“Sure.” He used the bed control to raise himself to a sitting position. His pain meds were working.
She held a small bouquet of flowers set in a Get Well coffee mug. “Sorry, they didn’t have much of a selection.”
She placed it on the end table next to his bed.
“Thank you,” he said. “For the flowers … and for coming.”
“I’m sorry about the other officer.”
Joe didn’t want condolences. He wanted to give them. To Bluehorse’s family. He wasn’t sure if the young officer had been married. He didn’t think so, but maybe he’d had a girlfriend. He should know that.
“I feel bad,” Sierra said, her voice gentle, almost inaudible.
“So do I.”
“No, not about him—I mean, I do feel bad about him, of course, but I feel bad about you. About the way I treated you when I first met you. I accused you of not doing anything, and … and I don’t want to repeat some of the things I said about you to other people.”
Joe had no idea where this was going.
“I don’t mean I was bad-mouthing you specifically,” she said. Her hands wrestled each other almost as much as she seemed to wrestle with her words. “I mean, I was talking about the police in general. You know, how sometimes they don’t care about victims or the families.”
“Wow. Thanks for coming and making me feel good about my job.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.” She looked around. “I’m not good at this.”
“At what?”
“This.” She gestured toward him and the nightstand. “All this.”
“The flowers? They’re great. I really appreciate them.” He motioned to the empty room. “They’re my first.”
She gave an embarrassed smile. “I mean talking to people. I’m not good at talking to people. I work with old bones, so I don’t have to talk to people. I didn’t want to be the chief preparator at the museum, because I knew that then I’d have to talk to the volunteers. And that’s not me. But they pushed me to take the position. And I hate it.”
“I see.”
“So, every time we’ve met, I came off…” She searched for the words. “I came off mean. And I’m really not. But I did it again today. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t think you came off mean. I appreciate your visit. I really do. I’m surprised and pleased by it. Believe me. There’s no reason to apologize. And besides, you’ve perked me up. I was starting to feel sorry for myself, lying here in bed, shot, not knowing if I was going to make it. I’m glad you set me straight.” He smiled, or tried to. He hoped Cordelli had been joking about what the effort looked like. “I’m a good-for-nothing cop.”
She giggled, then broke into a genuine laugh. “I know you’re making fun of me, and I deserve it. You really were shot, and I come in here insulting you. Then tell you about my own troubles. And there you are in pain, and yet … so nice.”
Joe started to laugh and then stopped, clutching his cheek.
“Are you okay?” She started to move to the door. “Should I get the nurse?”
He laughed harder, pressing against the bandage, trying to push down the pain. “No. No. I’m fine. Laughing hurts. Go back to insulting me. Please.”
She covered her mouth. He guessed part of the reason they were laughing was due not to the humor, but to the awkwardness of the situation. She was innocent. And so vulnerable.
“I never knew anyone who was shot,” she said. “Is it bad?”
“The doctor said I’ll be fine. A little rest. Some rehabilitation. I’ll be good as new. They’re releasing me tomorrow.”
“So, you’ll be off from work for a while?”
“Yes, but another agent will be assigned to your sister’s case.”
“No. No. That wasn’t what I meant. I was wondering if you would like to stop by the museum. It’s very relaxing, and I can show you around. We even have wheelchairs, if you can’t walk.”
Joe met her eyes. “Yes, I’d like that. Though not the wheelchair part.”
OCTOBER 8
FRIDAY, 4:37 P.M.
DENNY’S RESTAURANT, ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO
Officer Lopez sat at the counter. He liked this Denny’s because it gave cops half off. He was eating a T-bone steak and shrimp platter and reading the paper. Actually, he was rereading the article about Joe Evers’s getting shot. It was his third time through and he couldn’t stop smiling.
Damn his steak tasted good. Actually, everything tasted good. It was funny how good news made everything seem right in the world.
He looked for his overworked waitress. She was carrying a milk shake over to a trucker at the other end of the counter. There was a little junk in that trunk, but even she was looking all right to him today.
