by A.W. Hartoin
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I WOKE TO a warm hand stroking my forehead and the smell of good cologne in my nose.
“Dad?”
“No, Chuck.”
I opened my eyes and saw Chuck bent over me. His white dress shirt had the top two buttons undone, revealing his collarbone and a tangle of chest hair. His shield was at his waist and his face had an expression I’d never seen on it before. Maybe distraught. I tried to move my head, but I was in a neck brace and strapped to a backboard.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” he said.
“Stop touching me.”
“Not a chance and you called me. Remember?”
“Go away.” I tried to yell it, but my lungs and jaw wouldn’t let me. If I could’ve grabbed his hand, I might’ve bit him.
“Stay still,” said Chuck. “And stop trying to bite me.”
Someone else knelt beside me and picked up my wrist. I screamed and passed out again. When I woke up, Chuck said, “I guess her lungs are fine.”
Several people laughed and I really wanted to bite him. Cops and EMTs were swarming all over the place. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another person lying facedown a few feet from me. Chuck saw me looking and said, “That’s Holtmeyer. She’s still alive, unfortunately.”
“They’re all crazy,” I whispered.
“Not crazy enough and we have the death penalty.”
I started to cry, one of those big ugly cries, and I couldn’t even cover my face with my hands.
“I didn’t know you wear thongs,” Chuck said.
“What?” I said.
“Thongs. You wear thongs. I didn’t know you were a thong kind of girl.”
“How do you know I wear thongs?” Just then a breeze hit my stomach and thighs. The tears dried in my eyes and I was back to biting. “Oh my God. Pull my dress down, you sleazebag.”
Chuck tugged on my hem. “I like this dress.”
“I’m glad it’s ruined then.”
Chuck laughed and left me to the EMTs. I watched him walk to the ambulance a few feet away. Aunt Miriam sat on a gurney looking at me with an oxygen mask on her face. Chuck and the ambulance dwarfed her. She looked old and fragile. I wasn’t accustomed to seeing her that way, an old woman.
I closed my eyes and watched the spots dance across my vision. The pain was better, but the IV in my arm could’ve had something to do with that. The EMT told me they were going to transfer me to a gurney for transport to St. John’s. Chuck came back and touched my leg. I thought about kicking him, but found I didn’t care all that much who touched my leg.
They lifted on three and there wasn’t enough drugs on board to control the pain. I screamed until I panted from the effort then a hand touched my forehead. A kiss brushed my cheek and I smelled lavender. Aunt Miriam. The oxygen mask was off and her eyes were inches from mine. She whispered in my ear. I wish I could remember what she said. Mostly I remember her eyes. The blueness of them and how much they looked like Dad’s.
The next twelve hours alternated between hazy suggestions of events and long periods of nothing. I remember the blinding lights of the ER and the pain they caused. I remember my arm being popped back into its socket. I think Chuck and Nazir tried to ask me questions. I might’ve told them to shove it or something like. Pete flitted in and out like a hummingbird. I woke up once as he slept with his head on the edge of my bed, snoring and clutching my chart to his chest. I tried to touch his head, but fell asleep before I managed it.
I didn’t wake up again until the next day. My IV pump alarm was going ape shit and there were two nurse’s aides hitting buttons like a couple of woodpeckers.
“Get the key,” I said.
They both turned and stared at me.
“I’m a nurse.”
“Do you know how to turn this thing off?” It said Peggy on her tag. She didn’t look like a Peggy to me. I wondered if she had the wrong tag.
“You need the key,” I said.
Peg and her partner in stupidity asked each other if they had the key. It was a good thing I wasn’t coding because that would’ve been all she wrote. The more I listened to Peg and Glenda the more likely it seemed that they might not have on the right tags. They might, in fact, be janitors.
“Call the desk,” I said.
I was on a morphine drip, but the noise was increasing my migraine by the second. Peg tried to call the desk on my intercom, but they couldn’t hear her over the alarm and they both went in search of the key. My mother crossed their path, walking in with a tall pink cake box and coffee.
“Unplug it,” I yelled.
Mom yanked the plug out of the wall, but the alarm kept going. Mom looked at me and I said, “Push it over here.” My formerly good arm was in a sling, but my casted arm was free. I had enough finger mobility to unclip my medication drip from the pump and told Mom to unhook the IV bag. Mom pushed the squealing pump into the hall and closed the door. She took a deep breath and turned around.
“Feeling better, I see,” she said.
“I’m okay.” I stuck out my lower lip. I wanted sympathy, not a positive assessment.
Mom placed the cake box on my rolling table, lowered it to the height of the chair next to my bed and got a fork out of her purse.
“Hey, I said I’m okay.”
