EIGHT
Was it still August? There was a man in the bar, she remembered, a small man in a shiny suit; that was why she'd bought herself a bottle to take back to the hotel room, to get away from him.
No, it was December now, although inexplicably August's hangover was still with her - a head so fragile that if her queasy stomach did what it wanted to, her skull was sure to split right down the middle. Someone groaned, she thought, and grinned like a skull.
"Kate?" said an unfamiliar voice. "Katarina Martinelli? Are you awake?"
She worked her throat a bit, swallowed, cleared it gingerly. Her head didn't split, although she thought it might be a good idea to keep her eyes shut.
"Somebody had a headache," she muttered.
"What did she say?" said the voice.
"She seems to be disassociating herself from her experience," said another woman. Something familiar about this second voice. "How interesting."
"Not," began Kate, and then thought, The hell with it. Let them be interested.
"Not what, Kate?" said the second voice, the one with the mild accent, and when Kate didn't answer, she continued, "Do you know where you are?"
"Hospital," Kate answered immediately. She knew these smells and noises even with her eyes shut and a hangover thudding through her. She'd know them even if she lay here dead.
"Do you know how you got here?"
Kate had no immediate answer for that one.
"Who had a headache?" voice two persisted.
"Joke," said Kate to shut her up, but the word set off an echo and bits of memory began to flake off and fall down where Kate could gather them up. Joke (joke/buckets from the morgue catching scraps - no, drops, drops of rain/macabre cop humor, sorry, Grace/ is he with you?/ you're looking for a boy called —)
"Dio," she croaked, and opened her eyes into those of Rosa Hidalgo. "Dio. Is he alive?"
"The boy? The doctors say he's responding well, he'll be fine. You know how you got here, then?"
"I was in the squat, with, um. Rawlins. Rawlings," she corrected herself. "Did I get shot?"
"You were hit, with a piece of pipe. You were lucky, it seems, that God has blessed you with a thick skull."
"Thank you, God. How long was I out?" Kate was aware that the other woman was fussing with vital signs, her hand on Kate's wrist, but she ignored her.
"You were hit the day before yesterday, so it is about forty-three hours. And if you are wondering why I am here, I am acting as Jules's representative. Hospital policy does not allow children in the I.C.U.," she added with amusement, "and Jani has a lecture this afternoon."
"I can imagine Jules had words about hospital policy," Kate said, and closed her eyes.
When she next woke, Hawkin was there, and a different nurse. Before she could speak, the nurse shoved a thermometer into her mouth, and everything waited until pulse and blood pressure had been taken and the high-tech thermometer beeped.
"How's the boy?" Kate asked as soon as her mouth was clear.
"He'll do. He's still on a drip but his fever's down. I talked with him just before I came here."
"Has anyone come for him yet?"
"He won't give us his last name, where he's from, anything."
"You might ask Grace Kokumah to come and talk with him. You know her?"
"Of course. I'll do that, when he's better. How are you doing?"
"I feel like hell, but everything seems to be in the right place. I haven't seen a doctor yet, not to talk to."
"I'll try and find one for you. You owe Rawlings, by the way. He managed to be in the way when they were moving you into the ambulance, so the papers didn't have any pictures of you this time. They had to make do with Reynolds."
"Who's Reynolds?"
"Sorry. Weldon Reynolds, the guy you shot. He has a record, but only small things, creating a disturbance, selling grass and mushrooms, resisting arrest. Not a sexual offender, as far as we can find out, and none of the other boys in the squat accused him. Looks like he had a fantasy of creating a society of outcasts, petty thievery and selling joints, with the profits coming to him, of course."
"Dickens," Kate commented.
"Fagin," agreed Hawkin. "He'll be okay, by the way. Your bullet caught him at a funny angle, probably bounced off one of the struts in that elevator, traveled up through a couple of ribs and collapsed a lung, but it didn't reach the heart. You were lucky."
