Death Before Facebook

name?”
    “Lirette.”
    “Lirette, I’m coming over. If she turns up, have her wait for me, will you?”
    Twenty minutes later, she strode into Kit’s office, finding another woman at Kit’s desk, trying, apparently, to field a phone call. “Lirette?” Skip produced her badge.
    “I’ll call you back,” Lirette said into the phone. To Skip she said, “Yes?” But her calm voice belied her harried manner. This woman was definitely alarmed, or maybe she was picking up something from Skip that Skip couldn’t yet herself identify. All she knew was her pulse was racing.
    Lirette was a good deal older than Kit or maybe she just had no use for hair coloring and fitness plans. She looked as if she could make a lot of roux-based dishes and the flakiest of pie crusts. Her gray-blue flyaway hair had the slightly crimped look of baby-fine locks that didn’t take a perm too well but looked worse without one.
    Skip said, “Kit’s not in any trouble, if you’re concerned about that.”
    “It’s not that—I’m worried, that’s all.” She repeated what she’d said on the phone. “She doesn’t seem to be anywhere she’s supposed to be.”
    “Thanks. I’m going to have a look around. Okay?”
    Lirette nodded.
    Skip stepped out of the office and back into the corridor. Things were happening too fast… first Lenore, then Marguerite’s “confession,” such as it was—bogus or not, Skip couldn’t be sure.
    And now this.
    It might be perfectly ordinary for Kit to disappear for a few minutes—perhaps she’d stolen off to have a good cry over Lenore, but every instinct in Skip’s body said that wasn’t it, that Kit was in danger, maybe already dead.
    Kit knew something. Either the killer, like Skip, had just realized it or he was systematically getting rid of anyone who knew anything about what had happened twenty-seven years ago.
    Who says you can’t rewrite history?
    Skip called Security and identified herself. “I need help finding a nurse.”
    “Well, can I ask what for?”
    “She may be in danger.”
    “What kind of danger?”
    “Look, there isn’t time for this. I need someone to help me search the hospital.”
    “Well, we don’t really have nobody right now. Gerard’s on his break and Tootie went home sick about an hour ago.”
    “How about you?”
    “I can’t leave my post… there’s nothin’ I can really do.”
    Skip hung up.
Great. Just what I need right now. Bureaucracy
.
    She felt time running out.
    Barely thinking, driven by anxiety and adrenaline, she started walking, striding down the hospital corridors as if she were a nurse en route to a code.
    I know what he’d do; he’d stage another accident—that’s his specialty.
    She headed to the roof, taking the stairs two at a time.
    But no one was there.
    The clouds had lifted, though, and she had a clear view. Somehow the metaphor of clarity rooted itself in her belly. She closed her eyes and let the blackness give way to whatever came, be it pictures or words.
    She saw white—white walls, white cloths, bright lights, Kit all in nurse’s white, swallowing, terrified.
    This is a hospital, dammit! An ideal place for a drug overdose
.
    It’s perfect—her best friend just died. She’s too distraught to go on. She has a history of depression.
    Dammit! Goddammit
!
    She was too late and she knew it—the murderer would be gone and Kit would be lying unconscious, maybe dead. But maybe not dead. That part, Skip’s instincts told her, was very much open to debate.
    She opened every door she came to, including broom closets and bathrooms, once surprising an old man sitting on a toilet. She hoped he wasn’t a heart patient.
    Running, she covered the fifth floor (closest to the roof), and descended to the fourth, not even pausing when anyone yelled at her, which was often.
    She remembered something Suby had said—something about a room where Kit went to smoke, where the witches had had a secret ritual.
    Would the killer have told Kit he needed to speak to her? Something like: “Is there any place we could talk privately?”
    Where was the room?
    On the third floor, there was a wing that looked closed off. Could it be there? It wasn’t locked. She went in, opening doors, not closing them behind her.
    Was that a murmur she heard?
    Voices?
    Yes. At the end of the corridor.
    Hand in her purse, holding her gun, she opened the last door on the hall. She could shoot through the purse or take her hand out, whatever she needed to