Before Eddie realized what was happening, Bob had reached out with his good leg and swept the shotgun several feet in his direction.
Eddie dived for it, rolling over and over again as he fumbled to cock it.
One hijacker had already started to run.
The second, realizing what had happened, shoved Bob aside, kicked him hard in the ribs, and was racing toward the alley as Garcia fired.
The shot seemed to hit him, but after staggering a step, he barreled on.
Moments later, he disappeared into the alley. By the time Eddie brought the shotgun around, the man he had kicked was up and sprinting away. He leveled and fired, but the hijacker was already well out of range.
In seconds, the street was quiet again.
Shaken and gasping for breath, Eddie stumbled to his feet. Bob was on his knees, holding his left side.
"You okay, Bob?" Garcia asked.
Scott coughed and felt the seating Crunch of broken bone in his chest.
He had had fractured ribs before, he knew. But when? And how.
"I'm okay," he managed.
Garcia helped him to his feet.
"You sure?" he asked. "You want to go to a hospital?"
The word brought a barrage of images to Scott's mind, none of them pleasant.
"No," he said hoarsely. "No hospital."
Eddie Garcia stopped back a pace and looked at him.
"I've never seen anyone move like that," he said.
"Who are you?"
Scott looked at him sadly and shook his head.
"I don't know,Eddie. I don't know anything. I didn't even plan on attacking those guys. It just happened." He coughed again, and had to forget the pain to keep from passing out.
"I'm takin' you to a fuckin' hospital" Garcia insisted.
Scott shook his head. "I've got to get to East Boston," he said.
"It's important."
"For what?"
"I… I don't know."
"Mrs. Gideon's horse?"
"Something. I don't know what."
Garcia opened his wallet and pulled out a hundred dollall the money he had but ten.
"Here," he said. "The Buckeye people owe me big bucks for this run.
Thanks to you I'm gonna collect.
Can you make it back into the cab?"
"I can make it," Scott said, wincing with each step.
"We'll find the bus terminal then." Garcia kept shaking his head in amazement as he started up the rig. "I don't believe what I just saw you do. With your hand and your leg like that. I just don't believe it."
Fifteen minutes later they stood outside the darkened Greyhound terminal.
"You sure you don't want to just stay with me for a while?"
Garcia asked. "We can do my Cinci-Phoenix run together, and then maybe get you to a doctor find out why you can't remember nothin'."
"I'll be okay," Scott said.
"well, here. This is a number you can call in Utah. It's my mother.
She always knows where to find me. If you ever need anything, anything at all, just call."
"Thanks."
"I owe you, Bob. I owe you big-time."
"No, you don't."
Behind them, the lights of the terminal flicked on. Moments later the doors were opened. Eddie Garcia wondered if there was something else-anything else-he could do. Finally, he simply shrugged, held the man's hand for a time, and then walked away.
When he reached his rig, he turned back. Bob was still standing there, rail-thin and rumpled, and badly needing both a shave and a bath, Looking at the shape he was in, Garcia simply could not fathom what he had seen him do.
"You sure you know what's what in there, Bob?" he called out.
"Boston bus. I know."
"Well, I hope you find yourself, my friend, and that woman's horse, too.
I really do."
The man, in obvious pain, managed something of a smile.
"I hope so, too, Eddie," he said, with no animation whatever. "I hope so too."
Garcia hauled himself up behind the wheel.
When he glanced back, his passenger was gone.
The pathology unit at White Memorial was a fluorescently lit, windowless place located in the basement and much of the subbasement of the main building. It had been newly decorated with a mix of Marimekko cloth wall hangings and artificial Plants which Eric found not the least appealing. Although it was not yet eight in the morning, the day shifts in chemistry, hematology blood bank, cytology, and histology were in the swing. Wearing scrubs and his clinic coat, Eric passed by each section on his way to the cubicle that housed the hospital's toxicological unit.
It amazed him that even after five years, there were still so many mite Memorial employees whose work he depended on day after day, case after case, yet whom he didn't know.
Although he was operating on precious little sleep, he felt charged and invigorated-excited not only for the discoveries he hoped the day ahead would hold, but by the magic of the night just past.
He and Laura had, at last, become lovers in every physical sense.
They made love on her bed and in the shower, on the easy chair by her television, even on the carpet. They loved each other in the frantic, gtoping way of teenagers, and in.the prolonged, imaginative, gently touching way of old friends.
And finally, toward dawn, they slept, wrapped in each other's arms, both sensing their lives beginning to join.
The White Memorial toxicologist, a man named Ivor Blunt, could not have been more aptly named. A crusty veteran of nearly thirty years at his craft, Blunt had earned a reputation as much for his eccentricities as for his brilliance. His primary area of research involved the chemical dissection and adaptation of snake venom, and rumor had it that he kept more than one hundred different species of poisonous reptiles in a single huge solarium in his house.
Blunt was still smarting at having "not been invited to get involved" in the Loretta Leone case, as he phrased it to Eric. The toxicologist had been reluctant even to see him about the case. Eric persisted, though, and was finally granted a fifteen-minute appointment.
It was his plan to break from his E.R. shift long enough to see Blunt and later Haven Darden, and then to leave for the county Library as early as possible.
Meanwhile, Laura would file a complaint against Donald Devine and the Gates of Heaven, and also report on the threatening phone call she had received.
Whether she told the police about the shooting in East Boston would depend on how much credence they seemed to be giving her story.
Blunt's office was set at the far end of the corridor from the autopsy suite. The door, with IVOR T. L. BLUNT, PHD. painted in black on opaque glass, was ajar Just a crack. As Eric was about to knock, he heard the toxicologist's raspy voice from within.
"Come on, you pig-headed rascal," Blunt was exclaiming. "It's under the chair. Under the chair!"
Uncertain, Eric held back from knocking for a few seconds, and then gently tapped on the wooden margin of the door. The door creaked open an inch.
"No!" Blunt shouted.
Eric could hear him race for the door at the moment a brown mouse darted out, over Eric's shoes, and down the corridor.
"Damn," Blunt said.
There was a scuffling behind the door. Finally, it was opened.
Blunt, looking every bit the mad professor with a frayed tweed sportcoat, disheveled gray hair, and. Coke-bottle glasses, stood in the doorway with five or six feet of python draped over his shoulders.
"That was breakfast for Dr. Livingston here," he said, without the faintest trace of humor.
"I'm sorry, sir. I didn't mean-" From somewhere down the hall came a shriek, then another.
"I know, I know," Blunt growled. "Save your apologies for those women out there. As if I didn't have enough problems around here."