Frozen Stiff (27 page)

Chapter 42

I
’m pretty certain that Trina getting hit was no accident and every nerve in my body is screaming at me to turn tail and run. But I can’t leave Trina lying here on the sidewalk like this, so I shift into nurse mode and do a quick triage. I’m instantly drawn to her left leg, which is bent midthigh at an impossible angle. Her femur is broken and one jagged end of it has ruptured through her skin and her pants, leaving a large, gaping wound. It’s hard not to gawk at the injury but I don’t see any major bleeding so I remember my nurse’s training and focus on my ABCs instead.

Trina is unresponsive but breathing, though her breaths have a ragged gagging sound to them. I kneel down at the top of her head, place my hands below her jaw on either side, and push it up to better open her airway. Almost instantly her breathing quiets and improves.

“Are you a doctor or something?” the guy talking on the phone asks me.

“I’m a nurse.” I hear him relay this fact to the 911 operator. I look over at the second guy and say, “Can you take over here and hold her jaw like I am to keep her airway open?” The guy looks scared out of his mind but he kneels down beside me and lets me instruct him on what to do.

“Be careful that you don’t move her head too much,” I tell him as he positions his hands where mine were and thrusts Trina’s jaw open. “She might have a neck injury.” Next I feel along Trina’s neck for her carotid pulse. It’s there, but it’s very fast and thready. Clearly she is in shock and I’m relieved to hear the distant approach of sirens.

“Oh, shit,” the guy on the phone says. “Look at her leg. That can’t be good.” I assume he’s talking about the gaping wound until he says, “Is it supposed to be pumping like that?”

Quickly I look down at the leg. Sure enough, a small geyser of bright red blood is now rhythmically squirting out of the wound. Often times when an artery is ripped traumatically it will spasm for a period of time and clamp down on itself—a potentially lifesaving reaction that can temporarily contain bleeding. But as shock sets in the vessel eventually goes flaccid, triggering a hemorrhage. I suspect that is what has happened here and the fact that it might be the femoral artery that’s bleeding makes this a very deadly injury. Trina could bleed out in minutes.

Frantic, I move closer and rip her pants open to get a better look. The wound in her thigh is about three inches across and four inches long. I try to peer inside it but I can’t see very well by the dim light of the streetlamps. After hesitating for a second or two, aware that I am ungloved and about to come into contact with someone’s blood, I press my hand down on the wound to try and dampen the bleeding. But I might as well be the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike because the blood just keeps coming.

Fortunately a cop car pulls up and two officers get out and hurry over to us. “What happened?” one of them asks.

“Somebody hit her with their car,” I tell him. “I’m a nurse and she’s bleeding very badly from her leg here. How long before an ambulance gets here?”

“Five minutes or so,” the cop says.

“She’ll be dead by then if I can’t stop this bleeding,” I tell him. “Do you have a flashlight?”

The cop nods, pulls a flashlight from his belt, and hands it to me. I lift my hand and blood gushes forth in a frightening flow. I shine the light into the wound and what I see makes my heart skip a beat. Based on the size of the vessel I see pumping out blood, it is indeed Trina’s femoral artery that has been severed.

I plunge my free hand into the wound, making the people around me gasp. I feel around for the pumping ends of the artery and when I find it, I pinch my thumb and two fingers around it as tightly as I can. Trina’s blood is warm and slick on my fingers and I have a hard time maintaining my hold. But at least the blood has stopped pumping. I look at the feet of the people standing around me and see that the guy who was on his cell phone is wearing sneakers. “Quick,” I say to him. “Give me one of your shoelaces.”

The guy looks momentarily puzzled, but he squats down and starts undoing the lace from his left shoe. Moments later he hands it to me and it’s none too soon; the fingers I have clamped around the artery are starting to cramp like crazy.

“I can’t let go,” I say. “If I do, she’ll bleed to death. Someone needs to help me.”

“Tell me what to do,” one of the cops says.

“Put on some gloves,” I tell him.

He dashes back to his car and returns a moment later with gloves on. “Now what?” he asks.

“Loop the lace around my thumb and fingers here,” I say, showing him where. “Then cross the ends over like you’re tying the first step in a knot.”

He does so, his hands shaking.

