by Sheryl Lynn
He hated himself for thinking it.
“She’s going to die,” he said bluntly.
“I didn’t say that, Mr. Hudson.” The young man held out the clipboard. “But if the worst does happen, her organs can help someone else. In Colorado Springs alone, we have a long waiting list of seriously ill people—”
Ryder jerked the clipboard out of the man’s hands. “I’ll sign it.” As he scribbled his name on the proper line, tears burned, blurring his vision. He blinked hard to keep them at bay. He shoved the clipboard at the man. “I want to talk to somebody right now who can tell me how my wife is doing. Right now, do you hear?”
Right now didn’t come any time soon.
Laura remained in surgery until well after midnight
When the surgeon finally arrived, his weary, guarded expression held no power to frighten Ryder. Hours ago, he had resigned himself to accepting the worst.
“She’s in intensive care, Mr. Hudson. Her prognosis is not good.”
Tom Sorry dropped a big hand onto Ryder’s shoulder. During the hours of waiting, the big grizzled cowboy had seemed to shrink. It occurred to Ryder that he, Laura and Abby were the only family Tom had. Tom hadn’t liked Laura, and she’d made no effort to disguise how much she despised him, but she was family nonetheless.
The surgeon catalogued Laura’s injuries—multiple skull fractures, brain hemorrhage, shattered facial bones, a broken leg, dislocated shoulder, broken ribs, torn muscles and bruised organs. Her car had rolled off a cliff toward the quarry and Laura had been thrown face first through the windshield.
“The next twenty-four hours will be touch and go.”
“And if she’s still alive this time tomorrow?”
“I’ll be willing to state she has a chance...of survival.” The surgeon looked away. “She suffered massive head trauma, Mr. Hudson. Even if she survives, she may remain in a coma. There is no way to judge at this time how functional she will be.”
Ryder chewed over the implication of the doctor’s words. “She may never wake up?”
“That is a possibility.” He glanced at the door as if expecting somebody.
“She’s a vegetable.” Ryder tasted the words, not liking them.
“I’m sorry, but in all likelihood, she’ll be paralyzed and quite possibly nonfunctional. She may very well require institutionalization for the rest of her life.”
Ryder steadied himself with a deep breath. A nasty little voice said it was his anger at her that drove her car off the cliff. “I want to see my wife. Where is—”
“You can’t.” The doctor took a step backward and looked again at the door. “I’m sorry, sir, but no one can see your wife at this time.”
Ryder turned a puzzled glance to Tom. Tom’s face had lost color under his tan.
Ryder said, “You said she might die. I need to see her.”
The doctor crossed his arms and used the toe of his crepe-soled shoe to draw circles on the floor. He frowned at his foot as if it were doing something odd. “Hospital policy is, in these cases, we have to wait for the police. The police haven’t arrived yet.”
Ryder clamped his hands on his hips against the urge to grab the surgeon by his scrawny neck. “What police? What are you talking about?”
The doctor touched the back of his own neck. “We also extracted a bullet fragment from Mrs. Hudson’s third cervical vertebra. We’ve notified the police. Until they arrive, I can’t allow you or anyone in to see your wife.”
AGITATED by sleep deprivation and coffee, Ryder slouched on a chair in the hospital administrator’s office. He needed to walk around, clear his head, but if he left the office, he’d be mobbed by reporters. So he stared at a wall, seeing animal shapes in the textured paint. His groggy imagination soon conjured a herd of wild horses cantering across a snowy field.
A knock on the door gave him a start. A woman entered. She wore a blazer and jeans, which meant she wasn’t a nurse, doctor or hospital official.
He jumped to his feet and pulled off his hat. He pressed it to his chest.
In her mid-thirties, she was a big, athletic-looking woman with a broad face and glossy black hair. Her smile was attractive, but much too alert for Ryder’s mood. “Ryder Hudson?”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s me.”
She pulled back her suit jacket and revealed a gold badge clipped to the waistband of her slacks. “Becky Solerno. I’m an investigator with the sheriff’s department. I know this is a bad time, but there never is a good time for this kind of thing. I need to talk to you about your wife’s accident.”
