An Ice Cold Grave (Harper Connelly #3) 0

"Not your fault," he said. "You're getting a lot of publicity out of this, you know. That's another reason..." But then his face closed down on the thought. He'd been thinking about Manfred and Xylda again, sure that Xylda was in town to jump on the free ride of publicity the multiple murders would engender. No, I'm not a mind reader. I just know Tolliver very well.

"I'm not above thinking Xylda would cash in under ordinary circumstances," I said. I was trying to be practical and honest. "But she's so frail, and Manfred was so reluctant to bring her."

"He said," Tolliver pointed out.

"Well, yeah, he said. And you seem to think that Manfred's capable of dragging a sick woman somewhere she doesn't need to be just to satisfy his lust for me, but I don't think that's true." I gave Tolliver a very level look. After a second, he looked just a bit abashed.

"Okay, I'll agree he really loves the old bat," he said. "And he does take her wherever she wants to go, as far as I know."

That was as much of a concession as I was going to get, but at least it was something. I hated the idea of Tolliver and Manfred meeting up and getting into it with each other.

"Are they at our motel?"

"Yeah. There aren't any rooms anywhere else, I can tell you. The road up the mountain is nearly blocked off to traffic because there are so many news trucks and law enforcement vehicles. There's one lane open with guys with walkie-talkies at either end of the bottleneck."

Again, I felt a twinge of guilt, as if I were somehow responsible for the disruption of so many peoples' lives. The responsibility, of course, was the murderer's, but I doubt he was staying up worrying about it.

I wondered what he was thinking about. He'd vented his rage with me. "He'll lie low now," I said. Tolliver didn't have to ask me who I was talking about.

"He'll be cautious," Tolliver agreed. "That turning out to try to get you, that was just rage that his games were ended. He'll have cooled off now. He'll be worried about the cops."

"No time to spare for me."

"I think not. But this guy has to be a loony, Harper. And you never know what they're thinking. I hope you get out of the hospital tomorrow. Maybe the cops'll be through with questions and we can leave this place. If you feel well enough."

"I hope so," I said. I was better, but it would be stretching a point to say I felt good enough to travel.

Tolliver gave me a hug before he left. He would pick up something to eat on his way back to the motel, he said, and stay in the rest of the evening to dodge the reporters. "Not that there's anywhere to go," he said. "Why don't we get more work in cities?"

"I've asked myself that," I said. "We had that job in Memphis, and that other one in Nashville." I didn't want to talk about Tabitha Morgenstern again. "And before that, we were in St. Paul. And that cemetery job in Miami."

"But most of our calls are from small places."

"I don't know why. Have we ever done New York?"

"Sure. Remember? But it was really really hard for you, because it was right after 9/11."

"I guess I was trying to forget," I said. That had been one of the worst experiences I'd ever had as a professional...whatever I was. "We'll never do that again," I said.

"Yeah, New York is out." We looked at each other for a long moment. "Okay then," he said. "I'm gone. Try to eat your supper, and get some sleep. Since you're better, maybe they won't come in so much tonight."

He fussed around for a minute or two, making sure the rolling table was positioned correctly, clearing it for the supper tray, drawing my attention to the remote control built into the bed rail, moving the phone closer to the edge of the bedside table so I could reach it easily. He put my cell phone in the little drawer beneath the rolling table. "Call me if you need me," he said, and then he left.

I dozed off for a little while, until the supper tray came. Tonight I got something more substantial. I'm embarrassed to say that I ate most of the food on my tray. It wasn't awful. And I was really hungry. I hadn't exactly been packing in the calories the last two days.

After that, by way of excitement, a different doctor dropped in to tell me I was making progress and he thought I'd be able to go home in the morning. He didn't appear to care anything about who I was or where home was. He was as overworked as everyone else I'd encountered there at Knott County Memorial Hospital. He wasn't from around these parts, either, judging from his accent. I wondered what had brought him to Doraville. I figured he worked for the same emergency-room-stocking service that employed Dr. Thomason.

