When I arrive at home, I give Roscoe a few minutes of attention and then immediately head for my bedroom. I’m so tired I swear I could sleep standing up, but no sooner does my head hit the pillow than my mind starts whirling with thoughts about all the events of the past few days. I toss and turn fitfully for the next three hours. I hear P.J.’s arrival and her leashing Roscoe for a walk, hear their eventual return some time later, and I spend the in-between time pondering my future, questioning my decisions, and worrying about where it’s all going to end up. Somewhere around seven, I give up and get up, figuring I’ll try again later when the hour is closer to my normal bedtime.
Feeling gritty from my lack of sleep, I make a pot of coffee. It’s never kept me from sleeping before and I hope that’s still the case. I need it to get through the next few hours. I pour a cup when it’s done, and then get on my computer and start looking at furniture and design options with Bob’s house in mind. The coffee table he has is a unique piece that I rather like, so I decide to keep it and try to find items that will work with it. Eventually I settle on a leather sofa and two chairs, some end tables, and lamps. They have a strong masculine feel to them that I think Bob will like, but I find some paint colors, an area rug, and some accessories that I think will soften and lighten things up just enough that it doesn’t feel like a total man cave. I think about that large living room window for a few minutes and do some searching for drapery options. Then I get an idea I like much better: country-style slatted shutters.
It’s nearly eight-thirty by the time I finish, and I let Roscoe out into the backyard to do his business. He’s out there for less than a minute when he starts barking excitedly. There is a neighborhood cat, an orange tabby named Cisco, that likes to drop in for the occasional visit, and Roscoe isn’t sure what to make of the creature. Typically, he just barks like crazy while Cisco sits back and stares at him with an air of disdain.
I look out the window, surprised to see Roscoe barking at the door to my utility shed, and no evidence of the cat that I can see, though the sun has set, and the yard is cast in shadow. Could Cisco be shut up in the shed somehow? I try to remember the last time I saw the cat and the last time I had the shed open. It would have been on Wednesday evening when I last mowed the lawn, a task I now see I need to do again. Surely Cisco hasn’t been in there since then?
Roscoe’s persistent barking makes me think otherwise, so I grab a flashlight and venture out into the backyard toward the shed. I open the door carefully, expecting a crazed and angry cat to come bolting out, but that doesn’t happen. Instead, I realize that Roscoe’s excitement is because he has completed his find command from last night. Sitting on the floor of my shed is Danny Hildebrand.
For one fleeting moment I’m certain that Danny is dead. He is sitting slumped, chin on chest, against the side wall.
“Oh, Danny,” I say, and Roscoe hurries forth, sniffs at his face, and then gives him a lick. With this, Danny’s head raises and his eyes open.
“Thank goodness,” I say, sighing with relief. “Danny, are you okay?”
He nods and gives me a tentative smile. “I’ve been waiting for you to come home,” he says. “Fell asleep.” He punctuates this statement with a huge yawn.
“Are you okay? Can you get up?” I’m hoping he can because the chances of me being able to budge his six-foot-four frame with my five-foot, out-of-shape body are nil.
“I’m fine,” he says, and to my relief he gets to his feet, though he remains stooped to avoid hitting his head on the shed’s ceiling.
“Come inside and let me get you some coffee or something.”
I lead him into the house, noticing as I do so that he looks glassy-eyed. His hair is a ratty mess, he smells like he could use a shower, and his gait is stumbling. “How long have you been out there?”
“Don’t know,” he says, blinking slowly.
I steer him to one of the stools at my kitchen island and have him take a seat. “Coffee?” I offer. He nods. “How do you take it?”
He stares at me with that glassy-eyed gaze, brow furrowed, looking as if I just asked him to explain quantum mechanics.
“Cream? Sugar?” I prompt.
Danny doesn’t answer. He just stares. I decide to give him black coffee for now and pour a cup, setting it in front of him. He’s still staring but no longer at me. Now his eyes are aimed toward empty space, his head cocked to one side as if he’s listening to something.
