‘Yentall was parked in a police lot,’ Stryker pointed out.
‘Yeah – and you were parked next to a restaurant used a lot by cops. The car wasn’t a black and white, but it sure as hell was a Department car. He could have spotted the radio. All he had to do was stake it out and wait for you to come back to it.’ Neilson’s anger was difficult to contain, but it was not really directed at Stryker.
Stryker sighed. ‘Okay, okay,’ he conceded, warily.
‘Getting shot has slowed him down some, I see,’ Neilson commented.
‘He’ll catch up,’ Pinsky replied, and picked up another magazine.
A doctor appeared, looking young enough to still be in high school, and tired enough to have been on his feet since birth. ‘Sergeant Pinsky?’ Pinsky nodded. ‘Sergeant Toscarelli is out of surgery and in Intensive Care. The damage was less than we thought – he has a good chance of complete recovery.’
‘Thank you,’ Pinsky said. ‘Thanks very much.’
‘De nada,’ the young doctor said. ‘Maybe you can see him tomorrow, depending.’
‘Depending on what?’ Neilson wanted to know.
‘On what kind of a night he has,’ the doctor said. He turned to go, but stopped at the croak of Stryker’s voice.
‘You said the damage was less than you thought.’
‘Yes.’
‘But there was damage?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘What kind of damage?’
The young doctor leaned against the doorpost. ‘That area of the brain covers motor controls, mostly. Until he’s conscious, we won’t know what has been impaired and what has been saved. At best, he could have a full return of faculties.’
‘And at worst?’
‘Possible paralysis to a greater or lesser degree, difficulties in speech, that sort of thing. As I say, we have to wait until he can tell us or show us. We hope for the best, though.’ With a quick and unconvincing smile, he was gone.
Stryker found his sight going again.
Pinsky stood up. ‘Come on,’ he said to Stryker. ‘I’ll take you home.’
‘I don’t know what the hell’s the matter with me,’ Stryker said, wiping his face.
‘It’s shock,’ Pinsky said, kindly. ‘Blood loss. You feel weak, you know? You got to expect that.’
‘Yeah,’ Neilson agreed, taking Stryker’s jacket from Dana and carefully arranging it over his sling. He looked away while Stryker tried to press the tears back into his eyes. ‘Shock and stuff. Happens all the time.’
‘Not to me,’ Stryker snapped. ‘Goddammit, not to me!’
SIXTEEN
‘I guess I’d forgotten what it was like,’ Dana said, slowly, as she and Neilson drove away from the hospital. ‘Working at a desk in Washington the way I do is pretty far removed from the street.’ She looked down and saw that there was blood on her skirt. It must have come from Stryker’s clothing or bandage, but she couldn’t remember being that close to him.
He hadn’t let her get close to him.
‘Keep her out there,’ he’d said to Pinsky in the Emergency Room. His voice had been weak, but it had carried far enough to slap her in the face. She didn’t for a minute think it had been to protect her from the sight of blood. It had been to protect himself from what he assumed might be an emotional display.
Well, she was stronger than that, and he should have known it. The fact that her knees had nearly buckled when they’d brought him out from behind the curtain – his face white and pinched and angry – was irrelevant. It had been very hot in there, and she had never liked the smell of hospitals.
It reminded her of Peter, and of all those months, when the smell of hospital had gone home with her every night and penetrated every empty room in their apartment. She could never speak about it, about anything concerning that terrible, terrible year when her husband had died. No matter how tightly she had held his cold, thin hands, Peter had slid away from her inch by inch, like someone disappearing under the ice into black water.
Gone forever.
‘Hey,’ Neilson said, suddenly noticing the glisten of tears on her face. ‘It’s okay, they’re going to make it.’ He regarded her quizzically. ‘The question is, are we?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Dana said. ‘Not tonight.’
