by Sue Grafton
"Sorry I'm late. Have you been here long?"
"Five minutes."
She opened the trunk and picked up one grocery bag, then struggled to lift a second.
"Here, let me help with that."
"Oh, thanks. Terry should be right behind me with the liquor."
I took the bag, snagging up another one while I was at it. There were two more in the trunk and another two bags visible in the front seat. "God, how many people did you invite?"
"Just forty or so. It should be fun. Let's get these in and we'll have Terry bring the rest. We've got a ton of work to do."
She moved toward the front door while I brought up the rear. There was a crunch of tires on gravel and Terry pulled into the drive in a silver-gray Mercedes sedan. Must be nice, I thought. The gate rolled shut. I waited while Olive emptied the mailbox and shoved the stack of envelopes in the top of her grocery bag. She picked up the newspaper and tucked that in, too, then grabbed the parcel.
"You need help? I can take something else."
"I got it." She laid the parcel across the bag, securing it with her chin while she fumbled for her house key.
The cat was sauntering toward the driveway, plumed tail aloft. I heard the clink of liquor bottles as Terry set his bags down on the concrete. He began to coil up a garden hose the yardman had left on the walk.
"Break your neck on this thing," he said. Olive got the door open and gave it a push. The telephone started to ring. I glanced back as she tossed the parcel toward the hall table.
What happened next was too swift to absorb. There was a flash of light, a great burst that filled my visual field like a sun, followed by a huge cloud of white smoke. Shrapnel shot from a central point, spraying outward with a deadly velocity. A fireball seemed to curl across the threshold like a wall of water with a barrier removed, washing flames into the grass. Every blade of green in its path turned black. At the same time, I was lifted by a shattering low-frequency boom that hurtled me capriciously across the yard. I found myself sitting upright against a tree trunk like a rag doll, shoes gone, toes pointing straight up. I saw Olive fly past me as if she'd been yanked, tumbling in a high comic arc that carried her to the hedge and dropped her in a heap. My vision shimmered and cleared, a light show of the retina, accompanied by the breathless thumping of my heart. My brain, mute with wonder, failed to compute anything but the smell of black powder, pungent and harsh.
The explosion had deafened me, but I felt neither fear nor surprise. Emotions are dependent on comprehension, and while I registered the event, nothing made any sense. Had I died in that moment, I would not have felt the slightest shred of regret, and I understood how liberating sudden death must be. This was pure sensation with no judgment attached.
The front wall of the house was gone and a crater appeared where the hall table had been. The foyer was open to the air, surrounded by coronas of charred wood and plaster, burning merrily. Large flakes of pale blue and pale brown floated down like snow. Grocery items littered the entire yard, smelling of pickles, cocktail onions, and Scotch. I had taken in both sight and sound, but the apparatus of evaluation hadn't caught up with me yet. I had no idea what had happened. I couldn't remember what had transpired only moments before, or how this might relate to past events. Here we were in this new configuration, but how had it come to pass?
From the change in light, I guessed that my eyebrows and lashes must be gone and I was conscious of singed hair and flash burns. I put a hand up, amazed to find my limbs still functioning. I was bleeding from the nose, bleeding from both ears, where the pain was now excruciating. To my left, I could see Terry's mouth working, but no words were coming out. Something had struck him a glancing blow and blood poured down his face. He appeared to be in pain, but the movie was silent, sound reel flapping ineffectually. I turned to see where Olive was.
For one confused moment, I thought I saw a pile of torn foxes, their bloodied pelts confirming what she'd said the day before. It is true, I thought, these animals in the wild get ripped to shreds every day. The harsh splattering of red against the soft white fur seemed obscene and out of place. And then, of course, I understood what I was looking at. The blast had opened her body, exposing tangles of bloody flesh, yellow fat, and jagged bone along her backside. I closed my eyes. By then, the smell of black powder was overlaid with the scent of woodsmoke and cooked flesh. Carefully I pondered the current state of affairs.
