Hurt (17 page)

“Is that right?” the fat man said. “Ma’am do you know who is in charge around here right now?”

The tall woman placed a hand on his shoulder and shook her head.

“Samuels, I don’t think—”

“You don’t think what?” Nana snapped. She’d heard that tone enough from people coming and going, acting like she didn’t have the sense God gave a goat. “That I don’t know what goes on around this place? You listen to me, young lady. I know everything.”

“Now Nana…”

“Jamie, let the woman talk,” the man said, interrupting the lanky redhead. “If she knows, why not ask? Besides, it might save us from having to get a subpoena for employee records.”

Nana stiffened as he spoke.

“Subpoena?” she repeated, feeling her stomach drop. “You’re a cop, aren’t you?”

The man nodded.

“Yes ma’am. I’m Detective Samuels and this is Detective Tate. We’re with the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office.”

Those bitch nurses,
Nana thought
.
They had called the cops on her. It had to be over that cookie she’d taken off Maggie Neal’s plate at lunch today when she’d thought no one was looking. Nana darted her eyes back and forth between the two cops. She was fairly certain that she could outrun the fat man, but the Amazon would have her on the floor and hogtied before she made it to the nurse’s station.

“I see,” she drawled, weighing her options.

“Are you kidding me, Samuels? No, you’re not bringing an eighty year-old woman into this—even if she wasn’t Nicole’s grandmother. We can wait for whoever is in charge to get back to the nurse’s station and see if our guy even still works here.”

“Who’s your guy?” Nana asked, happy to see that maybe she wasn’t who the cops were after.

“Jerry Reynolds,” the fat man said, earning a nasty look from the tall woman.

Well, hot damn.

“Yeah, he still works here, all right. I’m not surprised you’re here after him. He’s a shifty one,” Nana said and then motioned with one hand. “He was in here twenty minutes ago trying to get me to take those poison pills. He’d be in Charlie Tucker’s room by now. Two-fourteen.”

The two cops looked at one another and then the Amazon pointed to Nana.

“Okay. We’re going to go talk to him, then. You stay here. I mean it.”

Nana smiled sweetly as the woman turned and left the room. She counted to twenty and then went to the doorway, peering down the hallway in the direction she’d sent the cops. Nana watched as they made it to Charlie’s room. Instead of going on in like she thought they would, the two stood out in the hallway. The fat man leaned against the wall and crossed his arms as the Amazon seemed to be whispering angrily at him.

“What’s going on?”

Nana looked across the hall to see old man Hicks looking out from his room. She was about to tell him to go mind his own damn business when she noticed he’d stopped looking down the hallway and was instead staring at her. Leering was more like it. Nana looked down and realized that she had only her nightgown on. Cursing the old pervert under her breath, Nana stepped back inside her room and quickly donned her robe.

She stepped back to the door just in time to hear shouting coming from down the hallway. Nana jumped back as Jerry Reynolds came running past, the fat cop in quick pursuit. She couldn’t help but notice blood running down the fat man’s face and onto his light blue, short-sleeved shirt. The cop tackled Jerry at the knees and the two went down to the floor, smearing blood everywhere as they slid across the white and blue-checkered linoleum. A second later the Amazon came rushing down the hallway and joined in on the fray.

A glint of metal caught Nana’s eye and she looked away from the spectacle to see a set of keys lying in the middle of the hallway. She recognized them to be the same keys that Jerry usually kept hanging off his belt. Nana gingerly stepped out into the hallway and picked up the keys, thinking that they must have gotten knocked off Jerry’s belt when the fat cop tackled him.

Chapter Twenty-Three

After leaving Nicole’s grandmother safely in her room, Jamie followed her partner down the long, narrow hallway, still fuming at the fact they had involved her in the first place. “You’re not going to have to wait for pneumonia to kill you, Samuels. I’m going to do it myself as soon as we get out of here.”

“What? Get your panties out of a wad. You’re just mad because it was your girlfriend’s grandma. If it’d been anyone else, you’d have asked the same questions yourself, and you know it.” Samuels stopped in the hallway. “Here’s two-fourteen.”