“It took you long enough, ma‘am,” he said, and placed his hat on the administrator’s desk. He checked his watch. It was nearly eight o’clock.
“What’s the matter? Run out of people to yell at?”
He tightened his jaw. He wasn’t proud of how he’d been acting, but he’d been sufficiently provoked by bureaucrats and red tape.
“Threatening doctors and security guards won’t win you many brownie points around here,” the woman continued. “They’re just doing their jobs.”
“My wife is dying. I want to see her. The only reason I can’t is that I’ve had to wait for you.”
“I apologize deeply for that, but I had to take care of the crime scene. I’ll make this as quick and painless as possible. Have a seat.”
Her cheerful demeanor made his hackles rise. He sat on a leather armchair. The investigator took a matching chair on the other side of the room. She faced him directly. A notepad rested on her knees. She held a pen ready to write.
“The doctor said she was shot. Is that right?” Ryder asked.
She had dimples in both cheeks. “Please, Mr. Hudson, sir. The procedure is, I ask the questions, you answer them. Okay?”
“Speak your piece, ma’am. I’m not in the mood to dance.”
She glanced at the array of paper coffee cups Ryder had left on the administrator’s desk. “It’s been a long night. You haven’t had any sleep. You’re worried. I understand. But I need you to understand. Your wife’s accident was no accident. Somebody tried to kill her.”
For hours he’d been trying to believe the doctor’s assertion that Laura had been shot. It made no sense at all. Even when this cop said it, it made no sense.
“It looks like whoever shot her was carrying her away from your house. The shooter wrecked the Mercedes on the road above the quarry when the car hit a boulder. It may have been disabled. Or maybe the shooter didn’t want to take a chance with a body in a damaged car. So he rolled the car off the road. My guess is, the car was supposed to end up in the water. With your wife inside, of course.”
Ryder’s gorge rose. A foul taste like copper pennies filled his mouth. “You find this funny, officer?”
“That’s investigator, please.” She blinked innocently, her smile never fading. “And no, it’s not funny. This is dead serious. If your wife, God bless her, dies, then it’s first-degree murder. So, do you have any ideas about who might have done this to her? No? Fine. Where were you when the accident occurred?” She glanced at her notebook. “Around two o’clock yesterday afternoon?”
She’d slipped as easily as a trout through still water moving from the question of who might have done it to the implication that he had. His brain finally caught up to the situation. “I was here in the Springs.”
“Can you be more specific?”
His discomfort increased. “Around. I was looking for someone.”
“Who?”
“My assistant. I owe her some money.”
“This is usual?”
Ryder didn’t see anything unusual, but the way she looked at him made him feel guilty as hell.
Her smile acquired a twist of skepticism. She turned a page in her notebook. “You’re an interesting man, Mr. Hudson.” She scanned a page, reading from it. “Former ranch hand and rodeo rider. Hunting guide. Now a world-famous artist. You did that big painting I’ve seen over at the courthouse. The longhorn cattle. Up on the second f
loor?”
He nodded.
“My boss loves your work. I’m pretty sure he has a painting of yours in his office. Or a print. Probably a print. I guess your paintings are expensive. You’re a rich man, aren’t you?”
“That’s no crime.”
“You and your wife are photogenic, too. Beautiful people, always turning up in the society pages. Looks like your wife hasn’t missed a big function or photo op in the past five years. Do you spend a lot of money on charities and political causes?”
He bristled. “What are you getting at, ma’am?”
“Beautiful wives, tons of money.” She held a hand palm up as if weighing her words. “Bullets. They all seem to go together.”
Her smile was getting on his nerves. “If you’re fixing to accuse me, say the words.”
“Is there anyone who can verify your whereabouts?”
He thrust out his fists. “If you want to arrest me, then do it.”
“I’m not interested in arresting you, sir. Not yet.”
