“As you can see…” the matronly ER nurse explained to Larson, “we’re a little bit busy right now, Officer.”
It was deputy marshal, not officer, and Larson considered setting the record straight in order to take control. The nurse wore a set of extra-large scrubs that nonetheless stretched to contain a continental shelf of breast and a hula hoop-sized waist. She wore a St. Christopher cross around her neck. A mouth-breather, she exposed a thin slice of white teeth, like a sleeping cat. She glanced up, locked her flinty eyes onto Larson. “Do I know you?”
The question was not uncommon. People said he had a little bit of Harrison Ford in him, a little bit of movie-star quality that seemed familiar at first glance. He’d looked for it, but sadly had never seen it. But this woman didn’t mean it as a come-on, but a qualifier; she was simply being stubborn.
“I need a street address for Alice Stevenson.”
The woman complained, “You know how hard it is shorthanded?”
He saw her name on her badge pinned above the shelf. “Ms. Rathmore, I need your undivided attention here.” He awaited those annoyed eyes of hers, then lowered his voice. “I’m conducting a federal investigation. I’m not going to throw around words like bioterrorism and national security”-he immediately won her full attention-“because you’re not authorized to receive such information, but let’s just say a little bit of help would go a long way, and you’re not going to want to look back on this opportunity and have to tell your friends you were the broken link, you were what took more time than necessary, you were the one who cost lives.”
“We don’t have an address in the system,” she told him. “But I can tell you this. Alice doesn’t make friends easily. She’s a little off, you know? I mean, who makes the kind of money she makes and still rides the bus? And with her looks… I mean the docs hit on her all the time, and she turns a blind eye to every one of them. So the talk is, you know… that she likes other women… and that stuff. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but there’s not a lot of them around here. I’m not saying I feel one way or the other about that, you understand. But she does have a little daughter… Penny. Thick as thieves, those two.”
Nurse Rathmore’s mouth kept moving, the words kept coming, but Larson no longer heard. The request Hope had made for a second protected identity had been for a daughter, not for a husband or lover. He filled in the blanks almost automatically. He considered the timing. My god. Maybe Hope had jumped the program because of her daughter. Our daughter?
Larson rushed his words, a fluttering inside him like something had broken loose. “The daughter. Penny… Did you mention a father?… A nanny?… Who takes care of her during work hours?”
Rathmore nodded, tilted her big head. “Daycare’s over in the basement of the Children’s Hospital. Not so easy to find. You’ll have to ask.”
When she looked up, she saw only Larson’s back, the automatic doors already closing.