Hot Read Online Free Page A

making it look as if an old building had dropped from the past and landed in the center of a modern one.
    At the information desk in the lobby, which was in the original building, an elderly woman behind a marble desk told Carver that Henry Tiller was in Room 504 and could have visitors, but Carver was to stop at the nurses’ station and let someone know he was there.
    Carver thanked her, limped past a hideous piece of steel modern sculpture looming in the lobby, and rode the elevator to the fifth floor.
    He didn’t like hospitals, and this one was no exception. The hall smelled faintly of disinfectant, and there was a hushed and impersonal efficiency in the midst of disease and suffering, as if Death were merely a member of the staff. White-uniformed nurses and occasionally people in pale green surgical gowns bustled meaningfully about the halls. Patients’ relatives slumped in plastic chairs and read dog-eared magazines, or wandered about with studiously nonchalant expressions, trying to come to terms with the realities of institutionalized illness. Carver told himself at least it was cool in here; outside it was ninety degrees even though it was only eleven o’clock.
    There were two beds in 504, but Henry Tiller was the room’s only occupant. His upper body was slightly elevated, and his right leg was in a cast and raised on a thin cable draped over a stainless steel pulley contraption above the bed. A thin white sheet covered his lower body, and he had on a blue hospital gown tied with a drawstring at the neck. There was an opaque plastic tube fitted through one of his nostrils, and something clear was being fed to him intravenously. His eyes were closed, and he didn’t seem to be in any pain. He was much paler than he’d appeared in Carver’s office yesterday. Carver thought he looked dead, only his chest was rising and falling.
    Carver stepped all the way into the room, which smelled like spearmint and was dark green on the bottom and pale green from halfway up the walls to the white ceiling. A nightstand with a phone sat beside the bed, and nearby was a traylike arrangement on a stand with wheels. A green plastic pitcher sat on it, and an upside-down clear plastic glass. There was a beige vinyl chair near the foot of the bed, with a pillow and folded blanket on it. Outside in the hall a couple of nurses hurried past, giggling softly. A job was a job.
    Carver approached the bed, stood leaning on his cane, and Henry Tiller sensed he was there and opened his eyes.
    Carver said, “I got your message. The girl, Effie, said you’d been hit by a car.”
    “Effie Norton.”
    “Guess so. She didn’t tell me her last name, only about you and the car.”
    “Goddamned hit and run,” Tiller said. His voice was slow, a bit slurred, but his eyes seemed focused and knowing. He was making sense—for Henry Tiller anyway. “I was crossing the street after I stopped for supper, out shoots this big car away from the curb, and ka-blam! I was on the pavement ‘fore I knew what’d happened. Hell of a jolt, I can tell you.”
    “I’ll bet. Get a glimpse of the license plate?”
    “Didn’t even think about it till it was too late,” Tiller said disgustedly. “Figured it was an accident, then I realized the bastard drove off and left me.”
    “Might still have been an accident,” Carver said. “Driver might have panicked.”
    “Or knew just what he was doing,” Tiller said. He was probably right. “It was a Chrysler New Yorker or Fifth Avenue, all white, like the ones car rental agencies got by the thousands here in Florida. White, I said.”
    Carver knew what he meant. Hitting a human being with a car often caused very little damage to the vehicle while smashing hell out of the victim. White paint was easy to match, so if minor damage to the car was quickly repaired by someone in on the crime, or who wouldn’t ask questions, after a short drive down a dusty road the car rental agency wouldn’t be able to tell the