“I don’t know it,” Jamie said, trying to keep her voice low. “We should wait for him to come out.” Samuels nodded and leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms. “And for the record, I wouldn’t have asked an eighty-something year-old dementia patient to identify a potential witness,” Jamie continued. “What were you—”

Jamie broke off as the door to room two-fourteen opened and a tall, dark haired man in blue scrubs walked out pushing a tall, metal cart. He stopped as he saw Jamie and Samuels.

“Hi, can I help you?” he inquired and leaned the clipboard he was holding in one hand down against the top of the cart.

“Jerry Reynolds?” Samuels asked, pushing off from the wall. As the man nodded, he continued. “I’m Detective Samuels and this is Detective Tate. We’re with the Hamilton Coun—” He was cut short as Reynolds suddenly threw the clipboard at his head. “Fuck!” Samuels shouted and brought his hands up to his face as the hard edge of the clipboard crashed against the bridge of his nose, sending blood spurting.

Jamie rushed at Reynolds, sidestepping Samuels as he doubled over. The male nurse gripped the handle of the medicine cart and charged at Jamie, slamming it into her side and knocking her hard against the wall. Jamie inhaled sharply as she felt the painful crunch of a rib giving way. She saw a bright flash of white and then felt the world tilt slightly. Blinking back tears as she struggled to catch a breath, Jamie looked up to see her partner tackling Reynolds and then the two men begin to roll around on the white and blue-checkered floor.

She put one hand on the medicine cart to steady herself and then, ignoring the stinging pain in her side, sprinted the best she could down the hallway. Jamie slid to her knees as she reached the men, grabbing a struggling Reynolds by the hair and pushing his head against the floor. Throwing her knee against his back, she turned to Samuels and wheezed out, “Cuff him!” With her free hand, Jamie reached for Reynolds’ flailing left arm and brought it down to a bloody Samuels.

“Got it,” Samuels growled and Jamie eased off of Reynolds’ back. She rolled over to a sitting position and glared at both men as she exhaled a painful breath of air.

“Goddamn,” Jamie panted.

“So, I think it’s safe to say Jerry Reynolds is more than just a witness.” Samuels grunted and stood, offering a hand out to help Jamie up. She accepted and then, standing, frowned and wiped her hand against her pants.

“Damn, Samuels, you’re getting blood everywhere.”

“Oh my God, what’s happened?”

Jamie glanced over to see a heavy-set woman in dark blue scrubs running toward them from the other end of the hallway. She winced as she unclipped the badge from her belt and held it up.

“Police,” she said in between panting breaths.

“Jerry?” the nurse said, looking down on the ground at a handcuffed Reynolds. She looked back to Jamie and then to Samuels. “Oh my God, you’re bleeding.”

Jamie saw three more nurses come running around the corner and wondered where the hell they had been ten minutes ago. The heavy-set nurse—Brenda, according to the name embroidered on her top—looked at the newcomers and went into take charge mode.

“Tina, you and John start checking the rooms on this hall. Do a headcount and make sure all the residents are okay,” Brenda said pointing. “Lisa, we need to get all this blood cleaned up.” The nurse looked sternly at Jamie and Samuels. “I don’t know what exactly has happened here, but you cannot be in the hallway like this.”

Samuels bent down, grabbed Reynolds by the shirt and pulled him off the floor. Jamie stepped between them and shook her head at Samuels as she took hold of the other man’s arm.

“I got him. Do something about that,” she said, motioning to the steady stream of blood flowing from his nose.

Samuels nodded and accepted a white bath towel that the nurse named Lisa handed him as she walked out of the nearest room. “I think the bastard broke my nose,” he grumbled as he held the towel to his face.

“This way,” Brenda said. “I’ll go unlock the administrator’s office. It’ll be a lot more…private.”

Jamie pushed aside the ache in her ribs as she tightened her grip on Reynolds’ arm and leaned in close. “So help me, if you try to run or do anything stupid from here on out, I will jerk a knot in your ass,” she whispered, repeating the phrase she’d heard earlier in the day.

Reynolds grunted but made no other response as he walked forward, following in between Jamie and Samuels. As they strode through the hallways, bypassing more than a few curious residents, Jamie saw Samuels reach for the radio that was surprisingly still firmly attached to his thick, brown leather belt and call in to dispatch.

“Here we go,” Brenda said, opening an office door and waving them in. “Now, would someone like to tell me what the hell just happened?”

