She wasn’t in shock, which surprised everyone. She’d come around, stared down at the stitched-up hole in her arm, and simply said to Taylor, “Oh, dear, will I have a scar?”
And he’d laughed. He still was laughing when the nurse had bandaged the wound. She was in a private room. Not the same one as before, but it could have been, except this one faced the river. This one had a Degas print on the wall opposite the bed.
“Let’s keep her here overnight.” That was Dr. Shantel speaking to Taylor near the door. Why not to her? Lindsay wondered. She wasn’t a Victorian maiden to swoon. She nearly crossed her eyes. She had swooned. It was rather a shock to know that her body could simply give out on her like that.
“It’s been a series of traumas,” she heard Dr. Shantel tell Taylor in a much-lowered voice. “ Perhaps I can recommend a good psychiatrist, you know, the type of doctor who can help her get over this.”
“I don’t need a shrink,” Lindsay said in a loud voice. “What I need is to know who hired Oswald. If we don’t find that out soon, then I will go into shock and I’ll go directly to Bellevue.”
“She’s right,” Taylor said. “Look, Dr. Shantel, I’ll keep a close eye on her. She’s got grit and she can be as mean as Satan, and she’s not stupid. She’ll tell me if things get shaky. Don’t worry. Even if she doesn’t, I’m not stupid. Okay?”
When they were finally alone, for the first time since the attack in their apartment, Taylor said, “I just spoke to Barry. Oswald’s in surgery. His chances are fifty-fifty. No, it wasn’t any of your blows, it was the bullet in the head fired by the officer. Now, sweetheart, how are you doing?”
“Can I get combat pay?”
He was immensely pleased. He wondered how much of her smart-ass talk was bravado, but realized it didn’t matter. She was holding up and showing him clearly that she was holding up. That meant a great deal to both of them. He lay down on the bed beside her, turning on his side to face her. “Your face isn’t going to fall off. Dr. Perry is relieved. He says the swelling will hang around awhile longer and to keep these three little strips of tape over the suture lines. You got it?”
She nodded. “It’s a relief to me too. Do I look really gruesome?”
“Yes, but I’m somewhat nearsighted so it doesn’t bother me all that much.”
“Do you know something, Taylor?”
He was nuzzling her neck. “What?”
“I haven’t been bored since I met you. On the other hand, I don’t know if my body can keep mending itself in time for you to come up with new diversions.”
He suddenly became very quiet in mid-kiss.
“Taylor?”
He raised himself on his elbow and looked down at her. He said very slowly, “I think that you’ve just hit on something.”
She just looked up at him, saying nothing. Her arm burned, but it wasn’t important. She scarcely even noticed it.
“I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before. Maybe we’ve been looking at this from the wrong end. You just said I’m the one coming up with new diversions. What if these attacks on you aren’t directed at you but at me?”
She stared at him. “Is that possible?”
“I’ve made enemies. I was a cop for a good number of years. Yeah, maybe we’ve been staring in the wrong end of the kaleidoscope. Let me get Barry over here fast.”
Barry would be over after he’d finished his dinner. Didn’t the two of them ever think about food?
“Now,” Taylor said, easing down on the bed beside her again, “I want to ask you a question.”
“Shoot.”
“Not that, Lindsay. Tell me why your father hates you.”
She gave him a clear, honest look. “I don’t know, I truly don’t. I’ve wondered and wondered and tried to figure it out over the years. I asked my mother, my grandmother, but they always told me it was my imagination or that my father was just under a great deal of stress. Finally my grandmother did admit that he loved Sydney more than he loved anyone else in the world. He was, she said, a man who couldn’t seem to love more than one person. It’s like he’s almost obsessed with her.”
“Did he always treat you badly?”
She shook her head. “No, it started sometime before Sydney’s wedding, before I was sixteen, I think. He simply drew back from me. Everything went to Sydney and she wasn’t even there most of the time. Now that I think about it, that’s when the troubles started between him and my mom too. She gained lots of weight and started drinking too much, just like Holly is now.”
“Sydney is nine years older than you.”
“Yes. So she would have been in law school when it began. Not even in San Francisco all that much. She was at Harvard.”
“You can’t remember anything that could have precipitated this behavior of his? This viciousness?”
“No. What are you thinking, Taylor?”
He kissed her. “I’m thinking that we’re going to have some answers, finally. Another thing, sweetheart, old Oswald is going to sing like a yellow canary once he’s out of surgery. Not to worry.”
“Why worry?” she said, and smiled up at him. “I’ve got another good arm to donate.”
23
Barry Kinsley stood beside Taylor, hands shoved into his pants pockets. Both of them were staring at the swinging doors, waiting for the surgeon to come through.
“I found a gray hair this morning,” Taylor said, never taking his eyes off those doors.
“Yeah, well, I got a good dose of indigestion from all these shenanigans you and your bride have put me through. My wife said if I didn’t get the guy responsible today, she wouldn’t sleep with me for five months.”
“Why five months?”
“That’s when our kid goes off to college and she figures she’ll be so horny by then she won’t care what I’ve done.”
“I didn’t know you had a kid. More than one?”
“Four. This is the last one off to college—a real pistol.”
The swinging doors were pushed open.
Two nurses came through, talking. No surgeon.
Three more minutes passed. They paced, silent now.
The surgeon came out then, an older man with tired pale eyes. He was still wearing his greens, only they were stained with blood now. He pulled the cap off his head even as he said, “He didn’t make it. I’m sorry. It was problematic when I went in. The bullet did a lot more damage than I’d first thought. If he had lived, he would have been a vegetable in any case. I am sorry.”
“Well, heigh ho,” Barry said, and sighed. “Thanks, Doc.”
Taylor headed back toward the elevators, feeling lower than a slug.
He pounded the elevator button with frustration. “Doesn’t the guy have any relatives? Maybe someone we can contact who would know who hired him?”
Barry shook his head and stabbed at the elevator button, outdoing Taylor. “Not a single merry soul, more’s the pity. I checked on that right away. Jesus, Taylor, back to square one.”
“I’m getting slow in my retirement. What are we going to do now, Barry?”
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about him croaking, not a bloody thing. Now, you said you had some other ideas. Let’s get back to Lindsay.”
When they reached Lindsay’s hospital-room door, there was Sydney, arguing with Officer Dempsey. He was refusing to let her in. Taylor could tell by the set of her shoulders that she was about ready to take his head off. He could tell by the set of Officer Dempsey’s shoulders that he wanted to let her do whatever she pleased, but he was holding firm.