“Hey, sweetie. I’ll take one of them shakes from you. Vanilla.” He winked at her. “With a cherry, please.”
Yeah, life was good.
He watched her butt jiggle as she scooped his ice cream.
Real good.
OCTOBER 8
FRIDAY, 6:37 P.M.
GALLUP INDIAN MEDICAL CENTER, GALLUP, NEW MEXICO
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Helena’s voice came through the phone, loud and brassy. “What the hell happened, Joey?”
“You’ve been scooped. I was shot.”
“Well, it must not be that bad, ’cause you still got that sexy dry humor. And now you have a kinda cowboy drawl. I like it.”
“I’m drawling because I got shot in the face.”
“Are you going to be okay?” She sounded concerned.
“A few scars.”
“Don’t worry about that. You’ll wear them well, I’m sure.”
Helena had called the hospital. Other reporters were trying to talk to him and visit him, but they were all being screened by the hospital staff and the deputy. Helena had told a nurse at the nurses’ station that she was a friend. The nurse gave Joe her name and he said to put the call through. Helena Newridge had a perky charm about her that he liked.
“My boss pulls me back to D.C. to cover an old broad with low blood sugar who’s tripping all over the place, and then you go and get shot. And I have to read about it in that Gallup rag.”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll wait for you to be in town the next time I get shot, how’s that?”
“Deal. By the way, I searched through some archives and found out that Grace Edgerton does own a gun.” She let her words hang in the air.
“You know I’m lying in a hospital bed, shot, hooked up to machines, right? Are you trying to kill me with suspense?”
“Sorry, I can’t help it. I deliver news like doctors deliver babies. And it’s a … boy!”
Joe waited.
“Okay. Okay. Don’t get your catheter in a bunch. I found an article in the Albuquerque Journal from a year before Edgerton went missing. The Veterans of Foreign Wars had honored him for getting them funding to build a new hall. They gave him an engraved Colt 1911 pistol. There was a photo of him receiving it.”
Joe’s mind went into overdrive. 1911s were .45-caliber. Had Grace Edgerton lied to him about the gun? Did she still have it? And hadn’t Bobby Joe Lopez met Faye Hannaway at a veterans’ function?
“Where’s the gun now?”
She let out a sigh. “You need to start pulling your own weight around here, Joey.”
“I was shot.”
“Yeah, and I got corns, but I’m working.”
OCTOBER 9
SATURDAY, 9:20 A.M.
OTHMANN ESTATE, SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO
“What did you find out?” Books asked. He cradled his arm. He’d stopped taking Percocet today, gone back on ibuprofen. The heavy drug had fogged his brain, and he couldn’t afford that handicap right now.
“He was shot, but he’s okay,” Othmann said. “He’s going to be just super in a couple days.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Maybe we don’t need to. He’s retiring soon, and this may put him on medical leave.”
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There’d been another bathroom episode last night, and while Books was helping him back to bed, a promise to cut back on the white powder had been uttered. Books thought nothing of it then, but today Mr. O. seemed more lucid. And that made two of them, which was good. Clear heads were less likely to screw up and land them in jail—or dead.
“I still owe him,” Books said. He rubbed the wound on his arm.
“This was all William Tom’s fault. That crooked jackass.”
Books remained silent, knowing Othmann would continue. He could tell his boss needed to talk about it, to bitch about it and blame someone else.
“He got greedy and took some items from that fat worm Trudle. I can’t even show them because Trudle published photos in his book.”
“What does that have to do with Edgerton?”
“Trudle told him about the theft.”
“Is that why he disappeared?”
“Why are you so interested in history all of a sudden?”
“Forget it,” Books said, disgusted by his boss’s paranoia.
“What?”
“Did you get the address?”
Mr. O. pulled a sheet of paper from his shirt pocket. He held it just out of reach of Books’s outstretched hand.
“Not until I give the okay.”
Books nodded and took the paper. He smiled when he read what was written on it. It was the smile several people had seen before their lives abruptly ended.
