The First Lady - James Patterson Page 0,92
at his silent phone.
CHAPTER 89
ON THE FOURTH floor of the Waterford County Hospital, Deputy Sheriff Roy Bogart checks in on his VIP patient from the open doorway. She’s rolled over in her bed, facing the wall, handcuffs still secured.
Good.
He steps out and walks to the nearby nurses’ station. An empty chair is next to the patient’s open door. Deputy Sheriff Nancy Cook is supposed to be working with him, but one of her kids is throwing up something awful, so she’s running late.
No matter.
When he first checked in on the patient an hour ago, she wasn’t moving or saying a thing, curled on her side, one wrist handcuffed to the Stryker bed. Roy is fine with that, having guarded lots of patients over the years. The ones that drove you nuts were the ones screaming about hospital brutality, about how they had to use a bedpan, or that they were about to hurl all over the floor.
This one, though, is perfect. Short, dark-skinned, kinda rough-looking, but from what he heard at the nurses’ station, she was wearing a Kevlar vest when somebody shot her three times in the chest. Poor gal is all busted up, and the last time Roy tried to talk to her, she just looked away.
Okay, then.
At the nurses’ station, he catches the eye of Rhonda Buell, the floor supervisor, who’s a cute thing with a nice set of curves, and although he’s old enough to be her father, he loves chatting her up.
She rolls over on her chair and says, “How are you doing, Roy?”
“Fine, hon, how about you?”
“Hanging in there,” she says, smiling, and Roy fantasizes for a moment that she’s one of those nurses that gets off on seeing a man in uniform. Maybe he could luck out when both their shifts end and set up a lunch date or something.
Roy says, “I’m about to swing down to the cafeteria, grab some coffee. Can I grab you a cup?”
Rhonda says, “Sure … but you sure you want to leave your patient alone?”
“Cripes,” he says, “you said her chest is all messed up, she’s handcuffed—I don’t think she’ll be breaking out anytime soon.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” she says. “I hear word that there’s a bunch of Feds, state cops, and local cops in a conference room on the first floor, fighting over who gets her.”
Roy says, “I still don’t know what she did, do you?”
Rhonda shakes her pretty little blond head just as the nearby elevator opens up, and a sweaty, red-faced Deputy Sheriff Nancy Cook comes out, a large woman in the sheriff’s brown uniform, carrying a small cooler.
“Man—Roy—s-so sorry I’m late—” she stammers out. “You know how it is.”
“Sure do,” he says, and he thinks, Perfect, she can sit and guard the prisoner, and I can make the cafeteria run. “Let me get you set up.”
He points to the patient’s room and Nancy joins him, and they walk in and Roy calls out, “Hey, miss, this is the other deputy sheriff who’ll be keeping an eye on you.”
No reply, which isn’t a surprise.
But a second later, there’s a big surprise indeed.
There’s no patient.
Just bunched-up pillows underneath the blankets, a dangling handcuff, and thick tufts of hair spread across the pillow that made it look like someone was sleeping. Sweet Mary, Roy thinks, she either tugged the hair out by herself or sliced it off.
Nancy is standing next to him, breathing hard.
“Christ, sorry to say this, Roy,” she says, “but I sure am glad I’m late.”
CHAPTER 90
FOR PROBABLY THE last time in my life, I’m able to use my Secret Service identification to go past a police and agency cordon, and after some minutes of delay, I’m able to get to a special room in Blair House, which—irony of ironies—is within easy walking distance of the White House and is also the President’s official guesthouse.
The door is opened up by one of the First Lady’s “children” from the East Wing, and I’m ushered into a sitting room, where a refreshed-looking Grace Fuller Tucker is sitting at a round dining room table. There’s a coffee setup spread before her, and she says, “Can I offer you a late-afternoon refreshment, Agent Grissom?”
Any other time, I would say no, but like I’ve thought many times over the past few days, this certainly isn’t any other time.
“Sure,” I say, “but I’ll pour myself.”
She nods, and I sit down across from her, get myself a cup of steaming hot coffee from a silver set, and add a few lumps of