“Same.” She couldn’t help but wonder if Ayer might be simply taking his job a little too far. It was, after all, his job to make his patients feel as comfortable as possible. What better way to ease their troubles than by ending their life? It seemed like a stretch, but she knew how deranged the human mind could often be.
“How far away are you from the hospital?” she asked.
“Twenty minutes, give or take. Do you have an address for Ayer?”
“No. Maybe you can get it from the McCains.”
“Maybe. And if not, I’ll call a request in to the bureau. I’ll work on that and text it to you when I get it. You okay grabbing an Uber and meeting me at his address?”
“I can. But…you aren’t going to try to talk me out of it? You aren’t going to suggest I take that Uber straight home?”
“Rachel, I think that’s a great idea. But would it do any good?”
“No.”
“Exactly, So let me save that breath for trying to get an address for Ayer. I’ll text you when I get it.”
He ended the call, the line going dead in Rachel’s ear. Feeling anxious and idle, she slowly started to pace around the parking lot, finding a little trail off to the western side of the building that wound through a flower garden. She found a little wooden bench by a small brick column and sat down. Looking out to the wildflowers and the wavering butterflies among the garden, she thought back to the last doctor she’d seen.
His name was Dr. Emerson, and Jack had recommended him to her. He’d given her the same news as the other two doctors—that the tumor in her head was in a place that was pretty much a death sentence in terms of surgical solutions. But he had offered her a small crumb of hope in the form of an experimental treatment that could shrink the tumor, making it a bit more realistic to surgically remove. She understood very little of it, something to do with her white blood cells and something called CAR T-cell therapy. Emerson told her there was maybe a ten percent chance that it would work. And when you were staring death in the face, ten percent started to sound like pretty good odds.
When she was trying to solve the murders of people with terminal illnesses, ten percent started to sound very good.
As she watched a butterfly land on a hyacinth bloom, she began to nod to herself. She’d go back to Emerson when this case was over. She’d tell him she was interested in the treatment and wanted to start as soon as she could. What the hell could it hurt to at least try?
She smiled, surprised to find that prospect excited her a bit. She smiled even wider when her phone dinged at her as a text from Jack came through. There was no lead-up, no small talk. Just Stephen Ayer’s address.
As she pulled up her Uber app, she got another text from him. Somehow, her smile grew even wider. The text read: Race ya!
With a strange revitalization passing through her body, she quickly booked a ride, finding that a car could be there to pick her up within six minutes. She sat on the bench and watched the parking lot, waiting for the car to take her to what she hoped would be a significant break in the case or, at least, a new source of information on their victims.