“Don’t worry,” I whispered. “I’ll make sure you have a good home.”
He opened his eyes and gave me a look of hurt accusation, and I couldn’t blame him. This had happened on my watch, and I had let him down.
I slipped him some kitty treats when I left, and promised him I would come back and get him as soon as Lieutenant Guidry said I could. Even with Marilee dead, there was no reason he couldn’t stay in his own home until I could find him another one. He gave me a glum look and whirled his head to the base of his tail and gnawed at it. I wasn’t sure what that meant in cat language, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t something nice.
Just as I was getting in the Bronco to make the rest of my afternoon visits, my cell rang—Guidry finally returning my calls.
I said, “Phillip Winnick saw a woman leave Marilee Doerring’s house about four o’clock Friday morning. He says she got in a black Miata and drove off. He didn’t tell you before because he doesn’t want his parents to know he was out of the house at that hour.”
“When did he tell you this?”
“I saw him at the Crab House last night and he told me then. But there’s more. Did you know I found him beaten up this morning?”
“Yeah, I know.”
I didn’t ask him if he knew about Marilee. Of course he knew.
I said, “I think somebody didn’t want him to tell what he saw.”
Guidry was silent for a moment, and I could almost hear his brain digesting what I’d told him, along with its implications.
He said, “Can you meet me at Sarasota Memorial in the next ten minutes?”
Before I could stammer out an answer, he said, “In the main lobby,” and hung up.
I stared at my phone for a few seconds, then flipped it closed and started the Bronco. Guidry always seemed to be one step ahead of me, and I wasn’t sure whether I liked that or hated it.
At the hospital, I left the Bronco for a valet to park, then hurried past a group of hospital personnel out on the sidewalk for a cigarette break. As I veered round them, they all gave me the defiantly sullen looks that smokers have acquired. Wide automatic glass doors slid open for me, and I went through to the lobby, my eyes searching for a man who looked too rich and well dressed to be a homicide detective. A hand touched my arm and Guidry said, “He’s on the fifth floor.”
He steered me to the wall of elevator doors, and when one opened and vomited a gaggle of glassy-eyed people, we took their place. Some other people got on with us, and we all stood tensely silent as the elevator began its smooth upward glide. Guidry and I stood at the back, not speaking or touching as some people got off and other people got on at every floor.
Finally, Guidry said, “This is our floor.”
He touched the small of my back with his fingertips, and I moved forward. A glass wall on our right showed a large waiting room where people were sitting staring straight ahead, each of them caught in a timeless worry.
I followed him down the hall to the ICU wing, where glassed cubicles were arranged in a circle around a busy nurses’ station. A uniformed deputy sat in a straight wooden chair outside Phillip’s cubicle. Phillip’s bed was slightly elevated so his face was visible. It looked like a cut of raw meat. His eyes were swollen shut, his nose was bandaged, and his cheeks were wider than his head. A ventilator’s blue accordion hose was taped inside his mouth, and an IV stand stood beside his bed. A couple of machines that looked like apartment-sized washer–dryer combinations stood behind him. Tubes snaked from them and disappeared under the sheet covering him.
I made a choking sound and covered my mouth.
“He looks a lot worse than he is,” Guidry said. “He has some broken ribs and a broken nose, but his lungs weren’t punctured and he only has a moderate concussion. He’ll have a headache for a while, but nothing vital is damaged.”
“His mother must be going crazy to see him like this.”
“Actually, she hasn’t tried to see him, and Carl Winnick keeps calling to warn us not to leak anything about the attack to the media. Says it’s a liberal conspiracy to push an agenda of a perverted lifestyle and ruin his reputation.”
I felt a little sick.
Guidry took my arm and said, “Let’s go find a place where we can talk.”
I got myself under control as we left the ICU unit and walked down the wide hall. Guidry tilted his chin toward a small waiting area where some overstuffed chairs were pulled around a coffee table. “Go sit down,” he said. “I’ll get us some coffee.”
He went into the glassed room where a coffee urn had been set up for visitors, and I went to sit in the waiting area. In a minute, he came out carrying two Styrofoam cups with plastic stirrers jutting from them. He set them on the coffee table and pulled out a handful of sugar packets and tiny creamers from his pocket.
“I couldn’t remember if you took anything in yours,” he said.
I shook my head. “I drink it black.”
He sat down in the chair opposite me. “This morning, a call came in a little after five o’clock from a man named Sam Grayson. He had been out walking his dog, headed toward Midnight Pass Road, and he had let the dog off his leash. The dog started barking and then took off in the other direction, chasing a man running behind the houses, headed toward the bay. Mr. Grayson managed to call the dog off, but he called nine one one to report a prowler in the area.”
“I know that dog.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. A deputy went out, but the man had disappeared and everything looked quiet. Then your call about the Winnick boy came in. More than likely, his attack was what the dog had been barking at. He may have saved the boy’s life.”
“Good old Rufus! Did Sam get a good look at the man?”
“No. It was dark, and the guy was half-hidden by trees. He thinks he was bald, but I don’t know if he’d be able to identify him if he saw him again.”
“Last night at the Crab House, a man with a bald head chased me in the parking lot. I barely got in my car before he got to me.”
Guidry leaned back and looked hard at me, assessing me the way dogs do when they smell something new. “Was this before or after the Winnick boy told you about seeing a woman leave the Doerring house?”
“After. He tried to hit on me at the bar before I talked to Phillip. Sent me a drink and then got huffy when I refused it. I’d know him if I saw him again.”
I put my coffee back on the table and leaned forward. “Phillip crawls out his bedroom window after his parents are asleep, and walks to the Crab House and plays piano until it closes at one. He probably goes home with somebody from there, but I don’t know who, then he goes home and crawls back in the window again in the morning. My guess is that somebody drives him to that spot on Midnight Pass Road, and then he walks alongside the woods to his house. Whoever attacked him must have known his routine and waited for him.”
Guidry was watching me closely, putting together all the pieces. “His parents know he’s gay?”
“I don’t think so. He doesn’t think so, and he’s scared to death they’ll find out. When I got to him this morning, he said one thing before he passed out. He said, ‘Please don’t tell my mother.’”
“Shit. Poor kid.”
“Yeah. He’s leaving for Juilliard in August, and I suppose he’s gotten more careless as the time grows nearer that he can be open.”
“I’m not letting anybody talk to him until I can question him, and that includes his parents. I think I’d like you to be there when I ask him about the woman he saw. If he’s up to it, I’d like to do it tomorrow morning.”
I hesitated, wondering what Guidry’s real reason was, but knowing that Phillip would be less nervous if I were there.
“Okay.”
“Is there anything else?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you know anything else you haven’t told me?”