There’s a horrified murmur from the crowd of residents across the street as two bodies, bagged and on stretchers, are carried out. Another county truck comes slowly down Ridge Road and parks in the middle of the street to receive them.
Barbara’s phone rings. It’s Jerome. She sits down on the grass to take the call. She can cry. With Jerome that’s okay.
Twenty minutes later Holly is crouched in the far corner of the cell across from the Porta-Potty. Her legs are drawn up and she has buried her face in her arms. A man in a welder’s mask is cutting through the bars, and the long room is filled with coruscating light. Izzy Jaynes is at the other end of the basement, where she first examines the woodchipper and then yells to one of the crime scene techs. She points to Bonnie’s bike helmet and backpack and tells him to bag both.
A steel bar clatters to the concrete floor. Then another. Izzy walks up to the FD guy running the cutting torch, keeping one arm up to shield her eyes. “How much longer?”
“I think we can get her out in another ten minutes. Maybe twenty. Someone did a hell of a good job putting this thing together.”
Izzy goes back to the workshop part of the basement and tries the door there. It’s locked. She motions to one of the bigger cops—there are half a dozen blues down here now, basically just milling around. “You better bust that,” she says. “I’m pretty sure I heard someone inside.”
He grins. “You got it, boss.”
He hits the door with his shoulder, and it gives way immediately. He stumbles inside. Izzy follows and finds a light switch beside the door. Overhead fluorescents come on, a lot of them. The two of them stand, stunned.
“What the fuck is that?” the widebody asks.
Izzy knows, even if it’s hard to believe what her eyes are reporting. “I’d say it’s an operating table.”
“And the bag?” He’s pointing to the big green sack hanging down from the end of the hose. It’s distended into a teardrop shape by what’s inside. Stuff Izzy doesn’t want to think about, let alone see.
“Leave it for the forensics guys and the ME,” she says, and thinks of Holly saying How am I ever going to tell her what happened to her daughter?
Forty minutes later Holly emerges onto the Harrises’ porch, supported by an EMT on one side and Izzy Jaynes on the other, but mostly walking under her own power. Barbara gets up, runs to her, hugs her, and turns to Izzy. “I want to go with her to the hospital.”
Instead of refusing, Izzy says they’ll both go.
Holly wants to walk to the waiting ambulance, but EMTs insist on a stretcher before she can descend the porch steps. Now there are news vans as well as all the official vehicles, but they are being kept at the top and bottom of the hill, behind police tape. There’s even a helicopter circling overhead.
Holly is hoisted into the ambulance. One of the EMTs shoots her up with something. She tries to protest, but he says it will help with the pain. Izzy sits on one side of the secured stretcher, Barbara on the other.
“Wipe my face, please,” Holly says. “The blood is drying to a crack-glaze.”
Izzy shakes her head. “No can do. Not until you’ve been photographed and we’ve got swabs.”
The ambulance pulls out, siren yelling. Barbara holds on as it takes the corner at the bottom of the hill.
“That’s a woodchipper in the basement,” Izzy says. “My father had one at his cabin upstate, but a lot smaller.”
“Yes. I saw it. Can I have a drink? Please?”
“There’s a cooler with Gatorade in it,” one of the EMTs calls back.
“Oh God, please,” Holly says.
Barbara finds the cooler, opens a bottle of orange Gatorade, and puts it in Holly’s outstretched hand. Holly’s eyes look up at them from above her bloody cheeks as she drinks.
She looks like she’s wearing warpaint, Barbara thinks. And I guess that’s okay, because she’s been in a war.
“The chipper’s outflow goes to a bag in that little…” Izzy pauses. She was about to say operating room, but that’s not right. “…that little torture chamber. Is the stuff inside what I think it is? Because it stinks.”
Holly nods. “They must not have had a chance to get rid of the… the leftovers this time. I don’t know how they did that with the others, but my guess is the lake. You’ll figure it out.”
“And the rest of her?”
“Check the refrigerator.”
Barbara thinks of the wrapped cuts of meat. She thinks of the parfait glasses. And feels like screaming.
“I have to tell you something,” Holly says to Izzy and Barbara. Whatever the EMT has given her is working. The pain in her arm and her ribs hasn’t gone away, but it’s receding. She thinks of the therapist she saw when she was younger. “I need to share something.”
Izzy takes her hand and gives it a squeeze. “Save it. I’ll need to hear everything, but right now you just need to take it easy.”
“It’s not about the case. I made up a joke and I’ve never had a chance to tell anyone. I tried to tell the woman… Emily… before she could shoot me, but then things got… complicated.”
“Go on,” Barbara says, and takes Holly’s hand. “Tell it now.”
“A new millionaire… me, actually, long story… walks into a bar and orders a mai-tai. When the bartender goes to make it, she hears a voice saying ‘You deserve that money, Holly. Every cent.’ She looks around and sees no one. She’s the only customer at the bar. Then she hears a voice on the other side. It says, ‘You look very pretty tonight, Holly.’ The bartender comes back and she says, ‘I keep hearing voices saying nice things about me, but when I look, no one’s there.’ And the bartender says—”
The EMT who gave her the shot looks back at her. He’s grinning. “He says ‘We charge for the drinks, but the nuts are complimentary.’ ”
Holly’s mouth drops open. “You know it?”
“God, yes,” the EMT says. “That’s an old one. You must’ve heard it somewhere and just forgot.”
Holly begins to laugh.
In a treatment room at Kiner, Holly is swabbed for DNA and photographed. Barbara gently wipes her face clean afterward. The resident on duty in the ER examines the bullet-wound and pronounces it “basically superficial.” He says if it had gone deeper and shattered the bone, that would be a different deal. Izzy gives her two thumbs up.
The doctor pulls off the shirt she’s used as a bandage, which starts the bleeding again. He cleans the wound, probes for shrapnel (there is none), then packs it. He says there’s no need for staples or sutures (a relief) and wraps it tightly. He says she’ll need a sling, but one of the nurses will take care of that. Also a course of antibiotics. Meanwhile, he’s got an ICU full of Covid patients to deal with, most of them unvaccinated.
“I got you a room here,” Izzy says, then smiles. “Actually that’s a lie. The Chief of Police got it.”
“Other people need it more.” The floaty feeling from the injection started to go away when the doc pulled the shirt out of the coagulating blood in the arm wound—rrrip—and by the time he’d finished disinfecting and probing, it was entirely gone.
“You’re staying,” Izzy says flatly. “Gunshot wound observation is mandatory in this town. Twenty-four hours. Be grateful they’re not stashing you in a hallway or the cafeteria. There are plenty of people in both places, coughing their lungs out. A nurse will give you some more pain med. Or a good-looking intern, if you’re lucky. Get a good night’s sleep. We’ll start debriefing you on this shitshow tomorrow. You’ll be doing a lot of talking.”