“Okay, now leave the loop a bit loose and slide it down over my fingers as far as you can. We’re going to try to tie off the end of this artery the way you tie off a ribbon on a gift when someone has their finger on it. Understand?”

He nods and carefully slides the lace down my fingers, moving from one side to the other. My fingers are cramping so bad I can barely stand it and I want to tell him to hurry, but I don’t because I’m afraid it will make him more nervous. When he gets the lace down just below the level of Trina’s skin, or where her skin would be if her leg wasn’t gaping open, I tell him to shove the lace down inside the wound along my fingers as far as he can. He grimaces but does what I ask, pushing the lace down my fingers a millimeter at a time, until I feel one side of it slide off my fingertip and onto the artery.

“That side’s good,” I tell him. “Now do the other one.” He tries to push the lace in along my thumb—a much tighter fit than the finger side—but it keeps sticking to his gloved fingers whenever he tries to pull his hand away.

The ambulance finally arrives and the paramedics grab their gear, rush over to where we are, and stand there a second staring at us. Judging from the expressions on their faces, they are clearly puzzled. But to my great relief I see that one of them has a pair of scissors and a hemostat hanging from loops in his belt.

“Severed femoral artery,” I tell them. Then I focus on the guy with the tools. “Give me your hemostat.”

The paramedic hands me the hemostat and I take it in my free hand. “Get some large bore IVs going and check her pulse and airway again,” I tell them. The paramedics go to work and I turn my attention back to my police assistant. “You can take the lace off.”

The police officer does so and as soon as the lace is out of the way, I open the hemostat and shove it into the wound alongside my fingers. Summoning all of my OR skills, I feel blindly for the open tips of the hemostat until I have them in place around the vessel and just above my fingertips. Then I clamp the device closed.

I wait a few seconds, trying to see if I still feel the faint pulsing sensation in my thumb and fingers. I don’t, and warily I let go of the vessel and remove my hand. The bleeding has stopped.

“I got it,” I say, breathing a sigh of relief and several people in the crowd around me applaud. I realize the number of gawkers has grown considerably and then I see that one of them has a large TV-type camera propped on his shoulder. And it’s aimed right at me.

“Nice work,” one of the paramedics says. “You may have just saved her life.”

“I hope so,” I say. “But you need to get her to the nearest hospital right away or she’s going to lose that leg. Be careful you don’t jostle that hemostat when you move her.”

The paramedics have made quick work of establishing IV lines and stabilizing Trina’s neck with a cervical collar and they are almost ready to load her into the ambulance. I stand up and turn my back to the guy with the camera, looking around for something to use to clean the blood off my hands. An officer sees my dilemma and steers me over to his car, where he hands me a container of antiseptic wipes from his trunk.

The guy with the camera follows and I finally whirl on him and say, “Turn that damned thing off, you vulture.”

“Are you kidding, lady? After what you just did back there, you’re a hero. This is a huge story. I make my living as a stringer and I can sell this footage to one of the local stations for a bundle.”

I want to rip the frigging camera from his shoulder and smash it onto the ground, or better yet, rip his gonads from his body and smash those on the ground. But I realize that reacting too strongly will only attract more attention to myself and possibly make the cops a little too curious. Besides, I hope to be long gone before the asshole’s footage ever gets aired.

As I try to wipe the blood from my hands, the cop says, “Nice work, lady.”

“Thanks.”

“Did you see what happened?”

I nod and give the camera guy a dirty look. The cop senses what I want and turns to the guy and says, “Give her a couple of minutes, Rod, okay?”

Rod shrugs, lowers his camera, and then makes his way over to the ambulance to get his drama shot.

When he’s out of earshot, I tell the cop, “Somebody in a white SUV ran that woman down on purpose. He aimed straight for her.”

“Are you sure?” he says, looking skeptical. “You don’t think it was just a drunk who lost control or something like that?”

“I’m positive,” I tell him. “Somebody tried to kill her.”

The cop takes out a notepad and a pen and asks me, “What’s your name? I’ll need it for my report.”

I hesitate just a second, remembering that I may be a fugitive on the run. “It’s Rebecca Taylor,” I tell him.

