Lost

The Professor arrives, his cheeks red from the cold. He hovers in the doorway as though waiting for an invitation. Behind him I see Ali sitting on a chair. She is now officially my shadow.

There are metal detectors being installed in the lobby and my medical personnel are being screened. Maggie isn't among them. I am responsible.

Although I've been over it a dozen times with detectives, I don't mind talking to Joe about the attack because he asks different questions. He wants to know what I heard and smelled. Was the guy breathing heavily? Did he sound scared?

I take him on a guided tour, showing him where the fight took place. Ali stays two paces away from me, scanning the corridors and rooms.

Leaning on my crutches, I watch Joe do his mad professor routine, pacing out distances, crouching on the floor and studying angles.

“Tell me about the gas leak.”

“One of the delivery drivers noticed the smell first but they couldn't find the source. Someone opened up a valve on one of the feeder pipes from the gas tanks near the loading docks.”

Joe kicks at the ground as though trying to make it even. I can almost see his mind moving forward and backward as he tries to reconstruct what happened.

Out loud now, he says, “He knew his way around the hospital but he didn't know which room you were in. Once he evacuated the floors there was nobody to ask.”

Joe turns and strides down the corridor. I struggle to keep up without overbalancing. He stops beneath a CCTV camera and reaches toward it as if holding a spray can. “He must have been about six two.”

“Yeah.”

He continues to the nursing station, eyes darting over the long narrow counter and kitchenette. There are clipboards hanging on a wall. Each one corresponds to a patient.

“Where did you find Maggie?”

“On the floor.”

Joe drops to his knees and then lies down, with his head toward the sink.

“No, she was lying this way, with her head almost under the desk.”

Jumping to his feet, he stands facing the clipboards and half closes his eyes. “He was looking at the clipboards to find your room number.”

“How do you know?”

Joe crouches and I follow his outstretched finger. There are two black smudges on the baseboard made by the heels of the fireman's boots. “Maggie came up the corridor. She was coming back to get you. He heard her coming and he stepped back to hide . . .”

I can picture Maggie bustling up the corridor, admonishing herself for being late.

“As she passed the doorway, she turned her head. He struck her with his elbow across the bridge of her nose.” Joe tumbles to the floor and lies where she fell. “Then he went to your room but you had already gone.”

All this sounds reasonable.

“There is something I don't understand. He could have killed me right away, here in the corridor, but he collected a wheelchair and tried to push me down the lift shaft.”

Still lying on the floor, Joe points past my shoulder at the CCTV camera. “It's the only one he didn't black out.”

“It didn't matter, he wore a mask.”

“Psychologically it made a big difference. Even with his face hidden, he didn't want to star in a home movie. The footage was evidence against him.”

“So he took me out of view.”

“Yes.”

Joe is thinking out loud now, unaware of his twitches and trembles. I follow him down the corridor to the stairs. He pauses, puzzled by something.

“The gas leak was part of both plans,” he announces.

“Both plans?”

“One for outside and one for inside . . .”

I don't understand. Joe motions for me to follow him and waits for me to climb two flights of stairs. We reach a heavy fire door and emerge onto a barren rectangle of bitumen, the rooftop of the hospital. A gust of wind slaps me in the face and Joe grabs my shirtfront to steady me. A big-bellied gray sky hangs overhead.

Circular ducts and metal air-conditioning plants punctuate the bitumen. A low brick wall with white capping stones marks the outside edge of the building. A wire security fence is attached, curling inward before being topped with barbed wire.

Joe slowly walks the perimeter, occasionally glancing at surrounding buildings as though adjusting his internal compass. When he reaches the northeast corner of the building, he leans close to the fence. “You see that park down there—the one with the fountain?” I follow his gaze. “That's the evacuation meeting point. Everyone was supposed to meet there when they emptied the hospital. You were supposed to be with them. There is no way they could have known you were going to be left inside.”

We are both on the same page now. “Perhaps he was supposed to hide in my room and kill me when I came back.”

“Or they were going to kill you outside.”

Joe drops onto his haunches, studying the thin layer of soot on the capping stones. It's the same black film that settles on everything in London until the next shower. Three penny-size circles smudge the surface. Joe swings his eyes to the ground where two larger smudges appear beneath the wall.