I sensed Estelle’s presence on the other side of the bed, heard a faint snick, and knew that Estelle had turned on her tape recorder.
“Linda, do you know who I am?” The squeeze came immediately, and this time her grip didn’t relax, but held my hand. Her index finger flexed and traced a line on my palm.
“Do you know where you are, Linda?” Her index finger flexed.
“Linda, do you know what happened to you?” Even old, crusty Helen held her breath. The index finger flexed, and this time her fingernail pressed into my hand. She closed her eye and I could see the fine muscles of her cheek twitch. She held her finger pressed into my palm for a full minute, and even in that tiny motion, the anger was translated clearly. She opened her eye again and a tear had welled up and now bathed the lower lash.
“Linda, you’re telling me that you do know what happened. Do you know who shot you?”
The question hung there in the room, punctuated by the soft hum of one of the monitors on the wall behind us. Her index finger didn’t move.
“Linda, did you understand what I asked you?” The stab of her finger came instantly. “You do understand, but you don’t know who shot you?” She blinked and her fingertip remained still.
“Linda, did Deputy Encinos stop a vehicle out on the state highway?”
No.
“It was already stopped? Perhaps disabled?”
Yes.
“Did you recognize the disabled vehicle?”
Yes.
I looked up at Estelle, but she didn’t return the glance. Her dark eyes were locked on Linda Real’s face.
“Linda, you said you recognized the vehicle. Was it from Posadas?”
Hesitation, then yes.
“It was local, you’re saying. Was the person who shot you in that vehicle?”
No.
“The person was not in that vehicle? Not in the disabled vehicle?”
No.
“Linda, was there a second vehicle?”
Yes.
“Was the second vehicle parked across the highway?”
Yes.
“Was it there when the deputy first stopped?”
No.
I paused and straightened, grunting audibly. Linda’s finger touched my palm, and I smiled at her. Her eyelid was at half-mast and I knew she was about to slip off into her drug-washed slumberland.
“Linda, do you know who was in the first vehicle?”
I didn’t think I was going to get an answer, but finally it came, a faint, light finger touch.
“You do know who was in the car?”
“Was it someone we know?” Linda’s hand lay limply in my old paw, unresponsive.
“She’s drifted off,” Helen said, and her crusty voice was softened to a whisper. I stood there for a minute holding the kid’s hand, thinking. The small click of Estelle’s recorder startled me, and I looked across the bed at her.
“How do you figure,” I said, and placed Linda’s hand on the sheet with a final pat. But Estelle was already collecting her purse and heading for the door.
“Thanks, Helen,” I said, and I caught Estelle by the elbow just outside the swinging doors of the ICU.
“What are you thinking,” I asked her.
“Would you stay with her, sir? She may come around again in a couple hours. She needs to see you, sir. She needs to see a familiar face.”
I nodded. “Sure, I’ll stay.”
“And if you find a writing pad, sir. A legal pad, maybe. If she can hold a pencil, maybe she can write a name for us.”
“And you?”
“Sir, if Linda knows the person involved, then the fingerprints on the lug wrench will match something we have in the file.”
“If that person has a record for anything, yes. And that’s a long shot.”
“Maybe, sir, except for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“The person who Linda recognized is involved, sir. Somehow. Otherwise, we would have found a third body out there, too.”
“There are any number of ways someone could have slipped away, Estelle.”
“But if they were just an innocent bystander to a homicide, then they would have contacted us. Or someone. No one watches two people get shot and then just drives away.”
I looked at Estelle, trying to assess if she still had enough of an energy reserve to avoid making a whopper of a mistake. “What can I do for you, then?”
“It’s important to stay here, sir.” And as if reading my mind, she added, “I’m going to go home for a few hours and try to clear my head.” She half smiled. “Francis keeps threatening to slip me a sedative. Later this morning I’ll go down to the office and see if there’s a match for prints.” She reached out a hand and touched my arm. “Will you call me if Linda can give us anything?”
“Of course.”
I pushed open the ICU doors. Helen Murchison was fiddling with one of the monitors, and when it behaved as she thought it should, she straightened up and frowned at me.
“What now? You’re going to stay?”
I nodded and pointed at the chair in the corner. “It’s my shift.”
“Oh, that’s choice,” Helen snorted, and headed for the door. She stopped with one hand on the push plate. “Can I get you anything, sheriff?”
“No, thanks, love.” And then as an afterthought, I added, “Yes, there is something. I really need a legal pad. Something to write on.”
“That shouldn’t be difficult,” she said, “although a pillow would do you far more good.” She smiled that wonderful half smile again, just enough to show the gold of one of her front bridges.
Chapter 17
I awoke being scrutinized. Dr. Alan Perrone and Dr. Francis Guzman stood at the foot of the bed, Perrone holding a chart, Guzman with his hands thrust in the pockets of his white coat.
Perrone had led the charge when this same hospital had cut me open for an overhaul three years before.
I blinked and looked at Linda Real. She appeared to be peacefully sleeping.
“The young lady is doing a first-class job, sheriff,” Perrone said. “If she keeps it up, we’ll move her out of ICU in two or three days.” He leaned forward, tipped his head up slightly, and peered at me through his bifocals. “Then we can move you in.”
I waved a hand and pushed myself up out of the chair. “No, no. I’m just an innocent bystander, doctor.” My watch said I’d slept almost three hours, just enough to feel wretched-stiff, groggy, discombobulated. There were no windows in the ICU, but the sun would be up, even in February cheerful as always, peeling paint off cars and incubating melanomas.
I rubbed a hand over my face and shook my head. “Effective guard,” I muttered.
Perrone laughed. “Don’t worry about the nap, sheriff. There’s a most alert sentry outside the door.” I looked out one of the windows in the swinging doors and saw Deputy Howard Bishop sauntering back and forth, a cup of coffee in his hand.
“Marty Holman was by earlier,” Francis said.
“He should have said something.”
He shrugged. “He figured you needed the sleep. I’m not sure that the DA agreed with him, but Schroeder’s always impatient. There wasn’t anything going on here, and they stayed just a few minutes-just until the deputy got here.”
“Schroeder was with him?”
Francis Guzman nodded. “I don’t know what he wanted, other than just to be in on things.”
“I can guess,” I said, and moved to the bed and touched the back of Linda’s right hand. Her skin was dry and cool.
“She’s heavily sedated right now,” Francis said. “For the next day or so, all the surgery she’s had around her eye and jaw is going to be hurting like hell. She’s not alert enough to have a self-starter for the pain.” He pumped an imaginary button with his thumb. “Maybe later. Estelle tells me that you managed a conversation of sorts with Linda earlier.”
I grunted. “Hardly a conversation. But she’s a champ, I’ll tell you that.” I looked up at Guzman. He’d taken to wearing a neatly trimmed beard. If a Hollywood casting agent walked by, he’d sign the young physician up to play Ivanhoe in an instant. “We need a name, Francis. That’s the information she has that we need. A name. She said that she knows the person that the deputy stopped out on Fifty-six.”