Barney Simpson's assistant, a very young woman named Heather Sutcliff, came in soon after the doctor's visit.

"Mr. Simpson just wanted me to stop by and check with you. Lots of reporters want to see you, but for the peace and privacy of the other patients we've been denying them visiting privileges. And we've screened the calls to your room...that was your brother's idea."

No wonder I'd been able to recover in peace. "Thanks," I said. "That's really a big help."

"Good. Because it really wouldn't be fair to the other people in this wing, to have all kinds of strangers tromping through." She gave me a serious look to show she took my reporter problem as a bad thing. And then she slipped out the door, closing it gently behind her.

The most interesting thing that happened after her departure was the tray guy removing my emptied tray. After that surge of excitement, I tried to watch television for a while; but the laugh tracks made my head ache. I read for maybe half an hour. I gradually grew so sleepy that I left the book where it fell on my stomach and just moved my hand enough to switch out the light I could control from my bed rail.

I was awakened by a brilliant flash and the sense of sound and movement very close to me. I cried out, and flailed my good arm to drive the attacker away. In a moment of sense, I punched the button that turned on the light and the one that called the nurse. I was stunned to see there were two men in the room. They were bundled up in coats and they were yelling at me. I couldn't understand a word they said. I punched the nurse's button over and over, and I yelled louder, and in about thirty seconds there were more people in my room than it was designed to hold.

The evening nurse was a starchy woman of considerable width. She was tall, too, and she scorned makeup, but she'd met a bottle of red hair dye she was real fond of in the past week or so. I admired her more by the second. She went for those reporters with both guns. Actually, if she'd had guns, the two men would've been dead without a doubt. Hospital Security was there (a man older than my doctor and not nearly as fit), an orderly was there (satisfyingly tall and muscular), and another nurse who added her opinion to that of my big nurse, as I thought of her.

Of course this was a silly episode, and one I should have been able to throw off; and once I considered it, one I should have anticipated. Right at the moment, I couldn't recognize any of those points. I'd been scared very badly, and my heart was thumping like a rabbit's, and my head was hurting as if someone had hit me again, and my arm ached where I'd bumped it when I'd lurched sideways against the railings in my panic.

When it all got sorted out the nurses had given the reporters a first-rate tongue-lashing, the security guard and the orderly were escorting the intruders out, and the two men were trying to hide their smiles.

And I was a mess: frightened, hurting, and lonely.

Chapter 6

TOLLIVER was livid when he came in the room the next morning. The nurses had been full of the night's excitement, and they'd been quivering to fill him in on the big event. They'd pounced on him with avidity. The result was that Tolliver was all but breathing fire when he flung open my door.

"I can't believe it," he said. "Those bastards! To sneak into a hospital in the night and actually into your room! Jeez, you must have...were you asleep? Did they really scare you?" He went from rage to concern in two seconds flat.

I was too tired to put a good face on for him. I'd come awake with a jolt at least three times during the night, sure there was someone else in the room with me.

Tolliver said, "How'd they even get in here, anyway? The doors are supposed to be locked after nine o'clock. Then you have to punch a big button outside the emergency room door to get in. At least that's what the sign says."

"So either a door was left open by accident or someone let them in. Might not have known who they were, of course." I was trying to be fair. I'd really gotten good treatment at this little hospital, and I didn't want to believe any of the staff had been bribed or were malicious enough to simply let reporters in for the hell of it.

Tolliver even sounded off to the doctor about it.

Dr. Thomason was back on duty. He seemed both angry and embarrassed, but he also looked as though he'd heard enough about the incident.

I gave Tolliver a look, and he was smart enough to back off.

"You're still going to let me go, right?" I said, trying to smile at the doctor.

