Lifeblood (23 page)

The sofa creaked as the big man leaned forward. “Did you get a good look at the shooter?”

“I told you. I didn’t even see him until he was shooting. I know he wasn’t wearing an orange cap, or anything orange. In fact, I’m pretty sure he was wearing camouflage clothes and cap. He was like part of the landscape. I could hardly see him at all. I think that was on purpose.”

“That might mean he was stupid, but it doesn’t mean he wasn’t out there to kill deer, not people.” Walcher scratched the stubble on his chin. “You have any idea the number of shots he fired?”

“I wasn’t counting. But he kept it up even after he hit Hank. He was aiming at us, trying to kill us.”

“You’re sure you didn’t know him from somewhere?”

“I didn’t get that good a look at him, but I don’t know a lot of people who shoot at other people.”

“And you don’t think it’s possible he was a hunter, maybe a stupid one, or maybe one who just went bonkers?” Nease asked. “Maybe you were in his favorite site or something, and it just set him off, and he went postal.”

After a moment Rachel said, “I guess that’s possible. All I know for sure is he was definitely, deliberately, trying to kill either me or Hank or both of us.” She said the last words slowly as if to emphasize them.

Nease raised his eyes from the clipboard to stare at her from the other angle. “If that’s the case, what prevented him from accomplishing his objective?”

Her pulse had slowed a little. Now it sped again and heat rose into her cheeks. “I shot him.”

In self-defense. You should have added that it was self-defense.

But Walcher was already asking, “With what?”

“An old thirty-eight.”

“And you killed him,” the bear said. “With a thirty-eight. At that distance.”

“I guess I did. He fell over. And one of the people from the helicopter took a look at him and said he was dead.”

The blond was quick to ask, “Where is this weapon now?”

“Still up where we camped, I suppose.” Rachel bit her tongue. Oh shit, Why did I say that?

I forgot.

No, you didn’t. You just don’t want them to take the gun away from you. Good thing you’re not hooked up to a lie detector. You’d flunk with flying colors.

“We recovered the shooter’s rifle. There was no sign of the gun you describe as yours.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Rachel said, knowing where the questioning would go next.

And it did. “How did this handgun get to the camp site?” Nease asked.

“You mean from here?”

He nodded.

She knew some of the rules. “Locked in the storage compartment in the back of my car.” How could anyone find out now that it wasn’t true?

“And that gun is properly registered?” Walcher mouthed the words as if they were rehearsed.

That they could find out, probably already had. She looked down at her hands. “I’m afraid I don’t really know. It was my father’s. We owned a farm upstate. That’s where he taught me to shoot. For years, that was the only place it was used. And then only for target practice. I thought it might be a good idea to have a gun on a camping trip. Just in case. For self-defense. Against a mountain lion or a bear or something. At the time, I wasn’t thinking of a human threat.”

“Did your father transfer ownership to you, or register the gun as loaned to you?”

“To tell the truth, I don’t know. I never asked.”

The two deputies nodded in unison, as if they knew that all along.

Chapter Forty-four

Nease advised the recorder that he was turning it off and Walcher handed her a business card. “If you think of anything else, anything at all, give us a call.”

When they had departed Rachel wondered if she had given the right answers, passed or flunked. How much had they known before questioning her? Did they know something they weren’t saying? Had they talked to Hank? She should have asked. Would he have any idea who the shooter might be? She didn’t think so.

She picked up the phone and called the hospital.

Mr. Sullivan was not to be disturbed. That’s all the floor nurse would say.

“Did the police talk to him?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know.”

Don’t know or won’t say? Rachel thanked the woman, hung up and dialed Goldie’s number.

“Why are you calling me at this hour?”

“I’m sorry. But I need you. Big time. Real big time.”

“Gimme time to put on some clothes. I’ll be right there.”

999

The first hole card fell slap on the table in front of Marty. He lifted a corner. Jack of diamonds. A good start. There were nine players, which made for a nice pot. The second card landed in front of him. Another jack. Spades.

Marty scratched his head and tried to look worried, which wasn’t hard. His hair was a little mussed and his five o’clock shadow hadn’t been achieved by the setting on his razor. His beard had passed the point of cool macho several hours ago and was headed for seedy.

