Just as I thought: it’s the remains of my lunch.
I hear a symphony of gasps, a sickly moan, and then a loud thud.
“Shit,” Hal mutters. “There he goes again. Damn it, Chuck!” Then I hear sniffing sounds. “I’ll be damned,” Hal says. “I think this is cottage cheese and jelly.”
“Huh?” Hurley asks.
Hal leaves my side, presumably to attend to his fallen partner. “I thought that crap all over her head and face was blood and brain matter but it’s not. It’s food. It must have gotten spilled on her during the accident.”
“So is she okay?” Hurley asks.
“I think I am,” I manage to mumble.
“Hey! There you go,” Hal says. “I think she’s in better shape than my partner here. I’m going to have to call for a backup ambulance for him. I’m afraid seeing a patient eat her own brains was simply more than he could take.”
Forty-five minutes later I’m safely ensconced on a cot inside the ER with Dr. Allan Connor examining my injuries. I can hear Hurley beyond my curtain asking one of the nurses on duty if he can come in and see me. He says it’s so he can get information about the accident though I’m pretty certain traffic accidents don’t fall within the scope of duties for a homicide detective. But since I was planning on finding him anyway before I was broadsided, I’m anxious to have him come in and chat. I want to share what I uncovered about Luke Nelson.
I’m glad Allan is the doc on duty. I worked with him years ago when I staffed the ER and I know he’s a thorough, no-nonsense guy with superb diagnostic skills. He’s already cleared my cervical spine and removed the collar, and one of the nurses was kind enough to clean the jam off my face, allowing me to open both of my eyes.
Allan finds a small laceration on the back of my scalp that will need a few stitches, but other than that I’m home free. He warns me that I’ll likely be plagued with aching muscles tomorrow, but doubts I’ll have any other symptoms. “You’re damned lucky,” he says. “The EMT showed me a picture of your car and the damage was quite extensive.”
“Is it totaled?” I ask.
Hurley pushes aside the curtain, steps in, and provides the answer. “Yup. It’s crusher fodder.”
“What about the other car? Who was in it? Are they okay?”
Allan, abiding by the strict confidentiality requirements imposed on all healthcare providers, says, “All I can tell you is that there was just the driver, who sustained a few injuries, though nothing that appears life-threatening at this point.”
I blow out a sigh of relief.
Allan says, “I need to go check on a couple of other things and then I’ll be back to stitch up your head.” He disappears from my tiny cubicle, leaving me with Hurley.
“You’re not bound by the privacy requirements,” I say to him. “Can you fill in any of the blanks for me?”
“I can tell you that the driver was a teenager and that it looks like he was texting someone on his phone when he hit you. Several witnesses saw him blow through the red light.”
I wince, knowing I’m almost as guilty as the kid since I was trying to make a call on my cell phone when I was hit.
“He busted one of his legs but his car had air bags and he was wearing his seat belt so at least he wasn’t totally stupid,” Hurley goes on. “The car is his dad’s Lexus so I’m guessing the kid will be suffering more pain at home than he will be here.”
“I’m just glad he’s okay.”
“Where were you headed?”
“Back to the office to help Izzy with the autopsies. Actually, I was hoping to hook up with you there, to share some information. I managed to wrangle a lunch meeting with Luke Nelson.”
“Really?”
“Yup.” I try not to look or sound too smug but I can’t resist skewering him just a little bit more. “He mentioned that he was supposed to meet with you later today so I figured I could make that easier for you by sharing what I managed to find out. You know, to keep us from duplicating our efforts.”
“I see.”
I expect him to look put out, or at least chagrined, but instead he looks amused.
“So, do you want to know what I found out?”
“Sure, one second.” Up to this point he has been standing beside my stretcher. Now he disappears from the cubicle only to return a few seconds later with a chair. He sets it down beside my cot, settles into it, and then takes a notebook and pencil out of his shirt pocket. “Go ahead,” he says.
I tell him about Luke Nelson’s alibis and that he is going to ask the patients he saw that day if it’s okay for us to know they were there and, if necessary, talk with them. Then I tell him about Nelson’s history, his practice in Florida, and his claim that he hadn’t seen Shannon for a week before her death.
“It seems odd that they didn’t get together more recently,” I say. “He claims it’s because he was busy but I got the feeling there was more to it than that.”
Hurley shrugs. “It’s a guy thing. We don’t feel the same need to be together with a romantic partner twenty-four-seven the way women do.”
I arch a brow at him and scoff. “That’s a bit stereotyped, don’t you think?”
He shrugs again. “There’s a reason stereotypes are stereotypes. It’s because they hold true much of the time.”
“You’re right,” I say, setting my jaw and folding my arms over my chest. “You men do tend toward a love-’em-and-leave-’em mentality. It seems rather lonely and sad to me.”
“It’s a defense mechanism,” Hurley counters. “Like the way you women are always being so secretive.”
“I’m not secretive,” I say.
“Really? Then what was Izzy referring to the other day when he threatened to tell us your real name?”
Crap. A little kid’s voice echoes in my head: You sunk my battleship!
“That was just a stupid inside joke,” I say dismissively, but I can tell from the way Hurley is studying me that he isn’t buying it. “Anyway,” I say, hoping to shift the subject, “I figure Allan will spring me from here as soon as I get my stitches and then I’ll check in at the office so I can help Izzy post the Heinrich couple. Then later tonight I’ll hit up the Somewhere Bar and see if Nelson’s alibi there holds up.”
Hurley sighs. “I still say the husband did it.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, we need to check out all the possibilities, right?”
“Right.”
“I’d also like to go back to Shannon’s house and have another look around.”
“Looking for anything in particular?”
I shake my head. “Not really. It’s just a feeling I had when we were there the other night. Something I was missing.”
“Okay, but I want to go with you. How about I give you a call?”
“That’s fine.”
There is a moment of silence and then Hurley pushes out of his chair and shoves it off to one side. “I have things to do so I’ll catch up with you later.”
I nod, cursing the whole love-’em-and-leave-’em thing.
He turns to leave, but then hesitates and looks back at me. “I’m glad you’re okay, Winston. You gave us a bit of a scare there.”
He shoves the curtain aside and is gone in a flash. But his words make me smile so wide that the cut on my head starts to throb. And the memory of the way those blue eyes looked at me makes other parts of my body throb, too, but in a much nicer way.
Chapter 20