"So she's hiding."
"Got more friends than we thought," Lucas said. "Your report said she didn't have any, and now we know of two who were willing to risk their lives on her."
"Yeah, well… I'll write a memo."
They walked around, watching the crime-scene people for a while, but Mallard's attention was drifting and finally he asked, "You getting out of town?"
Lucas nodded. "I have no more ideas. I mean, I do, but none are relevant at the moment."
"Coming to Malone's funeral?"
"Nope. Wouldn't help her, and would bum me out worse than I already am. I liked her."
"So'd I," Mallard said. He slapped Lucas on the back. "Let's go."
When Rinker woke up, she was lying facedown on a white sheet. Her legs were spread a bit, as were her arms. And her cheek was wet. Drool, she realized. She tried to move but found her arms and legs restrained. Near panic, she pulled her head up and saw a piece of paper a few inches from her eyes. It said, in large block letters, "Call out."
"Hey," she called, her voice weak. "Hey!"
And a woman's voice from somewhere else said, "Coming…," and a second later, a brown-faced woman with a red dot in the middle of her forehead squatted up beside the bed, her face a few inches from Rinker's.
"You're taped down so you couldn't roll over and pull the saline out," the woman said. "We didn't have anything better. Let me get the tape." There was a stripping-tape sound, and one hand came free, then her left foot, then her right foot and her right hand. She started to turn, saw the saline bottle on a hook over her head, and the woman put a hand on her shoulder. "Don't move too much," she said. "You're all taped up and you've had some analgesics, but it's going to hurt. Do you have to urinate?"
Rinker thought about it and shook her head. "No, but I could use a drink of water. How long have I been here?"
"You got here this morning. This is the afternoon, about four o'clock. My husband is a doctor at the university, and this is our house."
"How bad?"
The woman smiled sympathetically. "It's never good, but the wound was confined to your buttock." She enunciated buttock perfectly, with a bit of a British accent, and Rinker nearly smiled: It reminded her of a favorite Monty Python. "So it will hurt, and even when you are healed, you might not be able to run as fast or climb as quickly as you once did. And of course there is cosmetic damage, there will be a scar… but you are in no danger. Now."
"Thank you very much," Rinker said. The woman nodded but said nothing more, and after a minute Rinker asked, "So what do I do? Just lie here with my butt in the air until it heals?"
"You'll have to, uh, lie there for a while, certainly. We have been told to purchase a television set and some video games if you wish to have them."
"A TV would be good," Rinker said. "I don't need the games. Can I prop myself up?"
"You can, but I promise you, it's better to lie flat," the woman said. Then she said, "My name is Rayla. My husband is Geoffrey. He will be back soon, and we'll go to Best Buy for the television."
"Could I get water?"
"Oh, my goodness, yes, I forgot," Rayla said, jumping up. "Would you like juice? We have papaya, mango… Would you like a fish sandwich?"
"Do you have an Internet connection?"
"Yes, we do."
Geoffrey was a charming man, but she could never quite figure out how old he was: something between twenty-five and forty-five, she thought. He had a smooth brown oval face and a soft manner that fit well with a doctor, but not so well as an accomplice to major crime. They never talked about crime, though he knew who she was, and called her "Clara" rather than Cassie. He said that the costs of her care had been "fully funded."
He brought in a television with a DVD player, and for three days she watched TV and thought about things. On the fourth day, she made her first trip away from the bedpan, to the toilet, where she learned how hard it was for a woman to pee while sitting on one buttock and holding the other one carefully clear. Everything got squished together.
On the sixth day, she started a rehab program that featured five colors of rubber tubing that Geoffrey brought home from the hospital. She had to stretch against the rubber tubes, and could barely move the thinnest size. After a week, when she was feeling stronger and the thinnest tube wasn't stiff enough, he moved her to the next size, and again, he could barely move her leg…
As she waited to heal, and practiced walking, she watched TV and roamed the Internet and thought about things some more.
She thought about Paulo and the baby. The recovery process was quicker, easier than the recovery in Mexico, but the smells and the pain brought Paulo back, and the baby…
She thought about those bad years, the years she'd always tried to blank out, when her brother and her stepfather were abusing her. Abusing her and comparing notes on how well she'd done.
She'd run away, and she'd tried dancing nude, and she'd been raped by a fat man and she'd killed that man with a T-ball bat, and then she'd been picked up by John Ross, who'd taught her to kill for money, and she'd saved her money and had bought a bar and had been successful and had gone to college to try to understand herself…
She'd learned about herself in school. She might have avoided all this, if the killing hadn't been so easy and profitable. She never thought about the dead people, she only thought about the money. It had seemed like her right to kill, after all that had happened to her.
Then Davenport.
She'd feared the federal people, in a theoretical way, like you fear dying in a plane accident. Ross and his friends had heard rumors that there was a file on her, but that the file was almost empty.
Then Davenport had come along, and somehow had screwed everything. She'd lost her bar, lost a friend, almost lost her life. She'd been driven to Mexico and the disaster that followed. Nothing theoretical about Davenport.
She didn't cry about it. She might have, but she didn't.
She set her jaw, and she thought about Davenport.
She knew something about him. One solid fact.
She'd have to heal before she did anything. But she had time-five and a half weeks, to be exact. A Saturday in October.
Davenport was the devil, and had to be dealt with.
26
The bride was blushing in white and big as a house, and finally said she had to go off to the bathroom to get the goddamn leg strap right. Sloan, Lucas's oldest friend on the police force, leered at her and said, "So you show a little leg. You're among friends."
She said, "Don't hold your breath, pervert-boy," and went off into the back, shouting over her shoulder, "And don't start without me."
Lucas, waiting at the back of the church, pulled at the collar of his dress shirt, plucked at his tie. Del had been in the-What'd he call it? The nave? The main part of the church-drinking what Lucas hoped was a cream soda. Now he came up and asked, "Nervous?"
"Of course I'm fuckin' nervous, what'd you think?" Lucas snapped. Then, quickly, "Sorry. I'm not sure this is gonna work out. I thought about it all night. I was one inch from canceling the whole thing." He looked at his watch and said, "One minute. Where's that fuckin' Marcy?"
Sloan said, "She just went down to the can," and Lucas said to Del, "I met this guy down in St. Louis who told me about this time he had to wear a tux and it kept dragging his Jockey shorts up the crack of his ass, and I swear to God, right now…"
Rose Marie Roux, the chief of police, went by and said, "I think I'm more nervous than you are."
Lucas grinned at her, a tight grin. "If I was losing my job next week, I'd be nervous too. What if something happens and queers the deal with the state?"