Chapter 16: The Dead Spot

Joan was sitting up in a bed on the fourth floor with a saline line in her arm and a scowl on her face.

"Don't look at me like that," she said. "I fainted. I'm fifty-eight. It happens."

"You collapsed in the middle of a shift," I said.

"A shift I didn't pick."

Jerome, in the doorway, went still.

"Say that again," he said.

"Somebody changed my schedule in the staffing system," Joan said. "Last night, under my login."

"To what?"

"Two shifts back to back, twenty-six hours, on Christmas Day. I noticed at noon and said so."

"And?"

"The charge nurse said it was already signed."

"Signed by who?"

"By me. Apparently." She snorted. "I don't sign things at four in the morning. I eat."

I took her wrist and counted. Her pulse was steady, and the color was back in her face.

"They want you tired," I said. "Or they want me running to you."

"They want you in a hallway," said Joan. "Look at the monitor over the door. Where's it pointed?"

I looked up.

It was a dome camera in the ceiling, and it was pointed down the corridor.

"It sees everything but the far end," Joan said.

I had worked in this building for three years. I knew every camera on the fourth floor, and where each one could not see.

"There's a dead spot by the vending alcove," I said. "At the end of the hall."

"There is," Joan said. "I'd go the other way out."

I kissed her forehead. Then I walked out into the hall.

Sabrina was standing at the end of it, beside the vending machines.

She wore a gray coat and a soft scarf, and she looked small and tired.

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