OCTOBER 9
SATURDAY, 10:20 A.M.
GALLUP INDIAN MEDICAL CENTER, GALLUP, NEW MEXICO
After the doctor signed the discharge paperwork, the nurse wheeled Joe downstairs, Stretch following. Several journalists stood by the front doors, so Stretch pulled his car around to the emergency entrance at the rear of the hospital, where Joe and the nurse waited. A journalist came running around the corner as Joe got into the passenger seat.
“Agent Evers!” The young man made it to the car before the nurse could shut the door. “Agent Evers, can I talk to you a minute?” A camera with a telephoto lens hung from his neck.
Stretch came around the car to close Joe’s door. “Sorry, you need to contact the Albuquerque BIA office. Ask for Dale Warren. He likes talking to the press.”
The man looked at Joe. “Were you investigating William Tom?”
Joe moved his foot against the door, stopping Stretch from closing it. The way the man said that last sentence got Joe’s attention. “Why would you ask that?”
“His wife told me a BIA agent was out to interview him. Chief Cornfield with NPD confirmed it.”
“But why did you say were?”
“He’s dead.” The man looked surprised. “You didn’t know?”
“When? How?”
“Come on, Joe,” Stretch said. “We need to leave.”
Joe blocked the door again with his foot.
“His wife found him dead the morning you were shot,” the reporter said. “She thinks your visit caused him stress and killed him. She wants to sue the BIA. What did you talk to him about?”
Joe moved his foot.
Stretch shut the door.
The journalist took a photograph of Joe through the passenger window.
What the hell was happening? People were dying all around him.
OCTOBER 9
SATURDAY, 3:33 P.M.
JOE EVERS’S APARTMENT, ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO
The front door opened. Joe tried to sit up. Stretch had dropped him off a few hours earlier and then had gone to pick up Melissa. Joe had been on the sofa, watching back-to-back shark movies on the SyFy channel, dozing off from the pain medication.
“Dad!” Melissa came around the couch. “Are you okay?” She kissed him on the forehead, as though he were the child and she the parent. Then she examined his cheek, her hand a few inches from the gauze.
Stretch stood in the entryway of the apartment, holding a suitcase.
“I’m fine, Brainy Bug,” Joe said, trying to sit up. “You didn’t need to come home. Stretch made it sound worse than it is.” He gave his friend the stink eye.
She straightened and put her hands on her hips. “Are you nuts? You get shot and you think I’m not going to come home?” She waited for a reply, but he kept silent. “I came home to take care of you, because, God knows, you can’t take care of yourself.”
“Amen” Stretch said.
Joe tossed another stink eye toward his friend.
“You want this in the bedroom?” Stretch asked.
“Leave it there; I’ll get it.”
“I’ll let you two do your father-daughter thing. And don’t let him push you around, Melissa.” He gave her a peck on the cheek. “The doctor said nothing strenuous. So keep an eye on him.” He returned the stink eye to Joe and then left.
Melissa went to the kitchen. A few seconds later, she gasped.
“Is this all you’ve been eating?” She held up two tinfoil-wrapped bean burritos. The refrigerator stood open. “You don’t have anything else in here.” She pulled out four more and tossed all of them in the trash can.
“Leave that alone, and come here,” Joe said.
“What?”
“Come here.”
She walked to the couch. He stood. She looked so much like Christine. And she had her fire, too, which warmed his heart and stung his eyes. For any father, a daughter was perfect beauty. He wrapped his good arm around her, holding her close, then wrapped his injured arm around her, too, ignoring the pain to pull her even closer.
“Dad, be careful. Don’t hurt yourself.”
“It only hurts if I don’t hug you.”
OCTOBER 13
WEDNESDAY 9:45 A.M.
THE NEW MEXICO MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY AND SCIENCE, ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO
“What do you think?” Sierra said.
Beside her, a dinosaur, shorter than she was, with a long, narrow head, prowled through foliage from 200 million years ago.
“Wow.” Joe read the plaque: Coelophysis. “How do you pronounce it?”
