A.L. shoved his chair back, so fast that it scraped the floor and made a noise. “Sometimes you got to make your own luck.”

Baywood Memorial was a level-two trauma center, an accredited chest pain center and a certified stroke center. All that meant that they could treat almost any emergency from a sore throat to a heart attack or stroke to a gunshot wound. The most serious traumas or any burn victims generally got airlifted to Madison.

There was a marked police vehicle in the lot. Parked and empty. That probably wasn’t unusual. Sometimes there were disruptive people who required a police response. Sometimes, officers accompanied inmates from the county jail.

They entered through the emergency room doors that opened as they approached. There were at least ten people in the waiting area, one with a service dog sitting quietly at his feet.

A.L. and Rena stepped up to the glass window. A.L. suspected it was bulletproof. “We’re looking for Sam Wiese. Is he working tonight?”

“Are you a patient?” she asked, not answering the question.

“No.”

She looked at him as if expecting him to offer up more. When he didn’t, she pointed to the chairs in the lobby. “Have a seat. I’ll see if he’s able to take a break.”

“He must be working,” Rena murmured.

It was almost ten minutes before a man wearing blue scrubs and tennis shoes came through a door from the back. He glanced around the waiting room. A.L. stood up. “Mr. Wiese?”

“Yes.”

A.L. passed him a business card. “Could we maybe step outside for a minute?”

“Okay,” he said. He didn’t sound too concerned. It was hard to rile an emergency department nurse. They’d seen it all.

Once outside, Rena also passed him a card. “Thanks for talking with us. Did we catch you at the end of a shift?”

“Yeah.” He ran a hand across his short hair. “Long day.”

“We’ll try not to keep you long,” A.L. said. “We are the detectives who are investigating the disappearance of Emma Whitman.”

He nodded. “I recognized your names. Kara mentioned it. She’s torn up about this.”

“We understand that you were working this past Wednesday?” Rena said.

“Yeah. I do three or four twelve-hour shifts a week. And I’m going to grad school to be a nurse practitioner.”

“Had you ever met the missing child, Emma Whitman?”

“No. I’ve never been to Kara’s work.”

“So you don’t know anyone from there?”

“I know Claire Potter. She’s been at the house a couple times.”

“She and Kara are friends?”

“Yeah. She’s cool.”

That reminded A.L. that it had been Claire Potter who had originally mentioned that Kara had been interested in buying a house. Kara had later said that she was talking to the bank about refinancing.