He’d lost quite a lot in the past week and needed to make it up. He wanted to do something special for Rachel. She was having a hard time of it lately. How could anyone think she would steal drugs from a hospital? She wouldn’t let him help her with the expenses from that, she wouldn’t accept the perfectly nice Toyota he’d bought for her. In his book, that was taking independence a step too far. But she had always been that way.

Now, though, she was getting married. He could give her a nice wedding. A honeymoon to Europe or the Caribbean or anywhere she wanted to go. She couldn’t turn that down.

Marty had folded the last few hands, but now his luck was going to change.

999

“This damn place looks more like Baghdad after a botched raid than a camp site,” Goldie announced. She and Rachel had come to pick up the Civic and whatever gear and supplies they could round up.

The area was strewn with crime scene tape wrapped around shrubs and even rocks.

Goldie looked at Rachel over low-slung sunglasses. “How the hell do you get yourself into stuff like this? I just turn my head for ten minutes and someone is boiling oil and you are turning up the heat and helping ’em get it ready for you. You need yourself a keeper.”

“No kidding.”

From where they stood they could see the brown blotches in the scrub grass along the trail where the man she shot had fallen. Speckles of blood had even spurted onto the leaves of plants six or eight feet away from the crushed grass.

A jay sat on a flat rock watching the two women with great interest.

“You look kind of peaked,” Goldie said.

“It doesn’t feel good to have killed someone, even if that someone was trying to kill you.” Rachel shoved her hands in her pockets and looked at the ground. “And I’m wondering how long it’ll be before they find out about my two arrests, and that I’m out on bail on the OxyContin thing.”

The jay hopped to the ground and strutted toward them. He opened his beak in a silent question which probably had to do with food.

“Maybe they will, maybe they won’t,” Goldie said.

“You’re kidding. Why wouldn’t they?”

“Well, first off, you don’t have a conviction. Just the arrests. The first one was up north. Right?”

“Yes.”

“And the OxyContin, that was LAPD. And the guys with jurisdiction up here, they would be county sheriffs. So what we got is stuff that happened in two cities and one county. These guys don’t spend a lot of time talking to each other. They’re more like in competition with each other. Like remember after nine-eleven there was all that flap about the CIA not talking to the FBI and the FBI not even talkin’ to themselves?”

“You mean they might never connect the dots?”

“Three jurisdictions, no convictions? It’s possible.”

“How do you know all this?”

“My brother was a cop, remember?”

Rachel managed a small smile that quickly ebbed away. “I sure hope you’re right.” She pointed past the tape at clusters of little flags bearing numbers. “What’s all that? Looks like some weird little golf course.”

“Probably it’s where they found stuff,” Goldie said. “I guess they wouldn’t take it kindly if we removed anything.”

Rachel wondered if she should tell Goldie the cops had not found the thirty-eight here at the scene because it was at home, in her apartment, in her underwear drawer. She decided not to. Why involve her friend in something she might someday be asked about? Under oath.

They turned back up the path and she asked instead, “What could I have done that someone would come after me with a rifle?”

“Could be you should just plain stop poking around in other people’s business,” Goldie sniffed. “You notice nobody’s huntin’ me down with a gun.” A few steps later, she asked, “Are we sure this guy was after you and not Hank?”

Rachel shrugged. “I just figured it was me. I’m not sure of anything. Why would anyone want to kill Hank? As soon as I can, I’ll ask him if he has any ideas. I’m sure the cops will, too.”

She stopped, put her hands on her hips and looked at the sky. “You think the guy shooting at us might have something to do with what’s going on at Jefferson?”

“Anything is possible,” Goldie said. “Come on, you can’t take root there.”

Rachel began walking again. “The cops seemed to think it might have been some nut-case hunter who just lost it and started shooting people. Like maybe we were in his favorite campsite or something.”

“There are plenty of loony tunes out there. Probably more than one is a hunter.” Goldie turned to look at her friend. “Did those deputies ask you anything about whether you might have done something that pissed off the Mexican Mafia?”

