A Wee Dose of Death (21 page)

Off the Mountain

P
ulling a makeshift travois down a mountainside across deep snow is not easy. We hadn't gone much farther than the Robert Frost spot. Harper wasn't breathing as heavily as I was—a northern winter is a dead giveaway. Little puffs of mist came out of his nose or mouth every four or five seconds. I, on the other hand, looked like a steam engine, with an exhalation gushing out in front of me every second or so. I hoped maybe he wouldn't notice.

“Do you have enough breath to tell me what happened? Did you recognize the person who did this?”

“No. He had on a black ski mask.”

Harper's stride faltered. Maybe there was a fallen branch under the snow.

“He was short,” I said, “and he talked funny, like he was trying to disguise his voice.”

Harper took another few steps. This wasn't like cross-country at all. With all this weight behind us digging into the
snow, there was no way we could glide, but I knew that if we took off our skis, we'd sink up above our knees. “Do you think he might be someone you'd recognize if you heard his voice?”

“I hadn't thought of that.” I ran a brain scan over the citizens of Hamelin, but couldn't think of anyone. “He was about the same height as Mr. Pitcairn.” Harper had met my next-door neighbor. “But I know it wasn't him.”

Harper didn't ask why; he just waited for me to get my thoughts together. He seemed to be thinking, hard.

“With the mask, I couldn't see much skin, but his lips looked . . . young somehow.”

“Young?”

“You know. There weren't any wrinkles.”

“Good observation. What about eye color?”

“Dark, not light, but that was about all I could tell. He wasn't wearing glasses.”

It kept on this way for quite a while. I managed to tell him most of what had happened, leaving out any mention of Dirk, of course.

He already knew about Karaline's connection with Wantstring, and he seemed to accept without comment my description of Dr. W's squirreling habits.

“He had ballpoint pens—green ones—but nothing to write on,” he told me as we took an extremely short rest break. I knelt beside Karaline's left hand, but she seemed to be sleeping still.

Harper moved to Karaline's right side, and Dirk simply stepped across Karaline. I had to move up closer to her head so my busy ghost wouldn't run into me. I pulled off my glove and laid a hand on her forehead. Cool, but then, in this weather everything seemed cool. I hoped her toes weren't freezing.

Harper continued with his thought. “There weren't any writing materials in the cabin, no laptop, nothing like that.”

“He had to be using paper. The charge wouldn't last long on a laptop.” I told him what Karaline had said about a special project. “Do you think whoever murdered him took something he might have been writing?” It certainly made sense to me. I just wondered what he'd been working on. Whatever it was, it probably held the answer to why Dr. Wantstring was murdered.

“Could be. He was wearing a backpack.”

I couldn't remember having mentioned that fact. “How did you know that?”

He moved back up to the front of our rig. “I passed the guy on my way up here.”

“And you didn't stop him?”

“He was just a guy skiing.” He bent to lift his side of the jury-rigged travois. “Have you caught your breath? We need to press on. I don't want her getting frostbite on our shift.”

Dirk stayed beside Karaline the entire time. I glanced back a couple of times, and his hand was either on her forehead or on the bandage at her waist. The third time I looked back, it seemed as if both his hands had disappeared, had merged with her wound. It was a good thing he didn't have to watch where he put his feet; he never would have been able to manage. He didn't even seem to be moving his legs. He just sort of hovered there beside her. I couldn't stare too long, though. I needed to watch where I was skiing. Some of us had legs that had to move.

Not that they were moving very fast. We tried at one point to take off our skis and pull her that way, but we sank so far down into the snow cover with each step it was like slogging through mud two feet deep. “We should have brought snowshoes,” I said.

Harper didn't even bother to answer.

Once Harper could get cell service, he called for an
ambulance to meet us on the outskirts of town. The paramedics swooped into action the moment we reached them. Dirk had to back out of the way, but I could see in his eyes how little he wanted to give up his contact with Karaline. I answered their questions as best I could. After only a minute or so, Harper touched my arm. “I'll get my car,” he said. “Wait here.”

“No. I'm going with Karaline.”

“Sorry,” said an ambulance attendant. “You can follow later. We're taking her to the Arkane hospital.” They hoisted the gurney between the yawning doors, and the bright artificial light inside swallowed my friend. They jumped in after her, and I stood alone, beside the remains of the travois, watching the red taillights of the ambulance as it pulled out of sight. Only I wasn't really alone. Dirk touched my shoulder, and I felt a cool stream of comfort, even through my winter parka.

Before Harper returned with his car, I dismantled the skis, wrapped myself in the shawl—it was really cold with only a silk tee on underneath the parka now that I wasn't working to haul Karaline—and thanked Dirk for his service. “I think you saved her life.”

