“How do you feel?”
“All right.”
“How’s the head?”
I thought a moment. “Fine, I guess.” I moved it slightly and the bomb went off again. “Maybe not so fine.”
“The doctor says it’ll probably hurt for a few days. It’s amazing you survived at all.”
“Where’s Frank?” Brandt blinked and looked away. He nodded at someone I couldn’t see-or didn’t try to see. He then took off his glasses and scratched the side of his nose. “You know Frank’s dead.”
“Yes.”
“We had the ceremony yesterday, Joe.” The pounding had faded to the background. It returned with a vengeance. “You could have waited.”
“We waited three days. We couldn’t any longer.”
“Three days? Gail told me I’d been out two.”
“You went under again.”
A deep rage gushed up inside me, making my entire body hot. I tried getting onto my elbows, fighting against the nausea. Gail appeared at Brandt’s side and put her hand on my chest. “What do you want, Joe?”
“I’m sick of staring up everyone’s nostrils.”
She placed a control box into my hand and pushed my thumb against a green button. The bed behind my pillow began to rise. The world slowly straightened. The pain in my head backed off a bit.
Brandt sat on the edge of the bed. “That better?”
I nodded to Gail. “Thank you.”
“What happened out there, Joe?”
“A truck ran us off the road.”
He frowned and reached into his pocket for his pipe. He sat there for a moment looking at it, turning it over in his hands. “What kind of truck?”
“An eighteen-wheeler. Wasn’t there a report?”
He shook his head. “As far as the Massachusetts State Police are concerned, it was a single-vehicle accident.” he="0em"
“A single… Jesus Christ, didn’t they check the side of the car for paint? The son of a bitch sideswiped us.” I had to breathe deeply to keep the pain in check.
“There wasn’t much left of the car. I saw it myself.”
I stared at the opposite wall, trying to remember. Again, I saw Frank’s face in that red light, the side of the truck coming nearer. I looked back at Brandt. “The truck box was unpainted-plain metal. Still, there ought to be something to go on.”
“We’ll give it another look.”
“What about the road? Skid marks or debris?”
“Nothing besides yours. Of course, it wasn’t bare road. It’s hard to see skid marks on the ice, especially at night.”
It was hopeless. I was four days away from the event. The evidence had been snowplowed by now, the truck long gone. Suspecting nothing, they’d let it all slip away. “When can I get out of this dump?”
Gail spoke up from her chair. “Two or three days.”
“Take it easy, Joe. There’s no rush.”
“The hell there isn’t. What about Ski Mask?” Brandt glanced quickly at Gail, who to him was first and foremost a selectman. “She knows all about it. I told her. What about him? And what about the samples? What happened to them? Did you find them?”
“Slow down. Yes, we found them. The troopers were a little curious, to say the least, but we got them back. I returned them to Hillstrom. She told me the damage was slight-nothing crucial. And we haven’t heard a peep from Ski Mask since the accident.”
I slowly leaned forward and peeled the bed sheet back. Gail rose from her seat. “What are you doing, Joe?”
“Don’t get worked up. I just want to see if everything’s still functioning.” I swung my legs over the side of the bed. My head began to swim.
“I wouldn’t do that. Not unless you’re suicidal.” A young doctor with glasses and a pocket stuffed with the obligatory implements moved in from the door and lifted my legs back. “A concussion means blood gets loose in your head. That builds up pressure and you conk out. Build up too much pressure and you croak. You start running around now, you’ll start bleeding again and it’s bye-bye. Get the picture?”
I lay back against the pillow, partly happy for the interference. “How come all the doctors on television don’t talk like that?”
“They’re actors. They don’t think it’s real.” He pried back my eyelid and flashed a light in my eye.
“So how soon do I get out?”
“Two days at the soonest. You’ll be able to get around before that, but I don’t want you out of my sight until I know you’re okay. I know your type-pure John Wayne.”
“Give me a break.”
“All right-pure Jane Fonda. Take your da. em" pick.”
He finished his examination and had a nurse take my vitals. He said he’d see me the following day and left. Brandt took up his station by the bed. “Well, I guess I’ll let you be.”
“Tony, we got a lot of good stuff down there.” He patted my arm. “It’ll keep, Joe. Just try to relax and shake this thing off.”
“But what’s been going on?” Again, he glanced at Gail.
She took the hint. “You want me to step outside?”
“For Christ’s sake, Tony.”
Gail squeezed my hand. “He’s right, Joe-it’s good politics. What he says isn’t pillow talk, and that can be bad enough.”
Brandt smiled at her as she picked up her purse. “Thanks. I’ll vote for you next time.”
“Well,” she said, with exaggerated, tinny humor, “I should hope so.”
I waited for the door to close behind her. “So?”
“Nothing new on the Phillips killing. I think we’ve dead-ended on all possibilities except Ski Mask, and there we’re digging into Davis’s past with a microscope. I have managed to get Tom Wilson to stand between us and the board concerning the links to the Harris case.”
Wilson was the town manager and Brandt’s direct boss. “He’s lying to them?”
“Withholding information is more like it. I convinced him that if we let them know about the Harris connection, it’ll wind up in the next day’s paper; until we have something solid, it would be best to leave that hornet’s nest alone.”
“I can’t believe he agreed to it.”
“He’s so scared we may have jailed the wrong man, he’s damn near irrational.”
I closed my eyes and lay back against the pillow for a moment.
“You ought to get some rest.”
I opened my eyes again. “No, wait. So no state police?”
“Not yet. They’ve been informed-hell, they read the newspaper too-but so far they’re out of it.” He looked at me closely. “You look lousy. Get some sleep and I’ll come back later, okay?”
“All right. Thanks.”
I watched the door swing shut behind him. I felt a little like all this was happening to someone else; my concern with keeping the state police off our turf seemed incongruous now that I thought about it. Frank was dead, I damn near was, everything had gone to hell in a hand basket, and I was worried I’d lose the case.
My eyes were shut when Gail walked back in and resettled herself in the corner chair. I could hear her turning the pages of a book. “How was the ceremony?”
She put the book down and looked at me sadly. “There were a lot of people there. They had an honor guard-I thind amp;mighk Frank would have been embarrassed.”
“How’s Martha?”
“Not well. She’s staying with her daughter somewhere in Massachusetts.”
“Wendy. I think she lives in Braintree.”
Gail nodded. “That’s it. She seemed very nice.”
“Where did they hold the ceremony?” I knew the ground was too hard for burial.
“At the cemetery-Martha insisted. They just put the casket on the snow. It was beautiful-cold, but sunny. When they played taps, it was like the sound would go on forever. You could hear it hit the mountain across the river.”
I could visualize it. I knew the plot he had chosen; he’d shown it to me one summer afternoon years ago. It was on the eastern edge of Morningside Cemetery, right at the crest of a slope falling sharply to the railroad tracks and the Connecticut River far below. We’d stood there for a few minutes, taking in the view of Wantastiquet Mountain across the river in New Hampshire, looming a good thousand feet above us. In the middle of the river was a small wooded island that acted as midpoint to the bridge crossing there. At the turn of the century, it had been a permanent carnival area, the town’s hot spot all summer long, complete with merry-go-round, Ferris wheel, the works. Now it was just an island-a lover’s lane during the warmer months. Looking out over all that-the wash of green trees and the sparkling water-I had complimented him on his choice.