The hospital switchboard told him that the phone had been disconnected in the room number he gave them; there was no longer a Mrs. Bahkti listed as a patient. His heart sank. Damn! Even though he had spoken to the old lady for only a few minutes, the news of her passing hurt. So senseless. At least he had been able to get the necklace back to her before she packed it in. He told the operator to connect him with the nursing desk on the old lady’s floor. Soon he was talking to Marta.

“When did Mrs. Bahkti die?”

“Far as I know, she didn’t.”

A flash of hope: “Transferred to another floor?”

“No. It happened during the change of shift. The grandson and granddaughter—”

“Granddaughter?”

“You wouldn’t like her, Jack—she’s not a blond. Anyway, they came to the desk at shift change this morning while we were all taking report and thanked us for the concern we’d shown their grandmother. Said they’d take care of her from now on. Then they walked out. When we went to check on her, she was gone.”

Jack took the phone away from his ear and scowled at it before replying.

“How’d they get her out? She sure as hell couldn’t walk!”

He could almost feel Marta shrug at the other end of the line. “Beats me. But they tell me the guy with one arm was acting real strange toward the end of the shift, wouldn’t let anyone in to see her for the last few hours.”

“Why’d they let him get away with that?” For no good reason, Jack was angry, feeling like a protective relative. “That old lady needed all the help she could get. You can’t let someone interfere like that, even if he is the grandson! You should have called security and had them—”

“Cool it, Jack,” Marta said with an authoritative snap to her tone. “I wasn’t here then.”

“Yeah. Right. Sorry. It’s just that—”

“Besides, from what they tell me, this place was a zoo last night after a patient on Five North climbed out a window. Security was all tied up over there. Really weird! This guy with casts on both hands breaks through his room window and somehow gets down the wall and runs away.”

Jack felt his spine straighten involuntarily. “Casts? On both hands?”

“Yeah. Came in through the E.R. last night with comminuted fractures. Nobody can see how he climbed down the wall, especially since he must have got cut up pretty bad going through the window. But he wasn’t splattered on the pavement, so he must have made it.”

“Why the window? Was he under arrest or something?”

“That’s the really weird thing. He could have walked out the front door if he wanted to. Anyhow, we all figure the grandkids snuck old Mrs. Bahkti out during all the commotion.”

“What’d the guy who went through the window look like? Did he have a patch on his left eye?” Jack held his breath as he waited for the answer.