“I didna know what else to do.” He shook his head, and the trees I could see behind him seemed to waver a bit. “It felt . . . It seemed . . . right somehow to lay my hands upon her.” He raised those hands and stared at them. “I couldna see my own hands when I touched her.”

“I know,” I said in a dry tone. “That's because they went inside her.”

At his look of confusion, I told him what I'd seen on the trail. I didn't really believe it. But then again, I had a ghost attached to a shawl that was woven in the fourteenth century. If I believed that, why not believe anything? Like the fact that the shawl fit my shoulders just fine now, but for the last
few hours it had been big enough to support Karaline's six-foot frame when she needed it and the corners had been skinny enough to tie around a ski. It made no sense. But then again, neither did having a ghost.

*   *   *

We asked for
Karaline at the emergency room desk and were directed to a small waiting room. I shed my parka, but kept the shawl around me, not because it was cold—it wasn't. The hospital was heated like a Turkish bath. But all I had on was my silk tee. Anyway, I wanted to keep Dirk close by. Awful things happened when he wasn't around. Some time later—I didn't have my watch on and there was no clock on the wall—a doctor in blue scrubs entered. After we identified ourselves, he asked, “Are you a relative of the patient?”

Without a qualm, without a quaver in my voice, I said, “I'm her sister.” Well, I almost was. Sort of. Would have been if only we'd had the same mother. Harper's hand twitched slightly where it rested on the small of my back.

“Your sister is already in surgery,” the doctor said. “I attended her in the emergency room, but I'm not a surgeon.” He bit at his lower lip. “You told the paramedics she'd been shot at least three hours before you finally got her off the mountain. Is that right?”

“Yes,” Harper said. “Why?”

“There just seemed to be too little blood loss for that type of injury, and I've never seen so little swelling of tissue in a gunshot wound.”

“That's good, though,” I said. “Isn't it?”

The doctor's face cleared all of a sudden. “You must have packed it with snow. That's what you did. That could explain it. Good thinking.”

Harper looked over at me, and his brow furrowed.

“I wonder why the paramedics didn't mention that,” the doctor continued.

“They must have been busy trying to keep her alive,” I said.

The doctor rubbed the back of his neck and turned to leave. “That snow saved her life. You did well.”

“Thank you,” I said, looking as innocent as I possibly could. The doctor probably thought I was talking to him, but I was making eye contact with Dirk, who hovered just to the doctor's left side. “We did the best we could with what was available.” Dirk raised his hands again and looked at them in wonder.

“Don't worry too much. One of our best surgeons was on call. Your sister is in good hands.”

I wondered what he would have said if the second-best—or seventh-best—had been the one on call.

A nurse in purple scrubs walked into the room. “Are these yours?” She held up my bloodstained sweatshirt and a hand-knitted scarf. My kilt pin caught the light.

I took the sweatshirt. My hankies were stuck to it with dried blood.

Harper accepted his scarf back. There was surprisingly little blood on it. I smiled at Dirk.

Ten Hours in Limbo

W
e thanked the doctor, and the nurse led us to the surgery waiting room. I entered the room, but she detained Harper. “We'll need to have each one of you fill out a Gunshot Wound Report Form.”

Funny how you can hear capital letters in people's voices
, I thought.

“Come with me, sir.” She glanced at me. “Just wait here. Someone will come to get you in a little while.”

“I don't want to leave, in case I miss Karaline.”

The nurse looked at me, and I thought I saw pity in her eyes. “She'll be in surgery at least eight hours. Maybe ten.”

“Ten hours? You have to be kidding.”

She started to reply, but Harper held up a hand. “It was an abdominal wound, Peggy, and no telling what else was involved. They'll have a lot of cleanup to do in there.”

“Cleanup?” I hated sounding so dense.

“The intestines are in there, stomach, things like that. Anyplace the bullet went through spilled its contents. It'll have to be cleaned and sewn up. Then they'll have to clean out the whole abdominal cavity.” And on that happy note, he told me he'd be back as soon as he could.

Like I had anything else to do but wait. And worry. By this time, Karaline must have already been in surgery for an hour. I put in a quick call to Gilda and asked her to let the folks as the Logg Cabin know what was going on. The whole time I was talking I kept hoping the surgeon would come through the door with a report on Karaline's complete recovery. I knew it wasn't going to happen, but I couldn't stop myself from wishing.

I hated to admit it even to myself, but I had a deep-seated fear she wasn't going to make it. About the third time I bounced out of my seat to pace around the otherwise-empty waiting room, Dirk planted himself in front of me.

“Sit. Bide a while,” he said. “Ye canna help Mistress Karaline by falling into a hundred pieces yoursel', now, can ye?”

