After ten minutes' boredom, I carefully scrutinized the controls on the side of my hospital bed. I succeeded in turning on the television. The channel that came on was a hospital channel, and I watched people come in and out of the lobby. Even though my boredom threshold was quite high, that palled after ten minutes. I switched to a news channel. As soon as I did, I was sorry.
The quiet, derelict home in its picturesque setting looked a great deal different now from how it looked a day before. I remembered how lonely the site had felt, how isolated. And after all, there'd been enough privacy there to bury eight young men with no one the wiser. Now you couldn't sneeze up there without four people rushing at you with microphones.
I was assuming the film I was seeing was very recent, maybe even live, because the sun looked about in the same position as the sun I could see outside my window. By the way, it was nice to see the sun; I only wished I could be out in it, though from the bundled look of the people I could see on the screen it was still pretty damn cold.
I ignored the commentary and stared instead at the figures behind the newscaster. Some of them were wearing law enforcement uniforms but others were wearing coveralls. Those must be the tech guys from SBI. The two men in suits, they would be Klavin and Stuart. I was proud of myself for remembering their names.
I wondered how long it would be before someone came to see me. I hoped no one from the media would try to call me in the hospital or come in to see me. Maybe I could be released tomorrow and we could follow our plan of getting out of town to keep a little distance between us and the crimes.
I'd been rambling on in my head about this for a few minutes when inevitability knocked at the door.
Two men in suits and ties; exactly what I didn't want to see.
"I'm Pell Klavin, this is Max Stuart," the shorter man said. He was about forty-five, and he was trim and well dressed. His hair was beginning to show a little gray, and his shoes were gleaming. He wore wire-rimmed glasses. "We're from the State Bureau of Investigation." Agent Stuart was a little younger and his hair was a lot lighter, so if he had gray he wasn't showing it. He was just as shipshape as Agent Klavin.
I nodded, and I was immediately sorry. I gingerly touched my bandaged head. Though that head felt like it was going to fall off (and that would be an improvement over how it felt now), the bandage still felt dry and secure. My left arm ached.
"Ms. Connelly, we hear you got attacked last night," Agent Stuart said.
"Yes," I said. I was angry with myself for sending Tolliver away, and irrationally angry with him for taking me at my word and going.
"We're mighty sorry about that," Klavin said, exuding so much down-home charm I thought I might throw up. "Can you tell us why you were attacked?"
"No," I said. "I can't. Probably something to do with the graves, though."
"I'm glad you brought that up," Stuart said. "Can you describe how you found those graves? What prior knowledge you had?"
"No prior knowledge," I said. It seemed they weren't interested in the attack on me anymore, and frankly, I could understand why. I'd lived. Eight other people hadn't.
"And how did you know they were there?" Klavin asked. His eyebrows shot up in a questioning arch. "Did you know one of the victims?"
"No," I said. "I've never been here before."
I lay back wearily, able to predict the whole conversation. It was so unnecessary. They weren't going to believe, they would try to discover some reason I'd be lying about how I found the bodies, they'd waste time and taxpayer money trying to establish a connection between me and one of the victims, or me and the killer. That connection didn't exist, and no amount of searching would uncover one.
I clutched the covers with my hands, as if they were patience.
"I don't know any of the boys buried in the graves," I said. "I don't know who killed them, either. I expect there's a file on me somewhere that you can read, that'll give you the background on me. Can we just assume this conversation is already over?"
"Ah, no, I don't think we can assume that," Klavin said.
I groaned. "Oh, come on, guys, give me some rest," I said. "I feel terrible, I need to sleep, and I have nothing to do with your investigation. I just find 'em. From now on, it's your job."
"You're telling us," Stuart said, sounding as skeptical as a man can sound, "that you just find corpses at random."
"Of course it's not at random," I said. "That would be nuts." Then I hated myself for responding. They just wanted to keep me talking, in the hope that I'd finally reveal how I'd found the bodies. They would never accept that I was telling them the truth.
"That would be nuts?" Stuart said. "You think that sounds nuts?"
"And you gentlemen are…who?" asked a young man from the doorway.
I could scarcely believe my eyes. "Manfred?" I said, completely confused. The fluorescent light glinted off Manfred Bernardo's pierced eyebrow (the right), nostril (the left), and ears (both). Manfred had shaved his goatee, I noticed distantly, but his hair was still short, spiky, and platinum.
"Yes, darling, I came as soon as I could," he said, and if my head hadn't felt so fragile, I would have gaped at him.
He moved to my bedside with the lithe grace of a gymnast and took my free hand, the one without the IV line. He raised it to his lips and kissed it, and I felt the stud in his tongue graze my fingers. Then he held my hand in both his own. "How are you feeling?" he asked, as if there were no one else in the room. He was looking right into my eyes, and I got the message.
"Not too well," I said weakly. Unfortunately, I was almost as weak as I sounded. "I guess Tolliver told you about the concussion? And the broken arm?"
"And these gentlemen are here to talk to you when you're so ill?"
"They don't believe anything I say," I told him pitifully.
Manfred turned to them and raised his pierced eyebrow.
Stuart and Klavin were regarding my new visitor with a dash of astonishment and a large dollop of distaste. Klavin pushed his glasses up on his nose as if that would make Manfred look better, and Stuart's lips pursed like he'd just bitten a lemon.
"And you would be…?" Stuart said.
"I would be Manfred Bernardo, Harper's dear friend," he said, and I held my expression with an effort. Resisting the impulse to yank my hand from Manfred's, I squeezed his bottom hand as hard as I could.
"Where are you from, Mr. Bernardo?" Klavin asked.
"I'm from Tennessee," he said. "I came as soon as I could." Manfred bent to drop a kiss on my cheek. When he straightened, he said, "I'm sure Harper is feeling too poorly to be questioned by you gentlemen." He looked from one of them to the other with an absolutely straight face.
"She seems all right to me," Stuart said. But he and Klavin glanced at each other.
"I think not," Manfred said. He was over twenty years younger than Klavin, and smaller than Stuart—Manfred was maybe five foot nine, and slender—but somewhere under all that tattooed and pierced skin was an air of authority and a rigid backbone.
I closed my eyes. I really was exhausted, and I was also not too awfully far from laughing out loud.
"We'll leave you two to catch up," Klavin said, not sounding happy at all. "But we're coming back to talk to Ms. Connelly again."
"We'll see you then," Manfred said courteously.
Feet shuffling…the door opening to admit hospital hall noises…then the muffling of those noises as the SBI agents carefully pulled the door shut behind them.
I opened my eyes. Manfred was regarding me from maybe five inches away. He was thinking about kissing me. His eyes were bright and blue and hot.