Ryder grudgingly admired her gumption, but her in-hisface style irritated him. He lowered his hands. “I have attorneys who’d chew you up before spitting you out. So unless you want to deal with them, you best shoot straight with me.”
Her smile lost a bit of sparkle, but she didn’t back down. “Shoot straight. Interesting choice of words, Mr. Hudson.” She wrote something in her notebook. “Let’s see if we can get on the right track. How is your relationship with your wife?”
“None of your business.”
“I beg to differ, sir. My entire reason for existence is finding out who tried to murder your wife. Aren’t you interested in finding out who did it?”
Anger swirled and churned inside him, and he examined it with numb bemusement. He thought briefly about cutting off this little lady at the knees and calling in an attorney. Curiosity finally won out. “Do you think I did it?”
“I always suspect husbands.”
Her matter-of-fact attitude shocked him.
Her smile warmed. “Tell me about your relationship with your wife.”
“I didn’t shoot her.”
“You have a kid, Mr. Hudson.” She nodded sympathetically. “I have a son. He’s eleven. That’s a great age for boys, and sometimes I really resent how much time I have to spend away from him. He’s got a football game today. I hate missing it. So trust me, I’m not doing this for fun.”
He didn’t want to see her as human with a family life. He glowered at his hands.
“How old is your daughter, sir?”
“She’s five.”
“Does she know about her mother yet?”
Yes and no. Over the telephone he’d told Abby her mother was hurt and in the hospital. The little girl’s only reaction had been to ask if her kitten could sleep in the house.
“Your daughter will want to know what happened. Help me. Help her. Talk to me.”
“My marriage is rocky,” he said, having to squeeze each humiliating word between his teeth. “We’ve talked about divorce.”
“I see How long have you been married?”
“Almost five years. I didn’t shoot Laura. My wife and I have problems, but I love her.”
“Then talk to me. You’re a loose end I have to tie up before I can go on to the next step in my investigation.”
Loose end. He’d been called many things in his thirty-seven years, but that wasn’t one of them. A smile reached his face before he could stop it.
Grudgingly, irritably, testy as a mule in fly season, he answered her questions about his whereabouts yesterday and about his relationship with Laura. The only time he turned evasive was when she asked direct questions about Laura’s character. Until Laura could defend herself, nobody, him included, was going to bad-mouth her.
Finally she asked him to sign a release form grating permission to search his home.
He scanned the form, trying to clear his foggy head enough to think through all the implications. All he could think about was Abby. Children always suffered the worst in matters like these. Abby didn’t need cops snooping through the house, asking her questions and scaring her.
He tossed the paper at the detective. “Get a warrant.”
The light was finally extinguished from her smile. Her jaw twitched and her eyes narrowed. “I can do that.”
He leaned back on the chair and folded his arms over his chest.
“You’re a stubborn man, Mr. Hudson. But that’s okay. I’m a stubborn woman.” She left him with a parting shot. “I will definitely see you around.”
She spoke a few words right outside the door, then Tom Sorry entered the room. He closed the door. For a few seconds he held the doorknob. His craggy face was ashen.
“The cops think I tried to kill her, Tom. What did they say to you?” The full weight of the police interview caught up to him. He gripped his knees to keep his hands from shaking.
Tom’s face turned gray. “How can they think you’d do a low-account thing like that?”
“What did you tell them, Tom?”
“Nothing,” he mumbled, his eyes downcast. “Only that I didn’t see you yesterday.”
No one had accompanied Ryder to Monument, where he looked for Tess, or to Colorado Springs. He’d made a trip to Garden of the Gods in search of good background material for the Dizzy’s Two Times Two portrait, and then had gone downtown to browse in the art supply store. Except for the art store clerk, he hadn’t talked to anybody. He’d left messages on Tess’s answering machine, but he could have placed those calls from anywhere. It was logistically possible for him to have shot Laura, taken her to the quarry and pushed her car over the cliff. He could have then run the half mile back to the house, fetched his truck and driven into the Springs.
He hadn’t shot his wife, but damned if it didn’t look as if he had.
