“There were some funny things, though, come to think of it,” she said after a pause in the conversation.
“Funny things?”
“About that home. You’d think with all the charitable spirit behind it, they’d have done more to make the place a little bit nicer.”
“How could they, with a forbidding building like that to start with?”
“They had enough land to make it like a park in there, or at least put in a garden. I remember Ginny Strang, God bless her dear departed soul, telling me she suggested as much when she worked in the place. The women would have liked tending it for something to do, she figured. As it was, they only had a half-finished lawn to walk on and pretty much nothing to occupy them. Well, the idea was turned down flat.”
All part of their punishment, he thought, more ghosts from the cryptlike rooms rising to stir his anger. “Obviously, you should have been running the place, Nell.”
“I would have been glad to. But that’s another thing. The way they hired people. Very few locals. And they never took anyone full-time.”
“Oh?”
“I don’t know why. Lots were willing to work from here, nurses trained in the war, but they only gave people two or three shifts a week, and mostly picked outsiders over us from Hampton Junction.” She sniffed as if freshly offended. “I guess once again we weren’t good enough.”
“Now, Nell, it could be just as they did with your friend – their wanting to ensure the privacy of the mothers,” he said, trying to mollify her. “With different staff all the time, and none of them likely to have any social contacts beyond the place of work, the patients would probably feel more anonymous.”
She puckered her face at what he said and continued to look miffed.
“Come on, don’t get upset over nothing,” he pressed. Maybe he couldn’t “cure” her knee, but he at least should be able to get her out of a snit. “I know it backfired for her, but given the censorious climate of those days, it makes a sick kind of sense. It’s certainly the opposite of how we hire today, bending over backward to keep the same people around so the patients get to know who’s taking care of them.”
“Then how come it was identical to what happened at that fancy-schmancy maternity center the Bradens ran in Saratoga? No need for women to feel ashamed there.”
“How do you mean?”
“They hired a few former nurses from Hampton Junction to work there as well, but none of them could get a full-time job at that place either.” She finished with her scrawny head as erect as an eagle’s and a so-there glare.
Snow made the dusk luminous. Even with four-wheel drive, whenever he topped thirty miles an hour the Jeep started to fishtail toward the ditch, and he had to wrestle the wheel against the pull of the slush. The road out to Nell’s place was so infrequently traveled it was the last priority for the plows.
He rummaged through his CD holder and soon he crawled along to the breathy voice of Diana Krall singing “The Look of Love.” The car heater quickly warmed the interior of the Jeep to the point he could open his jacket, and the wipers beat a steady rhythm against the storm. With his headlights switched low to reduce their glare against the flakes, he easily distinguished the swell of the road from the steep drop of its shoulders on either side. Better straddle the middle, he decided, having the highway all to himself and not wanting to skid anywhere near the edge.
He continued to feel disappointed that, pleasant as his visit with Nell had been, she’d told him nothing new about Kelly’s murder or why his father might have been interested in either the maternity center or the home. Somehow, after his initial good luck with Kelly’s old file and spotting Earl Garnet’s role in her life, he’d assumed he was on a roll, that he’d continue to round up leads at the same speed.
Now he felt at a dead end, the next step as obscure and dark as the woods on either side of him.
He hoped Earl had fared better today. He patted his cellular phone in the breast pocket of his shirt, wishing he knew Earl’s number, which lay safely buried in the wallet he was sitting on and would be hell to get out. No matter. He’d be home soon. The traction felt more secure now that he hogged the center of the highway, and he gently eased his speed up to forty miles an hour.
Settling back, he watched the sweep of flakes across his windshield as Krall drifted into another song. She seemed to be whispering it into his ear.
“… I get along without you very well…”
A loud thwack sounded on his right, something stung the side of his face, and the glass immediately in front of him shattered into a silvery web of cracks around a small black hole.
“Jesus!” He jumped in fright against the restraints of his seat belt and inadvertently floored the accelerator. The Jeep lurched ahead, immediately swiveling to the left. He instinctively jammed on the brakes, and felt the staccato pump of the antilock system, but too late. In the snow-spotted blaze of his headlights, he glimpsed the edge of the road as it flew under him and the hood of his car nose-dived down a ten-foot embankment toward a ravine of open water lined with rocks. Amidst a deafening bam of impact and crunch of crumpling metal, he flew forward against the chest strap of his seat belt only to be pounded backward by the airbag exploding out of the steering wheel.
He felt he’d been hit by a giant boxing glove and struggled to breathe. After a few seconds that felt like minutes, he managed to suck in a breath.
He sat in total silence except for the howling of the wind and the occasional ping from the remains of his motor as it cooled down. Though the engine had cut out, the dash lights remained on. He brought his hand up to his stinging cheek and felt it covered with tiny sharp fragments. He looked over to the passenger door, and instantly a searing pain shot through the corner of his eye. “Shit!” he screamed, covering it with his palm, but not before he saw a pattern of splintered glass around a central hole identical to the one in front.
He’d been shot at! One of those fucking drunk hunters had taken a shot at him.
The burning in his eye grew worse, but fury overruled pain. He snapped open his safety belt, and after a couple heaves with his shoulder against the door, managed to push it open and crawl out. “You fucking asshole!” he hollered at the woods on the other side of the road where the shot had come from. “I could have been killed!”
A steady rush of wind through the trees, and the soft hiss of flakes striking the ground amplified the silence.
“You son of a bitch, come and help me. I’ve got glass in my eye.”
No answer.
Christ, would the shooter just run away? “Help me, dammit!”
Nothing.
Son of a bitch.
Still cupping his injured eye, he squinted with the left at the damaged Jeep.
The right high beam, still shining bright, faced straight down into a shallow stream of water that he only then realized he was standing in. The ambient light showed him the front wheel on his side of the vehicle had become part of the doorframe. And he could smell gasoline, a lot of it. Pushing off from where he’d been leaning on the hood, he turned and started to climb back up toward the highway. But his boot slipped on a rock, and he pitched forward into the water, landing on his hands and knees. “Goddamn it,” he yelled, the pain in his eye trebling to the point he hardly noticed the burning cold up to his wrists and thighs. He quickly got to his feet and jammed his fingers under his arms, where they continued to burn. Some water ran down his legs into his boots, soaking the lower half of his trousers, but the all-important feet and toes stayed mostly dry.