Read Denton - 01 - Dead Folks' Blues for Free Online Page B

nighttime parade. Not only was there no sign of Fletcher, there wasn’t much evidence of anything else: patients, nurses, orderlies. I gave up, turned around, and headed back down the hall toward the elevator, almost relieved that I hadn’t found the guy.
    I heard a swishing noise behind me and glanced over my left shoulder. The door at the end of the hall, perhaps a dozen rooms away on the right, opened and a nurse stepped out. I thought it curious that her hands were free. No clipboard, no sphyg, no medication tray, no gear of any kind. She stepped out into the hall, stopped, and gaped at me. I got the feeling she was nervous about something. I kept walking, but tilted my head and shifted a little so I could catch her out of the corner of my eye.
    She was still standing there, frozen. Then she reached up and fastened the top button of her nurse’s dress. She was smoothing down the front of her uniform when I lost sight of her for a second. She was too far away, and the light too dim, for me to get a decent look at her. I walked on a few more steps, then gave a casual glance backward to see what she was up to now.
    She was gone.
    I came to a full stop, turned. Yeah, she was gone. Screw it, I thought. There were a half-dozen doors she could have gone into, as well as another hallway off to my left. No big deal. I turned around. Again I heard the swishing, airy soundof a door closing behind me, all the way at the end of the hall.
    What the hell?
    Something wasn’t right here, so I turned and limped back down the hall, a little faster this time, headed toward that last door down the hall on my right. From way behind me at the nurse’s station, I heard the low murmur of voices and thought to myself that if I wasn’t careful, I was going to get in trouble. That’s all I needed, to get hassled by hospital security and escorted out of the building. Talk about blowing my credibility.
    I was two doors away, surrounded in the hot red light of the exit sign, when I heard a sound—a rustling maybe-coming from inside the last room. And a voice saying something I couldn’t understand. A strained voice—that much I could tell—and only one person speaking. I walked farther down and I heard a rustling noise, then a squeaking like a weight being dropped on rollers.
    The door was in front of me now. I reached out and grabbed the handle. Then I hesitated. What if there was a patient in there getting, like, an enema or something? My mind ran in a million different directions, thinking of all the potential medical procedures that I didn’t want to see, when suddenly I noticed—
    It’s quiet.
    Not a sound, not a whisper of breath, not the crunch of a disposable needle being stuffed in a Sharp’s container. No sound of hands being washed, relieved groans, drugged sighs. Nothing. Dead silence.
    The handle of the door was cold in my grip. I pushed it open, just a crack. No light escaped. If there was somebody in there, they were either asleep or they liked the dark. I pushed the door open, figuring I could always act embarrassed, apologize, and get the hell out.
    The light in the hall flooded the darkened room. My eyes adjusted—and I saw someone on the bed. Only his legs were dangling off the side. He was wearing street shoes and dress pants.
    And a doctor’s white lab coat.
    I stepped over to the bed quickly, straining to see the face across the bed. The door closed behind me, throwing the room into complete darkness. I fumbled at the head of the bed for the cord that would fire up the fluorescent light. I found the cord, but it kept dancing off my hand; it was as if I was trying to swat an insect at midnight. Finally I grabbed and pulled. The light flickered, then filled the room with a mellow blue-white light.
    And there was Conrad Fletcher, sprawled out on the bed with his arms outstretched. My heart suddenly went into power stroke. I could feel the sucker pounding in my chest like a bilge pump gone wild.
    I leaned over the bed,