The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,95

hands like a Great Oz, so that you did not see the weak, old man behind the curtain.

Sam wondered if he was still with Lenore. Even as a teenager, Sam had understood why Gamma had taken such a dislike to the woman with whom Rusty spent most of his time. Had he given into the cliché and married his secretary after an appropriate period of mourning? Lenore had been a young woman when Gamma was murdered. Would there be a half sister or brother waiting at the hospital?

Sam dropped her phone back into her purse.

“Okay,” Stanislav said. “We got one more mile, according to the Wave.” He indicated his iPad. “You say two hours, then we go back?”

“Approximately,” Sam said. “Maybe less.”

“I get some lunch from a restaurant. The hospital cafeteria, that food’s no good.” He handed her a business card. “You text me. Five minutes, then I meet you out front.”

Sam resisted the desire to tell him to wait in the car, engine running, wheels turned back toward Atlanta, and instead responded, “Okay.”

Stanislav engaged the turn signal. He ran the butt of his palm along the steering wheel, taking a wide turn into the winding drive of the hospital.

Sam felt her stomach clench.

The Dickerson County Hospital was much larger than she remembered, or maybe the building had been added onto in the last thirty years. The Quinn family had been to the emergency room only once before the Culpeppers entered their lives. Charlie had fallen from a tree and broken her arm. This had happened for typical Charlie reasons; she had been trying to rescue a cat. Sam could recall Gamma lecturing over Charlie’s screams during the car ride to the hospital—not about the idiocy of rescuing a creature whose every bundle of nerve and sinew equipped it with the ability to climb down a tree on its own—but about anatomical structure:

“The bone running from the shoulder to the elbow is the humerus. This we call the upper arm, or, simply, the arm. The humerus connects with two bones at the elbow: the radius and the ulna, which are regarded as the forearm.”

None of this information had abated the screaming. For once, Sam could not accuse Charlie of overreacting. Her broken humerus, or arm, as Gamma had called it, jutted up like a shark’s fin from Charlie’s torn flesh.

Stanislav pulled the Mercedes under the wide concrete canopy at the main entrance. He was a large man. The car shook as he hefted his frame from behind the wheel. He walked around the back of the car and opened the door for Sam. She had to lift her right leg to get out. She was using her cane today because there was no one she would meet who would not know what had happened.

“You text me, I come five minutes,” Stanislav said, then got back into the car.

Sam watched him drive away, a peculiar tightness in her throat. She had to remind herself that she had his number in her purse, that she could call him back, that she had a credit card with no limit, a jet at her disposal, the ability to flee whenever she wanted.

And yet, she felt as if a straitjacket was tightening around her arms as the car moved farther away.

Sam turned. She looked at the hospital. Two reporters were on a bench beside the door, their press credentials hanging on lanyards around their necks, cameras at their feet. They looked up at Sam, then back down at their phones, as she made her way inside the building.

She scanned the area for Ben, half expecting to find him waiting. She only saw patients and visitors idling around the lobby. There was a help desk, but the color-coded arrows on the floor were clear enough to Sam. She followed the green line to the elevators. She ran her finger along the directory until she found the words ADULT ICU.

Sam rode up alone. She felt as if she had spent most of her life riding up or down in elevators while others took the stairs. The intercom dinged as she passed each floor. The car was clean, but smelled vaguely of sickness.

She stared straight ahead, forcing herself not to count the floors. The backs of the elevator doors were polished satin to hide fingerprints, but she could see the anamorphic outline of her lone figure: an aloof presence, quick blue eyes, short white hair, skin as pale as an envelope, and with a sharp tongue just as