Guardian Wolf. Linda Johnston O.
in a lounge similar to that where Tilly and she had met with the children. This therapy session, too, resulted in lots of laughter, even with some patients who stared off into the distance until Tilly bumped them with her nose.
This time, no Simon observed them. Just as well. He was too much of a distraction.
For their planned final session of the day, Grace led Tilly to the psychiatric unit. As with the senior unit, it was behind a locked door to ensure no patient walked away without a doctor’s approval. Having the door click shut behind them hadn’t bothered Grace in the seniors’ area. Here, she wasn’t clear what to expect from the patients, so she felt a little uneasy.
Ten patients waited in this lounge—eight men and two women, most in cotton robes tied over their hospital gowns.
The head nurse, whose name tag read Ellie Yong, came up to Grace. “Mostly PTSD patients,” she said softly, as if conveying something confidential. But in a major military hospital like Charles Carder, that’s what Grace had anticipated.
She soon lost her uneasiness—most of it, at least—during the nurses’ welcome. They introduced Grace and Tilly first and then the patients, calling each by name. Some were quiet, yet stared at her mistrustfully. She assumed they were still in the deepest stages of post-traumatic stress disorder. Several were apparently undergoing detoxification for drug addiction, since she scented some of the medicines often used to help.
One patient, Sgt. Norman Ivers, seemed almost angry about having the dog around, yelling at Tilly and looming over her until the poor dog lay down submissively. Grace determined to tell the nurses to keep him in his room next time Tilly and she visited.
Another, Sgt. Jim Kubowski, seemed utterly indifferent at first, but when Tilly sat in front of him and offered her paw, he shook it, then got down on the floor and hugged the dog.
One patient, PFC George Harper, seemed to really adore Tilly. Another, Pvt. Alice Johns, knelt on the floor and cried on Tilly, and Grace vowed to bring the dog back as often as possible to cheer her.
Soon, Tilly had run through her repertoire of tricks. Their visit was over. “We’ll be back soon,” Grace assured those patients who appeared to give a damn.
She enjoyed this part of her assignment, working with all kinds of patients with Tilly as a therapy dog.
Too bad the rest of her mission wasn’t as likely to give her this much enjoyment.
In the hallway outside the psychiatric unit, Grace considered what to do next. It was getting late, but there was still some daylight. She intended to explore parts of the hospital she hadn’t seen yet, but it remained too early for what she wanted to do.
Instead, she went outside onto the hospital grounds and called Kristine on her cell phone. Her aide said she was around the side of the hospital building with Bailey.
They met up at the sidewalk near the curved patient drop-off area. Grace asked softly, “Have you found anything out yet? Do you know where the entrance to that tunnel is?”
“Of course,” Kristine asserted. “That’s what I do—figure out what you’ll want to see and locate it.”
Grace laughed. “Does that mean you’ve figured out who we’re after so we can easily track down our suspect?”
The sergeant smiled. “Wouldn’t want to take away your fun, ma’am.” She gave a mock salute.
Their dogs leashed beside them, Kristine led Grace toward the emergency-room entrance at the side of the medical center’s largest wing, then around the corner to a delivery area. Fortunately, nothing was going on there. She used her security card to get all four of them back inside the facility.
The tunnel entrance was off a room filled with boxes of benign medical supplies like bandages—but not far from the door to a stairway that, Grace determined, most likely led down to the floor containing labs where fluids and other samples were tested. Made sense, she thought.
Making sure no one was around to see them, they entered the tunnel. Grace saw no particular security there, but not many people were likely to know about this passageway, except staff members who delivered the biohazards to their storage area beyond the main outdoor parking lot. Grace and Kristine and the dogs walked swiftly along the concrete corridor, the sound of their footsteps echoing slightly in the confined area. It was illuminated by occasional recessed lights, and Grace’s nose wrinkled at the dry, musty scent of the surrounding emptiness.
Soon they reached the end. Kristine carefully opened the door and peered out. “We’re okay.” She held the door open, then led Grace and the dogs through a large, nearly empty parking lot toward its far end.
“There.” She pointed toward the concrete outbuilding Grace had seen briefly before—twice, including while shifted. She’d left it to Kristine to start gathering details about it.
The building was compact and nondescript, with a couple of doors visible. It could have been for storage of garden equipment, or electrical fuses and circuitry for the hospital—whatever. The fenced area around it contained yuccas and palm trees and other drought-tolerant plants that were politically correct for this dry climate. The only thing that indicated it was more than a boring, ordinary storage shed was the illuminated office at one end. In it sat a couple of uniformed soldiers.
“Have you talked to the guards?” Grace asked Kristine.
“Yep, at least the ones on duty earlier.
They try to keep their presence low-key, like they’re just guarding the parking lot and not what’s behind that door.”
“But some biohazards were stolen while guys were on watch?”
“Seems that way.”
“Interesting. I’ll need to find out the excuses given by whomever was on duty during the times samples were taken from here.”
“Count me in,” Kristine said. “Sounds like fun. The building’s not as bland as it looks, by the way.” She pointed toward the door farthest to the left. “On that side is the incineration unit where they dispose of the biohazards.”
“Why do they do it here, I wonder?” Grace mused. “Aren’t there companies that are specially rigged to pick up this kind of material to dispose of it offsite, away from the hospitals?”
“I gather it’s because of the volume and security issues,” Kristine said. “Better to deal with it here than take the chance someone will hijack a disposal truck.”
“A bit of irony,” Grace said.
“Seems that way,” her aide acknowledged. “Anyway, it’s nice and eco-friendly, I gather—everything’s burned, not much ash, nothing escapes into the air. Poof, and the danger is gone … unless the stuff’s stolen first.”
“And that’s exactly what we need to stop,” said Grace.
Grace considered asking Kristine to take Tilly back to their quarters on the air-force base, but it was time for one further piece of exploration, and she wanted her cover dog along.
A short while later, Grace walked slowly along the dimly lit corridor deep in the bowels of the Charles Carder Medical Center. Her rubber-soled shoes made no noise on the gleaming linoleum floor, although Tilly’s nails clicked lightly.
She spotted security cameras that hadn’t been doing their job reliably. Neither had other security devices, including those requiring people to use key cards to enter this floor. Many tests were conducted in the multiple labs on this level of the hospital. But all that security, including locked doors and storage cabinets, and guards out by the storage area, hadn’t prevented the disappearance of biohazard materials collected from patients with potentially dangerous communicable diseases. They weren’t always large samples, but their theft was enough to worry those who knew.
Hence Grace’s mission.
What was that? Tilly had heard the soft click, too. She had been well trained