‘Terrific,’ Neilson said. He was surprised to feel relief. The fact was, his original enthusiasm had been considerably dimmed by the afternoon’s events, but to admit it would be to seriously damage his reputation with himself as a ravenous sexual beast. ‘So, do I drop you at your hotel, or what?’
‘Yes, fine – the hotel would be fine.’
They pulled up in front of the hotel, and he left the engine running. ‘Ah – this thing with us,’ he began, awkwardly. ‘Maybe we should let it go?’
‘Do you want to let it go?’
‘Hell, no – I was just giving you an out, right?’ He leaned forward to look into her face. ‘I mean, you seem pretty upset and all about Jack getting shot . . .’
‘It’s not that, exactly. What you see here beside you is a woman beginning to . . . um . . . emerge.’
‘Like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon, hey?’ He thought she might laugh, but she didn’t.
‘You said I could trust you,’ she said.
He frowned. ‘Yeah, well – up to a point you can trust me. I’m not a bum, but on the other hand, I’m no angel, either. I told you, I never make promises or—’
‘I want you to understand,’ she said. And so she told him all about Peter and hospitals and Gabe Hawthorne and all the empty years she’d filled in with the cement of pretending not to care. She even told him how Stryker had made her realise what she was doing to herself. It poured out like infection from an old wound, cleansing her and transfixing him. Harvey listened in dismay – he was unaccustomed to hearing confession – and throughout her speech he smiled at her blankly, wishing he could think of something to say or do that would make it all right.
When she came to a stop, all he could think of was, ‘You’d better get some sleep.’ He knew it was inadequate – he suddenly felt inadequate all over.
With a sigh, she said goodnight and got out. He watched her enter the hotel. Her looks were somewhat diminished by fatigue, but she still turned heads. She certainly had turned his – he felt quite dizzy.
This whole thing was getting too heavy for him, he decided. He liked to keep things light, he liked his world to be casual, simple – and here she was, treating him like a deep-thinking person or something. He didn’t want to hurt her, nobody half-way decent would want to hurt her, but on the other hand, he didn’t think he was . . . he stopped himself just before he got to ‘good enough for her’.
What kind of thing was that for Absolutely Wonderful Harvey Neilson to be thinking?
‘Hell with that noise,’ he said aloud, and revving the engine into a defiant snarl, he pulled away from in front of the hotel with a screech of tyres.
He picked up a pizza and a six-pack on his way home, slumped in front of the television to watch an old John Wayne movie, and wondered why he didn’t feel like cheering the Duke, as usual.
Damned woman.
The room was dark, except for the television set flickering soundlessly in the corner of the built-in bookshelves that flanked the fireplace. Stryker lay on the couch with one of Kate’s patchwork quilts over him, and the cat on top of that. He scratched behind the cat’s ears and grimaced as on the screen he saw the top of his own head disappearing through the emergency entrance of the hospital, the rest of him hidden by paramedics carrying his stretcher. Just before him Tos had been taken in under an ominously stained blanket.
The six o’clock news had just finished, and he was watching the weather report without benefit of commentary. During the report on the lunchtime shooting, his heart had practically turned over when he realised t
hat the blanket was over Tos’s face – was he dead and they had all been lying to him? Then a corner of the blanket had flipped back momentarily, and he saw Tos’s hand lying on the stretcher. Saw it move, saw the fingers twitch, and realised the blanket cover-up had been to protect the on-lookers, not Tos.
The weathergirl looked inordinately cheerful, despite the fact that she seemed to be drawing all kinds of black clouds and depressions on the map. He closed his eyes for a minute.
He jumped when the telephone rang on the table behind the couch. The cat, with a reproachful glance, retreated to the foot of the couch and began to wash as Stryker reached over and picked up the receiver.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi.’
‘Kate? Aren’t you supposed to be giving your paper?’
‘I finished hours ago, silly. It went very well.’
‘Great. Good girl. I knew you’d dazzle them.’
‘Oh, sure, you know me.’
He was so glad to hear her voice he nearly burst into tears again, and mentally cursed his weakness. ‘What’s next on the busy agenda, then?’
