Sherrill passed the word, clicked off the phone, looked at the speedometer. "That all you can get out of this thing?"
"No," he said, and the needle climbed through 120.
She watched his face for a moment-a brick, a stone- then looked out at the cars flicking by. Good thing, she thought, that she hadn’t driven. She’d never moved this fast on a vehicle that didn’t have a stewardess.
Lucas dumped the Porsche in an ambulances only zone and they banged into the emergency room. A startled nurse turned toward them from the reception desk, and Lucas said, "I’m Deputy Police Chief Lucas Davenport from Minneapolis and a nun named Elle Kruger was brought in here…"
"Yes, yes, she’s in X ray, she just got here, the doctors are working-"
"Where?"
"Sir, I can’t let you go-"
"Where?" He shouted it at her, and she stepped back and a couple of male white-coated orderlies started down the hall toward the desk.
"Hold it," Sherrill said. "Miss, can you tell us who the doctor in charge is? Jim Dunaway?"
"No, Larry Simone…"
"Okay, he’s a friend of mine. Could you tell him Chief Davenport and Detective Sherrill are here asking about…"
"Sister Mary Joseph. Elle Kruger," Lucas said.
"I’ll be right back."
As the nurse started down the hall, waving off the orderlies, a thin, ill-tempered man stuck his head in the door and called, "Hey, whose car is this out here?"
"I’ll get it," Sherrill said to Lucas. "Gimme the keys."
Lucas dug the keys out and handed them to her. The ill tempered man raised his voice: "I’m asking, who the hell left their car out here-"
"I’ll move it," Sherrill said, walking toward him.
"You goddamn well will move it," the man said. "Or I’ll push that thing right into the wall."
Sherrill stepped to within four inches of his face, her voice low and controlled. "You shut your fuckin’ pie hole or I will break all your teeth out," she said. She pulled one hand back on her hip so the ill-tempered man could see the wooden butt of the.357. His eyes slid away from hers, and she pushed through the door to the car.
A balding, hatchet-faced doctor walked out of a back room, trailed by the reception nurse. He looked around, spotted Lucas. "Are you with Marcy Sherrill?"
"Yes. Elle Kruger-the nun-is my best friend."
"This is Chief Davenport," said the nurse.
"Come on back," he said. "Where’s Marcy?"
"Outside, moving a car off the ramp. How’s Elle?"
"Not good, but she’s better than the other one. We’ve got head injury but no direct brain damage, like the girl. We’ve got to manage the swelling and so on, which is gonna be a problem, but I’m more worried about blunt trauma to her kidneys and liver. Somebody beat the hell out of her with what looks like a baseball bat."
"Baseball bat?"
"Yeah…"
Sherrill caught up with them and said, "Larry, how are you?" and the doc said, "I’d like to look at that leg of yours again."
"I think it’s okay," she said.
"Oh, I know; I just wanted to look for aesthetic reasons." And Sherrill snorted and said, "Aesthetic, my ass," and he said, "That too…" and Sherrill said to Lucas, "Larry was one of the docs that took care of me after that thing with John Mail."
"Ah." Lucas said, and looked wildly at Simone, who said, "Through there."
He could barely see her. She was flat on her back, under an operating drape, her head tilted back, her head already shaved and painted with iodine-colored disinfectant. A drip flowed into her arm, and her mouth was propped open. She looked like a saint who was about to be committed to fire.
"Elle," Lucas whispered.
"She can’t respond," Simone said. "She might hear you, somewhere in her head, but she’s too doped up to show it."
"Gonna be all right," Lucas said, his face a foot from her ear. She didn’t look like any Elle Kruger he remembered: separated from the habit and other paraphernalia of the church, she looked stark; and the disinfectant added a strange otherworldly touch, like an image from Heavy Metal. "Gonna be all right, we’re here with you; we’re waiting."
"Come on," Simone said. "They’ve got to finish getting her ready for the OR."
Lucas reluctantly followed Simone out of the prep room, Sherrill a step behind him. "You want to look at the X rays?" Simone asked.
"Can I see anything?"
"C’mon."
The X rays were clipped to wall-mounted view boxes and a man in a tweed sportcoat was peering at them. Simone said, "Jerry, what do you think?"
"I’ve already called Jack Bornum in; we’re gonna have to do them both at the same time. I’ll take the kid, she’s gonna go if we don’t get in quick. Jack can have the nun."
"How bad’s the nun?" Lucas asked.
"Who’re you?"
"I’m a cop-and her best friend. Oldest friend."
"Whoever hit her missed; looks like two or three blows, hard, but never quite brought it down over the top of her head, like with the kid. Everything sort of skidded off."
"What about the blunt trauma?" Lucas asked.
The tweed man shrugged: "I don’t know; I do brains."
He glanced at his watch. "And I better go do this one."
"How long before the other guy gets here?"
"Five minutes maybe. He’ll be here before she’s ready to go," Tweed said gruffly. "He’s a good guy too-he’ll take care of her."
The other doctor, Bornum, arrived in the allotted five minutes, and disappeared into the back. Simone caught a knife wound to the liver area, and also disappeared. Twenty minutes later, Weather pushed through the door, with Andi Manette a step behind. She saw Lucas and Sherrill and said, "Lucas, my God, what happened?"
"Somebody beat her up. Almost killed her," he said. His voice got shaky and she touched his arm.
"How bad?"
"Pretty bad. They’re getting her ready for the OR. They’ve got a neurosurgeon working on her."
"Oh, no…"
He wanted to wrap her up and hold on, but there was a wall between them: he could feel it, pressing them away from each other. "I don’t know what happened… In fact, I think I’m gonna…"
He walked over to the reception desk. "Could somebody let me know when Elle Kruger goes into the OR, and get an idea of how long it’ll take?"
"I’ll check," the nurse said.
Weather stepped closer to Sherrill and asked, "How is he?"
She shrugged: "Freaked out. Really freaked."
Weather smiled, a thin, tentative smile but a real one, Sherrill thought. "Take care of him," Weather said.
Sherrill blushed and nodded, then said, "If I can."
Lucas wandered back, and Weather said, "The bomb through my window, and now Elle."
Lucas shook his head: "I can’t figure it. It’d have to be somebody who knows me, to know about you two. But who? And why not come after me? And why with the bomb and now a beating, for Christ’s sake? There’s too much risk involved. If they really want to get at me…" He rubbed his chin, wandered away, deep in thought.
A moment later, the nurse appeared in the hallway, busily stepping down toward the reception area; Lucas went to meet her.
"She’s in the operating room now," the nurse said. "They’re just putting in the anesthesia. Doctor says he can’t tell how long it’ll be, anywhere from two to six hours."
"Okay, okay…"
"He said she’s strong," the nurse said.
Lucas turned back to Weather and Sherrilclass="underline" "Did you hear that?"
They nodded and Weather said, "Have you been to the scene?"
"No, that’s where I’d like to go…"
"You guys go ahead," Weather said. "I’ll wait here, and if anything comes up, I can handle it."