[MD2, 10:15AM, Scranton airport]
Kate pulled the parking ticket off the windshield and tucked it in her purse while September loaded her bag into the trunk. Somehow, she didn’t think this would qualify as a legitimate travel expense. But at least she knew that the car had been watched and the two men in the gray Taurus hadn’t had a chance to mess with it.
The Taurus was no longer in the loading zone. As they pulled away from the airport, Kate checked the rearview mirror several times, just to be sure, but it was nowhere in sight.
About the third time she looked in the mirror, September pulled the visor on her side down and pretended to fix her hair while scanning behind them. "Are we being followed," she asked.
"No," Kate said, and sighed.
That drew a confused look from September. "You sound disappointed. Were you expecting someone to follow us?"
Kate laughed. "You could say that. There was a car following me all the way from World’s End. It seems to be gone now. … I think I liked it better when the car was where I could keep an eye on it."
Scranton not being a very large city, it didn’t take long to get to Mercy Hospital. There, they were informed that Agent Cohen had been put in the psychiatric ward on the fourth floor.
"The psychiatric ward," Kate mumbled as she and September got on the elevator. "That seems a rather extreme measure."
"Was Agent Cohen violent when you found him?"
"Just the opposite. Disoriented but very docile."
"Maybe something happened on the way here in the ambulance," September ventured.
Kate frowned at the thought of ‘Ranger Docker’. He had accompanied Cohen in the ambulance. She suspected that doing so was not routine procedure. "Maybe," she agreed.
On the fourth floor, an orderly led them through a pair of locked metal doors and down a long corridor. The sounds of moaning and incoherent ranting came from some of the rooms, but that and the security precautions were all that differentiated this ward from any other. In fact, everything here seemed a little too normal, but that observation, Kate decided, was just overactive imagination and bordering on outright paranoia. Since she’d never been in a psychiatric ward before, who was she to judge what it was supposed to be like?
The orderly led them to a room halfway down the hall and announced, "Well, there he is."
Agent Cohen lay on the bed, pale and motionless. "Is it all right if we wake him," Kate asked, thinking that he might be drugged, and not knowing what might have happened to warrant him being here.
"Sure, if you can," the orderly said. "But he’s been in a coma since he got here."
Kate stared at him for a moment, dumbfounded. September spoke first, asking the question both of them wanted the answer to. "Is it the normal procedure to put patients who are in a coma in this ward?"
The orderly just shrugged. "Not my department. I just take care of ‘em once they get here."
"Who is this man’s doctor," Kate demanded. "I want to see him. Now."
The orderly unenthusiastically consulted the chart on the wall. "Dr. Noonan saw him in the ER," he said. "I can see if he’s in his office, if you want."
*****
Noonan wasn’t in his office. In fact, he wasn’t even on duty, and he wasn’t answering his phone at home, or his cell phone, or his beeper. When Kate and September arrived at his house, the morning newspaper was still laying on the driveway. There were no lights on in the house and all the curtains were drawn, which wasn’t too unusual. He had worked the night shift, after all.
As they came up to his front porch, however, they noticed that the front door was open slightly. Kate unholstered her gun, and seeing that September had done so as well, pushed the door open.
Around the corner from the house, unseen by the agents, a gray Taurus pulled away from the curb.
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