‘We just finished dinner. I expect I’ll be going to bed when the talking runs down.’ She sounded both excited and exhausted.
‘Aren’t you supposed to be in there with your mouth hanging open at their display of wit and erudition?’
‘Nobody will miss me. I was—’
‘Not even Richard?’
She sighed. ‘I wish you’d stop going on about Richard. I knew you got the wrong idea about his being in my room. He’d just called in to see if I was ready to go down, that’s all.’
‘What a gentleman.’
‘There are a few left in the world.’
‘Excluding cops, presumably.’
‘No, including cops. Jack – what’s wrong?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘While I was eating dinner, I got the most terrible feeling that something was wrong. That’s why I called.’
‘I thought it was only bad dreams you had. Now it’s waking whim-whams, too? You’d better see someone abo—’
‘Jack – there is something wrong, isn’t there?’ She’d heard it in his voice, then. Maybe he’d been trying too hard.
‘Well – sort of. Tos got shot – but he’s going to be okay.’
‘Shot?’ Down the wire her voice became shrill with sudden panic. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Hey, hey – I’m fine,’ he lied. ‘I’m here at home, talking to you – it’s Tos who’s in the hospital, right?’ Well, that was the truth. ‘I’m fine.’ That wasn’t the truth, but he was better than dead.
‘Where was he shot?’
‘On Greenfield Road.’
‘No, no . . . where in the body?’
He sighed. ‘In the head – but it’s okay, Kate,’ he said over her moan of horror. ‘It took away a bit of bone but it was really just a deep crease. Nothing vital hit. Eyes, nose, teeth, all present and accounted for. Ears as well. Really.’
‘You’re hurt, too. I can hear it in your voice. I’m coming home first thing in the morning.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m just worried about him, that’s all. They say he’ll be okay, but I won’t be happy until he wakes up and begins telling me off for not eating my greens or something. You know how he’s always fussing about my health, like a goddamn Jewish mother. So now I’m returning the favour.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
He wanted like hell for her to be there. ‘You want me to be shot? Okay, I’m lying here in a cast from neck to ankle, blood dripping from every pore, screaming in agony every third minute. Your only consolation is that while I’m in this plaster overcoat I can’t chase women. Or at least, not as fast as usual.’
‘I see.’ She was wavering.
‘I’ll hire an ambulance so I can meet you at the airport. Don’t forget to bring me some Yorkshire pudding and some Scottish shortbread. What time will you be getting in?’
There was a long pause, and he could hear her thinking. He almost hoped he hadn’t convinced her, because he could conceive of nothing nicer at the moment than her cool hand on his fevered brow and maybe being read to, like a kid with measles. She finally spoke.
‘Who shot him? Was it – was it that cop-killer?’
So he’d teased her out of worrying about him. Why did he feel so disappointed? ‘We don’t know yet. It was from quite a distance away, so it was a rifle. They’re checking out the marks now.’
‘It could be the same person.’
‘You and Neilson ought to get together.’
‘He thinks it’s the same one?’
‘Yeah.’
She sighed. ‘So I had a premonition about Tos.’
‘You mean you’re starting to worry about him now, too?’
‘I’ve always worried about him, too,’ she said.
‘Yeah, I know,’ he said, softly. ‘Sorry.’
There was a pause – and then he heard her take a deep breath. ‘I’m coming home.’
‘No.’
‘But I’ve given my paper—’
‘No! Forget it. We’re all grown-ups here, we can look after ourselves,’ he said, more sharply than he’d intended. ‘I can’t help worrying,’ she snapped back.
‘Neither can I – but it won’t make a goddamn bit of difference whether you’re worried over there or back here.’
‘Well, thanks a lot – so nice to know I’m needed.’
‘I didn’t mean that. I meant—’
‘I know what you meant.’
