Passage

“But it will,” she said confidently, “and when it does, you won’t have to worry about the problem of locating her. I realize there’s still the problem of reaching her quickly, but I’ve got another programmer working on that.”

And I know the shortest route, Richard thought. I have the whole map of the hospital in my head, all the stairs, all the shortcuts. I could get to Maisie in time, if I had a way to revive her. If I knew what Joanna was trying to tell me.

“Of course, this is really just a precaution. Maisie’s doctors expect her to get a heart any day now, and she’s doing really well, they’re so pleased with her numbers. Now,” she said, putting the pager firmly in his hand, “I knew you’d want to see it in action, so Maisie’s going to activate her pager at two-ten so you can hear the beep and see how the locator screen works.”

“Two-ten?” Richard said.

“Yes, I suggested two o’clock so you’d know for certain it was a drill, but she insisted on two-ten. I have no idea why.”

I do, Richard thought. It’s a code. She’s found out something.

“They sometimes take her down for tests at two, and she may be thinking if she were somewhere other than her room, it would provide a better test. She’s such an intelligent child.”

That she is, Richard thought. “And where am I supposed to be at two-ten?”

“You’re not,” she said. “That’s the point. Wherever you are, the pager will beep you and tell you where she is. Unfortunately, I have to meet with my lawyer at one-thirty, so I won’t be there, but Maisie can probably answer any questions you have.”

Let’s hope so, he thought, watching Mrs. Nellis go down to the elevator. Maisie must have found someone else who’d seen Joanna in the elevator or one of the hallways. Or, if he was lucky, in the room with Carl Aspinall. Mrs. Nellis stepped in the elevator. Richard waited for the door to close and then took off for the CICU.

“I was worried you wouldn’t be able to figure it out,” Maisie said when he walked in her room. “I thought maybe I should have said two-twenty, when it went down, instead of when they sent the last wireless message.”

“What did you find out?” Richard asked.

“Eugene talked to this orderly who saw Joanna that day. On two-east. He said he saw her talking to Mr. Mandrake.”

Mandrake. Then he really had seen her, he hadn’t just invented the incident for his self-serving eulogy. He must have waylaid her as she was on her way up to see Dr. Jamison.

“Well?” Maisie was demanding.

Richard shook his head. “Joanna may have run into Mandrake, but she wouldn’t have told him anything. Did this orderly hear what Mandrake said?”

Maisie shook her head. “I asked Eugene. He said he was too far away, but Mr. Mandrake said a whole bunch of stuff, and so did she. He said she was laughing.”

“Laughing? With Mandrake?”

“I know,” Maisie said, making a face. “I don’t think he’s very funny either. But that’s what Eugene said he said.”

What Eugene said he said. It was a third-hand, no, fourth-hand, story, from someone too far away to overhear, and the chance that Joanna would have revealed anything substantive to Mandrake was nil, but Richard had promised Joanna he’d go down trying.

And you couldn’t go much lower than this. “I’ve been expecting you to call,” Mandrake said when Richard phoned him from the CICU’s front desk. “Mrs. Davenport told me she’d spoken with you about the messages she’s been receiving.”

I can’t do this, Richard thought, and almost hung up the phone. It’s betraying Joanna. She wouldn’t care, he thought suddenly. All she cared about was getting the message through to me. “I want to come see you,” he said. “Are you in your office?”

“Yes, but I’m afraid I have several appointments this afternoon, and my publisher — ” There was a pause, presumably while he checked his schedule. “Would two o’clock… no, I have a meeting… and my publicist’s coming at three… would one o’clock work?”

“One o’clock,” Richard said and hung up, thinking, Hopefully in the next hour and a half the answer will come to me, and I won’t have to talk to him at all.

He started through Joanna’s transcripts again, making a list of everything they contained — swimming pool, Scotland Road, mail room, key — the key. What was the key? — rockets, gymnasium, mechanical bicycles, wireless shack, sacks of mail — looking for common elements with his and Amelia Tanaka’s. They had both talked about doors and bottles, a bottle of chemicals in Amelia’s and of ink in Joanna’s, but there hadn’t been any bottles in his. A key? He had had to turn the key to open the door to the hallway, Mr. Briarley had gone to the mailroom to get the key to the locker that contained the rockets, the sailor who’d operated the Morse lamp had said something about a key, and Amelia, in talking about the catalyst, had said, “I had to find the key.”

That’s pushing it, he thought, and Joseph Leibrecht hadn’t said anything about a key. And key wasn’t one of the words highlighted on the transcripts.