Read Online T Is for Trespass by Sue Grafton - Free Book Online Page A

candy bar, in case he had a sweet tooth and hankered for one.
    I hadn’t been in the lobby long, but since no one had opened the receptionist’s window, I tapped on the partition. The window slid back three inches and a woman in her fifties peered out. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize anyone was out there. Can I help you?”
    “I’d like to see a patient, Gus Vronsky. He was admitted earlier today.”
    She consulted her Rolodex and then made a phone call, keeping her palm close to the mouthpiece so I couldn’t read her lips. After she hung up, she said, “Have a seat. Someone will be out shortly.”
    I sat down in a chair that allowed me a view of a corridor with administrative offices opening off each side. At the end, where a second corridor crossed the first, a nurse’s station diverted foot traffic like water flowing around a rock in the middle of a stream. I was guessing hospital rooms were located down the two peripheral halls. Living quarters for the active, healthy residents must be somewhere else. I knew the cafeteria was close because the smell of food was strong. I closed my eyes and sorted the meal into its component parts: meat (perhaps pork), carrots, turnips, and something else—probably yesterday’s salmon. I pictured a row of heat lamps beaming down on ten-by-thirteen stainless-steel food pans: one filled to the brim with chicken parts in milk gravy, another filled with glazed sweet potatoes, a third with mashed potatoes stiff and slightly dried around the edges. By comparison, how bad could it be to eat a Quarter Pounder with Cheese? Facing this muck at the end of life, why deny myself now?
    In due course, a middle-aged volunteer in a pink cotton smock came and fetched me from the reception area. As she led me down the hallway, she didn’t say a word, but she did so in a very pleasant manner.
    Gus was in a semiprivate room, sitting upright in the bed closest to the window. The only view was of the underside of ivy vines, dense rows of white roots that looked like the legs of millipedes. His arm was in a sling and the bruises from his fall appeared from the various gaping holes in his gown. His Medicare coverage didn’t provide private-duty nursing, a phone, or a television set.
    His roommate’s bed was surrounded by a curtain on a track, pulled in a half circle that delivered him from sight. In the quiet, I could hear him breathing heavily, a cross between a rasp and a sigh that had me counting his inhalations in case he stopped and it was up to me to perform CPR.
    I tiptoed to Gus’s bedside and found myself using my public library voice. “Hello, Mr. Vronsky. I’m Kinsey Millhone, your next-door neighbor.”
    “I know who you are! I didn’t fall on my head.” Gus spoke in his normal tone, which came across as a shout. I glanced uneasily toward his roommate’s bed, wondering if the poor guy would be jarred out of his sleep.
    I placed the items I’d bought on the rolling table beside Gus’s bed, hoping to appease his ill temper. “I brought you a candy bar and some magazines. How’re you doing?”
    “What’s it look like? I hurt.”
    “I can just imagine,” I murmured.
    “Quit that whispering and talk like a normal human being. If you don’t raise your voice, I can’t hear a word.”
    “Sorry.”
    “Sorry doesn’t help. Before you ask another stupid question, I’m sitting up like this because if I lie on my back the pain is worse. Right now, the throbbing’s excruciating and it makes my whole body feel like hell. Look at this bruise from all the blood they’ve drawn. Must have been a quart and a half in four big tubes. The lab report says I’m anemic, but I didn’t have a problem until they started in.”
    I kept my expression sympathetic, but I was fresh out of consolation.
    Gus snorted with disgust. “One day in this bed and my backside is raw. I’ll be covered with sores if I’m here one more day.”
    “You ought to mention it to your doctor or one of the