"Yes," Kate said with feeling. A shooting, even justified, was always a serious thing; killing a perpetrator could haunt, or end, a cop's career. To say nothing of the cop.
"Are you okay about it?"
"I don't know. I haven't thought about it. I guess so."
"You remember shooting him?"
"Oh yes. I remember shooting, anyway. I never saw him, just the gun flashes, and I aimed at them, and then the gun fell. I never saw him," she repeated. "Am I on suspension?"
"Administrative leave," Hawkin confirmed. "There'll be a hearing when you're on your feet again, but you won't have any problems. You were entirely justified. He was shooting at you, for Christ sake."
"I didn't have a warrant."
"He had no right to be there, either. I talked to the owner of the building. It'll be all right, Kate. Don't worry about it, just get better. Do you want me to call Lee?"
"No!"
Hawkin stood beside her bed and looked down at her for a long time, but in the end he did not comment, merely nodded and said good-bye. Kate was tired, but her throbbing skull kept sleep at bay for a long time - the throbbing, but also the tangled memories of Dio's sweaty face, the gun kicking in her hand, and the strangled cough of the man when her bullet hit him.
One of the things Kate hated most about being in the hospital was that people were forever coming in on her while she was asleep. Not so much the hospital personnel - she was resigned to them; after all, they were body technicians, and having them wandering around the room while she was out like a light was much the same as having a doctor doing a yearly exam, prodding and looking into areas of her body that even Lee hadn't seen much of.
It was the others who were given free rein to come in and stare at her who drove her mad. Over the next few days, especially when she was moved from the I.C.U., there was a constant stream: The man from Internal Affairs, the police psychologist, the social workers and investigators and everyone connected with the squat and its boys and the criminality of its leader - all had come in at one time or another, and most of them had caught her sleeping.
And now, yet again, five days into her stay, she was struggling up into alertness, knowing someone was standing beside her bed. Two someones, she saw, Al and a boy who was either extremely short or else sitting down, a boy with a Mayan face and long hair as black as Jules's, a boy who looked embarrassed and shy and determined.
"Kate, this is Dio," Al said.
She tried to lift herself upright, then remembered the switch and raised the head of the bed. The boy was sitting, in a wheelchair, though by the looks of him it was more due to hospital policy than need.
"Well, you're certainly looking better than when I last saw you," Kate told him, and put out her hand. He shook it with the awkwardness of someone who is more familiar with the theory of a handshake than with its practice. That seemed true of dealing with the adult world in general, as well; when he had his hand back, he didn't seem to know what to do with it, and his gaze flitted about the room, landing only briefly on Kate's face and veering away from the thick bandages around her head.
"I, um, I wanted to say thank you," he said. "They're discharging me, and I wanted to see you before I left. To say thanks."
"You're welcome," she replied, swallowing a smile. "I'm just glad I found you. You should thank Jules, and Grace Kokumah."
"Um, I - I did. I also wanted to thank you for getting the library book back to Jules."
"Library book?" She looked to Al for explanation, but he only shook his head in incomprehension.
"Yeah, the one I had
in the tent. I was really worried about it," he said in a rush. "It's been bugging me ever since I left, 'cause I know how careful Jules is with books, especially library books, and I knew the tent would leak as soon as it rained."
"I see. Why didn't you give it back to her before you left?" And, she thought, why didn't you take your bits of jewelry with you?
He looked down intently at his fingers, which were plucking at a worn spot on the arm of the wheelchair. Al moved casually away to examine a wilting flower arrangement.
"I was gonna go back. I only came up here for the day, you know? There was this other kid in the park - he wanted to come up and he had a ride, so I came with him. Then we met Weldon, and it got late, so we stayed with him, and then, well, we just got busy, you know?" He looked up, and read the expression on her face as disapproval. "He always had things for us to do. And I was afraid that if I went back down, I might have problems getting up again, like if the cops - the police'd found my stuff and thought I stole it, so I just kept putting it off. But I felt really bad about that library book."
The smile tugged itself out of the corners of Kate's mouth. "You're something else, you know that, Dio?"
