Roses Are Red

to work at Hazelwood again. I was outfitted in an overhanging white shirt and corduroy pants that were loose enough to hide the holster strapped onto my leg. An FBI agent named Jack Waterhouse had been added to the staff as an aide. Sampson continued as a porter, but he was working only on Five now.
    Frederic Szabo proceeded to do nothing to attract suspicion or reveal himself in any way. For three days straight, he never left the ward. He slept a lot in his room. He occasionally worked on an old Apple laptop.
    What the hell was he doing? Did he know we were watching him?
    Late on Wednesday, after the work shift, I met up with Betsey in the hospital’s administration building. She had on a navy blue suit and blue slingback heels, and she was all business again. She almost seemed like another person at times, preoccupied and distant.
    She was clearly as frustrated as I was. “He worked on his master plan for at least four years, right? Presumably, he has fifteen million dollars stashed somewhere. He’s killed a lot of people to get it. Now he’s sitting on his ass at Hazelwood? Give me a break!”
    I told her what I thought about Szabo. “He’s extremely paranoid. He’s psychopathic. He may even know we’re here. Maybe we should pull back from the hospital. Do surveillance from the outside. He has his full grounds and town privileges back from Dr. Cioffi. Szabo can come and go as he likes.”
    While I talked, Betsey kept pulling at the lapels of her blazer. I was afraid she might start pulling out her hair next.
    “But he doesn’t
go anywhere!
He’s a fifty-year-old slacker! He’s a total loser!”
    “Betsey, I know. I’ve been watching Szabo sleep and play games on the Internet for three days.”
    She snorted out a laugh. “So he’s pulled off five perfect crimes — that we know of. And now he’s retiring to the farm.”
    “Yeah. The funny farm,” I said.
    “Want to hear about
my
day?” she finally asked.
    I nodded.
    “Well, I visited First Union and I talked with everyone I could find who was there when Szabo was at the bank. He was considered very ‘dedicated,’ actually. But he was wound tight about efficiency and doing the right thing in
exactly
the right way. Some of the others used it to mock him.”
    “Mock him in what way?” I asked.
    “Szabo had a
nickname,
Alex. Get this — it was the Mastermind! The name was a
joke.
It was supposed to be a joke on Szabo.”
    “Well, I guess he’s turned the joke around. Now the joke is on us.”

Chapter 111
    THE STRANGEST THING happened the following morning. As Szabo was passing me in the hall, he rubbed against me. He managed to look flustered and he apologized for supposedly
“losing his balance,”
but I was almost certain he had done it on purpose. Why? What the hell was that all about?
    About an hour later, I saw him leaving the ward. I was pretty sure he knew I was watching him go. As soon as he was out, I hurried to the door.
    “Where’s Szabo going?” I asked the aide who’d just let him out.
    “PT. He signed out. Szabo has full grounds and town. He can go wherever he likes.”
    He had been vegetating on the ward for so long that he’d caught me off guard. “Tell the head nurse that I had to leave,” I said.
    “Tell her yourself.” The aide frowned and tried to blow me off.
    I pushed past him. “
Tell her.
It’s important.”
    I let myself off the unit and took the rickety and temperamental elevator down to the lobby floor. PT was physical therapy, and Frederic Szabo hated the gym. I remembered reading it in his nursing notes. Where was he really going?
    I hurried outside and saw Szabo skulking across the courtyard between hospital buildings.
Tall and bearded
— like the physical description we’d gotten from Brian Macdougall.
    When Szabo walked right past the gym, I wasn’t surprised.
    He was on the move!
    He kept on going and I followed. He seemed kind of nervous and skittish. He finally turned his head in my direction, and I ducked off the path. I didn’t think he’d seen me. Had he?
    Szabo continued on and walked through the hospital gates. The street outside was filled with traffic. He walked due south. Not a care in the world. Was this the Mastermind?
    He hopped into a cab a couple of blocks from the hospital. There were three of them parked in front of a Holiday Inn.
    I hurried to one of the other cabs, got in, told the driver to follow.
    The driver was Indian. “Where are we going, mister?” he