Blood Work

by L.J. Hayward

  Chapter 17

  Erin sat in the back of an ambulance, wearing nothing on top other than her bra. She was grateful she’d gone with a nice, cream lace full-cup. Not too much showed, not that anyone cared. Even the camera guy from the local news kept his camera pointed elsewhere.

  There had been no injuries, thank God. Just panicked, angry civilians and frustrated police. Miss Browne had an ‘attack’, asthma only, though to hear her go on you would think she’d had a heart attack and stroke all in one. Erin had been doing her best to console the witnesses to the drive-by until Ivan had directed a paramedic to her.

  Ivan sat beside her, his hands bandaged. He’d dropped as soon as she’d shouted and hauled himself under the car. His palms were a little torn up but otherwise, he was okay. Except that he couldn’t stop shaking.

  “It’ll be okay, Ivan,” she said gently. “The kids will be fine. I’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. Okay?”

  He nodded but it was small and pathetic.

  “Ma’am?” The paramedic working on her shoulder lifted her arm up. “Does this hurt?”

  “No. It’s all right. Just a scratch.”

  He looked pointedly at the gash on her shoulder. “It will need stitches. The bullet tore through some outer muscle as well.”

  “Can you do that here?”

  “No. You need a doctor. We’ll get you to the hospital shortly.”

  A plain clothes policeman swaggered over. “Not before she answers some questions. Can you slap a bandage on that so she doesn’t bleed out while we’re talking?” He was heading toward retirement age but had retained a full head of thick hair more salt than pepper, the face beneath it lined and tanned with sharp eyes and a mouth suited to the dour seriousness of his profession. He’d kept himself in fighting condition, his T-shirt and jeans wouldn’t have looked out of place on a guy half his age. “I’m Detective Sergeant Miles Courey.”

  The paramedic grumbled but bound up Erin’s shoulder and then helped her back into her torn and bloodied blouse.

  “Erin McRea, and this is Ivan Vorel, my assistant.”

  Courey peered at Ivan’s blank face. “He okay?”

  “First timer.”

  “Get him to a pub ASAP and he’ll come good. Now, I assume this isn’t your first, then.”

  “I was a cop in the city for nine years. Seen a few things.”

  The detective grunted. “I bet you did. A few transfers have been offered to me over the years. Wouldn’t touch any of them with a ten foot barge pole. So, any ideas who did this here?”

  Erin hesitated. She’d seen the driver, but she didn’t believe her eyes, let alone give this guy a snowflake’s chance in hell of believing her. She decided to go with the partial truth.

  “No idea. But the driver was pretty distinctive looking. Narrow face, flat nose, big ears.”

  Courey noted that down. “Recognise him in a line up?”

  “Shit yeah.” Though she doubted they’d ever get him in one. If he was caught, he would probably be sent straight to some institution for study.

  “And what were you doing here today?”

  Erin found a crumpled card in a pocket and handed it over. “I’m on a missing person’s case. Though I don’t think he’s missing so much as just doesn’t want to be found. This is the address he gave to hospital staff last night. I was here trying to find out what I could about him.”

  “Who’s the bloke?”

  She told him and sketched out the bones of what she already had. Courey dutifully wrote it all down.

  “And you think the drive-by had something to do with your investigation?”

  “Possibly. It was me he was aiming at and I was in front of Hawkins’ last known address. If it had nothing to do with my investigation then it definitely had something to do with him.”

  Courey eyed her speculatively. “You were a target of opportunity?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Who’s your client?”

  “That’s confidential.”

  “If this yahoo with an automatic finds your man, then this becomes a murder investigation. You’ll have to spill the beans then. May as well get some practice.”

  Erin snorted. “Oh come on. You know I can’t do that. It’s a breach of the trust the client has placed in me as a discreet investigator. Sure, you’d get your information but you wouldn’t respect me afterward. Not to mention my boss. I’m not giving you my client’s name.”

  Courey sighed. “All right. Just know that if anything I find so much as smells like you or your investigation, I will be getting a court order to get your files.”

  “I would expect no less,” Erin said sweetly. “But I don’t think this had anything to do with my client. It’s unlikely they’d pay for a hit on an investigator they’d hired.”

  “Maybe they’d thought you’d found this Hawkins character and decided to take him out, and you at the same time. Two birds, one stone.”

  Ivan shuddered. “Why would they take us out?”

  “Do you do the accounts, young man? How much does your boss charge per day?”

  “But Mrs—”

  Erin nudged him hard. “That’s enough, Ivan. Don’t worry. The hit wasn’t on us.” She glared Courey. “Is that all, Detective?”

  He grunted. “For now. You’ll both be down the station to give your full statements within a half hour.” It was not a question.

  The paramedic, who’d been tidying up the back of the ambulance, said, “Make that two hours. She’s going to get her shoulder stitched first. And he needs his hands properly cleaned.”

  Courey scowled. “Whatever. Don’t be late.”

  He wandered back over to the main gaggle of police. Erin sighed. It was going to be a long evening.

  She and Ivan were cycled through the hospital’s emergency department fairly quickly, a stern faced senior constable encouraging the nursing staff and doctors along with nothing but his steely presence. Then they were chauffeured to the Ipswich station to make their statements. Erin repeated her toned down description of the driver several times and then went through it all again with the composite artist. At the end they had a picture of a thin-faced, broad-nosed bald guy with jug-handle ears. Weird, but human. By that time, Erin was almost willing to swear on a stack of Bibles that the picture was exactly what she’d seen. She didn’t want it to be anything else.

  As she was collecting a weary Ivan from the visitors lounge, more than ready to head home and crawl into her bed, Detective Courey found her.

  “McRea, I was wondering if I could discuss a few things with you.”