“See-low-fy-sis.”
He repeated the name.
“I finished it last night,” she said, pride in her voice.
He looked directly into her eyes. “I’m impressed.” He really was.
The color rose in her face. “Thank you, Joe.”
He walked around the exhibit. “Lot of teeth. Meat eater?”
“Yes. And a cannibal, too. We found fossilized remains of a young Coelophysis in its stomach.”
“Thank you for getting me out of my apartment. My daughter’s been smothering me. Now I know what I do to her.” He made small rotations with his shoulder. “Do you mind if we walk. I’m a little stiff.”
They moved through the exhibits, taking it slow, Sierra the tour guide, Joe the interested visitor. Even though a part of him was attentive to the history, or the science, or whatever one would call the stories behind dinosaur displays, he was more attentive to her, simply enjoying hearing her speak. He smiled when she smiled. He laughed when she laughed. And he showed appropriate fascination when her voice took on that dreamy quality people have when talking about something they love.
When they arrived at the FossilWorks, she asked if he remembered it from their last visit. He wanted to tell her that of course he did. This was where he had first noticed her figure beneath that lab coat. But he only nodded.
Behind the glass, the same group of volunteers toiled away. The old woman in the center of the room looked up and waved to Sierra. When she saw Joe, she broke into a large, full-faced grin. She gave Sierra a thumbs-up. Sierra seemed to blush.
“So what’s the thumbs-up for?” he asked, not letting the opportunity pass.
“Oh, that’s Trixie. She’s a real spitfire. Been volunteering here for fifteen years. She’s almost ninety, but her mind and attitude are no older than nineteen.”
She was being coy. He was about to press her for the real meaning of Trixie’s gesture, when a man spoke.
“Excuse
me, Sierra.”
It was the ponytail guy, the same one who had interrupted their last meeting. Joe could smell the man’s testosterone even from this distance.
“Hello, Paul.” She turned to Joe. “This is Paul Drake, our director of acquisitions. Paul, this is Joe Evers. He’s … he’s a friend.”
Joe picked up on Sierra’s hesitation. Was she trying to hide he was a cop, or was she explaining their relationship to Paul?
They shook hands and stared at each other a moment. Paul seemed to be sizing him up.
“We’re about to open the crates for the Seismosaurus,” Paul said. “You said you wanted to be there.”
“Why are we doing them now? I thought we planned it for this afternoon.”
“We did, but I saw you finished the Coelophysis exhibit, so I thought we might get a jump on the crates. Unless you’re otherwise tied up.” Paul looked at Joe.
“Well, I was planning on this afternoon.”
“That’s fine. I thought I’d stop by to see if you wanted to do it now, that’s all. We can do it later.”
Joe sensed a relationship here, a slight tension between them. Past or present?
“Actually,” Joe said, “I have to go anyway. I need to stop by the office.”
“Are you going back to work already? I thought—” She stopped herself, clasping her hands together.
“No. I’m taking the week off. I just need to check on something.”
Paul said good-bye. Sierra walked Joe out.
Their time together had been nice, but Joe worried he’d misinterpreted her invitation. “I’ll be back on the case next week, so I may need to talk with you again about Bobby Lopez. I met him. I didn’t know your sister, but he didn’t seem like the kind of guy she would have been involved with.”
“She was going to change the world one stray dog at a time. Bobby was broken. She met him at some veterans’ event. Congressman Edgerton was there receiving an award, and she went along.”
“Was it the Veterans of Foreign Wars?”
“It could have been. I may have photos. Faye often took photos at the congressman’s events. When I cleaned her apartment, I took all of her things, or at least whatever Bobby didn’t steal. I still have them all in my attic.”
Joe thanked her for the tour and left. Joe wondered what Sierra’s relationship was with Paul Drake. Obviously more than coworkers, but how much more, he didn’t know. Ex-lover? Maybe. Hopeful suitor? He hoped not. But he knew he shouldn’t be jealous. He’d had twenty-two amazing years with Christine. He shouldn’t begrudge another man that same happiness.
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