Free The Killer Is Dying by James Sallis

Hispanic, one Korean, he held up the clipboard and went in.
    The room smelled of cleansers and disinfectant. Sunlight, awash with dust motes, streamed through the wide-slat blinds. A tissue clung to the side of the otherwise empty trash can at bedside. Stains on the bottom sheet: brown for blood, yellow for Betadine, red or purple probably from spilled foodstuffs. Pillow oily and ripe with sweat, half a dozen dark hairs adrift on it. Ringers and a broad-spectrum antibiotic hanging, shut off for the trip. He’d have a hep lock, maybe a central line.
    The TV in the next room went off. It had been all laughter and loud voices, one of the Spanish-language channels. Now other sounds moved in to fill: the gurgle of the toilet whose ball valve didn’t quite fit, the all but inaudible hiss of oxygen leaking from the room’s piped-gas coupling.
    Nothing bearing witness to the man who occupied this room. Not the blood-smeared clothes in which he’d arrived; cut off him in ER, they were a crusty wad in a plastic bag on the floor of the closet, scarcely recognizable anymore as clothing. Not the misbegotten stack of magazines on the window ledge, Field & Stream , Money , Star Talk , brought him by well-meaning volunteers. Not the toothbrush at bedside, standard-issue institutional, clear plastic, twelve dozen to the case. From similar cases came the blue drinking cup with emesis basin and urinal to match. The urinal unused, since Rankin was still catheterized.
    Christian had registered the footsteps when first heard, followed them with increasing portions of his attention as they became louder. He was standing by the oxygen outlet as a man stepped into the room. Christian bent close to the coupling as though to read something from it, made as though to scribble another something on the clipboard. Then turned to show mild surprise.
    Steel-gray suit, blue dress shirt, leather loafers, and belt. Hair light brown and worn longish. Hands muscular, veins and tendons clearly visible.
    “You’re not, I take it, Mr. Rankin?”
    “Mr. Rank— Oh, the patient, you mean. That’s in here? Nope. Just doing my day’s work.” He brandished the clipboard. “Routine check of zone valves. That carry medical gases?”
    “Of course,” the man said, though everything beneath the surface, posture, expression, tone, belied that.
    A cop, Christian would have thought, but that wasn’t a cop suit. An easy athleticism about him, too, the way he moved. Doctor? Hospital official maybe. But he wasn’t wearing an ID badge the way all other employees were. Christian wasn’t either, of course.
    “Mr. Rankin is …?”
    “Search me.” Christian tilted his head back toward the wall. “Gases? Pipes? Probably down for tests, PT, like that.”
    “Yes, I suppose so.”
    “You could always check at the nurse’s station.”
    “Of course.”
    The man stepped to the side to allow him to pass. Christian didn’t glance back but knew he was being watched as he moved down the hall, away from the nurse’s station this time, to the stairway entrance. Remains of cigarettes on the first landing, a plastic cup that had served as ashtray. Hightop tennis shoe left behind on the next. One very confused sparrow perched on the sill trying to see out the frosted glass.
    So the eyes-on was a bust. The sole thing of interest he had was what he’d carried away on his first visit.
    This calling card.
    The woman in the freshly ironed dress at the next table stood, saying “I’m sorry you feel that way, Charles.” She dropped her cup in the trash can by the door on the way out. The man sat watching as she walked to her car, a silver Volvo, got in, and pulled away. Then he looked quickly around, and left himself.
    Sayles would be one of the cops he had seen outside ICU. More likely the one with well-worn, baggy pants. He’d be senior officer, be the one to leave the card. Past caring overmuch what impression he made. Work clothes for him, nothing more. Just get the job