  Ivan sighed and slumped back into his chair. He pulled out his mobile phone and looked at Erin, eyebrows raised in question. She nodded and he dialled her home number to make sure Gavin’s wife Kate was still able to stay with William.

  “This way,” Courey said and led her to his office. It was tiny and cramped and Erin had to clamber over an archive box of files to get to the seat Courey indicated. “I checked out your credentials, McRea. You’re legit.”

  “Well, thanks for telling me. I appreciate knowing. Was that all?”

  He very pointedly didn’t respond, instead opening a folder and glancing over the contents. “I pulled the file on Matthew Hawkins. He’s got a history.”

  “I know. The assault and a stint in prison.”

  “Few other things besides. He’s on his second lot of court ordered anger management therapy. The first lot was because of the assault, the second stemmed from an indecent exposure incident.”

  Erin leaned forward. “How did that come about?”

  “Report says he was seen chasing a woman through the Queen Street Mall early in the a.m. He caught her and in the tussle, he somehow lost his pants.”

  “Rape?”

  “No. Witness says that it was the woman who tore the pants off him while he tried to fend her off.”

  “Not just a case of victim gets the upper hand for once?”

  “Could be, but I doubt it. He claimed s
he had been taking injured animals from vets around the city and killing them.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Nothing. She got away and never came forward. In the end, all they could get him on was the exposure. His history was enough for the judge to send him off to a shrink.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “About three months. Establishing a time line?”

  Erin sighed. “Trying to. The man doesn’t stick in one place for long.”

  “The hospital last night?”

  She nodded.

  “Yeah, I read that report. Guy’s got some issues, that’s for sure. Chasing down alleged animal killers, getting beat up by unknown thugs. He’s got several speeding fines, as well as a couple of charges for destruction of public property.”

  “And now he’s got someone who seriously wants him dead.”

  “Or just very scared.”

  Erin asked, “Why are you sharing this with me?”

  Courey sucked his teeth for a moment, clearly not liking what he was about to say. “My captain read up about you, as well. He thinks you’re some bit of hot shit. Figures you might actually find this guy before we do, or the folks gunning for him. You’re private. He might not actually smell you coming.”

  “Well, that’s a nice thing to say.” She didn’t even think before asking, otherwise she probably wouldn’t have. “Can you run down a car rego for me?”

  He studied her for a long moment, not quite meeting her eyes, but not bothering to look anywhere else, either. “I suppose. Is it part of the case?”

  “Could be.” She dug through her bag and pulled out the picture from the hospital security camera. “That’s our guy right there, the tall one with his arse hanging out of the hospital gown. The other two helped him escape the ED very early this morning.”

  Courey turned to his computer and began plugging in details. Erin waited as patiently as she could but it was a hard thing watching him type with two fingers. Finally, he sat back and read off the screen.

  “Silver Toyota Prado registered to Robert Robertson. Apart from being pretty sad in itself, that name mean anything to you?”

  “Not right now, but it might soon. Got an address there?”

  He wrote it on a scrap of paper and handed it over.

  “Does Hawkins have a car registered in his name?” she asked while Courey was feeling generous.

  Courey pulled in a deep breath and began tapping away again. Erin resisted the urge to throw herself over the desk and do it for him.

  “He does. A black Holden Monaro, address of residence the same one that just got hit. Oh, and the boy’s got personalised number plates. Nit sill.”

  “Nit sill?” Erin got up and leaned over the desk to look for herself. The screen displayed NYT CLL. She muttered it a few times, eventually settling on, “Night cell. At least, that’s about the only thing that might make sense.”

  “In someone’s crazy world, sure.” He yawned. “I’ve got your number if I need to call you.”

  Erin got the hint and said goodbye. No one interrupted her escape this time and Ivan collapsed into the passenger seat of her car, which some nice officer had brought to the station for her, and promptly fell asleep. She took him home, walked him up to his apartment and handed him over to his boyfriend. Brad put him to bed and then Erin told him the basics of what had happened, just so he knew what he might be dealing with if Ivan had nightmares. She said Ivan wasn’t expected at work the next day and then left.

  She reached her own home around three a.m. and found Kate asleep on the couch. Rather than disturb her, Erin put a light blanket over her and went to check on William. He too was sleeping. She stood in the door to his room for a long time, just watching him, trying to reconcile this wasted shadow with the vital, energetic man she’d married five years ago.

  Had it only been five years? Sometimes it felt like a lifetime since she hadn’t had to worry about safe guarding against infections and slogging through sessions of chemotherapy and radiotherapy and God knows what else the doctors had tried over the years. Decades since she’d made the painful decision to leave the police force and take the job with Sol Investigations just to earn enough money to get William the care he needed and everything the doctors said might, just might, possibly, help him survive for a few months more.

  And then there were the times she wondered if she should. He was in pain more often than he wasn’t, though he faced it with an incredibly strong and brave face. But there were nights—and it always seemed to be in the night—when he broke down with the agony of the cancer tunnelling through his bones. She would hold him and tell him it would pass and that it would get better and she would hate herself for lying to him when he really needed her honesty.

  Still, he was sleeping peacefully tonight, face smooth, eyes closed gently, chest rising and falling in steady rhythm. She wanted to go to him, lay her head on his chest and feel him living, reassure herself he was still with her. But she had a fresh wound and despite the thorough washing it had undergone, she didn’t dare risk getting close to William until she was certain it was not infected.

  Erin pulled herself away from William’s room and wrote a note for Kate, asking her to stay until the Blue Care nurse arrived in the morning. She quickly and quietly packed a small overnight bag and left again. There were showering facilities at the office building and a fairly comfortable couch in her office. That would do her until she was certain she wasn’t a danger to her husband.