“What meeting?”

“But I’d never hurt a kid. I don’t know why she – ”

“I don’t think that mob assembled to save your sorry ass from a charge of child abuse. I want the truth, Travis!”

“You might as well go ask the dog.” Travis’s eyes closed.

The sheriff reached down and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Don’t you die on me, you son of a bitch!” He shook the deputy’s thin body with real violence. “Why did they murder Cass?” He was yelling to be heard above the scream of the monitor alarm.

The question went unanswered. The monitor’s flat line and loud noise said that it was now wired up to a corpse, and the other machines agreed that the heart was no longer beating. The doctor stepped to the bedside. He flipped all the switches to the off positions and cut the feed on the oxygen line. Then he looked at his wristwatch and penned a note on the chart, marking the exact time when the technology died.

Charles slowed the car just beyond the gas station. Mallory turned to the rear window. “The car is stopping. It’s not a tail. Gun the engine, Charles.” She kept the gas station in sight for another few minutes as they barreled down the road and joined the highway.

All around them, sugarcane stalks were moving with the wind, rippling like water on the surface of a vast green sea. The car sped toward an unnatural structure on the horizon; it bore the logo of a chemical company. Waves of stalks lapped up against this skeletal monster of towering dark steel pipes and girders, a specter from the future, a taste of world’s end. White smoke plumed from the stacks and joined up with the wind. Charles knew the whiteness was deception. What was smoking into the air was not something Augusta’s birds should be breathing. He better understood her ruthless ambition to give them sanctuary.

It was a good fight.

He pulled off the highway and onto a side road marked with the hospital sign. “What makes you think they’d keep the records this long? Don’t most hospitals toss them after ten years or so?”

“Not anymore. Computers solved the storage problem.” The hospital was in sight now, a bland building of straight lines. “Augusta’s favorite cashier at the Levee Market has a part-time job scanning the old hardcopy into a data bank. If she’d only worked a little faster, I could’ve lifted everything I wanted from my laptop.”

He slowed down and pointed out the sheriff’s car parked near the entrance. “We could come back later.”

“No, I need this stuff now. Don’t worry about it, Charles. They won’t ask questions. You told Riker you wanted to visit Alma, didn’t you?”

“But what about you?”

He didn’t hold out much hope for this disguise of hers. She would have seemed less out of place on horseback in another century. The long black duster was wide in the shoulders and covered most of her body, stopping short of the riding boots and a bit of the blue jeans. The black hat was also an antique, short in the crown but wide enough in the brim to resemble a cowboy hat. Beneath the hat a black scarf covered every strand of her hair. The incongruous aviator sunglasses made her look even more dangerous. He thought the costume was actually more revealing of her character than disguising of person.

“Seriously, Mallory? You don’t think Jessop and Riker will notice you the second you walk in the door?” Could a bright red fire engine be less conspicuous in the hospital lobby?

“I’m going in through a basement window.”

Oh, of course. He had forgotten who he was dealing with. Any fool could go in by the front door. He pulled into the visitors’ parking lot and rolled along the side of the building. “Just stop me when you see a window you like.”

“It’s the last one at the rear.” Mallory consulted his wristwatch. It was safely past the hour when the clerk went off shift. “Augusta says this woman always complains about the view from the back end of the parking lot. Pull up here. And park the car close by.” She handed him a piece of paper. “And get this prescription filled at the pharmacy. It’s for Augusta.”

He stared down at the paper in his hand. “This has my name on it as the prescribing physician.”

“Well, you’re a doctor.”

“I’m a Ph.D. not a medical doctor.”

“You are now. I gave you a New Orleans physician’s number. You’ll be on the pharmacy computer. Don’t worry about it.”

She crept out of the car, and he gave her cover while she opened the basement window. He had expected her to whip out an elaborate tool kit with delicate lockpicks. Instead, she opted for expediency and used a rock.

Riker changed his mind about going outside for a smoke. Charles Butler had just entered the lobby, bearing a huge bouquet of brilliant flowers. Though he usually attracted some attention for his size and height, he walked through the crowded area without turning a head. In the aftermath of a highway accident, people in hospital garb were moving with urgent purpose. The civilians were haranguing the personnel at the front desk, and others sat, worried and waiting, filling all the chairs and couches scattered about the lobby. All around the giant in blue jeans, people were preoccupied with matters of life and death.

Only Riker noticed Charles approaching the pharmacy window and handing a piece of paper over the counter. The gray-haired pharmacist looked at the paper, nodded and held up five fingers, to say this transaction wouldn’t take much time.

Charles had only walked a few steps away from the counter, when he was roughly shouldered by a speeding nurse, who bounced off of him. Riker could read the body language of Charles rushing to apologize for what she had done to him. The nurse gently touched one of the exotic blooms in Charles’s bouquet and nodded. Now she pointed down the hall where Charles would find Alma Furgueson’s room and her visitor, the sheriff.

Riker had begged off that interview. He hadn’t wanted to see the sheriff’s interrogation style applied to the woman who had crawled from the cemetery on her hands and knees.

He felt around in his pockets for cigarettes and matches as he walked outside. Charles’s Mercedes was nowhere in sight. He strolled around the side of the building and spotted the silver car at the back of the lot, though there were a dozen spaces close to the front door.

Now that was interesting.

He walked toward the car, but stopped when he came to the window with the broken pane of glass. It put him off for a moment because this was not her style. Well, maybe the brat had been in a hurry.

He turned to the metal doors under the sign for the service entrance. They should open onto a freight elevator. He tried door pulls – locked tight and no signs of a pick. She had definitely gone through the window. She probably wanted to avoid meeting staff in the basement halls.

He tested the door of Charles’s car. Not locked. Good. He had never hot-wired a Mercedes before, but it shouldn’t be much of a challenge.

Riker forgot the urge for a cigarette and returned to the hospital lobby. A young woman was entering the door next to the pharmacy window. A few minutes later, the old man with the glasses was heading down the hall marked by a sign for the cafeteria.

Riker walked up to the window, gave the young woman Charles Butler’s name and asked her when the prescription would be ready.

“Oh, you’re in luck. He finished that one before he went to lunch.” She slid the bag over the counter. “That’ll be thirty dollars and twenty-five cents, Dr. Butler.”

Riker paid her and opened the bag. Doctor Butler? He read the labels for drugs which were all too familiar. One he recognized as an anti-inflammatory. The second bottle was antibiotics. And the Percodan would kill the pain.

He strolled over to the basement door as an orderly parked a wheelchair by the wall a few steps away. And now the rest of the plan fell into place as the orderly disappeared into the men’s room.