فصل 07 - بخش 06

7

She arrived at two thirty, this time driving around to the left side of the building, where signs announced EMPLOYEE PARKING and KEEP AMBULANCE BAY CLEAR. She chose a space at the far end of the lot, backing in so she could watch the building. By two forty-five, cars began to drift in as those working the three-to-eleven shift arrived. Around three, the day shift employees – mostly orderlies, some nurses, a couple of guys in suits, which probably made them doctors – began to leave. One of the suits drove away in a Cadillac, the other in a Porsche. They were doctors, all right. She evaluated the others carefully, and settled on a target. She was a middle-aged nurse wearing a tunic covered with dancing teddy bears. Her car was an old Honda Civic with rust on the sides, a cracked taillight that had been mended with duct tape, and a fading I’M WITH HILLARY sticker on the bumper. Before getting in, she paused to light a cigarette. The car was old and cigarettes were expensive. Better and better.

Holly followed her out of the parking lot, then three miles west, the city giving way first to a pleasant suburb, then to one not so pleasant. Here the woman turned into the driveway of a tract house on a street where others just like it stood almost hip to hip, many with cheap plastic toys marooned on the little patches of lawn. Holly parked at the curb, said a brief prayer for strength, patience, and wisdom, and got out.

‘Ma’am? Nurse? Pardon me?’

The woman turned. She had the creased face and prematurely gray hair of a heavy smoker, so it was hard to tell her age. Maybe forty-five, maybe fifty. No wedding ring.

‘Can I help you?’

‘Yes, and I’ll pay for your help,’ Holly said. ‘One hundred dollars in cash, if you’ll talk to me about Heath Holmes, and his connection to Peter Maitland.’

‘Did you follow me from my job?’

‘Actually, I did.’

The woman’s brows contracted. ‘Are you a reporter? Mrs Kelly said there’d been a woman reporter around, and promised to fire anyone who talked to her.’

‘I’m the woman she mentioned, but I’m not a reporter. I’m an investigator, and Mrs Kelly will never find out you talked to me.’

‘Let me see some ID.’

Holly handed over her driver’s license and a Finders Keepers bail bondsman’s card. The woman examined them closely, then handed them back. ‘I’m Candy Wilson.’

‘It’s nice to meet you.’

‘Uh-huh, that’s good, but if I’m going to put my job on the line for you, it will cost two hundred.’ She paused, then added: ‘And fifty.’

‘All right,’ Holly said. She guessed she could talk the woman down to two hundred, maybe even a hundred and fifty, but she wasn’t good at bargaining (which her mother always called haggling). Also, this lady looked like she needed it.

‘You better come inside,’ Wilson said. ‘The neighbors on this street have long noses.’