He scribbles it down and says, “Stay here, Ms. Taylor. I’ll be right back to get a statement from you but I need to give the other guys a quick heads-up so they can follow the bus to the hospital.”

He heads back to the crowd around the ambulance and as soon as I’m sure he isn’t looking my way, I hurry back to my car, get in, and drive away.

Chapter 43

A
s I maneuver through the streets of Chicago, I keep a wary eye out for any police cars that may be on my tail. Fortunately I make it back onto the freeway and out of town without incident.

I head back into Wisconsin, frightened and unsure of where to go. I consider returning to Carl Withers’s house; if nothing else it will at least give me a place to hide until things blow over. And I could call Richmond or Izzy from there using Withers’s phone to let them know what I’ve found out. But then I realize that if I call them from the house phone, it will be easy for them to trace where the call came from and find me. And if they can find me, I’m afraid anyone else might be able to, too.

Finally I decide that the quicker I can clear Hurley’s name, the quicker the investigation will move in the direction it needs to be headed. And if I’m looking for somewhere to be safe, sitting in a jail cell surrounded by police seems like a reasonable solution.

With my mind made up, I steer the car back toward Sorenson. It takes me nearly three hours of driving to get there and when I pull into town, I head straight for the police station. It’s just shy of eleven o’clock when I park in the public lot. Feeling exhausted, I grab the e-mails that Trina gave me and stuff them into the pocket of my sweatpants. Then I head inside where I see Heidi Cronen, one of the evening dispatchers, seated at the desk behind the window.

She looks up at me with a smile in preparation for making her standard greeting but when she sees it’s me, her smile disappears.

“Mattie!” She hits the buzzer that lets me open the door beside her window and enter the area behind it. “Oh my God, are you okay?” she asks.

“I’m fine, tired, but in one piece. Is Bob Richmond around by any chance?”

“He’s not in the station at the moment, but I can call him.”

“Is Hurley here?”

She makes a face and shakes her head. “I’ve heard he’s in custody,” she says. “But not here. Let me call Richmond for you. Maybe he can give you more information.”

She makes the call, tells Richmond I’m at the station, and then disconnects. “He’ll be here in a few minutes.” She looks me over from head to toe and says, “I heard about everything that’s been going on. It sounds like you’ve been through quite the shit storm.”

“It’s been interesting, that’s for sure.”

“Do you think Hurley is guilty?”

“No,” I say without hesitation. “I’m certain he isn’t. But knowing it and proving it are two different things.”

We pass the next couple of minutes indulging in polite conversation, updating one another on family status and sharing some minor gossip. Then Richmond arrives, coming in from the back of the station.

“Mattie, are you okay?” he says when he sees me.

“I am, but I have a lot to tell you.”

“Is that blood on your hands?” he asks, staring at my fingers.

I look down and see that I still have traces of Trina’s blood in the crevices around my nails. “It is,” I tell him. “But it’s not mine. It belongs to a woman in Chicago who was run down by a car.”

Richmond’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Let’s go in the back and talk,” he says.

I follow Richmond to a room that serves double duty as both a conference and interrogation room. It’s a pretty comfy spot, bearing no resemblance to the sparsely furnished, bare interrogation rooms you see on TV, other than the fact that there is a camera mounted in the ceiling designed to record whatever takes place.

Richmond directs me to one of the chairs around the table and says, “Do you want something to drink? Or a snack?”

“A cup of coffee would be great,” I tell him.

He nods, says, “Be right back,” and disappears from the room. He returns a few minutes later carrying a plastic tray bearing two Styrofoam cups filled with coffee, a jar of Coffee-mate, a couple packets of sugar, and some spoons.

I fix my coffee by adding a heaping spoonful of Coffee-mate, hoping it will cut the acid taste I know our cop-house coffee usually has. Richmond does the same with his but he also adds three packs of sugar to his cup.

“You really need to learn to do without that sugar,” I tell him. “Or at least switch to the artificial stuff.”

He sighs, stirring his coffee. “Yeah, I know. Little steps,” he says. He looks at me then with an apologetic expression. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there at the gym yesterday. But Izzy called me to come up to your office and I kind of forgot about the whole gym thing.”

I dismiss his apology with a wave of my hand. “Don’t worry about it. What’s done is done.”