"Yeah, I think we'll toss you out. You're recovering well from your injuries. Traveling isn't going to be easy on you, but if you're determined, you can leave. No driving, of course, not until your arm is well." The doctor hesitated. "I'm afraid you'll leave our town with a bad impression."

A serial killer, an attack out of the blue, and a rude awakening...why would I get a negative picture of Doraville? But I had manners and sense enough to say, "Everyone here has been very kind to me, and I couldn't have gotten better treatment in any hospital I've seen." It was easy to see the relief pass across Dr. Thomason's face. Maybe he'd been concerned that I was the kind of person who slapped a lawsuit on anyone who looked at me cross-eyed.

I'd been thinking of the good people I'd met here, and the fact that Manfred and Xylda had come here expressly to see us. That had made me wonder if we shouldn't spend the rest of the day here in town to wind up our loose ends. But after the scare the night before, I was twitching with my desire to get out of this place.

Of course, there was the usual long wait while the paperwork made its way around the hospital, but finally, about eleven o'clock, a nurse came in with the mandated wheelchair, while Tolliver bundled up and went out to pull our car around to the entrance to pick me up. There was another wheelchair waiting just inside the front door. A very young woman, maybe twenty, was perched in it, her arms full of a swaddled bundle. An older woman who had to be her mother was with her. The mother was herding a cart loaded down with pink flower arrangements, a pile of cards that were also predominantly pink, and some gift boxes. There was a pile of pamphlets, too. The top one was titled "So You're Taking Your Baby Home."

The new grandmother beamed at me, and she and my nurse began chatting. The young woman in the wheelchair looked over at me. "Look what I got," she said happily. "Man, the last time I was in the hospital I left my appendix. Now I get to leave with a baby."

"You're lucky," I said. "Congratulations. What have you named her?"

"We named her Sparkle," she said. "Isn't that cute? No one will ever forget her."

That was the absolute truth. "It's unforgettable," I agreed.

"There's Josh," the grandmother said and wheeled her daughter and granddaughter through the automatic door.

"Wasn't that the cutest little old girl?" my nurse asked. "The first grandbaby in that family." Since the grandmother had been in her late thirties, at the most, I was relieved to hear it.

I wondered if my lightning-fried body could produce a child.

Then it was my turn to be wheeled to the cut-down curb, and Tolliver leaped from the car to hurry around to help me. After I'd carefully eased into the car, he bent over to fasten my seat belt and then rounded the car again to get in the driver's seat.

The nurse leaned down to make sure I was sitting straight with all my bits in so she could close the door. "Good luck," she said, smiling. "Hope we don't see you back here anytime soon."

I smiled back. I was sure the other departing patient had felt sorry for me, but I felt much better now that I was in our familiar car and Tolliver was with me. I had prescriptions and doctor's instructions, and I was free to leave. That was a great feeling.

We turned right out of the hospital parking lot, and I didn't see any traffic out of the ordinary. No reporters. "Back to the motel, or can we leave?" I asked.

"We're getting your prescriptions filled and then we're leaving town," Tolliver said. "What more could they want from us?"

We stopped at the first pharmacy we saw. It was a couple of blocks from the hospital, and it was a locally owned business. Inside it was a cheerful mixture of smells: candy, medicine, scented candles, potpourri, nickel gum machines. You could get stationery, a picture frame, a Whitman's Sampler, a heating pad, a magazine, paper party plates, or an alarm clock. And at a high counter in the very back, you could actually get your prescriptions filled. There were two plastic chairs arranged in front of that counter, and the young man behind it was moving with such a languid air that I was sure Tolliver and I would have time to find out how comfortable they were.

My only exertion had been getting out of the car and walking into the pharmacy, so it was unpleasant to find how relieved I was to see those plastic chairs. I sat in one while Tolliver surrendered the prescription slips to the young man, whose white coat looked as if it had been bleached and starched - or maybe it was the first one he'd ever worn. I tried to read the date on the framed certificate displayed on the wall behind him, but I couldn't quite manage the small print at that distance.