“Danny, why are you here? Why aren’t you at home?” He doesn’t acknowledge that he heard me; he just sits there staring off into space.
I take out my cell phone, thinking I should call Allie to let her know that Danny is okay and to have her come over and get him. Just as I’m about to punch in the number, Danny finally speaks.
“We need to get it done before sunrise.” His expression turns anguished and his hands curl into fists. He starts pounding his fists against his temples. “I know, I know, I know. Don’t hurt her. I’ll do it.” He is staring into space, his eyes unfocused.
“Danny, please, calm down. It’s okay. Allie is okay. She’s at home and she’s worried about you.”
“They are wrong. Wrong color, wrong size, wrong taste.”
I stare at him, trying to make sense of what he’s saying. “Danny, I think we need to get you your medication for today. Why don’t we go to the hospital and get you checked out, see if we can get you back on track? Would that be okay?”
“No, it isn’t right. But we must do it, or Allie will die.” He pauses and takes on a pained expression. “Don’t hurt Allie,” he whines, and then he starts to sob. My heart breaks a little, but I also feel a surge of anger. That note Allie found must be part of the threats that were made to Danny to get him to cooperate. Who was making the threats? Was it the members of that militia that Bob mentioned?
I realize I’m going to need help, so I switch gears and decide to call Bob Richmond first instead. I’m reluctant to turn Danny in, but he clearly needs help, more help than I can give him here and now. Plus, I need to let the cops know he’s been found. If I’m right in my suspicions about Marla, he may need protection.
As Danny sits at the counter, his face buried in his hands, his shoulders heaving with his sobs, I dial Bob’s number. It rings four times and then I get his voice mail. Belatedly, I remember that he said he was going home to take a nap earlier. Hopefully he was luckier than I was and has been able to get some sleep.
I listen to Bob’s message and then leave my own at the prompt. “Bob, it’s Hildy. Danny Hildebrand is here at my house. He’s in bad shape mentally. I think he’s been here all night and day hiding in my backyard shed. I need to get him to the hospital but I’m not sure I can do it alone. I’ll try to get him into my car when I hang up, but I’ll probably call an ambulance if I can’t.” I disconnect the call and stand there a minute, thinking, trying to come up with a plan.
Roscoe, who has been sitting by the back door since we came in, gets up and walks over to Danny. He rests his chin on Danny’s thigh, nuzzling him, and with the contact, Danny lifts his tearstained face and looks down at the dog.
“Hey, buddy,” Danny says, and he reaches down to stroke Roscoe’s head.
“Danny, we need to get you to the hospital,” I say, seizing what seems to be a moment of clarity. “How about if Roscoe and I take you there, and then we can get you the medication you need?”
Danny looks at me with bemusement. “They are different now,” he says. “The medicine is different. Wrong color. Wrong size. Wrong taste.”
“I know you don’t like the medications. I get that. But we need to get you something to help you feel better.”
“They don’t work,” he says.
“Then we’ll get you something that does work, okay? We’ll figure it out.”
“Allie,” he says, looking miserable. “Where’s Allie? I won’t go without Allie. Make sure she’s safe.”
“If Allie comes with you, will you go to the hospital?”
He nods. “I need Allie.”
I use my cell phone again, this time to call Allie. She answers on the first ring. “Hello?” There is an anticipatory, anxious note I can hear even in this one word.
“Allie, it’s Hildy. I found Danny. He’s here at my house. Can you come over and help me get him to the hospital?”
“Oh, thank God!” she says, relief flooding her voice. “I’ll come right away. What’s your address?”
I give it to her, but as I do it raises a question in my mind. As soon as I’ve disconnected the call, I go back to Danny. “Danny, how did you know where I live?”
Danny looks at me with that puzzled expression again.
“How did you know how to find my house?”
“Found it at sunrise,” he says.
