The Missing Page 0,58
was dressed in a yellow rain slicker and held her mother’s hand. The girl looked scared, on the verge of tears. Darby was watching her when the van exploded and blew the girl and her mother off the ground.
Chapter 44
An evacuation siren blared over the hospital speakers. Daniel Boyle pushed his way through the crowds of civilians, doctors and nurses running in all directions, people bumping into each other, some falling, everyone scrambling to find an exit, to get away from the dust and smoke filling the hallways.
The ICU waiting room was empty. The ICU doors were opened. Nobody was guarding Rachel’s room. The two cops responsible for watching her had either been called away or had decided to leave.
Boyle ran down the hallway. The ICU nurses had left their post. He was alone. He looked through the window to Rachel Swanson’s room. She was sleeping.
Boyle pushed open the door with his arm, careful about not leaving any fingerprints.
Hand already inside his breast pocket, he came back with the hypodermic. He clamped the plastic cap between his teeth, exposing the needle, his thumb drawing the plunger higher as he moved to the bed.
Boyle wished he could wake her up, wished he could watch Rachel scream one final time before she started convulsing.
The needle pierced the IV tube. Boyle pushed the air through the line.
A quick wipe of the line using his jacket cuff and he was moving back to the door. Hurry.
Cap back on the needle, the hypodermic tucked back inside his pocket. Hurry.
Out the door and walking swiftly down the hallway, nobody watching –
One of the hospital’s security staff was standing next to the nurse’s station. The man was dressed in a dark raincoat and wore an earpiece and a lapel mike. He was looking around the space, searching for the wounded when he spotted Boyle.
Boyle ran to him. ‘Everyone’s gone,’ he said. ‘It’s all clear.’
An alarm sounded from behind the front desk.
The security man turned to look at the monitors. ‘What’s going on?’
Boyle pretended to study the numbers on the monitor. ‘One of the patients has gone into cardiac arrest,’ Boyle said. ‘I’ll take care of it. Make sure everyone gets to the stairwells.’
‘You sure I can’t help you?’
‘No, get going. I can take it from here.’
The security man didn’t move.
Very calmly, as if reaching for a pen, Boyle slipped his hand inside his white coat and undid the snap for the shoulder holster. He’d drop the rent-a-cop if he had to. Drop him first and then run for the stairwell.
No need. The security man had left. Boyle watched him leave, then turned the corner and headed for the bathroom. He grabbed his backpack from the trash and made his way toward a cop directing people into the stairwell. Boyle blended into the crowd of civilians and hospital staff.
The morning was filled with rain and sirens. He jogged down Cambridge Street and took the stairs for the T station.
Yesterday, on his way home from Belham, he purchased an electronic T pass at South Station. He swiped the pass through the magnetic card reader, leaving no fingerprints, and stood with the rest of the people watching the chaos below them. Smoke drifted from the crumbled ruins of the delivery garage. Fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars were coming from all directions. Shards of glass and pieces of brick and concrete covered Cambridge Street. Some of the store windows, Boyle saw, had been blown apart by the blast.
When the train pulled up, Boyle grabbed a window seat, took out his BlackBerry and typed a message to Richard: ‘Done.’
To pass the time, Boyle thought about what he would do to Carol Cranmore once she stepped outside her room. Sooner or later, she would come out for her food. They all did.
But he couldn’t wait forever, not now. The preparations for leaving were already made. He would have to kill them all soon – tonight, maybe.
Chapter 45
The right side of Darby’s face throbbed as she helped Coop lift another wounded SWAT officer onto the stretcher. The officer was unconscious but breathing.
They carefully made their way over the wet debris, heading as fast as they could through the rain and smoke, toward the far end of the street where the wounded lay scattered on the ground. Dozens of them were being treated by the EMTs and doctors rushed in from Belham Hospital. The dead ones lay still under blue tarps weighed down by rocks.
Darby eased the officer onto a gurney. She was about