A million pieces, I thought. I'd tried to tell him once about how much a million was, but he hadn't quite grasped the concept of a number that large.
Like sand grains on a beach
, I'd said. But Dirk had never seen the ocean. A hundred was more than enough as far as he was concerned.
We ha' no need for any more of a number
, was his comment, and I hadn't been able to answer him. I didn't have an answer now, either. I leaned my head slowly, tentatively forward until my hairline touched his plaid, right next to the branch of antler that formed his kilt pin. I felt his capable hands flowing gently over my shoulders. “God bide ye,” he said. “She will be well,” and I felt inestimably comforted.

*   *   *

Harper returned from
the bowels of the hospital maybe half an hour later, accompanied by a woman in a gray suit. She gathered me up and ushered me out into the hall.

At the door I turned back. “Stay here, will you?”

“I canna. Ye have the shawl.”

“Don't worry,” Harper said. “I'll wait for you.”

Something in his tone of voice sounded . . . uh . . .
weighted
somehow, as if there were a meaning I wasn't privy to. I nodded, waited for Dirk to drift through the doorway, and followed the gray suit down the hall. She took me back to the same place Harper had been, or so she said, where I filled out a form as well. They apparently wouldn't take Harper's word for it since all his knowledge was secondhand. He hadn't seen the shot. He hadn't seen the shooter in action. I wondered if they'd ask Karaline to fill out a form once she was back from surgery.

I sure hoped I'd never be called on to testify in a trial. How, with a ghost as an almost constant companion, could I possibly tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I wrote my highly edited answers, handed the paper to the woman, and we followed her back to the waiting room where I sank onto a hard couch facing Harper, who sat on an equally hard one. He didn't say a word, other than, “Welcome back.”

I nodded. A few minutes later, Dirk, his kilt swirling around his legs, stopped at the end of the little table between the two couches. He looked at Harper, whose forehead rested in his hands, and at me. He raised an eyebrow.

What?
I mouthed.

He crooked his forefinger and wiggled it at me by way of answer. “Huh,” I said without uttering a sound.

Dirk pointed to Harper, pointed to me, and back at Harper.
“Go to him. Let him comfort ye,” he said, and his voice was so soft I could almost feel his thoughts about Peigi, his ladylove—so long dead, but never
really
dead since she lived in his heart.

I stood, almost in a daze, bypassed the coffee table, and sat next to Harper. He raised his head from his hands. His charcoal eyes were shadowed, sorrowful. He really had lost a lot of weight recently. He put an arm around me and pulled me closer against his side. I nestled my head against his shoulder, watching as my sweet, gentle, lonely ghost turned his back and walked to the other side of the room.

*   *   *

Harper stepped out
of the room and approached the little desk just down the hall. The volunteer behind it looked up expectantly. “We're going to grab a bite to eat. If there's any word about Ms. Logg, would you be able to send word to the cafeteria?”

“Of course. I'll be happy to do that. I'm sure you and your wife must be very worried.”

That sounded so good to Harper, he didn't correct her. He just collected Peggy and headed downstairs. They both picked chicken potpie. It was surprisingly good.

After the first few bites, Harper asked, “So, what's been going on for you other than all”—he waved his hand around—“all this?”

Peggy swallowed, wiped her lips, and thought for a moment. “You saw Scamp? The little Scottie dog?”

Harper nodded and relaxed as he listened to the saga—rehab, Sherpa bag, dog on the ottoman in the window.

When she wound down, he asked, “Anything else?”

“No . . . Oh, yeah. Karaline and I went to UVM Monday before we knew Dr. W was dead.”

“Why? You plan to enroll?”

She flicked her fingers at him, as if they were dripping with water. “It was a side trip, really. Karaline had to go to Kittredge Foodservice Equipment in Winooski to get a mixer, but Chester Kerr—he's the manager—said they didn't have any and there wouldn't be one for another eight days. Because of the storm.”

Harper nodded. Peggy wrinkled her forehead. “I guess I'll have to go back up there Tuesday and pick it up for her. I'll get D—” She looked up over his shoulder at something. “I'll get somebody to go with me.”

“Who?”

“Oh, my dad or somebody. So, anyway, we took a side trip to UVM so Karaline could look in on Dr. W, only he wasn't there, of course.”

Harper loved watching her face. It was so animated. He only half listened to her until she mentioned a six-foot invisible rabbit. “What did you say?”

She looked at him and took a last bite of her potpie. “I said that PD said they'd almost called her Rabbit instead, because she was always invisible.”

“Called who Rabbit?”

“Stripe. Haven't you been listening?”

“Sorry. I got confused there. Why was PD called Stripe?”

“No. PD stands for Polka Dot, and Stripe was a childhood nickname.” Peggy bunched up her napkin. “I'm done here. Can we go back upstairs now?”