I have no idea what that means, so I let it go for now. “Allie is on her way,” I tell him. “She should be here soon.” Allie’s house is only about eight blocks from mine, and I figure it won’t take her more than five minutes to arrive. I just need to keep Danny calm and, if possible, focused in the meantime. “If you don’t want the coffee, can I get you something else to drink?”
He looks at the coffee with a stunned expression, as if seeing it for the first time. “This is good,” he says, and he wraps his hands around the mug and takes a sip. Roscoe, no longer being petted, drops to his belly beside Danny’s stool.
I slide onto the stool next to Danny and gently touch his arm. “Danny, why did you come here? And why were you hiding out in my shed? Is someone threatening you?”
He doesn’t answer me. He doesn’t even acknowledge that he heard me.
“Danny, can you tell me anything more about Artie? Why were you out there at the farm? Were you working for Artie? Or for someone else?”
He shakes his head adamantly. “No, no, no, no, no!” he says, his voice growing more vociferous with each utterance of the word. He turns and looks at me, his eyes burning with some unknown torture he’s feeling on the inside. I fear I’ve lost him, but then he looks me in the eye and, with sudden clarity, says, “Hildy, I need help.”
“Okay, Danny. I’m going to get you some help. And I’ll make sure that both you and Allie are safe, okay?”
“They’re coming,” he says, and the words make the hairs on my arms rise. “You’re not safe. Allie isn’t safe.”
“I’ll make sure we’re all safe,” I assure him, even though I have no idea if that’s even possible. Not knowing exactly what the threat is, or if it’s even real, makes this whole scene surreal. I decide to call the police station and see if they can have an officer come by, just as insurance. Not only will it provide help in case we need it with Danny, it will give me—and perhaps Danny and Allie—a sense of being safe and protected. I grab my cell phone to make the call but before I can, the doorbell rings.
“That’s Allie,” I say to Danny. I hurry over and open my door.
“Where is he?” Allie asks anxiously. She spots Danny then and pushes past me, hurrying over to her brother.
“Oh, Danny, I’ve been so worried.” She wraps her arms around his neck and gives him a big hug, tears of relief coursing down her face. “Where the heck have you been?” she asks, a hint of chastisement in her voice.
“I found him in the shed in my backyard,” I tell her. “I’m not sure how long he’s been out there. He might have been there all night last night and all day today.”
Allie releases her hold on her brother and gives me a puzzled look. “Why?”
I shrug. “I don’t know how he knew where I lived. But when I found him, he made it clear that he was looking for me.”
Allie reaches up and places her hands on either side of her brother’s face, turning him to look at her. “Why, Danny?” she asks, staring into his eyes. They look blank. “Why did you come to Hildy? Why didn’t you come home?”
He doesn’t answer and I’m about to suggest that we try to coax him out to the car and take him to the ER to get checked out when my doorbell rings again. I go to answer it, thinking it might be Bob. But it’s not. It’s Joel, who’s standing there, dressed in scrubs.
“Allie called and said you found Danny,” he says. Then he looks past me, sees the two of them seated at the island, and hurries over to them. “I told work I had a family emergency,” he says to Allie. He sidles up on the other side of Danny, who is still staring off into space.
Joel reaches over and lays a hand on Danny’s arm. “Hey, bro,” he says. “Where the heck have you been? You’ve had us worried to death.” Not surprisingly, Danny doesn’t answer him.
“I think we need to get Danny to the hospital as soon as possible,” I tell them. “He’s not right, and I think he needs to be evaluated.”
Allie shakes her head, shifting back and forth from one foot to the other. “They’ll call the cops and then they’ll arrest him,” she says, rubbing her brother’s back as she does her nervous dance. “Let me take him home.”
“I think we should call the police anyway,” I tell her. “No one has said anything about arresting him. They’ll want to talk to him, though, and make sure he’s okay.” I’m trying not to let on that I think Danny might be in danger and get across the need for police involvement without spooking Allie or Danny. In the back of my mind I see Crystal’s accusing face from earlier today. Was I crossing that line she talked about?
