“Smells like we have a family affair going on here.”

“If what I am thinking is accurate, they hired me to track down Mix, Lucietta, and Straus and not to protect anyone. Now that Lucietta is dead, and they have a lead on Straus, all they are concerned about is me finding and securing Mix.”

“Yup,” Ralph responded. “I bet you feel like you were used.”

“Sure do. But now I am going to finish this thing.”

“Heading to Hilburn, are you?”

“Damn straight.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The NYPD detectives and officers searching for anything unusual on the Hilburn campus could find nothing. They walked every foot of the main hospital, entered every room that wasn’t locked, and inspected the outside of the main hospital looking for any signs that someone, or some people, could be hiding inside.

The steel reinforced door on the second floor was the only room that couldn’t be broken down or that the superintendent of the campus couldn’t locate a key for. The police pounded on the door and listened quietly for any noise coming from the other side of the steel door.

Nothing.

After two hours, the lead detective, Mark Smith, called off the investigation. He assigned a patrol car and two officers to “stay back and to watch the grounds closely for anything or anybody moving around.”

Workers, employed by one of the companies with offices on the Hilburn campus, began to filter out of their offices to see what the commotion was. After all the police cars had left, a few walked over to the patrol officers to see what was happening at the old hospital.

“Nothing to be concerned with,” an officer said dismissively. “But if you do see anyone trying to make access to this building, we need you to contact us right away.”

“Does this have anything to do with that doctor murdered yesterday?”

“Just precautions. Had reports that someone of interest may be holed up in this hospital. Again, if you should see anything peculiar, call us.”

Straus heard the footsteps, the voices, then the banging on the door. It took a few moments for his heart to calm when he realized it wasn’t danger knocking, but the police. He assumed that some police presence would remain behind, keeping a close eye on the hospital. He also knew that opening the door and letting them in would lead to his reputation, his career, and his life being dragged through the mud.

He had his own plan that had been working flawlessly up to this point and fully trusted that his cunning and sharp mind would keep him safe. Keep his name clean and respected.

The fact that police had arrived told Straus to expect Alexander and O’Connell to be arriving soon. Lucietta must have said something to someone or had left some evidence behind that led them to Hilburn. No matter. Worst case scenario and Plan C would eliminate the possibility of Alexander Black ending his life. And Plan B was still working just fine.

Straus sat silently on the bed where Alexander Black once rested, keeping absolutely still. He waited for well over an hour after hearing the footsteps move down the hall before he risked standing and walking to the door to capture a better listen. With his ear pressed to the cool, steel door, he heard nothing but an occasional scurry of a mouse moving about in the hallway.

Still, he stood, ear pressed to the door for ten minutes, believing that if anyone was standing outside, their resolve to keep quiet would end before his.

There was no sound.

He glanced towards his iPad, sitting on the desk in the “hub” room. Its battery was drained. He thought about his car, hidden brilliantly in the loading docks, and about the charger that was sitting on the passenger seat. He wondered if the police had somehow found his car, then dismissed the possibility.

“If they found my car,” he thought, “they wouldn’t have left. They would have broken this door down.”

But would taking the risk to get to his car and the all-important charger be worth possible exposure? He knew he was blind without his news stream and realized that the fact the police showed up told him that something significant must have happened.

“Get a decent charge on the iPad only,” he thought. “A shower and a pillow will have to wait.”

The locking mechanisms on Ward C’s door were far from quiet. The dead bolt slid noisily into its home. The steel bars screamed from lack of use as Straus twisted the handle that freed them from their locked position. The echoes of metal scraping metal reverberated down the hallway, scaring away whatever mice and rats that may have chosen the second floor south hallway as their home. But when he slowly opened the door and saw the fading stream of light trickling in through the window at the hallway’s end, Straus was relieved to see no welcoming party.

He closed the door behind him as he made his way down the hallway. The stairway that led down to the first floor and then to the old office of the loading dock supervisor was no more than fifty feet away. Again, he paused to listen and only heard faint sounds of voices and an idling car coming from outside. He moved quickly to the stairway door that, thanks to his cunning mind, had been left open to assist in a quicker escape if things came to that.

The stairway was dark, not graced by any window’s filtered light. When he had arrived back at Hilburn, Straus did his best to remove any large debris from the steps, being careful not to make it seem that the stairs were still being used. Slowly, he made the dark journey down the first flight and paused when his feet hit the landing.

Still no sounds.

He moved down the second flight with more confidence and when he reached the landing, he stuck his head out into the first floor hallway to see and to listen.

The hallway was empty and quiet except for discarded papers, broken glass, empty bottles of cheap liquor spilled carelessly about, and a few folded mattresses that he assumed were the resting place of the homeless who used the hospital as shelter during the cold Long Island winter days and nights.

There was nothing else to see or to be concerned about.

Straus drew his body back into the stairway, allowed his eyes to readjust to the dark, then proceeded down the next two flights of stairs. When he reached the lower level, he again paused to make sure that no one was where they shouldn’t be. After a minute, he walked towards the loading docks, using his hands to feel for familiar landmarks on the walls. When the walls opened into large area, he shuffled his feet, feeling for the three-foot drop that would lead to the storage and warehouse area of the docks.