“When can I take her home?”
“Let me have another look at her after lunch, and we’ll see about sending her home this afternoon. But no promises.”
Sutter hung up, then sat staring at the phone’s home screen, at the image of his daughter and himself smiling out at him, that time she got him to go skating with her, both of them red-faced and wearing black knit caps like a father-daughter burglar team. Then he dialed the same number and asked the nurse on duty to let Audrey know he’d called and that he’d be coming in after lunch to see her.
The waitress returned and he found the simplest thing on the menu and she wrote that down on her pad and collected the menu and went away again—unsmiling, no-nonsense; another breed entirely from the one at the café, with the birthmark.
He drank his coffee and watched the garage. He pulled out his wallet and his notebook with the names and numbers of the garages and set them before him, and after a while he opened his wallet and slid the white business card free and held it at its four points between his thumbs and forefingers.
She might remember more when she’s feeling better, Tom. I know you know that.
Keep it, Ed. I’ve got your number in the phone.
Well, take the card anyway. And Tom… I’ve got this. I promise you.
sheriff edward moran, the card said, in raised black. Little sheriff’s star up in the corner that caught the light like gold, that looked damn near like the real deal. One good-looking card, Sheriff.
He looked out the window for a long while. His phone was under his hand and he kept turning it round and round on the tabletop.
You could just take the bastard’s picture and show it to her.
That still wouldn’t prove it.
Be enough to bust him, though.
It’d still be his word against hers. Only one thing can prove he was there.
Hard evidence, pal. I know it.
He took another sip of coffee, then picked up the phone and punched in the number and held the phone to his ear. The woman who answered was the same one he’d spoken to thirty minutes ago, in person, and he said, “Yes, is Ryan working today?”
“Ryan Radner?”
Sutter hesitated. “Is there another Ryan?”
“Not today there’s not.”
“Well, Radner’s the one I want.”
“Did you need to speak to him?”
“No, ma’am. I was just wondering how late he’ll be there today so I don’t miss him.”
“He’ll be here till five today, sir. That’s when we close.”
“Thank you very much,” Sutter said.
“You’re very welcome, sir.”
HE WAS AT the hospital at half past noon and when he looked around the doorjamb she was sitting up with a spoon halfway to her mouth and she looked so much like her mother in that bed, in that place, that his heart went out from under him, and she looked at him, the spoon halted in midair, and said, “—What?”
He corrected his face, his heart, and stepped into the room.
“Nothing,” he said. He held up the white paper bag, and her eyes widened.
“Is that a Portman’s bag?”
“Kept it in the trunk all the way up here.”
“Strawberry?”
“What else?”
She set aside the pudding and pulled the large paper cup with its coat of frost from the bag and fastened her lips on the straw and caved her cheeks and shut her eyes.
The doctor floated in, the wings of his open labcoat riding his currents, greeted Sutter and stepped up to Audrey. “Don’t mind me,” he said, and she went on sucking at the straw while he shone his penlight into her eyes, put his stethoscope on her back and on her chest, held her cast out of view from her and pressed his ballpoint pen to the tips of her fingers, asking her to wiggle each finger when she felt it. He seemed to like all he saw and heard, but at the end of it he said he wanted to keep her one more night just to be on the safe side, and Audrey shook her head at Sutter and Sutter said, “Whatever you say, Doc,” and the doctor floated away again.
She released the straw and pushed her head into the pillow as if for a better view of him, standing there.
“Did you sleep at all last night, Sheriff?”
“I got my share.”
“I think we need to go home.”
“You heard the doctor.”
“I don’t think he sees the big picture.”
“What’s the big picture?”
“That staying here isn’t making me any better and it’s making you worse.”
“It’s not making me worse.”
“It isn’t making you any better.”
He rubbed his open hand on his thigh to warm it and then placed it on her forearm. “It never has and it never will, sweetheart.”
“Oh, Daddy, don’t be morbid.”
“It’s just the truth.”
“That’s not what you said when Mom was sick.”
“That was different.”
“How was it different?”
“You were just a little girl then.”
“Maybe I needed to hear the truth.”
He kept his hand on her arm. “Maybe. But I couldn’t say it. Not then.”
She stared at the ceiling. “I missed her funeral.”
It took him a moment. Caroline Price. “Yes, sweetheart. I’m sorry.”
“I want to go down there. I want to see them. Her family.”
He nodded. “All right. When you’re stronger.”
“I don’t want to wait.”
“Well.” He squeezed her arm.
“Well what.”
“Well, they may want you to. Wait, I mean.”
She turned to look at him. To see his eyes.
“They don’t want to see me, you’re saying,” she said.
“I don’t know what they want, sweetheart. I can’t even imagine. But I think maybe those folks need a little time just to themselves.”
She stared at the ceiling again. She wiped at her eyes.
“They don’t think they want to see me,” she said, “but they do. I’m the one person they want to see.”
He stayed until she slept again, then stayed a while longer just watching her face, the faint tremblings of her eyelids, seeing her face from long ago, a little girl in her bed, night after night when he’d read her to sleep. And then he saw that hand, Radner’s greasy right hand pressed over her mouth, and his heart began to bang again. Finally he got up and crossed the room and drew four purple rubber gloves from the size L dispenser and tucked them into his jacket pocket and walked out of the room.
Sutter, she said once he was in the car again, on the road again. When she wanted to be sure she had his attention she called him Sutter.
“Please, woman,” he said aloud. “Just… for a little while here.”
22
WABASH HAD THE one loaner and Gordon could take that or he could wait for Wabash to get back with the wrecker, Goss advised him, and then Goss himself could drive him home—he couldn’t leave Marky alone at the garage—but if it was a bad heater core, as Goss would bet dollars to donuts it was, then Gordon would have to leave the van for a day at least, because to get to the heater core you had to remove the AC housing and to get that out you had to remove the blower and the filters and to take those out you had to pull the dashboard and to pull the dashboard you had to—Jesus Christ, gimme the loaner, Gordon had said, and he’d taken the key from Goss and left the van and all his tools and his supplies behind and he would have to cancel his appointments for the day and that was just as well anyway, way he felt.