Olive had to be dead, but Terry seemed okay, and I thought perhaps at some point he would come and help me up. No hurry, I thought. I'm comfy for now. The tree trunk provided back support, which helped, as I was tired. Idly, I wondered where my shoes had gone. I sensed movement, and when I opened my eyes again, confused faces were peering into mine. I couldn't think what to say. I'd already forgotten what was going on, except that I was cold.
Time must have passed. Men in yellow slickers pointed hoses at the house, swords of water cutting through the flames. Worried people crouched in front of me and worked their mouths some more. It was funny.
They didn't seem to realize they weren't saying anything. So solemn, so animated, and so intent. Lips and teeth moving to such purpose with no visible effect. And then I was on my back, looking up into tree branches that wobbled through my visual field as I was borne away. I closed my eyes again, wishing that the reeling of the world would stop before I got sick. In spite of the fire, I was shivering.
Chapter 15
* * *
Gradually my hearing returned, pale voices in the distance coming nearer until I understood that it was someone bending over me. Daniel, as radiant as an archangel, appeared above me. The sight of him was baffling, and I felt an incredible urge to put a hand to my forehead, like a movie heroine recovering from a swoon, murmuring, Where am I? I was probably dead. Surely, hell is having your former spouse that close again... flirting with a nurse. Ah, I thought, a clue. I was in a hospital bed. She was standing to his right, in polyester white, a vestal virgin with a bedpan, her gaze fixed on his perfect features in profile. I'd forgotten how cunning he was at that sort of thing. While he feigned grave concern for me, he was actually casting backward with his little sexual net, enveloping her in a fine web of pheromones. I moved my lips and he leaned closer. He said, "I think she's conscious."
"I'll get the doctor," the nurse said. She disappeared.
Daniel stroked my hair. "What is it, babe? Are you in pain?"
I licked my lips. "Asshole," I said, but it came out all garbled and I wasn't sure he got the drift. I vowed, in that moment, to get well enough to throw him out. I closed my eyes.
I remembered the flash, the deafening bang, Olive flying past me like a mannequin. She had looked unreal, arms crooked, legs askew, as lumpy as a sandbag flung through the air, landing with a sodden thump.
Olive must be dead. There wasn't any way to mend the parts of her turned inside out by the blast.
I remembered Terry with the blood gushing down his face. Was he dead, too? I looked at Daniel, wondering how bad it was.
Daniel sensed my question. "You're fine, Kin. Everything's okay. You're in the hospital and Terry's here, too," he said. And after a hesitation, "Olive didn't make it."
I closed my eyes again, hoping he'd go away.
I concentrated on my various body parts, hoping that all of them could be accounted for. Many treasured portions of my anatomy hurt. I thought at first I was in some sort of bed restraint, but it turned out to be an immobilizing combination of bruises, whiplash, IV fluids, painkillers, and pressure dressings on the areas where I had suffered burns. Given the fact that I'd been standing ten feet away from Olive, my injuries turned out to be miraculously insignificant – contusions and abrasions, mild concussion, superficial burns on my extremities. I'd been hospitalized primarily for shock.
I was still confused about what had happened, but it didn't take a 160 IQ to figure out that something had gone boom in a big way. A gas explosion. More likely a bomb. The sound and the impact were both ch
aracteristic of low explosives. I know now, because I looked it up, that low explosives have velocities of 3,300 feet per second, which is much faster than the average person tends to move. That short trip from Olive's front porch to the tree base was as close to free flight as I was ever going to get.
The doctor came in. She was a plain woman with a good face and sense enough to ask Daniel to leave the room while she examined me. I liked her because she didn't lapse into a slack-jawed stupor at the sight of him. I watched her, as trusting as a child while she checked my vital signs. She must have been in her late thirties, with haphazard hair, no makeup, gray eyes that poured out compassion and intelligence. She held my hand, lacing her cool fingers through mine. "How are you feeling?"
