“It was a well-deserved rebuke, Abram. I was wrong.”

“So was I.”

Rina said, soothingly, “Just goes to show you. Sometimes two wrongs do make a right.”

10

The third floor of New Chris was taken up by the Cardiac Care Unit—six divisions, each with its own central nursing station surrounded by a dozen private suites. The rooms, radiating from the center like spokes on a wheel, reminded Decker of biblical leper caves—isolated, dark, quiet, ominous. No human noises, just the occasional electronic whine of high-tech equipment at work.

Decker leaned against the wall, watching it all, fascinated by the sci-fi medicine. Someone tapped his shoulder. He straightened and turned around.

A heavyset nurse with muscular forearms. Young and well scrubbed. In another life, she might have been a milkmaid. She whispered, “Dr. Berger will be with you in a moment. Would you like more coffee?”

“No thank you,” Decker said softly. The nurse’s ID tag told him her name was Tara. “I’m pretty much coffeed-out. What exactly is Dr. Berger doing?”

“Pardon?”

Decker cleared his throat. “It’s almost three in the morning. Aren’t most of the patients asleep?”

Tara said, “He’s just finishing off two o’clock vitals check. Normally, we nurses record the numbers, dispense the necessary medicines according to the doctor’s orders. But Dr. Berger wanted to familiarize himself with Dr. Sparks’s patients. It will help ease the transition …as much as that’s possible.” She swallowed hard. “Dreadful!”

“Horrible.”

“Who would do such a terrible thing?”

“I don’t know, ma’am.” Decker leaned in close. “You wouldn’t have any thoughts about it, would you?”

“Why no!” Tara looked down. “Well, I have thoughts. But they don’t mean anything.”

“Tell them to me anyway.”

She started to talk, stopped, then bunched her facial muscles in concentration. “Well…to me, it sounds like…maybe he picked up the wrong person.”

Decker looked around the room. “What do you mean by ‘picked up’?”

“Like a motorist who he thought needed help. But the motorist was really a robber. Isn’t that a possibility?”

Decker slipped out his notebook. “Have you ever known Dr. Sparks to pick up people?”

“Not hitchhikers. But he was a take-charge kind of man. And he was a doctor.”

“Meaning?”

Tara dropped her voice even further. “Let’s say he thought he saw an accident. I’m sure he would have pulled the car over to help, no?”

The woman was making sense. Decker said, “Go on.”

“But suppose it wasn’t a real accident. Suppose it was a dodge…to entrap some poor unsuspecting motorist. And of course, Dr. Sparks would pull over. And when he did, he was carjacked. Robbed. Taken to a dark place…” She shivered. “It’s awful to think about it.”

“Do you know if Dr. Sparks ever did that before? Stopped at the scene of auto accidents?”