His head came up, looking for ridicule but looking relieved, and when he realized she meant it as a compliment, his brown skin blushed copper.
"You just stayed on in the squat because it was better than living out in the open, with winter coming on?"
"Yeah. It was an okay place. It was dry, and we had lots of blankets, and some of the other kids were cool. Weldon was a little weird sometimes, but he was good at getting food and stuff, and he knew some great stories. He used to tell us things at night. Called it 'sitting around the campfire.' " A crooked smile softened the boy's face for a minute, and then it was gone.
"How was he weird, Dio?" she asked, and when he didn't answer, she said, "I think I deserve to know. He nearly killed me, for Christ sake."
"That was Gene that hit you."
"I mean with the gun. Or didn't you know that Weldon tried to shoot me?"
"I heard, yeah." He shifted uncomfortably. "I don't know. Weldon was kind of paranoid. He used to tell us how he'd protect us against people - cops and CPS and people who'd want to break us up. He used to call us his family. He even tried to get us to call him Dad, but only a couple of the littler kids ever did." He sounded regretful, as if he had failed a friend.
"Why didn't you let Jules know you were okay? She was terribly worried."
"I know. I did write. Twice."
"What happened?"
"I gave them to Weldon to mail," he said flatly.
"And he never did."
Dio shrugged.
"What are you going to do now?" she asked.
"I'm gonna live with a family for a while. The Steiners."
"I know them. They're good people."
"I guess."
"Well, good luck to you, Dio. Stay in touch, and look, if things get rough, give me a call, okay? I might be able to help."
His eyes went to her wrapped head, and he winced, but his parting handshake was more assured than the first one had been.
Al took the chair's handles and began to push it toward the doorway, but Kate had remembered something else. "Dio - who was the woman in the picture? The snapshot I found in your tent?"
Al turned the chair around, but the boy's face was closed up and he said nothing.
"Anyway, did Jules give it back to you?" After a moment, he ducked his head. "Yeah."
"That's good. Well, take care, man. See you later, Al."
Their voices faded down the noisy hallway, and Kate lay back to await the next interruption.
She was in the hospital for a week, refused release because of occasional spikes in her temperature and a cycle of blinding headaches that entertained a series of doctors and worried the nurses. Finally, however, her fevers left, and with the possibility of an infection inside her brain out of the way, she was discharged. Even then she had to lie to the head nurse, saying that there would be someone to care for her at home, but eventually, her shaven scalp cold around the smaller bandage, she eased herself from wheelchair to Hawkin's car, and he drove her home.
She let him take the bag of accumulated possessions into the house - things he or Rosa Hidalgo or Rosalyn Hall had fetched for her - and walked cautiously through to the living room sofa. Hawkin brought her the alpaca throw blanket, turned up the heat, made her a cup of hot milk, and carried her bag upstairs. He came back with her gun in its holster.
"Where do you want this?" he asked.
"The top drawer in that table with the phone on it, thanks."
He stepped back into the hallway and she heard the squeak of the drawer.
"Can I get you anything to eat?"
"No thanks. They fed me lunch." The doctor whose approval was required before Kate could leave had been in surgery, delayed by an automobile accident and leaving Kate to sit in her room, waiting and picking at a tray of hospital food, until he swept in, still wearing his surgical booties, looked in her eyes, asked her two or three questions, and left. "What I'd really like is to be alone, if that's not too rude."
"I understand. I'll stop by on my way home, but call if you need anything. Where's the -I saw it in the kitchen." He went out again and returned with the portable telephone, checking that the batteries were charged before he put it on the table in reach of Kate's hand. "You remember my beeper number?"
"Al, I had a concussion, not a lobotomy. Go do some work. Solve a crime or something, and let me sit and be quiet."
And it was quiet, once the door had closed behind him. A light, steady rain was falling, soaking the shrubs and pots and the bricks of the patio, where the moss in the cracks rose up to drink it in. Streaks ran down the windows and the French doors, a mild gurgle came from the downspouts, an occasional seagull floated across the gray sky, and Kate slept.