When he reached intensive care, a police officer stood guard outside Laura’s room. The cop made Ryder show identification. A nurse archly informed Ryder that he must limit his visit to three minutes.
For all that, he didn’t even recognize her. Where she wasn’t bandaged up, she was swollen, and her skin was stained yellow by disinfectant. Tubes and wires ran into and out of every part of her body. Monitors flashed and beeped. A respirator schussed in steady rhythm.
He swayed and had to close his eyes a moment. When he opened them, he sought a place on her that wasn’t bandaged, intubated, skinned up or bruised. He settled on the tip of her thumb. He stroked it. It felt cold.
“I’m here, darlin’,” he whispered. “No matter what happens, I’ll always be here.”
All the long ride home, he kept trying to understand how the world’s most beautiful woman had ended up as that poor pitiful creature laying so broken on a hospital bed.
When he and Tom Sorry reached the ranch, Ryder said, “I won’t be staying long I’ll make sure Abby is okay and pick up some fresh duds. Take charge of things.”
Tom pulled the Jeep Cherokee into the garage, then glanced at Ryder’s old four-by-four. Guessing what he was thinking, Ryder said, “I didn’t tell the police about the brake lines. Or about Tess.”
“I didn’t, either,” Tom said. “No one asked.” When he turned off the engine, the silence settled over them like a blanket. Neither man made a move to open a door.
“You don’t...” Tom cleared his throat. His ears turned red. “Teresa didn’t have anything to do with this.”
Ryder knew Tom had liked the girl more than just in passing. He’d courted her for a while until finally deciding he was too old for her. “What if she did, Tom? God knows what kind of blowout her and Laura had.” He fingered the cellular telephone still strapped to his hip. “I tried to get hold of her all day yesterday. I never heard from her.”
“What if... Laura wakes up and tells... ?”
“Tells what? We don’t know Tess cut the brake lines or had anything to do with the accident.”
“Not to say nothing bad about your wife, boss, but she’s—�
� He shrugged and grimaced. “You know.”
“She could provoke the Pope into popping his cork.” Ryder sighed wearily, so tired he hurt all over. Even thinking hurt. “I still can’t see Tess bringing harm to anybody. It’s probably just coincidence.”
“True,” Tom said, giving Ryder a measuring look. “Things like this, they’re for the police to figure out. Criminals always leave clues. Cops get paid to find clues ”
Ryder nodded in agreement. “Speculations from cowpokes like us would probably just muddy the water. It’s better if we don’t say anything.” He met Tom’s eyes. “Did they ask you anything personal?”
Tom tugged at his hat brim. “Didn’t have to. They already know about my past. Guess we just have to wait for your missus to wake up.” He sighed heavily. “If she wakes up. Damn, I’m sorry, Ryder, I never wanted anything like this to happen.”
Ryder patted his friend’s ropy forearm. “None of us did.”
He left the Jeep and trudged toward the house. As he climbed the two wide steps into the courtyard, Abby’s shriek echoed against the walls and a door slammed. The little girl tore across the terrazzo tiles.
Despite the cold morning, Abby wore only a T-shirt. Her bare feet slapped the tiles. He crouched and opened his arms. She leaped against him and locked her arms around his neck.
“Daddy!” She sobbed hoarsely. “You was gone! You scared me. You didn’t call this morning. I waited and waited. You were supposed to call.”
“Hey, sugar bear, it’s okay, I’m home.” He stood, bringing her feather weight against his chest.
Mrs. Weatherbee pushed open the French door through which Abby had just run. He entered the house and followed the housekeeper into the kitchen.
“I’m sorry, but she was so upset about everything, I couldn’t make her go to school,” Mrs. Weatherbee said. “That child is slippery as a blue-tailed lizard. Abby, where are your clothes?”
“Daddy’s home,” Abby said and tightened her grip on Ryder’s neck. Her heels dug into his ribs.
“You best put some britches on.” Ryder squeezed her tightly. “Some socks and shoes, too.” He tried to put her on a stool, but she clung to him like a little monkey.