Blood Passage Read Online Free

a pencil, a Sharpie marker, a wad of yellow Post-It notes, a small metal pencil sharpener and a few wood shavings from the pencil. Hank held the bag up close to his face, as though trying to see into the bottom, and inhaled slowly. Nothing. He lowered the bag and quickly unzipped the side pouches. Empty.
    “ Cleaned it out, didn’t they?” He handed the knapsack back and decided that he wasn’t being protective of the bag; he was being protective of himself.
    They left the room and slowly walked down the corridor to the nurses’ station.
    “ This patient has been discharged and is ready to leave,” Hank said to the nurse on duty.
    “ Oh, you can’t just walk out,” she said to Josh, standing up. “What’s your name?”
    “ Joshua Duncan,” he answered politely.
    She consulted a sheaf of papers on a clipboard and nodded. “Yes, I have your signature, but you have to be taken down in a wheelchair.”
    “ A wheelchair?” Josh looked embarrassed.
    “ Hospital policy. Wait here a moment.” The nurse disappeared through a doorway into a back room and a moment later a volunteer came out with her, a white-haired African-American in jeans and a plaid shirt with a name tag that said Bob . He grinned at Josh as he brought a wheelchair around into the corridor.
    “ Ready to go, are you? Have a seat.”
    “ Yes, sir.” Josh sat down in the wheelchair.
    Hank followed Bob and Josh into the elevator and they rode down to the ground floor.
    “ Here you go,” Bob said, stopping just short of the sliding front doors.
    “ Thanks very much.” Josh got out of the wheelchair with a wince.
    “ No problem. You take care of yourself now, son.”
    There was a bank of pay phones along the wall inside the front doors. The one at the end connected directly to the largest taxi company in town. Hank called for a taxi and then strolled back over to join Josh at the door. The kid didn’t have a problem with authority, he decided, because he had been deferential to the nurse and the volunteer. He seemed polite, well-mannered and respectful. Not a problem with authority; more likely a problem with police.
    “ Have you dealt with the police before in any of the other cases you’ve researched, Josh?”
    “ No.” He shook his head. “This is only my second case. In the other one, the previous personality was in his fifties and died of a heart attack. Which is unusual, actually, because the age of previous personalities at death tends to average about 34 to 38 years old.”
    “ I see. You seem nervous around police.”
    “ No, I’m okay.”
    “ Have you ever been arrested?”
    “ No, I haven’t.”
    “ Okay, that’s fine. I’m not trying to hassle you.”
    “ I understand that.”
    “ You seem a little nervous.”
    “ I’m okay.”
    “ Some kind of problem before?”
    Josh hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah, I suppose.”
    “ When was that?”
    “ Last summer, outside a bus station in a town not far from Rayville, Louisiana. I was visiting a friend in Shreveport and was waiting for a connection back home.”
    “ And?”
    “ Sheriff saw me leaning against the wall of the bus station while he was waiting for a stoplight. I saw him look over, then come around the corner into the parking lot and right up in front of me. Got out and asked me what I thought I was doing in his parish.”
    Hank waited.
    Josh looked at him. “He had a problem with my hair and the color of my skin. Said he didn’t need my kind of trash coming up from New Orleans into his parish. I tried to tell him I was in transit, but he wasn’t interested in listening. Said if I was going to hang around the streets of his parish with dreadlocks or whatever you call that druggie hairstyle I could expect a visit from one of his deputies. Said if I wasn’t gone in half an hour his deputy would be back to arrest me.”
    “ Bothered you, did it?”
    Josh frowned. “Of course it did, it scared me. I’ve never had any trouble before in my life. I grew up in