There was a silence. They both seemed to realise simultaneously that they were on the verge of an expensive transatlantic argument, for as he opened his mouth she spoke quickly, overriding him. ‘Well, I guess I can go back to this terribly important conference. Since you’re okay and all that. You are okay, aren’t you?’
‘Nothing a night’s sleep won’t improve.’ He was being so careful choosing his words, you’d think he was Richard Bloody Cotterell.
‘I’m sorry about Tos.’
‘Me, too. But it will be okay. I’ve still got Neilson and Pinsky.’
‘And Miss Fireplug,’ she reminded him. ‘Or should it be Mrs?’ Oh, such an innocent little voice.
‘She’s a widow.’
‘Oh. Shame.’ Ah, but there was no pity there.
‘She can help out a little more, until Tos is back on his feet. Why not? Anyway, this is costing a fortune. See you in a week,’ he said, briskly.
‘Only three days now.’
‘In three days, right. No more premonitions, okay?’
‘I’ll notify my subconscious immediately.’ She could be brisk, too. The phone clicked down. The connection was broken.
He hung up the phone with a sense of guilt about the evasions. When she came home in three days and found him with a hole in his shoulder, she would raise hell.
Well, so what?
In three days he would have his strength back.
If he was lucky.
He didn’t feel very lucky.
Kate put the phone back on its hook and stood there, staring unseeingly at the dial. Slowly she turned and walked to the nearest chair. Around her the lobby of the hotel was fairly deserted – those attending the conference were still in the dining room, enjoying after-dinner brandy and bullshit. She’d had enough of both. All day long, Stratford had been full of visitors. The lush spring sun had brought them to marvel at the daffodils and crocuses that swathed and spangled the grass along the Avon. All during the long morning and afternoon of talk after talk, her attention had wandered to the windows. On the pavement outside crowds of people passed, the clatter and shuffle of their footsteps audible through the open casements. Children shouted, and there was laughter. It seemed as if everyone was hurrying to some kind of parade
or celebration, but it was only the hysteria engendered in the English by sudden warmth and brightness. They were unaccustomed to it, it went to their heads.
Kate wished it would go to hers, again. She felt suddenly suffocated by the soft lighting and rich surroundings of the hotel lobby, stood up, and fled into the cool night air. The novelty of being able to walk the night streets buoyed her up for a while, and then she began to feel chilled. She felt a moment of alarm when she heard the footsteps behind her, but then she heard Richard’s voice.
‘You must be wishing you’d brought a coat,’ he said, quietly, and draped his dinner jacket over her shoulders as he drew level with her. She started to protest, then saw he was wearing his raincoat.
‘Thanks. I think I was about to get lost.’
‘That phone call upset you.’ It wasn’t a question – he must have been watching her. That disturbed her momentarily, but she didn’t know why.
‘Yes. My – Jack’s partner has been shot.’
‘Is that the one you call Tos?’
‘Yes. He’s in the hospital. Jack’s not telling me everything, I know he isn’t. I’m sure he’s hurt, too. I feel it.’
‘But he was at home when you rang?’
‘Yes,’ she admitted, reluctantly.
‘Well then, if he is hurt, it can’t be very bad, or they wouldn’t have let him leave hospital.’
She smiled, wryly. ‘You don’t know Jack. If he could walk they would have had to tie him to something to keep him there.’
‘There you are, then. He can walk. How bad can it be? He’s a grown man, he can look after himself for a few days.’
‘That’s what he said.’
‘Sounds like a sensible chap,’ Richard said, levelly.
‘He’s not, he’s an idiot!’ Kate snapped, on the verge of tears. ‘He’s always trying to protect me, to pretend police work is safe – but someone tried to kill Tos. And Jack, too, only he won’t admit it.’
Their footsteps echoed off the closed shopfronts, her heels tic-tacking on the uneven paving stones. The warm day had given way to an evening of light mist, haloing the streetlamps and making the pavements glisten. Droplets of mist glistened in the dark curls of her hair and gave a dewy glow to her cheeks, which were flushed with frustration.
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