The Night Crew

them and then suddenly and hurriedly turned back to the hospital doors and disappeared inside.
    ‘‘Did you see that?’’ Anna said.
    ‘‘Yeah.’’ Harper broke into a trot, Anna running beside him. ‘‘Somebody who doesn’t want to talk to us. You know him?’’
    ‘‘Couldn’t see his face,’’ she said.
    ‘‘White hair,’’ Harper said. They were moving fast now, hit the doors to the entry, burst into the reception area. No white-haired men. A guard was looking at them, quizzically. Harper hurried toward him, Anna a half-step behind.
    ‘‘A white-haired guy just came through here,’’ Harper said. ‘‘Did you see where he went?’’
    The guard said, ‘‘Yeah, he . . . hey, who are you guys?’’
    But he’d started to point, down the hall: the elevators were just around the corner.
    ‘‘Elevators,’’ Anna said to Harper. And she said to the guard, ‘‘Call the intensive care unit on the third floor. If a white-haired guy shows up, watch him . . . he may have a gun.’’
    Harper was already hurrying toward the elevators, Anna catching up as the guard said, ‘‘Yes, ma’am,’’ and picked up a phone.
    They turned the corner. Three elevators, one with the door open, waiting. Of the other two, one was on eight, coming down. The other was on two, stopping at three.
    ‘‘Damn it,’’ Harper said. He looked around and Anna said, ‘‘Stairs’d be faster,’’ and they went left and up the stairs, around two flights; as they got to the third floor, Anna heard a door shut below them, the hollow tunnel sound of metal on concrete. She stopped, looked down. ‘‘You hear that?’’
    ‘‘Yeah,’’ Harper grunted, but he went on past, into the corridor on three. Two nurses were talking at a work station, one with a phone in her hand, and looked up at them.
    ‘‘Did a white-haired man . . .’’
    ‘‘No. Nobody came here. The guard just called . . .’’
    ‘‘Is Pam Glass still down in intensive care, the police officer?’’
    ‘‘I think so . . .’’
    They went that way, and Anna blurted, ‘‘Maybe he went down. You heard that door close, he couldn’t have been too far ahead of us.’’
    ‘‘Yeah.’’ They turned the corner into the intensive care unit. Glass was standing next to Creek’s bed; Creek’s eyes were closed. No white-haired man.
    ‘‘Nobody just came through here?’’ Anna asked.
    Glass shook her head. ‘‘No. What . . . ?’’
    Harper said, ‘‘Tell them,’’ and ran back toward the stairs. Anna asked Glass, ‘‘You got your gun?’’
    ‘‘Yes.’’
    ‘‘Keep a hand on it, there’s a guy,’’ and turned and ran after Harper. She caught him on the stairs and Harper glanced back at her, grunted, shook his head and kept circling down. They came out in a sub-basement, looked both ways, finally turned left, a shorter hall and an exit sign.
    The exit led to an underground parking ramp: they hurried along the ramp, and Harper said, ‘‘Get the gun out.’’
    Anna took the gun out of her jacket pocket, feeling a little silly—and a little dangerous—and held it by her pants leg as they turned up the ramp toward a pay booth. A Latino was running out an adding machine in the booth, and Harper said, ‘‘Did a man just run by here?’’
    ‘‘Yes, si , he went that way, one minute.’’ He pointed up the ramp to the street. They ran up the ramp and found . . . traffic.
    Harper looked both ways, down at Anna and said, ‘‘He’s gone.’’
    She shoved the gun back into her jacket and said, ‘‘Yeah.’’
    • • •
    Creek had been awake for a few minutes, had maybe recognized Glass, but maybe not: ‘‘He was drifting,’’ Glass said. ‘‘He thought he was on his boat.’’
    Anna told Glass about the white-haired man, and finished with, ‘‘It’s possible that it was nothing.’’
    ‘‘No.’’ Harper disagreed. ‘‘That move he made—I saw that two hundred times when I was a cop. Especially working dope. Someone sees you, figures you for the cops, and he turns and splits. Runs in the front door, runs out the back. Just like that: and that’s what he was doing.’’
    ‘‘I see it all the time,’’ Glass said.
    ‘‘That’s what it felt like,’’ Anna admitted. She kept looking at Creek, then glancing away: his figure disturbed her. He looked hollow, tired. Old, with lines in his face that she hadn’t noticed before. He’d always been the opposite of those things, a guy who’d go on