He scrunched his eyes shut and made himself breathe, his heart going like a jazz drummer cranked out of his mind on crystal meth. It was stress, nothing more. Everything he’d seen up until now, all he’d been through, was finally backing up so grossly that he was, was—

Crazy like your father, stumble-bum syphilitic raving out of his mind—

There was no suicidal ICU nurse in the supply closet; in fact, maybe what he’d seen up on the sixth floor had been a similar apparition. Maybe…

He opened his eyes in time to see her painted lips curling up, only slightly, as what first looked like a tiny black hair pushed itself out of the folds of her mouth. Calhoun’s vision sharpened. The gleaming roachlike insect at least the size of a quarter squirmed free and began crawling up Mona Homely’s cheek, toward her open eye, where it dangled momentarily from her lower lash like a single black tear before scuttling over the glossy white surface of the sclera.

Calhoun flung the door shut with a bang and stood back in the darkness, staring at it. He looked at the light that still bled out from underneath. Real or imagined, the vision of Mona Homely’s corpse still hung in his mind’s eye. Calhoun realized that he’d seen something else that the man who’d first found her had not reported.

She’d been wearing a silver crucifix.

It had been dangling upside down.

31.

Jolie was out.

In the most recent photo she’d taken, the door leading to the psychiatric ward’s outdoor basketball court appeared as a simple metal-reinforced glass sheet with a chrome handle. If it was locked, she was prepared to pitch the fire extinguisher through it, but that proved unnecessary. The handle turned with nothing more than a rusty squeak and, praise Allah, she boogied right through. Simplest thing in the world, ladies and germs, even the hospital floozy could do it.

She took in a deep breath and blew the hair from her eyes. Despite the fact that it was completely enclosed in high chain-link fencing, the court immediately made her feel like she’d escaped. The night breeze bristling against her bare forearms and neck smelled of freshly mowed grass and the fishy stink of fertilizer from farms far away.

I never thought shit could smell so good, she thought, a trembling little smile twitching halfway over her face.

She looked up. Somewhere up in the vicinity of weather satellites, a dense heap of clouds sopped up the hazy moonlight, and when the clouds began to drift westward the hooked lunar crescent spilled down brightly enough that Jolie didn’t need the camera’s flash to make her way forward.

If she could climb up the fence and lower herself down the other side, then she would really be out. There had to be a fire escape or some kind of maintenance ladder going down the outside of the hospital. Twenty minutes from now she’d be in her car, driving away from here as fast as humanly possible. She’d be sure to alert the police that there were others inside, but first she was going to get the hell out of here. Sorry, sports fans, but it’s every woman for herself.