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4

Alice Rivers’s baby was born healthy. Within fourteen hours her sister from Gretna had driven to Shreveport to take her and the baby back to New Orleans.

Throughout her ordeal, Ben kept telling Shannon he was convinced Alice might have been able to identify John Doe had his features been more normal.

Jimmy Joe blew him off, saying, “Drop it, Ben. Alice Rivers doesn’t know him.” But Shannon couldn’t help thinking Ben was right.

Shannon doubled her shift time to watch over John Doe. Because of the police investigation and the myriad questions swirling around John like a whirlpool, she became fascinated with him. Every time she looked at him, she was amazed the man had survived the torture, much less the car crash. There was little about him that looked human.

But you are human, aren’t you, John?

More than that, she sensed he had an incredible inner strength. In the first thirty-eight hours of his confinement, she’d watched his condition improve from critical to stable status. His heartbeat regulated. His breathing became stronger. Even the swelling in his face had begun to subside today as she tended him.

“You want to live, don’t you, John?” She held his hand, counting his pulsebeats. His skin was warm—a good sign. His heart was strong, beating a Morse code that coursed through the nerve endings in the pads of her fingers.

“I want you to live, too. I want you to get well and strong. Maybe then you can tell the police who did this to you. I’ll help you, John.” Shannon was a firm believer in the power of the subconscious.

Today she’d brought in an old cassette tape player she’d bought at a clearance sale and played classical music and New Age meditation and healing tapes. She owned a collection of subliminal-healing tapes she brought to her favorite patients from time to time. The staff never said anything about her tapes, knowing that Helen Mayers had twice requested financial funding for just such equipment, only to be rejected by the hospital board.

Shannon depressed the start button on the player and turned the volume down low. “It’s a Chopin nocturne. I love this part, John,” she said, listening closely.

She glanced at him, wanting to believe she saw a tiny tic at the edge of his mouth. But it was only the morning-light shadows playing across his face.

“Keep listening. It will help you wake up.” She patted his hand and began marking down his vital signs on his chart.

Routine was easy for Shannon. She’d been through this process many times before, with herself as the healer. She realized she played a catalytic role in all her patients’ lives. She believed she was part of the reason John was alive and would, in time, become healthy again. He would awaken. He would heal. They would get to know each other without the machines as interpreters. He would tell her about himself and clear up these mysteries around him. The police would be satisfied. He would tell her where he was from and about his family. About his life. His wife and children, possibly. About how much he loved them and missed them. They would come for him and he would tell her he was eternally grateful to her for helping to save his life. They would bond in a special way that patients did with their nurses. Eventually, he would leave the hospital. He would say goodbye to her and go back to where he came from and she would never hear from him again. It was always like that in Shannon’s world.

The John Doe case was more than perplexing to Ben Richards. It bugged the hell out of him. After a week of standing guard at the hospital, Ben had learned little about the man. No one had come to visit him. No one asked about him. There were no calls, no flowers.

Even the police were dumbfounded, it seemed.

Ben stood stock-still in Chief Bremen’s office. “Sir, I have a feeling that Alice Rivers knows John Doe. Her ability to recognize him was impaired not only because of his physical condition but because she was stressed over her husband.”

“Don’t you think I know all that?”

“Sir, I was only recounting your thoughts on the matter.”

“Well, then, don’t you have any new thoughts to add, Richards?”

“Not at this time, sir.”

Jimmy Joe took out a cigar, considered it and put it back in his drawer. “Doc says those things will kill me.”

“Yeah, they tell me that about cigarettes.” Ben shrugged his shoulders. “But, what can I do? I’m hooked,” he said with a sheepish grin. “You ran John Doe’s fingerprints?” he asked, sliding the question easily into his conversation.

“Yes, but we found nothing. No criminal record. No military record.”

“And the rental car?”

“Issued to a Harvey Ackerman. But we tracked him down. He’s alive and well in Bossier.” Chief Bremen answered pointedly and with a terse nod for emphasis.

“John Doe stole Harvey’s credit card and driver’s license?”

“Apparently,” Jimmy Joe said dismissively. “Look, Ben, I handled all this myself. I don’t want any more screwups. Your job is to bird-dog John Doe. I’ll take care of the rest. You got that?”

Ben watched Jimmy Joe’s reactions to his questions like a scientist searching for microscopic clues. Something was wrong. Jimmy Joe was lying through his teeth about something. Ben just had to find out what that something was. “Got it.”

“I’m glad we got that straight. Helen Mayer called from the hospital and said they’re moving our guy out of ICU. Room 505. I told her I wanted as few people to know about his presence as possible.”

“Chief, the fact that he has a guard twenty-four hours a day will draw attention,” Ben said.

“I told you to look as inconspicuous as possible.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hopefully the guy will come around in another couple days. So far we’ve been able to keep the press at bay. We’ve still got a chance to unravel this thing.”

“I understand.”

“Dr. Scanlon will continue to be the attending physician and I understand Helen has assigned a permanent nurse.” He looked down at his pocket spiral notepad. “Shannon Riley. Wasn’t she his nurse when they brought him in?”

“Yes. She’s been with him every day,” Ben said. “She seems dependable, even taking double shifts.”

“She’s probably being paid double time and a half.”

A moment later, Ben told his boss that he was headed for the hospital. What he didn’t tell him was that he wasn’t going there immediately. He had some investigating of his own to do.