*   *   *

It took seven
more hours. I was pulled out of sleep by Dirk's excited comment. “The chirurgeon is coming!” A woman of medium build appeared, wiping her forehead with a green square of cloth that matched her scrubs. I swung my feet off
the highly uncomfortable couch and sat up. As I did so, I had the distinct impression that my head had been pillowed in Harper's lap, but by that time he was already on his feet.

She gave us her name, which I promptly forgot, and motioned to Harper to sit back down. She took a seat herself on the facing couch. “I removed one intact bullet,” she told us.

I nodded. “There was only one shot.”

She looked at me, registering my comment, but continued with her own train of thought. “From everything I could see, the bullet does not appear to have fragmented inside Ms. Logg's body.” I reached for Harper's hand. That possibility had never occurred to me.

She looked at Harper. “Did you fill out the gunshot wound report form yet?”

One-handed, since I was clutching his other hand, he pulled out his ID and showed it to her. “Yes. I'm a police officer. I know the ropes.”

“What about you?”

I nodded and raised my spare hand, palm open wide. “I never saw a gunshot wound before today,” I said, “except in movies.”

I couldn't quite interpret her expression, but I was fairly certain she thought the idea of a
realistic movie
was an oxymoron.

“Have you contacted the rest of your family?”

My
family? Why would I do that? Oh, wait. My family. I was her sister.

Harper looked at me. I shook my head, terrified suddenly that she was going to say Karaline was dying.

“They'll take her to the intensive care unit,” Dr. Whatever-Her-Name-Was told us. “She can't have visitors yet, but I'm guardedly optimistic.”

I pulled away from Harper. “What on earth does that mean?”

The surgeon clasped her hands together in front of her. “It means I'm fairly certain she won't die tonight. I'm sorry I can't predict the future.” She gave me a minute to pull my last hankie out of my parka pocket and blow my nose. It was really gross by this point, but I figured the doctor had seen worse. So had Harper, probably, being a cop. “Your sister is healthy, well nourished, and appears to have a strong heart. It may take her a long time to recover completely, but—as I said—I am optimistic.”

“Thank you, Dr. Marston.” Harper apparently did not have trouble remembering names. “Can you tell us how much internal damage there was?”

“The incision had to be much longer than I ordinarily would like to see, but the bullet did not appear to have impacted any major organs other than the intestines and diaphragm.”

“She could hardly breathe,” I said.

The doctor nodded. “Was the shooter below her?”

“I . . .” I had to think for a minute. “The cabin is up two steps, and the clearing slopes downward from the cabin before it rises quite a ways up to where the path continues down the mountain. He was at the base of that rise.”

The doctor shook her head. “The trajectory went from lower left to upper right.”

“She was reaching way up over her head when it happened.”

Her face relaxed, as if she just solved a major problem. “That would account for it.” She wiped her face again. “Her liver was intact, as I'm sure you know.”

Harper nodded. I looked blank. He bent his head a little closer to mine. “If the bullet had hit her liver, she would have bled to death before we got her out of the cabin.”

I went a little limp at that. If she'd been standing in a slightly different position, an inch or two to one side . . .

“Spleen, stomach, everything else important was untouched.”

“What would be a
spleeeen
?” Dirk's question was only halfhearted. He knew perfectly well I couldn't answer him.

The doctor, unaware of this small interruption, kept talking. “The bullet pierced a number of folds of her intestine and went through the colon multiple times. That was what took most of the time to clean up and repair. It lodged in a rib, resulting in a longitudinal fracture.” She drew her finger along her right side in illustration. “I can arrange to have you see the bullet in the X-rays, as long as your sister agrees.”

I didn't give a hoot about seeing Karaline's rib. “How soon will I be able to see her?”

She looked at me with great compassion. Or maybe she was just tired after fishing around for a bullet and sewing up my friend's gut for ten hours. “Let's get her through the rest of the night, why don't we? You can call in the morning.”

“I don't want to wait that long,” I blurted out.

Harper looked at his watch. “Can we call around seven?”

Dr. Whosits nodded.

“Good,” Harper said, and squeezed my arm gently. “It's after one in the morning. We can wait a few more hours.”

It sounded like an eternity, but I noticed he'd said “we.”

Dr. Question Mark seemed to think we'd leave, go home, get a good night's sleep. She had to be out of her mind. I had no intention of leaving the hospital until I could see Karaline, be sure she was alive.

Harper agreed with the doctor, though. He thanked her profusely and turned to me. “Peggy,” he said, and my knees went a little wobbly to hear my name on his lips, “whoever that was who shot at you and Karaline, he's—”

“He wasn't shooting at me.”