Tears welled up. I saw my mother's face superimposed on hers, and I was four again, throat raw from a tonsillectomy. I'd forgotten what it was like to experience the warmth radiated by those who tend the sick. I was saturated by a tenderness I hadn't felt since my mother died. I don't take well to helplessness. I've worked hard in my life to deny neediness, and there I was, unable to sustain any pretense of toughness or competence. In some ways it came as a great relief to lie there in a puddle and give myself up to her nurturing.
By the time she'd finished checking me, I was somewhat more alert, anxious to get my bearings. I quizzed her in a foggy way, trying to get a fix on my current state.
She told me I was in a private room at St. Terry's, having been admitted, through Emergency, the night before. I remembered, in fragments, some of it: the high keening of sirens as the ambulance swayed around corners, the harsh white light above me in the Emergency Room, the murmurs of the medical personnel assigned to evaluate my injuries. I remembered how soothing it was when I was finally tucked into bed: clean, patched up, pumped full of medications, and feeling no pain. It was now midmorning of New Year's Day. I was still groggy, and I discovered belatedly that I was dropping off to sleep without even being aware of it.
The next time I woke, the IV had been removed and the doctor had been replaced by a nurse's aide who helped me onto the bedpan, cleaned me up again, changed my gown, and put fresh sheets on the bed, cranking me into a sitting position so I could see the world. It was nearly noon. I was famished by then and wolfed down a dish of cherry Jell-O the aide rustled up from somewhere. That held me until the meal carts arrived on the floor. Daniel had gone down to the hospital cafeteria for lunch, and by the time he got back, I'd requested a "No Visitors" sign hung on the door.
The restrictions must not have applied to Lieutenant Dolan, however, because the next thing I knew, he was sitting in the chair, leafing through a magazine. He's in his fifties, a big, shambling man, with scuffed shoes and a light-weight beige suit. He looked exhausted from the horizontal lines across his forehead to his sagging jawline, which was ill-shaved. His thinning hair was rumpled. He had bags under his eyes and his color was bad. I had to guess that he'd been out late the night before, maybe looking forward to a day of football games on TV instead of interviewing me.
He looked up from his magazine and saw that I was awake. I've known Dolan for maybe five years, and while we respect each other, we're never at ease. He's in charge of the homicide detail of the Santa Teresa Police Department, and we sometimes cross swords. He's not fond of private investigators and I'm not fond of having to defend my occupational status. If I could find a way to avoid homicide cases, believe me, I would.
"You awake?" he said.
"More or less."
He set the magazine aside and got up, shoving his hands in his coat pockets while he stood by my bed. All my usual sassiness had been, quite literally, blown away. Lieutenant Dolan didn't seem to know how to handle me in my subdued state. "You feel well enough to talk about last night?"
"I think so."
"You remember what happened?"
"Some. There was an explosion and Olive was killed."
Dolan's mouth pulled down. "Died instantly. Her husband survived, but he's blanking on things. Doctor says it'll come back to him in a day or two. You got off light for someone standing right in the path."
"Bomb?"
"Package bomb. Black powder, we think. I have the bomb techs on it now, cataloguing evidence. What about the parcel? You see anything?"
"There was a package on the doorstep when I got there."
"What time was that?"
"Four-thirty. Little bit before. The Kohlers were having a New Year's Eve party and she asked me to help." I filled him in briefly on the circumstances of the party. I could feel myself reviving, my thoughts gradually becoming more coherent.
"Tell me what you remember about the parcel."
"There isn't much. I only glanced at it once. Brown paper. No string. Block lettering, done with a Magic Marker from the look of it. I saw it upside down."
"The address facing the door," he said. He took out a little spiral-bound notebook and a pen.
"Right."
"Who's it sent to?"
"Terry, I think. Not 'Mr. and Mrs.' because the line of print wasn't that long. Even upside down, I'd have noticed the 'O' in Olive's name."
He was jotting notes. "Return address?"
"Uhn-un, I don't remember any postmark either. There might have been a UPS number, but I didn't see one."
