"Did Doctor Townsend look closely at the wound?"
She raised her chin and compressed her lips, a clear signal that my questions were trying her patience. "I really don't know. Now, if I can just get you to give me the insurance information so we can get the billing wrapped up-"
"I'm sorry. I can't tell you anything about Sadie Marsh's insurance. Did Deputy Walters come over from the sheriff's office?"
She was almost amused. "The sheriff's office? You've got to be kidding. They don't bother about people who get kicked by horses or run over by bulls or bit by rattlesnakes. Or stung by bees. You'd be surprised how many people nearly die from bee stings. Why would the sheriff bother about a horse?"
Why indeed? And who knows what happened between the time I called Stu Walters and the time Sadie Marsh died? Maybe the deputy had a political reason for not investigating. Maybe he talked to the EMS techs or Tom and they convinced him it was an accident. Or maybe he just hadn't gotten his investigation in gear before Royce Town-send, MD and JP, made the accidental-death theory official.
Whatever the reasons behind it, the result was an accomplished fact. Now that Townsend had recorded the cause of death, it would be damned difficult, if not impossible, to get it changed. A doctor-especially Townsend-would be reluctant to admit that he'd failed to examine a fatal injury closely enough to determine what had caused it. And a JP would hate to confess that he'd closed a possible murder case before the sheriff's office had started to look into it. I could talk to Townsend, but I wouldn't get very far. As far as Carr County was concerned, Sadie had been kicked to death by a horse, and that was that.
I took a different tack. "Let me ask you about Mr. Rowan. Mr. Tom Rowan, Senior. He was admitted this morning as well."
"I'm afraid that-"
"Don't tell me he's dead, too!"
"He's in guarded condition. His son is with him now, and I really can't permit another-"
"What's the room number?"
"I'm sorry. I can't-"
I assumed my sternest courtroom demeanor. "I am an attorney, Nurse. Mr. Rowan, Junior, would not be pleased if I were not permitted to see his father in order to discuss certain urgent legal matters."
She hesitated. "Well, since he's your client-"
"What room?"
"One-ten."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome. When you have a chance, will you have your secretary call us with Miss Marsh's insurance information and social security number?"
"Oh, absolutely." I turned and walked away.
The blinds had been adjusted to block the sun streaming in through the west window. Tom Senior was lying motionless under a white sheet on a narrow, railed bed. His nose and mouth were covered by a plastic respirator mask, and his skin was a lifeless gray. He was hooked up to some sort of humming apparatus on a cart beside him-life support, I supposed. A respirator. Tom Junior was standing at the end of the bed, shoulders slumped, hands in his pockets. His face was bleak.
"How is he?" I asked quietly.
"Hanging in there."
"What happened?"
"Coronary. The last thing he needs with his lungs in the shape mey're in." He gestured at the machine. "Doc's got him on a respirator."
The old man raised his hand, feebly gesturing at the mask.
"Take it easy, Pop," Tom said. He stepped forward, bent over his father, and gently eased off the mask. ' 'Doc says you can't leave tins off too long, or you'll be in trouble."
The old man turned his head toward me. He looked like a cadaver, his eyes, dark-rimmed, sunk into his skull, his cheeks fallen in. His voice was faint and raspy. "That your girl, boy? The one we ate with last night?"
Last night? Was it only last night that I'd had dinner with Tom and his father? And only yesterday that Sadie had been ready to blow the whistle? Twenty-four hours had changed everything.
"Yeah, Dad." Tom took my hand and pulled me forward. "It's China."
"Good." The old man stretched thin lips in a ghastly smile. "Glad you've got somebody, now that I'm checkin' out. You're not too old for kids, either of you. Get to it"
Tom dropped my hand and shook his father's shoulder lightly. "Hey, you old coot. I don't want to hear that kind of talk. You're not in any danger of-"
"Don't give me that, boy. Now's no time to screw with the truth." With an effort, the old man picked up the mask and put it over his face, breathing heavily. He pulled it aside enough to ask, "Where's Father Steven? Thought you called him."
"I left a message." Tom forced a grin. "What do you want the priest for, anyway? You're not in that" bad a shape."
"You can't lie for shit, boy."
"It's true, Dad," Tom protested. "You'll be up and around-"
The old man's sigh was slow and heavy. "Yeah, sure. Up and around, and then what? Back down again in a month or two. And in the end-" He turned his head to look at the respirator. "More of this, and nurses messin' with you every ten minutes, and a helluva lot of pain." He closed his eyes. His eyelids were thin parchment. "Forget the priest. He can't absolve me, anyway."
Tom's eyes slid to me. "You're not thinking straight, Pop. Wait until you can-"
"Listen to me, boy. You've got to handle this so the bank doesn't get hurt. I killed-"
"Shut up, Dad," Tom said fiercely.
The old man closed his eyes. "You keep a civil tongue in your head, Tom-boy. I killed that meddlin' woman, and I'm not goin' to be around to suffer the consequences. But you are, and so's the bank." His breathing was more and more labored. "It's up to you, Tom. You got your work cut out for you. Damage control, that's what they call it."
"I don't know what you're talking about." Tom sounded desperate. "Sadie got kicked in the head. Anyway, she's not dead. She's right down the hall in Intensive-"
I touched his arm. He started, as if he'd forgotten I was there, and looked at me. I shook my head slightly.
His eyes went dark. "She's dead?"
I nodded, and he seemed to slump. He turned aside as I went to the bed and leaned over it. The old man had pulled the mask back over his face and was breathing raspily.
"What happened in the barn, Mr. Rowan?" I asked.
I thought he might object to my being the one to ask the question, but he seemed to welcome it. He slipped the mask aside. "My kinda woman," he said. "You get that boy to handle this right, or it'll ruin his name. He's got to fix it, before it brings down the bank." With great effort, punctuated by periods of silence imposed by the mask-longer and longer, as the story went on-he told the whole story.
Tom Senior had called Sadie the night before to ask her what she had up her sleeve, and she'd told him that she intended to blow the whistle on the bank fraud. If she did that, he knew it was all over. It might take a while, but the bank would go under, like the Singapore bank that was sunk by a junior official speculating in Japanese investments. Or like the one in Orange County, California, which filed for bankruptcy after an investment officer lost a billion or two in derivatives-risky stock ventures that lure investors out of the safe shallows into the treacherous deeps.
And it was derivatives, of course, that had been the devil in the old man's woodpile. He had begun his term as trust official by investing conservatively, as he always had. But Carr County had been struck by a three-year drought that forced a couple of big ranchers to go under, leaving their loans unpaid. To cover those losses, he had borrowed from the Laney Trust, using its assets as leverage in increasingly speculative markets. Occasionally he did well, and once or twice had brought the trust account almost back to where it should have been. But one spectacular loss forced him to