He takes a pad and pen out of his shirt pocket and says, “Okay, where do we start?”

“How about telling me where Hurley is?”

He shakes his head. “He’s in a secure location for now. That’s all I’m willing to tell you at this point.”

I let out a sigh of exasperation.

“Why don’t you start by telling me what happened at the gym yesterday?” Richmond prompts.

Resigned to having to give information if I have any hope of getting any, I tell him how Hurley and I hid out at the cabin, leaving out the part about how we sort of slept together. Next I tell him about our trip to Chicago, my interview of the people at
Behind the Scenes
and my suspicion that Ackerman may have been more than just a boss to Callie Dunkirk, and after a moment of thoughtful debate, I also tell him about our search of Callie’s apartment. I watch Richmond’s face carefully as I talk, looking for hints of any disapproval or surprise, not knowing how much of this Hurley may have already shared, but his expression remains placid and neutral. When I mention Callie’s diary, he nods and says, “We found the diary under the seat of your car.”

Next I tell him about Helen Baxter and the man she saw staking out Minniver’s neighborhood. When I explain how I got the name of the person who rented the car, he gives me a look of grudging admiration, but says nothing. Then I tell him about our trip to Stateville Prison, our talk with Dilles, our discovery that the only visitor Dilles ever had was his lawyer, Connor Smith, and how Hurley figured out that the name Leon Lindquist is an anagram of Quinton Dilles.

My story is somewhat convoluted and I feel like I’m leaving a lot of loose ends hanging, but if Richmond is confused by any of it, he doesn’t show it. He just keeps taking notes and listening.

I explain how Hurley dropped me off at his friend’s house and then headed for Chicago to talk to Smith. Finally Richmond halts my story to ask questions.

“How did you leave there if Hurley took his car?”

Looking abashed, I explain how I took Carl Withers’s car and watch as Richmond sighs and shakes his head.

“You stole the man’s car?” he says, looking chagrined.

“I’d call it more of a borrow,” I say, wincing.

He shakes his head again and says, “Continue.”

I tell him how I saw the cops with Hurley and ask how they caught him.

“We had a BOLO out for him and his car,” Richmond explains. “An alert statey saw the car, matched the plate to our BOLO, and pulled Hurley over.”

“I see.” I realize then that it might have been fortuitous that Hurley left me behind. Otherwise neither of us would have made it to Chicago and I never would have uncovered the information I did. Of course, it might also have meant that Trina would still be alive and well.

I move on to tell him about my meeting with Smith, and the subsequent discussion I had with Trina afterward. Then I tell him how the poor woman was run down.

“So you’re wanted by the Chicago police at this point?” he asks, looking worried.

I shrug. “I suppose. But all I did was avoid making a statement. I’m pretty sure they don’t think I had anything to do with her attack.”

“These e-mails the woman gave you, what did they say?” he asks.

“I don’t know. I never had a chance to read them.” I dig the papers out of my pocket and hand them to him. “Trina said they contained evidence that Smith was communicating with Mike Ackerman. I know Hurley seems pretty convinced that Dilles is behind all this, but I like Mike Ackerman for it. Though there is one other mitigating factor.”

“What’s that?”

“Trina said Smith was having an affair with Dilles’s wife right before she was killed.”

Richmond sets his pen down and runs his fingers through his hair. “So I’m confused. You’re saying that both Dilles and Ackerman have connections to this lawyer . . .” He pauses and flips through his notebook but I fill the blank in for him.

“Connor Smith.”

“Yeah, okay. But you don’t think any of them committed the murders.”

“No, for the same reason Hurley couldn’t have done it. They’re all too tall. I believe Izzy shared his findings with you, that the person who stabbed Callie was most likely short and left-handed.”

“Yeah, but that’s theory, not conclusive evidence.”

“But there’s more.” I then explain to him my theory about the size of the murderer, mentioning the position of the seat in Callie’s car, the size of the window in my basement and how much trouble I had getting through it, Hurley’s description of the height of the man who tried to abduct me. Then I realize that the burns from the Taser are on the left side of my neck, which would make sense if the person who came up behind me was left-handed.

I start to add this fact to my litany but Richmond gets up from his chair and says, “Stay here. I need to make some phone calls.”