Ben’s conversation with Jimmy Joe bothered him. He was smarter than Jimmy Joe and knew how to read people. The man was lying and Ben had to figure out what he was lying about and why.

After speaking with Jimmy Joe at the station, Ben drove to the airport car rental where John Doe had falsely rented a car. He asked the supervisor to show him the records regarding that particular transaction.

“Mabel Yates, one of our clerks, dealt with that customer. The police were already here once about it. She knows she messed up.”

“Messed up?” Ben asked.

“Yeah, she didn’t check the signature against the customer’s credit-card signature on the back.”

“I see,” Ben said, nodding. “Did she remember the man at all? Give a description?”

The supervisor shook his head. “Most folks look the same to us, we see so many. But she did remember that he was short.”

“Short?” Ben was surprised. John Doe was at least six foot tall. But Adam Rivers is short.

“Yeah. Mabel is tall—five-ten. He was shorter than she is. She says she always notices people’s height.”

Ben reasoned that Adam Rivers had undoubtedly rented the car under an assumed name, then left it somewhere for John Doe to pick up at a later time. But why? Was Adam Rivers protecting John Doe? Was Adam the gofer, doing odd jobs for John Doe the mastermind? Or was Rivers protecting himself? Or both?

After leaving the car rental place, Ben went to a pay phone. Picking up the phone book, he quickly turned to the Bossier City section. There were three Ackermans in Bossier City, but there was no Harvey nor even an initial “H.” He called all three numbers and each call confirmed there had never been a Harvey Ackerman in Bossier City.

Why would Jimmy Joe lie about this? Ben wondered. Or is someone in the department lying to Jimmy Joe?

Ben had thought he’d find answers to his questions.

He’d thought wrong.

John Doe had been assigned to private room 505, located at the end of the hall, surrounded by unoccupied semiprivate rooms. Chief Bremen and the hospital administration had agreed that until more was known regarding the criminal status of John Doe, the safety of patients and staff was of primary concern. No one was allowed admittance to that end of the hall except Ben Richards, Dr. Scanlon, Shannon Riley and Chief Bremen.

“I can understand having Ben around when John was in ICU. But now that we know it may be weeks, months, before John comes out of the coma, is it necessary to have cops on duty all the time?” Shannon asked Helen.

“Chief Bremen thinks so,” Helen said. “He doesn’t want a gang slaying up here any more than I do.”

“Slaying? They think John is in that much danger?”

“Yes.”

“My God.” Shannon swallowed hard, looking around the nurses’ lounge for escape. “I had no idea…”

“Don’t cop out on me, Shannon. I need you on this case. You’re damn good.”

“Besides, no one else will take it?” Shannon offered.

“Something like that.”

“Well, I’ve never worked with an armed guard at the door. All this past week, it’s given me the willies.”

“He’s supposed to make you feel safe.”

“Well, he doesn’t,” Shannon replied tersely. “Maybe I just don’t like cops.”

Helen nodded. “I’ve noticed that about you.”

“What?” Shannon asked, clearly shocked.

“You shake like a leaf when Ben is around. Chief Bremen, too.”

“I do not,” she answered with more confidence than she felt. “It’s the case that has me rattled. You have to admit, this entire case is out of the ordinary.”

“It is.”

Shannon rolled her eyes. “How did I get myself into this?”

“You didn’t. I did,” Helen smiled.

“Remind me to thank you later,” Shannon replied. Making no further comment, she walked down the hall toward John’s room, closing the door behind her.

“Good day, John,” she said cheerily, opening the miniblinds. “Sunny. That’s good.”

She smiled at her patient. “You look better already without your ICU attachments.”

She looked at him closely. The cuts on his face were healing well after only a week in the hospital. There was a remarkable change almost overnight as the swelling had gone down due to Shannon’s trick of placing frozen peas inside the fingers of plastic gloves and laying them across his eyes and cheeks. The edges of his bruises had altered from black and blue to a muddy yellow. She passed her hand over his cheek. “I think Mozart has had a hand in this.” Shannon had continued to play him classical music each day. She leaned over him, putting her face close to his.

No response, not even the flutter of an eyelash.

“Looks like you could use a shave, my friend.”

She prepared water, towels, soap and a plastic disposable razor. After thoroughly washing his face, she smeared a small amount of shaving cream on his left cheek. “Nasty cut on the other side. Better not risk it.”

She carefully shaved his cheek, sliding the razor over abrasions with skilled ease. She applied more shaving cream. “I’ve never shaved a man with such a deep cleft in his chin. How many times did you cut yourself when you first started shaving? Did your father teach you? Did he have a cleft, too?”

She smoothed a clump of hair from his forehead and gazed at him. She was seeing an almost normal-looking man.

“Or was it your mother you inherited it from?”

She looked at him, but not as a nurse looking for signs of health. In some part of her mind, she knew she was projecting herself onto her patient. Patients projected their emotions onto their healers all the time. It was so common it was a cliché in the medical world. In this case, though, Shannon believed that John was a mirror of herself—a person alone, wounded and waiting.

“Like Sleeping Beauty,” she whispered.

Impulsively, she leaned toward him, her lips pursed.

“Do you believe in magic, that a kiss will awaken you?”

She stopped herself midmotion. She straightened up and blinked.

“Stupid. What was I thinking?”

I’ve never done anything like that. Never. Professionalism is my middle name.

Quickly, she gathered up the shaving utensils. “That is the last time I pull three shifts in a row!” she exclaimed and walked out of the room.