The doctor stood studying x-rays hanging up on the view boxes. He turned away, grimly shaking his head at a nurse. “Let’s get a CT and MRI and see just how bad a prognosis we have.”
What? Cole circled them to the view boxes. He had seen enough x-rays over the years to know what the human skeleton should look like. Irah’s rads recorded disaster. Two cervical vertebrae had shattered. One fragment looked driven into the spinal cord itself.
On the exam bed, Irah groaned. The heart monitor beeped faster.
“She’s regaining consciousness,” another nurse said.
The doctor quickly stepped back to the bed. Cole moved to the foot of it.
Irah opened her eyes. She stared around with the dazed expression of the half-conscious, her mouth working behind the oxygen mask. After several tries, she managed a weak, ragged: “Where…”
“You’re at San Francisco General,” the doctor said.
Irah stared up at him. “Alive?”
“Yes.” He smiled at her. “You’re alive.”
Her face twisted. “No!” The whisper rasped, enraged. “No! Get away from me, all of you! Get those fucking needles out of me!” Her chin jerked toward the IV tubing. A moment later her expression went baffled. She stared down at her arms. “My arm won’t move.” Horror spread across her face. “I can’t feel it!” Her voice rose. “I can’t feel anything!”
Cole smiled in grim satisfaction. “Hey, Irah…can you say quadriplegia?” Much of the lead in his gut dissolved. This time they had her for good.
The cervical collar prevented her from lifting her head, but Irah’s eyes shifted to stare toward the foot of the bed. “You! How can you be here?”
He started. Now she saw him?
“I’m an ER doctor,” the doctor said. “Dr. Anson.”
Irah’s eyes stayed focused on the foot of the bed, furious. “You’re dead!”
Anson and the nurses exchanged puzzled glances.
Triumph warmed Cole. Maybe being so close to death herself broke down her blindness. “That’s right. I’m dead. While you’re still alive. That truck needed to be a bigger or going faster to do the job you wanted. But you’re alive just from the neck up.” He gave her a knife-blade smile, savoring justice. “No matter what kind of defense your attorney mounts, you’ve got a life sentence in an escape-proof prison. With no possibility of parole. I can’t see a jury sentencing a quadriplegic to death, so on behalf of Sara and myself, I wish you a long, long life.”
Staring at him, her glare turned to horror, and she began screaming…her voice rising higher and higher toward hysteria that was equal parts fury and despair.
But before Cole could enjoy it, weakness swept him. Suddenly he stood in evening light looking into a grave. A body was being lifted out of it in a canvas sling. In the bottom of the grave, next to a trenched section, part of another body showed through a layer of dirt…a female hand, blonde hair. Sara.
Cole swung into the grave and knelt to touch the hand. “We got Irah. She’s going down for what she did to you. I only hope you can feel how sorry I am for what I did to you.”
Did he see a stir in the air beside him, or only imagine it and a brush of warmth across one cheek?
Before he could decide, more weakness hit him. He looked up to see the sling being spread open. A camera flash went off several times. The Colma lieutenant said, “God…700 pounds of concrete vault did a job on him.”
Cole climbed out of the grave and, feeling oddly detached, stared at his crushed body as Hamada went through the pockets. He thought of the dead airmen movie. Was he about to disappear? He checked himself and saw with relief that he still looked solid.
Then he realized the world had changed. Things looked…translucent. Instead of him fading, the world was. Protest rose in Cole. No, not yet! One piece of lead still lay in him, the one with Sherrie’s name.
“Imagine that,” the lieutenant said as Hamada found a billfold in one hip pocket and Cole’s cell phone in the coat. “A killer too squeamish to clean out her victim’s pockets.”
Hamada grunted. “More like she reckoned he’d never be found.”
Cole stared at the phone. It still looked in good shape. Hope sparked in him. He leaned down close to Hamada’s ear and strained to put substance into his voice. “See if the phone still works!”
Hamada froze. Cole saw goosebumps rise on his neck.
“Try the phone.”
Hamada just stared at it for several moments, then pushed the power button.
Hope surged higher as the screen lighted. “Play the voice mail messages. My password is 03686.”
Hamada stood, hefting the phone, an inner struggle visible in his eyes.
“Something wrong?” the lieutenant said.
“I reckon I’ll see.” Hamada punched up the menu and went to voice mail. Playing the messages, his expression turned bemused.
“My wife needs to hear those messages,” Cole said. “Call her on your phone and play them for her. Please?”
Hamada looked around…and stared incredulously at him.
“Please call her.”
“What are you looking at?” the lieutenant asked.
Hamada quirked a brow. “Maybe the explanation for a lot of weirdness. Excuse me. I need to make a phone call.”
Cole quickly zipped back to the hospital, to Razor, still standing outside the exam room.
Razor glanced at the others and sidled away from them, lowering his voice. “What’s happened? You’re fading.”
So was Razor. His colors looked washed out and objects behind him showed through as shadows. Cole’s throat tightened. “They’ve found my body. Sara’s, too. And my phone. Hamada’s going to play the voice mail messages for Sherrie. I don’t have much longer here.”
“Cole, I- ” Razor’s voice caught.
Cole’s throat closed completely. Damn. How did the two of them say goodbye? “It’s been fun, huh, partner?” He punched toward Razor’s shoulder.
Razor punched back. “Always a blast.”
Cole zipped home. It looked surreal, turned to layers of colored glass. It felt held-breath tense. Lauren and Holly had arrived. The kids sat together in the livingroom watching Harry Potter, but silent except for Hannah, who squealed at the flying car.
From the doorway, he said softly, “I love you, gang. Have a good life. I’m sorry I won’t be there.”
In the kitchen the women cut up vegetables and tossed them in Sherrie’s big soup pot…working without talking, either. Tiger, lying by Sherrie’s feet at the sink, looked up at him and whined.
Cole bent down to pet him, then stood and wrapped his arms around Sherrie, wishing she could feel him, even if only as a chill. But she showed no reaction.
His chest constricted. “I wish you’d hear me. I screwed up. Me and my obsessiveness screwed up royally. But I didn’t screw around. Not with Sara, not with any other woman… despite what Debra Brewer thinks she saw. There’s only been you. They’ve found- ”
The phone rang.
Joanna answered it. “It’s for you, Sherrie. An Inspector Hamada.”
Sherrie slid out of his arms. He followed her to the phone, chest tight. Not bothering to listen to Hamada’s end of the call, he watched her face. She caught her breath and tension drained from her face. As it did, color faded faster from the glass layers around him.
Sherrie hung up and stood leaning her forehead against the phone.
He reached out to touch her hair, which still had color when almost nothing else did. “You know, I really wanted to grow old with you and watch this wild red hair turn to wild white hair.”
Sherrie lifted her head. Her hand went to her hair…where his hand touched.
The constriction unwound in his chest. She felt him…maybe on some level heard him, too. A sense of lightness filled him. Contented, Cole stepped back, watching her while the world went transparent and disappeared.