“I don’t know if okay is good enough for this cake. This is an extreme dessert.”
“I think I’ll risk it.”
Mom kicked off her shoes, a big no-no in public, and cuddled into my bed beside me. She folded down the sides of the cake box and I got all misty. German chocolate. My favorite made by Myrtle and Millicent. I could tell by the huge dark chocolate curls. They made the best curls.
“Don’t cry,” said Mom, dabbing at my eyes with a tissue.
“It’s my cake and I’ll cry if I want to.”
Then Mom cried a little, although she called it allergies. She has no allergies, the big softy. To distract her I asked if Ellen had come by. Mom said she had, but I was still out of it and Sophie peed on the floor, so she had to go. Mom didn’t approve of Sophie. She said the tiny girl was a hellion. I guess she would know, considering that she’d raised me.
The thought of difficult little blonds dried Mom’s eyes and we ate my unbelievably fabulous cake while we watched Channel 5’s coverage of my escapade. I was impressed with myself. Mom wasn’t.
“I’ll never know why you chose to go into that storage room. What were you thinking?”
“I was trying to call Chuck. It was too loud everywhere else.”
“You isolated yourself when you knew a murderer was in the vicinity.”
“But I didn’t know Darrell knew I knew. Give me a break.”
Mom put her head to mine and patted my cheek. “I know, I know. Think before you act next time, honey.”
Next time?
“It’s a good thing Chuck was there.”
“Why? He didn’t do anything.”
He did get a sweet interview on Channel 5 though. Bastard.
“He arrested the Holtmeyers for double murder.”
“After I figured out who did it. Jeez, Mom,” I said.
“Oh, Mercy. Everybody knows you did a good job.”
Yeah, just not anyone who watches Channel 5.
“If Chuck hadn’t been there, they might’ve gotten away,” Mom said.
“No, they wouldn’t have. I clobbered Darrell and Aaron clobbered his mom.”
Mom gave me a funny look. It did sound stupid. Aaron clobbered her? The only thing Aaron clobbered was food.
“Aaron was there, wasn’t he?” I asked.
“Yes, he saved your bacon, so to speak. I’d say you owe him one.”
Great. I owed Aaron. The only thing worse would be owing Chuck.
“You owe me, too.” Chuck walked into my room, smirking and holding a bag of Krispy Kremes.
“A cop with donuts, imagine that,” I said.
“It’s a stereotype for a reason, baby.”
&
nbsp; “Please don’t call me baby. It makes me nauseous.”
“Whatever you say, baby,” he said as he attacked a glazed raised.
“Why are you here? Don’t you have some unsuspecting nurse to harass?” I asked.
Chuck smiled so that he looked like Jack Nicholson’s Joker, only sleazy, not evil.
“Some other nurse. I already suspect you,” I said.
“Too bad.”
“And what am I supposed to owe you for anyway?”
“How about arresting the people that tried to kill you?”
“Any first year rookie could’ve done that. Aaron and I did all the hard work,” I said.
“So Aaron’s your partner now,” said Chuck.
“I don’t have a partner. I don’t need a partner.
“Actually, your father and I have reached a decision,” said Mom.
Oh no. The last time I heard that line was when they tried to send me to an all girls high school.
“Mercy?” asked Mom. “Don’t you want to hear what I have to say?”
“No, I’m good.”
Chuck laughed and got comfortable.
“This is the second time you’ve been seriously injured in the course of an investigation and we feel you can’t continue helping the family in this manner.”
Yes!
“So in future investigations, Aaron will be your partner.”
No!
Chuck doubled over.
“Mom, how about we try something else like I’m a nurse and I do nursing. Aaron can help Dad if he wants to. Leave me out of it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Yeah, Mercy,” said Chuck. “You and Aaron are great partners.”
“Please go away,” I said.
“He can’t. He’s here to sit with you,” Mom said.
“Oh no,” I said.
“Oh yes,” Chuck said.
Mom got up and said she had to check on Dad who was about to go stir crazy, but still too weak to go far.
“Plus, I have to interview you,” Chuck said.
“Didn’t you do that last night?”
“I tried, but you told me to go fuck a duck.”
“Oh, is that what I said.”
Mom looked at the ceiling and said under her breath, “Give me strength, Lord.”
She left us and Chuck pulled up a chair. He put a foot up on my bed and opened his notebook.
“Nice crotch spread. Can’t you sit like a gentleman?”
“Are you saying that you, as a lady, deserve such consideration?”
“Drop dead and rot,” I said.
“Right. Let’s get to it. What happened?”
“What happened when?”
“Mercy!”