“I want to take him home,” Allie says, her voice pleading. “Please, Hildy.” She gives me a beseeching look. I stall, unsure what to say next. Then Allie completely derails the conversation with her next question. “Man, I really have to pee. Can I use your bathroom, Hildy?”
That explains the nervous dance, I think. “Of course.” I show her where the main floor powder room is and, after giving Danny a kiss on the cheek, she hurries off.
I look at Joel, thinking he might be the voice of reason in all this. I nod my head sideways, indicating that we should step away. He follows me off to a far corner, where I hope we will be out of earshot of Danny. “It’s not safe to take him home,” I say in a whisper. “You need to make Allie see that he’ll be better off with the police.”
Joel scoffs at my words. “You don’t really believe that, do you?” he says. “Of course, they’ll arrest him. They’re going to want to know what he had to do with those poisons they were making out at the farm.”
“But we don’t want Danny to become a fugitive. They’re going to talk to him sooner or later and it will look better if he does it sooner and voluntarily.” I sigh, looking over at Danny’s slumped form sitting at the island. “Though I doubt anyone will be able to get much out of him the way he is now, anyway.”
Allie comes out of the bathroom then and joins us in our side conversation. “Do the cops think Danny killed that farmer?”
“I don’t think so, Allie,” I say honestly. “But they know Danny was somehow involved with what was going on at that farm. He knew things about the man who was murdered that put him out there at some point.”
“Just what was going on at that farm?” Allie asks. “I’m so confused. Those people from Homeland Security showed up at the house with a search warrant and took a bunch of Danny’s clothes. I tried to ask them what they were looking for, what they suspected, but they wouldn’t say a thing.”
“I can’t go into the details,” I say. As soon as I utter the words, a thought springs to mind, a disturbing, unsettling thought.
“Danny had an alibi for the time of the murder, didn’t he?” Allie insists. “He was at work. His boss even said the cops came by and checked to verify that he was there.”
“He was only there for part of the day,” I tell her. “And I believe the timing of the death has changed.” I don’t want to give her false hope, but I also don’t want to give too much away. I’m walking a tightrope here, and that thought I had a moment ago is making my footing feel more precarious with each passing second.
“It had to look like it happened before sunrise,” Danny says, startling us all, and we all move bac
k to the island.
Danny’s comment strikes me as odd, and I wonder if he’s reiterating something he overheard. “Why?” I ask him.
“For the alibi,” Danny says.
Before the sun came up, Danny would have been home in bed or getting up for work. His sister, if she was home, would be his alibi for that hour. I look at Allie. “Did you see Danny on Friday morning before he went to work?”
Allie thinks a moment, and then says, “Yes, I did. I woke him up because I heard his alarm go off at six-thirty, but he didn’t get out of bed. That happens sometimes because his meds make him so sleepy.”
“And what time did he leave for work?”
She shrugs. “The usual time, I suppose. I was already at work by then.” She looks questioningly at Joel.
“That sounds right. I think he left around eight-thirty.”
“Have to do it at sunrise,” Danny says.
I frown at this. His words don’t make sense, unless he’s talking about stuff he did at the farm. “Did you have work out at the farm that you had to finish before the sun came up in the morning?” I ask him.
“No sun,” Danny says irritably. “At sunrise. Right?” He cocks his head to one side as if listening, as if there is a voice he hears right now.
Joel sighs and says, “This isn’t getting us anywhere. I think Hildy is right. He needs to go to the hospital, get his medications changed or something.”
“We could take him home and make sure he takes his regular meds first,” Allie suggests. “He hasn’t taken them today and maybe that’s why he’s in this state.” Clearly, she is desperate to get him home where she can better protect him. I know she doesn’t want to face what’s coming.
“Yeah, okay,” Joel says. He tugs on Danny’s arm. “Come on, bro. Want to go home?”
“I really don’t think you should take him home,” I say. “He’s not well. He could be dehydrated and that might be contributing to his current state. He spent hours in my shed out back.”
Night Shift Page 24