"You're doing pretty good," he said. "The regular mailman says he only delivered hand mail yesterday, no packages at all. UPS had no record of a delivery to that address. They didn't even have a truck in the area. You didn't see anyone leave the premises?"
I tried to think back, but I was drawing a blank. "Can't help you there. I don't remember anyone on foot. A car might have passed, but I can't picture it."
I closed my eyes, visualizing the porch. There were salmon begonias in big tubs along the front. "Oh, yeah. The newspaper was on the doormat. I don't know how far up the walk the paperboy comes, but he might have seen the parcel when he was doing his route."
He made another note. "We'll try that. What about dimensions?"
I could feel myself shrug. "Size of a shirt box. Bigger than a book. Nine by twelve inches by three. Was there anything left of it?"
"More than you'd think. We believe there was gift wrap under the brown mailing paper. Blue."
"Oh sure," I said, startled. "I remember seeing flakes of brown and blue. I thought it was snow, but it must have been paper particles." I remembered what Terry had said to me. "Something else," I said. "Terry was threatened. He talked about it when I was there the night before. He had a phone call at the plant from a woman named Lyda Case. She asked him when his birthday was and when he told her, she said he shouldn't count on it."
I filled him in on the rest, unburdening the sequence of events from the first. For once, I loved offloading the information on him. This was big time... the heavy hitters... more than I could deal with by myself. When it came down to bombs, I was out of my league. Lieutenant Dolan was scratching notes at a quick clip, his expression that mask of studied neutrality all cops tend to wear – taking in everything, giving nothing back. He talked as if he was already on the witness stand. "So there's a chance she's in Santa Teresa. Is that what you're saying?"
"I don't know. He seemed to think she was coming out, but he was pretty vague on that point. He's here, too?" I asked.
"This floor. Other end of the hall."
"You care if I talk to him?"
"No, not a bit. Might help jog his memory." After Lieutenant Dolan left, I eased into a sitting position on the edge of the bed, feet dangling over the side. My head was pounding at the sudden exertion. I sat and waited for the light show inside my head to fade. I studied as much of my body as I could see.
My legs looked frail under the lightweight cotton of the hospital gown, which tied at the back and let in lots of air. The pattern of bruises across my front looked like someone had taken a powder puff and dusted me with purple talc. My hands were bandaged and I could see an aura of angry red flesh along my inner arms where the burns tapered off. I held onto t
he handrail and slid off the bed, supporting myself on the bed table. My legs were trembling. I could almost bet they didn't want me getting up this way. I didn't think it was such a hot idea myself, the more I thought of it. Nausea and clamminess were chiming in with the pounding in my head and a fuzzy darkness was gathering along the periphery of my vision. I wasn't going to win an award for this so I sat back down.
There was a tap at the door and the nurse came in. "Your husband's out here. He says he has to leave and he'd like to see you before he goes."
"He's not my husband," I said automatically.
She put her hands in the pockets of her uniform – a tunic over white pants, no cap. I only knew she was a nurse because her plastic name tag had an R.N. after her name, which was Sharie Wright. I studied her covertly, knowing how much Daniel liked women with names like that. Debbie and Tammie and Cindie. Candie loomed large in there, too. I guess Kinsey qualified, now that I thought of it. Kinsie. Infidelity reduces and diminishes, leaving nothing where you once had a sense of self-worth.
"He's been worried sick," she said. "I know it's none of my business, but he was here all night. I thought you should be aware." She saw that I was struggling to get settled in the bed and she gave me a hand. I guessed that she was twenty-six. I was twenty-three when I married him, twenty-four when he left. No explanation, no discussion. The divorce was no-fault, served up in record time.
"Is there a way I can get a wheelchair? There's someone down the hall I'd like to see. The man who was admitted at the same time I was."
"Mr. Kohler. He's in three-oh-six at the end of the hall."
"How's he doing?"
"Fine. He's going home this afternoon."
"The policeman who was here a little while ago wants me to talk to him."
"What about your husband? He said it would only take two minutes."
