For the three years Mike had worked at Tanglewood, Calhoun’s “office” had been a gauntlet that he had to run just to get to the time clock. Here the security guard sat with his keys, cigarettes, and closed-circuit video feeds from every corner of the hospital, as protected as any endangered species: the gainfully employed American functional alcoholic. And from the current smell of things, Calhoun hadn’t waited until he was home to start drinking.

Let him say what he wants about Jolie Braun, Mike decided. Nobody would believe him anyway.

“Ayuh.” Calhoun grinned in a way that made his long chin appear to grow even longer. “I guess you ought to have it quiet tonight.” He looked around with the comical bewilderment of the person the universe had chosen as its straight man more often than not. “But I still don’t see why they couldn’t give you one night off.”

“I appreciate your concern.” Mike was already leaning into the first step that would carry him away from Calhoun and whatever remained of this conversation when he heard rubber squealing up the service road in front of the hospital. Turning, he saw a line of police cruisers pulling into the rotunda, followed by an ambulance. Officers in blue uniforms were already getting out, moving with the swift urgency of men about their work.

Calhoun glanced up. “What the hell is all this happy crap?”

“Got your patient here,” a young cop in sunglasses said, walking up, thrusting a fat stack of pages in Calhoun’s direction.

“Hold it.” Calhoun put down his paper and stood up. But the EMTs were already opening the back of the ambulance, unloading a stretcher with a man in an orange prison jumpsuit strapped to the rails. The man stared into the blue summer sky with an absolute vacancy of expression that seemed to Mike’s eye neither childlike nor tranquil. Like the hospital, he thought, the man on the stretcher looked dead.

“Says here he’s going for an MRI,” the sunglasses cop said. “Either you two geniuses know where that is?”

Mike nodded. “I work there.”

“Yeah? Well, that makes you my new best friend.”

Craning his neck, Mike tried to get a better look at the face of the man strapped to the litter, but the shadows of the officers surrounding him continued to float over his features, obscuring them like a series of ill-fitting masks. It felt like the man’s face was hiding from him, ducking away just when he thought he might catch a glimpse of it. The cops, all five of them, stood looking at one another across the stretcher. Mike realized that the paramedics had already climbed back into the ambulance; within moments the vehicle sped off, leaving them there with the silent passenger.

“Who is this guy?” Mike asked.

Nobody said a word.

2.

The elevator doors jumped open and the cops came out with the stretcher—Calhoun had elected to stay upstairs—when Mike saw Jolie waiting for them. She was holding a digital camera, snapping photos of the man in the prison jumpsuit until the sunglasses cop gave her a hard look.