The Door to December

maybe there's some link between this homicide and Melanie because—'
     'Because what?'
     'Well, after all, she's a patient here. So I've been trying to get hold of you—'
     'I was out shopping, buying new clothes for her,' Laura said. 'What happened? Who's dead? Are you going to tell me, for God's sake?'
     'A guy in his car. That Volvo over there. Dead in the front seat of his Volvo.'
     'According to his ID, his name's Ned Rink.'
     She leaned back against the chain-link fence, her pulse rate gradually slowing from the frantic beat it had attained.
     'You ever heard of him?' Haldane asked. 'Ned Rink?'
     'No.'
     'I wondered if maybe he was an associate of your husband's. Like Hoffritz.'
     'Not that I'm aware. The name's not familiar. Why would you think he knew Dylan? Because of the way he died? Is that it? Was he beaten to death like the others?'
     'No. But it was odd.'
     'Tell me.'
     He hesitated, and from the look in his blue eyes she could see that it was another particularly brutal homicide.
     'Tell me,' she said again.
     'His throat was crushed, as if someone gave him one hell of a whack with a lead pipe, caught him right across the Adam's apple. More than one whack. Lots of damage. Literally pulverized the guy's windpipe, crushed the Adam's apple, the vocal cords. Broke his neck. Cracked his spine.'
     'Okay,' she said, dry-mouthed. 'I get the picture.'
     'Sorry. Anyway, it's not like the bodies in Studio City, but it's unusual. You can see why we might figure they're connected. In both cases, the murders involved an unusual degree of violence. This one wasn't as bad as those, not nearly, but nevertheless ...'
     She pushed away from the fence. 'I want to see Melanie.'
     Suddenly she had to see Melanie. It was a strong physical need. She had to touch the girl, hold her, be reassured that her child was all right.
     She headed away from the parking lot, toward the front entrance of the hospital.
     Haldane walked beside her, limping slightly but apparently not in pain.
     'You have an accident?' she asked.
     'Huh?'
     'Your leg.'
     'Oh. No. Just an old football injury from college. Banged the knee up pretty bad my senior year. Sometimes it acts up in humid weather. Listen, there's more about the guy in the Volvo, Rink.'
     'What?'
     'He had an attaché case with him. Inside, there was a white lab coat, a stethoscope, and a pistol fitted with a silencer.'
     'He shoot his assailant? Are you looking for someone with a bullet wound?'
     'Nope. The piece wasn't fired. But do you see what I'm driving at? The lab coat? The stethoscope?'
     'He wasn't a doctor, was he?'
     'No. What it looks like to us is that maybe he was going to go into the hospital, put on the lab coat, hang the stethoscope around his neck, and pretend to be a doctor.'
     She glanced at him as they reached the curb and stepped up onto the sidewalk. 'Why would he do that?'
     'From a preliminary look, the assistant medical examiner thinks Rink was killed between four and six o'clock this morning, though he wasn't found until nine-forty-five. Now, if he was figuring to visit someone in the hospital at, say five o'clock in the morning, he'd almost have to try to pass himself off as a doctor, because visiting hours don't start until one in the afternoon. If he tried to get on one of the medical floors in civilian clothes at that hour, there's a good chance a nurse or maybe a security guard would stop him. But in a lab coat, with a stethoscope, he could probably breeze right through.
     They had reached the front entrance of the hospital. Laura stopped on the sidewalk. 'When you say "visit" you don't mean "visit".'
     'No.'
     'So you believe he intended to go into the hospital and kill someone.'
     'A man doesn't carry a pistol with a silencer unless he means to use it. A silencer's illegal. Law comes down on you hard for that. You get caught with one, you're in deep sh ... deep soup. Besides, I haven't learned any details yet, but I'm told Rink has a criminal record. He's suspected of being a freelance hitman for the past few years.'
     'A hired killer?'
     'I'd almost bet on it.'
     'But that doesn't mean he came here to kill Melanie. Could be someone