“Hey, you! What are you up to?”
I’d been so intent on the papers that I’d lost track of what was going on around me. A man in a patrol officer’s uniform had come up the drive; his squad car, labeled “City of Burbank, Illinois, Public Service with Honor,” was parked at the curb. In the best movie tradition, he was wearing wraparound mirror shades; I couldn’t see his eyes.
I introduced myself as a licensed private eye. “You know Xavier Jurgens died this morning? I’m the person who found him, in that fancy new Camaro he was so proud of. I’d hoped to ask Ms. Shatka a few questions, since Jurgens had a missing girl locked in the trunk of the car.”
He grunted. “Maybe you found Jurgens, maybe you dug up a fortune in gold coins you’re trying to hand over, but we got a call from the home owner that you’re trespassing. Whoever you are, whatever you’re here for, if the home owner doesn’t want you on the premises, you get off the premises.”
I thought about trying to explain myself, but even as I opened my mouth I couldn’t imagine how to put my tangled nest of assumptions into one short, plausible sentence: Wuchnik’s death and Carmilla, Queen of the Night’s devotees; Xavier’s death and Arielle’s kidnapping; Leydon’s fears and her fall from the Rockefeller balcony, and Jana Shatka’s reaction to my suggesting she’d been investigating Chaim Salanter’s past. Instead, I nodded meekly and went down the drive.
The Burbank cop didn’t seem to notice that I was taking a piece of paper from the Hyundai. Maybe his wraparound shades were too dark for him to see me clearly, or maybe Jana Shatka had rubbed him the wrong way, because he didn’t knock on her door, the way a cop usually would, to make sure the home owner knew the trespasser had been successfully rousted.
He followed me to the foot of the drive and leaned on his open squad-car door until I’d gotten into my Mustang. He followed me up Laramie until I turned west on Seventy-first Street, and then took off, his lights rotating and sparkling under the hot sun.
I drove on out to Downers Grove, followed the path to the hospital, lined up behind the other supplicants, pulled out my ID, and told the woman guarding the entrance that I had an appointment with Tania Metzger.
The gatekeeper handed me a pass and a map and moved on to the person behind me. I followed the dull brown paint on the floor to corridor B and the social work area. Tania Metzger wasn’t at her desk, but two other social workers, one a man about my age, the other a young woman, were in the bullpen. The woman was on the phone; the man was doing something with his computer.
Chantal, the secretary I’d met last week, greeted me. “Tania’s with a patient. Did you have some new information about Leydon?”
I shook my head, my conscience pricking me—I hadn’t checked in on her for several days now. I could have asked Lotty for an update when she was filling me in on Arielle’s condition.
“I went to see her, as Tania recommended, but I haven’t been able to get to the hospital this week. I actually came here today because of the orderly who was murdered this morning.”
“Murdered?” Chantal cried. “You mean Xavier? But they told us he killed himself.”
“It’s a convenient theory,” I said, “but it leaves a few questions unanswered. One of them I’m hoping you can answer for me.”
The woman finished her phone conversation and stood up. “I’m Alvina Northlake, director of this unit. Who are you?”
“Oh, Alvina, this is a detective”—Chantal looked at me—“I’m sorry, I forgot your name—yes, V. I. Warshawski—anyway, she’s a friend of Leydon Ashford. I told you she was here last week, asking questions about Leydon, which, of course, we couldn’t answer.”
“And now you’re asking questions about an orderly from the forensic wing?” Northlake’s brows rose above her outsize glasses. “If you have questions about him, I can give you the name of the supervisor of that unit.”
I pulled the greasy carbon of the Abilify requisition from my bag. “I’d welcome a chance to talk to someone in the forensic wing, but before you send me over there, can you look at this req? The signature’s too blurry for me to read—I was hoping someone who knew the staff here might recognize it.”
Northlake was interested despite her desire to make me follow hospital protocols. She skimmed the document, her mouth pursing in anger. “Where did you get this?”
“It was in the backseat of Xavier Jurgens’s car. Not his lovely new Camaro, where he died on a side street in Chicago. This was in the back of his old Hyundai, the car he usually drove to work.”