It was dark outside when she woke, although a light from the kitchen gave outlines to her surroundings. She woke bit by bit, dozing warmly inside the cocoon of the soft blanket, grateful for the familiar room and the sounds of home. Hospitals were cold, clanking death traps, and she was aware, for the first time since August, of the innate goodness of life.
Easing onto her back to look at the digital clock on the video machine, she felt a twinge along the right side of her skull, but that was all. Just after eleven - she'd slept for seven hours. Gingerly she tried sitting up, then got to her feet, and other than a couple of dull thuds at each change of position, the headache remained lurking in the background - not gone, but not actively attacking, either.
Enjoying the freedom of movement, exploring how far it would stretch, Kate folded the blanket and tossed it across the back of the sofa (a brief awareness of pressure at the throwing motion, not really a pain) and went to look out the window at the night. All the lights seemed very distant, but it was a comforting sensation, not an alienating one. The wind stirred the bushes, and she wondered how long Gideon the raccoon had continued to come before deciding that she was a lost cause. Maybe she would put a handful of dog biscuits out tomorrow night, on the off chance he cruised by.
She was thirsty, and, yes, actually hungry, although there was not likely to be much that was edible in the refrigerator. She pulled the curtains against the night and went to the kitchen.
There was a vase of flowers on the table, a fresh, fragrant mixture of florist's blooms, and beside it a note, the first part of which, strangely enough, was in Al's handwriting. Surely he would have mentioned any message that afternoon? She picked it up and read:
Martinelli - I turned the ringer on your phone off and the sound down on your answering machine. Call if you need anything, otherwise, I'll drop by in the morning. The flowers are from Jules.
Al
Beneath it on the page, in the same ink but by someone with a much lighter hand, was another message:
Kate,
We didn't want to wake you, but I thought you might like some food and wouldn't fee
l like cooking. You can eat the soups cold or micro them for a couple of minutes, ditto the beans in the glass casserole, but don't heat the noodles - it's a salad. I'm going to be at the civic center tomorrow morning, and may stop by around noon. Oh yes, that's Maj's tiramisu in the white bowl. Take care.
Rosalyn
Kindness, the simple kindness of friends, the last thing she had expected, and it reached in through her weakness and she felt tears start up in her eyes as she sat at the table and read the words over again. On the third time through, it occurred to her that she had been driven in here by hunger, and she seemed miraculously to have at hand something more appealing and substantial than the bowl of cold cereal she had resigned herself to.
Six containers of food awaited her: two white deli cartons, two glass jars, and two ovenproof containers reminiscent of potlucks. Noodle salad with the spicy, fragrant sesame dressing Kate loved - how had Rosalyn known? One jar with a strip of masking tape labeling it mushroom soup, the other chicken vegetable. Two kinds of beans. And a large bowl of creamy white pudding, drifted with black-brown powdered chocolate. Kate reached in and began greedily to pull out containers.
At midnight, replete and much steadied, Kate turned off the kitchen light, turned on the light over the stairs, and began the climb to bed. Halfway up, she paused, then reversed her steps back into the kitchen. She found a stemmed wineglass and a pair of scissors, turned to the bouquet on the table and teased a few of the flowers from it, trimmed their stems short, and dropped them into the wineglass. She put the scissors in the drawer, ran some water into the glass, put the denuded stems into the trash, turned off the light again, and took the miniature flower arrangement up the stairs with her. The flowers sat on the table beside her bed, keeping her company while she looked at the television, and later they watched over her while she slept.
NINE
Kate was in the garden chopping weeds with a hoe when she heard the doorbell. The garden was on the north side of the house, and usually cool and shaded, but despite being mid-December, it was one of those warm winter days that explains why California is over-populated, and Kate was sweating with the effort. She straightened and, with resignation, felt the inevitable jab in her head travel on down her spine and seize her stomach, setting off the vague nausea she had come to dread.
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