The Investigators Part 17

Who? A nurse?

Cynthia let herself fall back on the bed.

The last thing she remembered clearly was being in her own room in Bala Cynwyd. Dr. Seaburg had been there.

Mother called him when I couldn't stop crying.

And he gave me something, a pill. A pill. A pill and then a shot. And told me it would let me sleep.

And then I was in a car, and going downtown. . . .

They must have brought me here.

Dr. Seaburg was here, too. He had some other doctor with him. A nice old man.

My G.o.d, what did he give me? I can't seem to think, and I feel like I just swam across the Atlantic Ocean!

"Are you supposed to be doing that?" Cynthia challenged.

"Doing what?" a female voice near the cigarette glow asked.

"Smoking in here?"

"I didn't think anyone would notice. I'll put it out."

"No!" Cynthia said. "I don't mind. I could use one myself."

A body appeared at the bedside. A female body. Extending a lit cigarette.

"Will you settle for a puff on this?" she asked. "I don't want you falling asleep again with a lit cigarette."

Cynthia had trouble finding the hand holding the cigarette. But finally she got the cigarette to her lips and took a puff.

"You're right," the woman said. "I shouldn't be smoking in here. But it's been a long day, and I'm a nice girl, and I figured, what the h.e.l.l?"

Cynthia chuckled and took another puff on the cigarette, and in its glow saw that the woman was young, and wore a simple cotton blouse and a skirt, with a sweater over her shoulders.

"Would you like something to drink?" the young woman asked. "There's water and 7-Up."

"Oh, yes, please, 7-Up," Cynthia said.

"Would it bother you if I put the lights on?" the young woman said. "I don't want to spill 7-Up all over you."

"Go ahead," Cynthia said. "Who are you?"

"My name is Amy Payne."

"You're a nurse?"

"No."

"I was wondering where your uniform was," Cynthia said.

The lights came on, painfully bright. It took what seemed to be a long time for her eyes to adjust to them.

When she finally had everything in focus, she saw that Amy-attractive, but no real beauty-was extending a paper cup to her.

Cynthia quickly drank it all, and held out the cup for a refill.

"If you promise not to gulp it down the way you did that one," Amy Payne said. "I don't want you to toss your cookies."

Cynthia chuckled. She liked this woman.

"Funny, that sounded like a nurse talking," she said. "But okay. I promise."

"Not to gulp? Girl Scout's honor?"

"I said I promised," Cynthia said, and added: "Actu ally, I was a Girl Scout."

"So was I. I hated it."

"Me, too," Cynthia said.

Amy gave her another gla.s.s of 7-Up. Cynthia took a sip.

"If you're not a nurse, what are you doing in here?" she asked.

"Actually, I'm a doctor."

"You're putting me on."

"Girl Scout's honor," Amy said.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned."

"Your doctor, if you'd like. Both Dr. Seaburg and Dr. Stein think that might be a good idea."

"Dr. Stein?"

"Little fat fellow. Looks like Santa Claus with a shave. Talks funny."

Cynthia giggled when the description called up the mental image of the doctor who had been with Dr. Seaburg.

"Why do Drs. Seaburg and Stein think it would be a good idea if you were my doctor?"

"I don't know about you, but I always have trouble talking about some things-the female reproductive apparatus, for example, or s.e.x, generally-with a man. With another woman, provided she's not old enough to be my grandmother, it's much easier."

"What makes you think I would want to talk to you? About s.e.x or anything else?"

"I don't know if you would want to or not," Amy said.

"You're a shrink, right?"

"Right. A pretty good one, as a matter of fact."

"You don't look like a shrink."

"Dr. Stein looks like what most people think of when they hear the word 'shrink,' " Amy said. "Wise and kind, et cetera. Would you rather talk to him?"

"I don't really want to talk to anybody."

"You're going to have to talk to somebody, and I think you know that," Amy said. "Maybe I could help. Your call."

"I really don't want to talk to Dr. Seaburg, or the other one."

"Can I take that as a 'yes'? Do you want to give it a shot, see if I can help?"

"G.o.d, I don't know. I'm so d.a.m.ned confused."

"When you're d.a.m.ned confused is usually a pretty good time to talk to a shrink," Amy said.

"Let me think about it," Cynthia said.

"Counteroffer," Amy said. "Give me a temporary appointment as your physician until, say, half past eight in the morning."

"Why?"> "Under those circ.u.mstances, I can prescribe medicine and offer advice."

"If you were my physician, what medicine would you prescribe?"

"None. No more sedatives. I don't like the side effects-what they gave you really makes you feel like a medicine ball at the end of a long game-and I don't think it's indicated."

"You just have been appointed my temporary physician," Cynthia said. "What's the advice?"

"Two things. First, when they come in here in the morning and ask you how you want your eggs, say 'poached' or 'soft-boiled.' What they do to fried and scrambled eggs around here is obscene."

Cynthia giggled.

"And second?"

"Try to trust me. Whatever's wrong, whatever happened, we can deal with it."

"Oh, s.h.i.t," Cynthia said. "I really don't . . ."

"That bad, huh?" Amy said.

"Yeah, that bad."

"Okay, we'll talk about it. Now, after a word with the nurse, I'm going home."

"What kind of a word with the nurse?"

"Orders. One, no more sedatives. Two, you have my medical permission to smoke. Not now, in the morning, after that sedative wears off."

"You'll be back in the morning?"

"After you've had your breakfast."

"Okay," Cynthia said, and then said, "What do I call you, 'Doctor'?"

"If you can remember that I'm your doctor, you can call me 'Amy.' I'd like that."

"I don't think I understand that," Cynthia said.

"I don't know about you, Cynthia, but every time I've told one of my friends something I really didn't want anybody else to know, it was all over town by the next day. What you tell me as your doctor goes no further."

"Not even to another doctor? Or my parents?"

"What you tell me goes no further, period."

"I may not tell you anything."

"That's up to you, what you tell me or don't. Okay?"

"Okay," Cynthia said.

Dr. Payne touched Cynthia Longwood's shoulder and walked to the door. She turned off the lights, smiled at Cynthia, and walked out of the room.

When Matt went into Personnel Records at the Roundhouse a few minutes before ten, Sergeant Sandow's contact, a heavyset civilian, led him into a closet-size office where he had laid out the personnel jackets of the Narcotics Unit's Five Squad.

"I'll stick around until you're finished," the civilian told him, "in case somebody wonders what the lights are doing on in here. But make it quick, will you?"

"Right now, that is the guiding principle of my life," Matt said, and took off his trench coat. He fished the pocket recorder out again, looked at it, shrugged, put batteries and a tape in it, and tested it.

It worked. The question was whether or not it would be quicker to use the machine and the transcribing device, or whether he should just use pencil and a notebook.

He decided in favor of modern technology, sat down at the desk, and started to work his way through the foot-high stack of records in front of him.

It took him more than two hours. Dictating names and addresses into the recorder proved, he thought, much quicker than writing them down would have been; the question remained how long it would take him to transcribe them in the morning.

None of the names and addresses of relatives and references rang any bells, except tangentially. Officer Timothy J. Calhoun of the Five Squad had uncles and aunts and cousins in both Harrisburg and Camp Hill, and was a graduate of Camp Hill High.

It was unlikely that they knew each other, but Miss Susan Reynolds, who had not been kidnapped at all, was from Camp Hill.

What was that bulls.h.i.t she told Daffy all about, that she was in her room all the time? Her bed had not been slept in. Period. Wherever she was when everybody was looking for her, she wasn't in the Bellvue-Stratford. At least not in her room.