The wing commander heard the second ring and said something about the operations’ Klaxon and that we’d better settle this problem before we had four incoming jets land in our laps.
I argued, somewhere between the third and fourth ring, that there was no point in doing anything until we knew the weight of the aircraft. Kendall stood off to one side, occasionally gazing out across the blue, calm Caribbean, not interested. That irked me, since it was an airplane that belonged to his squadron. And then I awoke with a start.
The phone rang again. The two-inch, glowing digital numbers on the nightstand clock announced 3:16 A.M. I rested on my elbows for a moment and let the phone ring three more times. I’d fallen into bed at one-thirty after dropping Martin Holman at his home. Dispatch knew where I was, so I groaned and reached for the receiver.
“What?” I said, not the least bit cordial.
“Sir,” Estelle Reyes-Guzman said, and her husky voice sounded loud in the dark, predawn silence of my ancient adobe house. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”
“Uh,” I said, and lay back down, the phone buried in the pillow. “I guess I dozed off for a little bit. What’s up?”
“Sir, I’m down at the hospital. It looks like Linda Real might be gaining some strength.”
I frowned in the dark, trying to remember all the pieces. “She’s awake, you mean?”
“Not yet, sir. But a few minutes ago, one of the nurses said something to her, and she responded. She murmured a few sounds in response.”
“Did you get a chance to talk with her?”
“She can’t talk, sir, and she drifted off again. Francis said that’s normal. But she’s close to the surface now, sir.”
I pushed myself upright and swung my feet over the bed. “Did you have a chance to process the wrench handle?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And?”
“Several clear prints, sir. I’m going to have Tony Abeyta run it up to the state lab later today. Maybe they’ll find something I missed. It’s going to be time-consuming to separate the prints, though.”
“Separate?”
“If it’s a new vehicle, sir, then there’ll be prints of the factory worker who put the wrench in the kit, in addition to the person who used it.”
“It won’t be hard to trace the Detroit end, or wherever that thing was made.”
“No, sir.”
“Did you make any comparisons?”
“Just one, sir. I checked Victor Sanchez’s prints more out of curiosity than anything else. We’ve got them on file. No match.”
“That’s not surprising,” I said. “If Victor Sanchez ever kills someone, there’ll probably be a hell of an audience. By the way, Holman thinks he found the road hazard that ruined the tire.”
“Oh?”
“A chunk of concrete near the Broken Spur. It’s got a piece of rebar sticking out of the side.”
Estelle caught the tone of my voice and said, “And you don’t think so?”
“Well, I think he’s jumping at the first thing he sees. Yes, here’s an object that could wreck a tire. To make the jump to proving it’s the object is just that…a jump.”
“Especially since we don’t know for sure that that’s what happened,” Estelle said.
“That’s about the size of it.” I stood up beside the bed. “Give me about ten minutes to pull myself together and I’ll be down.”
“That’s probably not necessary, sir. Anything else can wait.”
“Hell, I can’t sleep the night away, Estelle. Hang in there for a few minutes and I’ll relieve you.”
***
I arrived at Posadas General and padded down the silent hall past the snack bar and gift shop that the auxiliary operated, past the small waiting area for radiology, stopping finally at the nurses’ station. A young lady looked up through the Plexiglas partition and saw the apparition of an old fat man in a red-checked flannel shirt and gray trousers. Except for the absence of a white beard, I probably looked like an off-duty Santa Claus.
“Hi,” she greeted me. Her name tag said she was Peggy Hadley, LPN.
“Everything quiet?”
“Very, sir.” She smiled a snaggletoothed grin that was as charming as it was crooked. “At this time of night, everything is always quiet.”
She leaned forward so she could look down the hall toward the double doors leading into intensive care. “Miss Reyes-Guzman is down there with Linda, sir.”
“Thanks.”
Someone had carried a heavy Naugahyde chair in from the separate ICU waiting room across the hall and found a corner for it among the tubes, machines, adjustable tables, and IV stands. Estelle was curled up in the chair like a little kid, sound asleep. I had three seconds to stand in the doorway before she opened one eye and looked at me.
“Hey there,” I whispered. But it wasn’t Estelle’s unfolding from the chair that drew my attention. Under the white sheet of the bed, Linda Real’s right foot moved.
I heard soft footfalls behind me and turned as Helen Murchison entered the room. She shot a tight, begrudging smile my way and then concentrated on her patient. Helen was dean of the old school of nurses, flinty, efficient, and brooking no nonsense from physicians, patients, or visitors.
She’d been one of my own nurses after surgery three years before. I’d received the best of diligent care, but I didn’t remember much sympathy. Maybe that was because once I had told Helen that beneath her crusty exterior beat a heart of stainless steel.
I heard a faint, distant sound, a single syllable that sounded like an owl’s first tentative hoot half a mile away through the woods.
“Is she awake?”
Helen had absorbed all the information the machinery had to offer in a single, cursory glance. Now she bent close to Linda, one hand light as down on the girl’s right cheek. I noticed with surprise that Helen’s knuckles were twisted and swollen with arthritis. It seemed unfair somehow that someone like her would get old the same as the rest of us.
Linda’s right eye was open, but unfocused. As Helen continued to touch her cheek and whisper encouraging nothings, Linda closed her eye again and after a moment reopened it, this time looking directly at the nurse.
“How’s she doing?” I whispered.
“She’s a brave girl, this one is,” Helen said, her back still to me. She held Linda’s right hand in her own and turned to face me. “She’s not going to be able to talk to anyone, you know. For some time. You should all go home and get some rest.” She sniffed her disapproval. “The gathering of the living dead,” she said. “You’re all so tired you can hardly think straight.”
“Can she hear you?” I asked, stepping close to the bed. Linda’s right eye looked at me from the depths of a dark hollow, haloed by bandages and oxygen tubing. As if in answer, she blinked once. Her eyelid reopened so slowly I was afraid it would stall at half-mast.
“Linda, can you understand me?” Again the blink. “Let me hold her hand,” I said to Helen, and she surrendered what felt like a tiny, fragile, child’s hand, all its energy and vitality gone.
I bent close and my back twanged in protest. I stood hunched, my knees braced against the side of the bed. Linda’s good eye scanned my face. She was probably trying to figure out just what kind of nightmare she was having.
“Linda,” I whispered, “can you squeeze my hand?” The response was the slightest flexing of the fingers, a tentative experimentation. And then a second, definite squeeze. “That’s the girl. Linda, I need to ask you a couple questions. Just a couple. Can you do that? Squeeze my hand once for yes. Don’t squeeze at all for no. All right?”
For an agonizingly long minute, there was no response. But then a single squeeze came, as if she had to concentrate every undamaged fiber of her body for that one action.