Jamie sat Reynolds in a floral-patterned high-back chair and then held a hand to the throbbing pain in her left side as she looked apologetically at the charge nurse.

“I’m sorry for all this. We simply stopped in to ask Mr. Reynolds here a few questions about his brother. If I had any idea that this was going to happen, we would have gone about it a different way.”

Brenda briefly made eye contact with a sullen Reynolds and then glanced back at Jamie.

“I would think so,” she huffed. “I know you, don’t I?”

Jamie nodded.

“I’ve been here a few times before to see—”

“Mrs. Parker’s gone,” Nurse Lisa exclaimed, rushing into the office.

“What do you mean she’s gone?” Brenda asked.

“She’s gone,” Lisa answered, shaking her head. “We’ve checked all the halls. We can’t find her anywhere.”

“Wait,” Jamie said, feeling her mouth go dry as she stepped away from the chair. “Mrs. Parker? In room two hundred?”

The two nurses both nodded at the same time.

“Yes, that’s right. Do you know her?”

“She’s my girlfr…my friend’s grandmother,” Jamie answered, casting a glance at Samuels. “We just saw her. She was in her room.”

“Well, she’s gone now,” Lisa said. “She must have found a way out somehow while all this was happening. She’s a runner, you know.”

“No,” Jamie said, shaking her head. “I didn’t know. Nicole hadn’t mentioned that to me.”

Nicole.
Fuck
, Jamie thought,
she’s going to kill me
.

“We need to get the alert out,” Brenda said. “Can you…”

“Already on it,” Samuels said, pulling his radio out. He gestured toward the blue lights flashing outside the office window. “Here’s patrol rolling in. We can get them going as well.”

“Give me the keys.”

“What?” Samuels said, lowering the towel from his bleeding face to scowl at Jamie. “Have you lost your mind? I saw him hit you and the way you’ve been holding to your side. You’re in no better shape than I am to go traipsing about out there.”

“Give me the damn keys, Greg,” Jamie repeated in a low voice. “I’m fine. It’s freezing outside. You saw what she was wearing, we don’t have time to stand around and argue about this.”

Samuels swore under his breath as he reached a hand in his pocket and then tossed Jamie the car keys. “Here. Go on, then.”

Jamie caught the keys and turned toward the door. She paused just as she stepped into the hallway and turned back to Samuels.

“Samuels, someone needs to—”

“We’ll call Nicole and let her know what’s going on,” he finished for her. “You just go.”

Jamie gave a small nod and hurried toward the exit, stopping briefly to punch in the code on the door’s electronic key lock. A slap of cold air hit her in the face as she threw open the door. “Damn it,” she muttered, zipping up her jacket as she saw snow flurries beginning to fall.

Shivering, Jamie strode toward the two patrol cars parked by the front entrance, hailing the uniformed officers stepping out of the vehicles. She frowned as she approached them, recognizing both but unable to think of either man’s name.

“Bowman, Detective Samuels has a suspect inside that needs transport to the jail,” Jamie said, finally placing a name with a face. “I need you with me,” she stated to the other officer. “One of the dementia patients has gotten out. She’s approximately eighty years-old, black hair, wearing a yellow nightgown. She can’t have gotten too far in this weather. I’ll take the road west, you go east.”

“Gotcha,” the officer said and sprinted back to his patrol car.

Jamie crossed the parking lot to the dark blue Ford, pressing the faded red button on the key fob to unlock it. Her hand froze on the handle as her cell phone began to buzz. She pulled the phone from its holder on her belt and then swore when she read the name displayed on the caller ID.

“Now you call,” she muttered and slid behind the wheel of the car, wincing as the movement caused the pain in her left side to flare once again. Jamie shoved the phone into her jacket pocket and pulled the Ford out of the parking lot, cursing her luck as heavy snow flakes began to fall on the windshield.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“Damn, Nicole, can you try not to kill us? Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?”

“I’m fine.”

“Well, slow down at least.”

“Give me a break,” Nicole said, ignoring Julie as the other woman gripped tightly on the passenger door handle. “Besides, we’re here.”

“Thank God,” Julie muttered. She straightened up in the seat as Nicole turned the Honda into Golden Meadows’ parking lot. “Are those police cars?”