“I was in a hospital in Raleigh with a concussion three, four years ago. My roommate was in for a bleeding ulcer. Dottie Coombs. That was her name.

“Dottie was ready to go home when she suddenly went into seizures and died. Right in front of me.”

“Go on, Mrs. Haggerty.”

“She shouldn’t have died. The nurses closed my curtains, but they were very upset, saying, ‘How could this happen?’ And I heard her doctor say something to those nurses that I’ll never forget as long as I live. It was burned into my brain.”

“I’m listening.”

“He said, ‘Sometimes a bad wind blows.’”

“What did that mean to you?”

“It meant Friday the Thirteenth. It meant Nightmare on Elm Street. I don’t know, Lieutenant Baxter, but my friend was dead, and her doctor’s reaction was creepy and sick. And now he’s here. He poked his head into my room, and I think maybe he remembers me. I’ve got surgery tomorrow for a hernia,” Haggerty continued breathlessly. “Supposed to be a simple operation, but as God is my witness, I’m scared for my life.”

I was having the kind of premonition where you know what someone’s going to say before they say it. Cold sweat trickled down the sides of my body.

I pressed the receiver hard to my ear.

“Do you remember the doctor’s name?”

“I’ll never, ever forget it,” Haggerty said. “It was Garza. Dr. Dennis Garza.”

Part Four: SHOW GIRL

Part Four

SHOW GIRL

Chapter 65

Chapter 65

SOMETIMES A BAD WIND BLOWS.

It was an eerie phrase, and the fear in Mrs. Haggerty’s voice had given me chills. I heard Yuki’s voice, too. Someone at that damn hospital murdered my mother.

I drove to the hospital alone, telling myself that I wasn’t working a case. This was just an inquiry. A courtesy call, I guess you could say.

San Francisco Municipal Hospital is a humongous stone fortress of a place with a low wall and a smattering of shade trees between the entrance to the hospital and the sidewalk.

I parked in the lot and entered the gloom of the lobby. Crossed the granite-block floor to the elevator, got out on the third floor, and followed the arrows to room 311.

I was about to open the door to Haggerty’s private room, when a nurse’s aide came out with a load of sheets in her arms. I waited for her to clear out of the way; then I stepped inside room 311.

I had pictured Mrs. Haggerty from the sound of her voice, imagined her as having a wiry frame and dark, hennaed hair.

I hadn’t imagined for a second that her bed would be empty.

I stood blinking stupidly in the doorway, astonished by what I didn’t see. Then I spun around, out into the hall.