I started at the beginning with Dixie’s call from the hospital and ended with me lying on a bed of gravel. So I left out a few choice bits like searching Gavin’s office. What’d it matter?
“How’d you know Lee was the stalker?”
“How didn’t you know?” I said with as much venom as I could muster.
“I knew. We just didn’t have enough to pick him up,” he said.
“Whatever.”
“So how did you know?”
“Uncle Morty told me. He didn’t know he told and neither did I at first,” I said.
“Say that again,” Chuck said.
“He called me from Lincoln. He told me that Gavin went to the novelty shop and signed the mailing list book. Gavin wrote something down out of it. Morty thought he’d spotted a name in it that made him stay in Lincoln an extra day.”
“And?”
“And he said that Lee’s name was in the book, but that it wasn’t a surprise,” I said.
“He brought a present for Sample there.”
“Right. But he also read me some of the names and said he had a headache from reading all that bad handwriting.” I looked at Chuck, who cocked his chair back on two legs and said, “Shit.”
“I didn’t put it together until I thought about Lee signing the guest book at Rebecca’s memorial. He told me he’d never been to Lincoln, so how did he sign the book? He lied because he was the stalker. Still, I knew Lee didn’t kill Gavin because you were interviewing him when it happened. Helen Card said Darrell and his mother treated Lee like he was disabled, so it had to be one of them to kill Rebecca after she found out about Lee. Mrs. Holtmeyer couldn’t have overpowered Gavin on her best day, so that left Darrell.”
“How’d you know about me interviewing Lee?” asked Chuck.
“Word gets around.”
“Not bad. Not bad at all. Care to hear a little info from my side?”
“If you must.”
“You were right Lee was in Lincoln. He went to school with Sample for a couple semesters, but he didn’t graduate. He had two classes with her. That must’ve been what Gavin found out at the university. Lee was stalking her even back then.”
“How could she not know he was stalking her?”
“She did, sort of. Her roommate said they got a lot of hang ups and Sample got flowers with no cards, but it wasn’t anything creepy. We think it was pretty casual until she graduated and moved here. He must’ve taken it as a rejection and stepped it up.”
“How in the world did she end up dating him?”
“Dumb luck. He bumped into her in a grocery store.”
“People actually meet that way?” I asked.
“I guess so. Her friend Helen was with her. She said he accidentally rammed their cart. Helen knew him from the gym and introduced them properly. The intro made him a known quantity. You can’t plan that kind of thing,” he said.
“I bet he was stalking her in the store and got turned around. I doubt he ever would’ve risked face-to-face contact on purpose.”
“That’s what our shrink says. But if you ask me, he was escalating. He would’ve done something to her eventually,” said Chuck.
“But Gavin wouldn’t be dead, if it happened that way.” I looked past Chuck to the cloudy sky out my window.
Chuck reached forward and touched my hand. “Yeah, Gavin wouldn’t be dead.”
“So what did Darrell use on Gavin?”
“Epinephrine,” Chuck said.
“How’d he get it? I mean, it’s not like it’s a street drug.”
“His mother has a nut allergy. We think he took her EpiPens.”
“No way. It would take at least nine to OD somebody. Nobody carries that many pens with them.”
“Mrs. Holtmeyer refilled her prescription several times in the week before the wedding. Doctor shopping.”
“Why?” I sat up quickly and my vision narrowed to a point for a moment. I grasped the handrail to steady me. “What was she planning?”
“I suspect the epi was meant for Rebecca. Mrs. Holtmeyer was none too fond of her, but when Darrell had to deal with Gavin, she handed them over.”
“Sounds good, but Gavin only had one puncture. What’d they do? Milk the pens and combine them into one syringe?”
“Sure, why not?” Chuck stood up and laid me back on my pillows. Behind him Nardo slunk in and shot a round of pictures. Chuck whipped around and shoved Nardo against the wall.
“Mercy,” Nardo shouted. “Tell him.”
Chuck’s hand left Nardo’s throat, but he didn’t turn around. “Tell me what?”
“It’s alright,” I said. “He’s my official photographer, I guess.”
“So that’s why the internet traffic slowed down,” said Chuck.
Nardo shrugged. “I have connections.”
Chuck put his large hand on Nardo’s scrawny shoulder and steered him out the door.
“And now you’re done.” Chuck deleted the pictures over Nardo’s protests and closed the door.
“So now you’re protecting me?” I asked.
Chuck sat down on my bed, tucking me into an envelope of his fabulous scent. “From everyone but me.”
“Please.” I rolled my eyes.
“Too much?” asked Chuck.<
br />
“Way.”
We laughed together, and I forgot how irritating he was until he started going on about his interrogation techniques. I fell asleep as he proclaimed himself brilliant, second only to my dad.
