Even as she spoke the words, she saw from the flashlight beams that she was at the bottom of a small hill. She could see the outlines of two other people with lights walking up on the ridge.
“You’re in a ravine,” the cop said. “You must have tripped when you were running.”
“The dog?” Phoebe blurted out. “She—”
“Don’t worry,” the cop said softly. “We’ve got her. She led us to you, in fact.”
Then Phoebe remembered Hutch and started to tear up.
“Can you tell us what happened?” the cop asked.
“Hutch. I came to see him. He was dead. And the killer—he was still in the house—upstairs. I . . .”
She wanted to say more, but she couldn’t. Everything felt so heavy—her legs and her arms, even her eyelids.
“Can I just sleep?” Phoebe whispered hoarsely. “For a little while?”
“You might have a concussion, so you need to stay awake,” he said. “At least until the ambulance comes. Can you do that for me?”
“Uh, I don’t know.” She felt so weary.
“Is that your dog?” he said. “She’s awfully cute.”
The cop talked to her then about little things. She could hear his voice droning in her ears, and sometimes she answered. Then there were more people moving around, lifting her. There was so much noise now, and she wanted to tell them, Shush, be quiet, I can’t sleep, but no words came out.
She was in an ambulance after that, but she couldn’t remember being lifted inside. There was something around her head—one of those protective braces, she thought. The siren made her head ache all over again.
Finally she was in the ER. Doctors and nurses stood over her, tugging off her clothes, prodding her.
“I’m Dr. Morton,” a woman said. She was tall and seemed to tower over the table Phoebe was lying on. “Can you tell me where it hurts?”
“My head,” Phoebe said. “And my arm. The um—left one.”
“We’re going to fix you all up, okay?” the doctor said. Her green eyes were warm and caring. “You may have had a concussion, and your left elbow is broken. We’ll need to do some tests to see if there are any internal injuries.”
“Thank you,” Phoebe muttered.
“Is there someone you need us to call?” another woman asked. A nurse, Phoebe thought.
“No, that’s okay,” Phoebe said. She didn’t want Glenda around, but she knew she would have to alert her eventually.
“There are two detectives who want to talk to you, but I suggested they come back tomorrow. We need to make sure you’re okay,” the doctor said.
Phoebe was in the ER for what seemed like hours. They X-rayed her elbow, and then secured it, and right after that she was wheeled off to another location for a CAT scan of her head. As an orderly rolled her gurney back to the ER later, she wondered what would happen after all the tests were done.
“How will I get home tonight?” she muttered to the orderly.
He chuckled. “Oh, don’t worry about going home. We’re checking you into our fine hotel for the night. Rest assured, it’s four stars.”
Eventually she was brought to another floor and hoisted onto a bed for the night. She drifted off again, though she was aware of people coming in and out of the room, checking on her.
At some point her eyes popped open, and she felt suddenly wide awake. It was dark outside, but there were low lights on in the room, and she could see that she was in a private room with just one bed. The door was open, and from the hall she could hear the low murmur of voices and the occasional sound of something being wheeled. She was on painkillers, she knew, but she sensed they’d begun to wear off—there was a dull ache in her head, her elbow, and, she realized for the first time, also in the left cheek of her butt.
As the minutes passed, her mind began to clear. She forced herself to go over everything, picking up a thread and following it backward. She had injured herself falling down a ravine in the dark. Someone had been chasing her. Hutch’s killer. Her face tightened in anguish as she thought of the kind man she had known so briefly. He had been brutally murdered, beaten to death. There was a chance, of course, that it was a burglary gone bad, but her gut told her it was about the investigation—the one she had lured Hutch into. She felt sick with guilt. Who was the person who had stood on the ridge? She had seen only the outline, but she remembered that the person’s head had seemed smooth as a skull.
Phoebe thought of Ginger then. Where was she? With relief she remembered what the cop with the flashlight had said. She led us to you. The police must have her. But what about the retriever—where had he gone? Hutch had said he had a nephew, and somehow Phoebe needed to contact him—to tell him about Hutch and to ask him to track down the dogs.
Odds and ends began to fight their way to the surface of her mind. Her purse and her phone. Surely the police had found them, or at the very least they would still be in the woods. Her car. It was still at Hutch’s. It was almost Monday, she realized, and she would have to miss class. She had to let the school know.
She shifted position, turning a bit onto her right side. She became aware that the pain was getting stronger now. She found the call button, and a nurse came in, giving her more medication. As she drifted off to sleep again a few minutes later, a gray light was seeping in around the edges of the window blinds. At least the night is over, she consoled herself.
The police wasted no time getting there in the morning. Phoebe had woken around seven, when a nurse came in to check on her. He’d helped her out of bed, and in the bathroom she was surprised to see that her tumble had remaining her with a black eye and a crosshatching of scratch marks on her face. The nurse had pointed out that her purse was safely tucked away in a cabinet by the bed. With the little battery power she had remaining in her phone, she left a message for the department chairman, Dr. Parr, explaining she had been injured and would not able to teach today.
Breakfast arrived next—damp toast and limp-looking scrambled eggs.
As she was poking at the food, she heard a light knock on the open door to her room. It was the pink-faced Detective Michelson, who walked in without waiting for her to reply. A slim Asian man accompanied him.
“Feeling any better?” Michelson asked her.
“Yes, much,” Phoebe said. As she scooted up to a seated position in the bed, she nearly yelped from how much her butt hurt.
“This is Detective Huang,” Michelson said, nodding toward his colleague. “As you can imagine, we’re both anxious to talk to you.”
“Of course,” Phoebe said. She hadn’t been forthcoming with the police previously, but she was now going to do everything she could to help. “Did you catch the killer yet?”
“Unfortunately, no, the person is still at large.”
Michelson took the chair closest to the bed, splaying open his legs; Huang dragged an extra chair across the room for himself.
“Why don’t you take us through everything—from the beginning,” Michelson said. Huang drew a notepad from his coat pocket and flipped the cover over. Both men reeked of fresh aftershave, and the smell, mixing with the gamy hospital odors, nearly made Phoebe retch.
“First, there’s one thing I need to tell you about Hutch,” Phoebe said. “He has a nephew in Allentown. Can someone contact him?”
“Yes, we’ve already been in touch with him,” Michelson said.
“And what about the dogs? Are they both okay?”
“The nephew has the little one. She’s fine.”
“But what about the retriever? I never saw her last night.”
Huang shot a glance at Michelson that wasn’t returned.
“Unfortunately,” Michelson said, “she was hit and killed by a car last night. She must have wandered out onto the road after Mr. Hutchinson was murdered.”