broke into the forensic wing back in May; Tania explained that Garrett was the guard who’d assisted Leydon at the time.
Mulliner remembered me from my visit last week, and he wouldn’t budge. “Even a real detective would need a court order to question anyone in the forensic wing, and you, you’re an ambulance chaser who lies so she can sneak into places.”
“The last PI who snuck into the forensic wing ended up dead.” I pretended I hadn’t heard the part about my being a liar. “That’s why I’m coming to you. I expect the next people you’ll hear from will be Chicago cops, because your orderly was found dead in Chicago, and he left a text message apologizing for the death of Miles Wuchnik, the murdered PI. And Wuchnik’s sister may well sue you for negligence, letting one of your docs help Jurgens slip two hundred milligrams of Abilify from the pharmacy. I can help you prepare for this incoming flood, but I need to find out what Wuchnik and Xavier Jurgens were up to. Which means talking to your staff over there.”
“You tried to bribe your way into the locked wing.” Mulliner ignored my speech. “That may play well in Chicago, but here in Downers Grove we think the law is meant to be obeyed. By everyone.”
“Someone is spreading a lot of money around this hospital,” I said. “Orderlies get enough extra pay to buy new cars, senior staff get enough to buy mansions with swimming pools. Once the attorney general gets hold of that news, everyone working here at Ruhetal is going to see their bank accounts go under a microscope.”
Mulliner’s David Niven mustache quivered. After a long pause, he said, “You’d better leave the premises before I call some guards to carry you out. And you, Metzger, your family may have built this hospital a century ago, but your job depends on your adhering to our guidelines, not telling hospital secrets to outsiders.”
Tania dragged me out of the administrative offices as fast as possible and hurried me to the parking lot. “You’d better go. I really don’t want to get fired, not in this economy. I can’t jeopardize my conscience or my professional standing to help you.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” I said, hoping I meant it. “But if Leydon did tell you what she saw or who she spoke to, it matters that I hear about it now. It’s not just that your orderly died this morning—he had kidnapped a twelve-year-old girl, and she’d be dead, too, if I hadn’t arrived when I did. Miles Wuchnik was murdered ten days ago. Leydon Ashford may spend the rest of her life in a vegetative state. This is a scary body count. If Leydon gave you any other names or information about who she saw or what, tell me now, before the numbers get bigger.”
Metzger bit her lips, debating how much she could say without jeopardizing her professional standards and standing. “She didn’t tell me anything, not in direct words, which may be just as well—it makes my crisis of conscience easier to manage. She came back from the forensic wing shouting that everyone in America needed a lawyer and a video camera with them twenty-four hours a day, and then she started talking about being on fire, aflame with news. I didn’t know there were so many ways to talk about being burned until I listened to her the rest of that week. Singeing, she talking about that, and smoking out dead rats, and how it would take the mightiest of huntresses to blow on a dying coal and bring the conflagration back to life.”
My heart sank. “I’m the person she means when she talks about the mightiest of huntresses, and I have no more idea what all that symbolism means than, well, than you do yourself.”
A car marked “Ruhetal Security” pulled up next to us. “Mr. Mulliner sent me to ask if you needed help getting rid of this woman, Ms. Metzger.”
Tania flushed. “No, no, I’m fine.”