Maybe that’s why I’d hallucinated about being covered in blood? There wasn’t much that would freak me out more than that.
The door to the room opened again, startling me, and I dropped the IV line with a guilty flush as a different nurse walked in. She was a lot younger than the other one—maybe in her early twenties or so, with sleek blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail and the sort of fresh no-makeup look I wished I could pull off. I looked like death without makeup, and while my hair was blonde as well, it was that way because I dyed it myself, which meant it was a frizzy, damaged mess.
Her eyes flicked to the discarded IV, but she didn’t seem to be upset that I’d removed it. “I wanted to make sure you were awake and decent,” she said with a smile that was kinder than I expected. “There are a couple of detectives here who want to talk to you.”
A frisson of terror shot through me. “Wh-why?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I knew. They were here to take me to jail. My probation officer had found out about the drug use and my probation was being revoked. Or they wanted me to squeal about where I got my drugs.
I must have gone pale because she closed the door and gave me a reassuring smile. “They only want to talk to you. You’re going to be fine. Here,” she said, gently but firmly pushing me back to sit on the bed. She didn’t make me lie back down—simply pulled the bed sheet around so that my lower body and bare feet were covered. “That’s better. I know I can’t talk to anyone with any sort of authority if I’m half-naked,” she said with a wink.
Her unexpected niceness had me a little off-balance, especially after the open hostility of the previous nurse. “Where are my other clothes?”
“You, uh, weren’t wearing any when you were brought in.”
Oh, shit. I swallowed hard. “Did they take them off in the ambulance?” Surely it wouldn’t be as bad as if I’d—
“The cops found you on the side of the road . . . naked.” Her face twisted in embarrassed sympathy.
My throat tightened. “Was I—I mean, had I been . . . ?” I couldn’t say the word.
Her eyes widened. “No!” She shook her head emphatically. “No, the doctor, um, checked. You weren’t assaulted.”
I scrubbed at my face and fought the urge to cry. Overdose and naked on the side of the road. This kept getting better and better. And not even the victim of a crime, just a stupid drugged-out skank.
The nurse made a concerned noise in her throat, reached out and gave my upper arms a firm rub. “Relax now. Everything’s going to be fine. These detectives want to have a word with you, then you’ll be ready to get out of here.” She turned and left before I could form any sort of coherent response.
Right. Everything’s going to be fine, I thought with a sour laugh. She didn’t know. She couldn’t possibly understand why I was freaking.
I didn’t have to stew in my panic for long. No sooner had the door swung shut behind the blonde nurse than it opened again and two detectives walked in. But they weren’t probation officers or narcotics detectives. That threw me. At least I was pretty sure they weren’t narcs. Those guys usually went around in jeans and T-shirts, but these two were in dress shirts and ties. The first one in was a burly guy—at least six feet tall and stocky with a bit of a pudge working around his middle, blondish brown hair, and a scruffy-looking mustache. The second detective wasn’t as tall, but he was big in a muscled way. No pudge on him. I could tell he worked out, and hard. He had dark hair, dark eyes, and an equally dark expression on his face. Both had guns, badges, and handcuffs on their belts.
In other words, they intimidated the ever-living shit out of me simply by walking into the room.
“Ms. Crawford,” the burly one began, “I’m Detective Ben Roth and this is Detective Mike Abadie.” He cocked his head toward the dark-haired detective. “We’re with the Saint Edwards Parish Sheriff’s Office, and we’d appreciate it if you could take a couple of minutes to answer some questions for us.”
“Do I need a lawyer?” I blurted. The two men exchanged a quick glance. Oh, great. Nice way to start. Now I sounded guilty as all hell.
“That’s completely up to you, Ms. Crawford,” Detective Roth said. “But we’re only here to see if you might have witnessed anything that could help us solve a crime. You’re not under any sort of suspicion at this time.” His expression remained serious but his eyes were kind. At least, I wanted to believe that. The other detective looked like he had a permanent scowl on his face. Maybe they were about to play good cop bad cop on me. It would probably work, too. I always fell for that psychological shit. Especially when I was confused and stressed. Like right now.
I gripped the sheet in my hands. “Uh, sure. What . . . um, what crime?”
Detective Abadie cleared his throat. “You were found on Sweet Bayou Road right off Highway 180.” His lips pressed together and I could see the same derision in his eyes that I’d seen in the red-haired nurse’s. Maybe he didn’t know why I was in here, ’cause of privacy laws or whatever, but he sure as hell had his suspicions.
“Okay,” I said, doing my damnedest to not hunch under his gaze. “If you say so.”
“At about the same time,” he continued, eyes hard and flat, “a body was found a few miles further down Sweet Bayou Road. It had been decapitated.”
“Wh-what?” I said, staring at him in horror.
“Decapitated. It means that his head was chopped off,” he explained, tone thoroughly patronizing.
A sudden burst of anger managed to burn away a good portion of the panic and fear that had been controlling me up until then. “I know what ‘decapitated’ means,” I replied with a scowl. “But I don’t know anything about this. I sure as hell didn’t do it! ” The two men exchanged another quick glance and a sliver of the fear came back. “You don’t think I did it, do you?”
Detective Roth shook his head firmly. “You’re not a suspect at this time, Ms. Crawford. However, right now you’re the only possible witness we have. Anything you can remember might be useful.”
I swallowed. At this time. He kept saying that. In other words I sure as shit hadn’t been ruled out, even though I knew there was no way I would have chopped some guy’s head off—no matter how high I might have been.
So why did I remember blood . . . ?
I took a shaking breath. No. There was no way. I wasn’t a killer. “Sweet Bayou Road?” I asked, stalling for time to get my thoughts into something other then a jumbled mess.
“That’s where you were found,” Detective Roth said patiently. “What do you remember?”
“I . . . don’t know.” Sweet Bayou Road was only about five minutes down the highway from where I lived, but there wasn’t a whole lot on it. A few fishing camps near the end, and the rest of it was several miles of desolate and twisty road through the marsh. “I mean, I was at Pillar’s Bar with my boyfriend. We had a fight and . . .” I rubbed my eyes, odd flashes of the hallucination swimming through my head.
Blood and pain . . . I thought I was dying. No, I died. But then I was hungry. Starving-to-death hungry. . . .
I took an unsteady breath. “Then I was out on the road, and there was an ambulance.”
I was arguing with the paramedics after they got me into the ambulance, begging for something to eat because I was so damn hungry. Maybe that’s why I didn’t walk into the stupid white light. Maybe I knew they wouldn’t have anything to eat down that way.
“I must have passed out.” I looked up at the two men. “Then I woke up here. Sorry. ”
No pain. No hunger. No clue.
Detective Abadie let out an exasperated snort. “Why were you out there?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I was trying to walk home.” Walking home from the bar would definitely rank as one of the more boneheaded things I’d done in my life. In other words, totally believable. And somewhere along the way I’d decided to strip naked. That must have been one helluva high.