“Mexican Mafia! Where’d you get that idea?”

“You think that guy, that El whatever his name was, that friend of your dad’s who got you that loan, you think he runs a nursery school or grows petunias for a living? He sounds like he’s got Mexican Mafia written all over him.”

“Mexican Mafia sounds so…really bad. I agree El Jefe probably operates on a less than legal basis—I’ve told Pop the same thing. The guy’s probably a crook, a gangster, maybe, of some sort, but just an ordinary one.”

“Now that sure does make sense. An ordinary gangster, not a Mexicano Mafioso. Where is your head, girl?”

“Why would El Jefe get the vice president of a big bank to loan me twenty-five thousand dollars and then send someone to kill me?”

Goldie thought about that. “Maybe the loan was honor. He owed your dad. Sending a killer after you, that was maybe money, or something he owed someone else. Those people think different than we do.”

“There’s also the matter of those poor kids I found in that van. What happened to them? They couldn’t have just disappeared into thin air.”

Goldie kicked a stone out of the trail. “You better forget about those kids. Your plate is full enough right now. You have downright made a pig of yourself with trouble.”

Chapter Forty-five

The architecture was different, sort of Moorish modern, but once you were inside Pasadena’s Memorial General Hospital, there wasn’t a nickel’s worth of difference between it and Jefferson Medical Center.

To Rachel, both hospitals seemed like foreign countries where she didn’t speak the language or know the rules. Everything seemed larger than life, with a spotless lack of character. And people who worked there spoke in acronyms that must have been designed to keep ordinary folks at sea.

Whoever was in charge of reciting information about patients had told her that morning that Hank’s condition was stable. He could now have family visitors, but he was still sedated and visits should be brief.

She waited in line at the reception desk. The woman behind it had pale freckles and braids the color of sand wound atop her head. Rachel had seen braids like that at a German meat market in Montrose. Sure enough, the woman had a German accent.

“He is allowed only visits from family.”

Rachel didn’t miss a beat. “I’m his wife.”

“I.D.?”

Oh, for God’s sake. Rachel produced her driver’s license. “I kept my own name. I hope you don’t think I carry my wedding license with me.”

“Room six-fourteen.”

The room was cold. Not just the temperature, but the colors—gray and white. Everything but the mattresses seemed made of steel.

One bed was empty. The other had been raised part way. Face almost as pale as the sheets, Hank lay against a small, flat pillow, chin up, slender oxygen tubes at his nose. A drip tube led from a pack that hung from a pole to his arm. A bank of digital instruments stood next to the bed.

“Hank?”

He didn’t move. That frightened Rachel until she saw his chest move with his breaths.

“Hank?” she said again, softly, and took his hand. It was warmer than hers. Still she pulled the white blanket up closer around his shoulders. He was wearing one of those awful hospital gowns and she made a mental note to go up to his house and get him some pajamas. Then she realized she didn’t have a key and the hospital probably had locked up whatever he’d had in his pockets when he was admitted.

His head rolled a bit and a faint sigh escaped his lips.

She straightened his pillow. “Hank, it’s me, Rachel.”

His eyes opened, clear blue as glass in blood-shot white. “Rachel?” His voice was high, so faint and feeble she was barely sure she’d heard it.

“How are you feeling?”

His eyebrows raised slowly, giving him a puzzled look.

“Hank, do you know anyone who might have wanted to shoot you? You instead of me?”

Very slowly, his head moved from left to right.

Was that involuntary or did it mean “no”?

His eyes closed again.

999

The first hole card was a three of hearts. Marty’s hands were getting sweaty. Almost every dime he had was on the table. He had only slept about six hours a night for three nights. Or was it four? He couldn’t remember exactly.

He knew one thing though, he had to get that money back.

999

“I just lost an argument with myself.” Goldie’s voice on the phone. “Where’ve you been?”

“You mean tonight?”

“I’ve been trying you every twenty minutes. My phone is gonna run down.”

“I took Hank a pair of pajamas. They had him in one of those awful hospital gowns. It’s impossible to find a parking place at the Galleria. I had to follow a woman to her car and wait for her to leave so I could get her slot.”