“Spit it out, Coop, or I’ll deck you, maybe tomorrow. What happened then?” She rubbed her throat. She sounded like a frog, but the soreness was down and the hospital tapioca had settled nicely in her empty stomach. A nurse had told her cheerfully that she’d had her stomach pumped. So stomach lavage was “the little bit of this, little bit of that” her husband had told her about. She suddenly wasn’t so sure about the tapioca.
Coop told her about the gunshots after Comafield blew out of the alleyway, protected from return fire by the crowd, and how Savich had managed to put the bullet in his belly while on the run.
Sherlock felt her body creak with effort to push the stupid button that raised the bed so she could look at everyone straight on. When Savich would have helped her, she shook her head. She could do this. Once she was sitting up, she said, “What happened to Billy the Cop? I remember he was yelling at me, waving a Beretta around.”
Lucy said, “Full name’s William Benedict, and he’s a longtime homicide detective with the Baltimore Police Department. The Texas Range Bar and Grill is his neighborhood bar, been going there for years. He went after you, Sherlock, because you had a gun on Kirsten, but then, thank goodness, he realized what was happening. He took a bullet instead, but he’ll be fine. I heard him laughing this morning as I walked down the hall, talking about Gator and his freaking bat. What a story he has to tell his buds.”
Savich glanced at his Mickey Mouse watch, patted Sherlock’s hand. “It’s nine o’clock. I’m off to see Bruce Comafield. Coop, Lucy, I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I think it’s best I speak to him alone. You guys stay here—if I need you, I’ll call.”
When Savich saw they would both argue, he raised his hand. “Look, we need information, and we need it now, with no messing around. I’m going to question him. Trust me, okay?” He didn’t tell them that he’d already asked Dr. Pendergrass to cut down Comafield’s morphine, told him exactly why. Savich wanted him awake and on the edge, if possible.
Bruce Comafield was in a small glass-fronted room in the ICU on the third floor. An FBI agent was seated at his door, his legs crossed, a magazine unopened on his lap.
“Hi, John,” Savich said to Agent Frish. “Anything interesting?”
“Nope, if by that you mean Kirsten Bolger waltzing by, maybe to shoot him to keep him quiet.”
Savich smiled. “Yeah, that’s what I mean.”
“Nope, not a whiff of her.”
“Keep a sharp eye, okay?”
“You’d better believe it. I wouldn’t want to get taken down by that crazy-ass woman.”
Savich stood in the doorway for a moment, staring over at Bruce Comafield. There were lines running into his arms, a line running under the hospital blanket. He had an oxygen clip in his nose, and he was awake, moaning, his eyes closed, turning his head back and forth on the flat pillow.
He wasn’t in happyland. Good.
Savich didn’t say anything, simply walked to his bedside and looked down at him. Slowly, Comafield became aware of him, turned his head back, and opened his eyes to look up at him.
Comafield whispered, “You were one of the agents at the Willard, to speak to Lansford.”
“Yes, that’s right. I’m pleased you recognize me. If you forgot my name, it’s Special Agent Savich, FBI.”
“You shot me.”
“Yes. I’m pleased you’re still alive, Bruce.”
“Not for long. They’re going to let me die of pain. If I turn my head I can see all the nurses out there at that big counter. I keep ringing for a nurse, but none of them come. Dear God, it’s horrible. Tell them I need some pain meds.”
Savich leaned down close. “Tell me where Kirsten is, and I’ll make sure you get more morphine.”
Comafield tried to spit at him, a stupid thing to do, since he didn’t have the strength to lift his head, and it hurt even to try, and the spit ran down his chin. He cursed the spit, cursed Savich, cursed fate. “Kirsten knows who you are, too, you bastard. She’s going to kill you; she’s going to execute you. It was a little promise we made to each other. Whoever brought one of us down is not going to live. So, you’re a dead man. She’s going to watch you die, count on it.”
“Where is she, Bruce?”
“Look over your shoulder if you want to find her. She’ll be looking for you.”
“That’s not going to cut it, Bruce.”
He closed his mouth and stared toward the pale green wall opposite his bed.
Savich leaned close, watched Comafield’s eyes dance madly with pain. “You want more morphine, Bruce? The only way you’ll get it is for you to tell me where Kirsten is hiding.”
Comafield’s dark eyes turned black, rage boiling up. He whispered, voice shaking, “You can’t do that. You think I’m stupid? You’re the law; you can’t torture me.”
“You let Kirsten torture all those women she butchered. Did you help her jerk a wire around their necks, pull it tight while your victims were helpless from the drug she’d fed them?”
“That’s different! How’d you even know about me?”
“A very sharp guy in New York described you very well. You know, the guy Kirsten set up to take the fall at Enrico’s Bar?”
Comafield knew; of course he knew.
Savich leaned close again. “I liked you better with hair. I’ve got to say, though, you fooled me. I never saw you go in the bar, and believe me, I was looking.”
“Yeah, I stuck myself right in the middle of a happy group, and hooked up with this little blonde. We waltzed right in. I’m always careful now—real careful after New York.”
He managed to preen through the pain. Savich leaned close. “Now that you had your little rush, I can see the pain’s really getting to you. Tell me where Kirsten is, and I’ll get you a ticket on the morphine express.”
At Comafield’s silence, Savich turned away from him. He walked over to the single window and looked down into the parking lot. It was nearly full at a little after nine o’clock in the morning. It was a gray day, clouds swirling low, the wind blowing fiercely. He was glad he’d put up the Porsche’s top. He began whistling.
He admitted to himself that he felt great relief when Comafield cursed him again, finally nodded, and whispered, “All right. Morphine, get me morphine.”
He gave Comafield a long look before he got Nurse Harmony, a lovely name for a nurse, Savich thought, and she nodded, said she’d just as soon leave the killer to rot. Comafield watched her hook up an infusion device to his IV. Every fifteen minutes he could press the button, she told him. When she left, he was frantically pushing the button, his eyes closed.
Savich walked back to the window, and waited.
It was Comafield who spoke first. “Like I said, you’ll never find her; she’ll be the one to find you. So, it doesn’t matter that you know where we were staying—at the Handler’s Inn on Chestnut. Hey, the room is one-fifty-one. Go search our room to the rafters, you won’t find anything, and believe me, Kirsten won’t care, she’ll be long gone.”
And he gave Savich a malicious smile, proof that the morphine was kicking in. “Why do you care, anyway? You’re going to be dead.”
“The two of you didn’t discuss where you were going after Baltimore?”
“Nope, she hadn’t decided.” Comafield actually gave Savich a small grin. “She told me her daddy was guiding her steps. Then she’d laugh and say, well, mainly it was her daddy.”
“What did she mean by that?”
“I don’t know exactly, but sometimes she’d talk on her cell phone, never told me who she was talking to.”
“Did you hold down the women while she strangled them with the wire?”
“No, that was her deal. She said her daddy always worked alone, and so would she, at least at the denouement. That’s what she called it—the denouement. She liked to say she not only wrote the scripts, she was the lead actress, and she wasn’t about to share that with anyone, even me. The denouement was always just her and the pathetic female she’d chosen to dance with.