"My sister-in-law," she said.
"Taking it hard, I'll bet," Hawes said.
"They were very close."
"Let's check out that room," Brown said to Hawes.
"I'll come over with you," Marie said.
"No need," Brown said, "it's getting cold outside."
She looked at him. She seemed about to say something more. Then she merely nodded.
"Better get a light from the car," Hawes said.
Marie watched them as they went out the door and made their way in the dark to where they'd parked their car. Car door opening, interior light snapping on. Door closing again. A moment later, a flashlight came on. She watched them as they walked up the driveway to the garage, pool of light ahead of them. They began climbing the steps at the side of the building. Flashlight beam on the door now. Unlocking the door. Should she have given them the key? Opening the door. The black cop reached into the room. A moment of fumbling for the wall switch, and then the light snapped on, and they both went inside and closed the door behind them.
The bullet had entered Carella's chest on the right side of the body, piercing the pectoralis major muscle, deflecting off the rib cage and missing the lung, passing through the soft tissue at the back of the chest, and then twisting again to lodge in one of the articulated bones in the spinal column.
The X rays showed the bullet dangerously close to the spinal cord itself.
In fact, if it had come to rest a micrometer further to the left, it would have traumatized the cord and caused paralysis.
The surgical procedure was a tricky one in that the danger of necrosis of the cord was still present, either through mechanical trauma or a compromise of the arterial supply of blood to the cord. Carella had bled a lot, and there was the further attendant danger of his going into heart failure or shock.
The team of surgeons mdash;a thoracic surgeon, a neurosurgeon, his assistant, and two residents mdash;had decided on a posterolateral approach, going in through the back rather than entering the chest cavity, where there might be a greater chance of infection and the possibility of injury to one of the lungs. The neurosurgeon was the man who made the incisions. The thoracic surgeon was standing by in the event they had to open the chest after all. There were also two scrub nurses, a circulating nurse, and an anesthesiologist in the room. With the exception of the circulating nurse and the anesthesiologist, everyone was fully gowned and gloved. Alongside the operating table, machines monitored Carella's pulse and blood pressure. A Swan-Ganz catheter was in place, monitoring the pressure in the pulmonary artery. Oscilloscopes flashed green. Beeps punctuated the sterile silence of the room.
The bullet was firmly seated in the spinal column.
Very close to the spinal cord and the radicular arteries.
It was like operating inside a matchbox.
The River Dix had begun silting over during the heavy September rains, and the city had awarded the dredging contract to a private company that started work on the fifteenth of October. Because there was heavy traffic on the river during the daylight hours, the men working the barges started as soon as it was dark and continued on through until just before dawn. Generator-powered lights set up on the barges illuminated the bucketsful of river slime scooped up from the bottom. Before tonight, the men doing the dredging had been grateful for the unusually mild weather. Tonight, it was no fun standing out here in the cold, watching the bucket drop into the black water and come up again dripping all kinds of shit.
People threw everything in this river.
Good thing Billy Joe McAllister didn't live in this city; he'd have maybe thrown a dead baby in the river.
The bucket came up again.
Barney Hanks watched it swinging in wide over the water, and signaled with his hand, directing it in over the center of the disposal barge. Pete Masters, sitting in the cab of the diesel-powered dredge on the other barge, worked his clutches and levers, tilting the bucket to drop another yard and a half, two yards of silt and shit. Hanks jerked his thumb up, signaling to Masters that the bucket was empty and it was okay to cast the dragline out over the river again. In the cab, Masters yanked some more levers and the bucket swung out over the side of the barge.
Something metallic was glistening on the surface of the muck in the disposal barge.
Hanks signaled to Masters to cut the engine.
"What is it?" Masters shouted.
"We got ourselves a treasure chest," Hanks yelled.
Masters cut his engine, climbed down from the cab, and walked across the deck toward the other barge.
"Time for a coffee break, anyway," he said. "What do you mean a treasure chest?"
"Throw me that grappling hook," Hanks said.
Masters threw the hook and line to him.
Hanks tossed the hook at what appeared to be one of those aluminum cases you carried roller skates in, except that it was bigger all around. The case was half-submerged in slime, it took Hanks five tosses to snag the handle. He pulled in the line, freed the hook, and put the case down on the deck.
Masters watched him from the other barge.
Hanks tried the catches on the case.
"No lock on it," he said, and opened the lid.
He was looking at a head and a pair of hands.
Kling arrived in the Canal Zone at thirteen minutes past midnight.
He parked the car on Canalside and Solomon, locked it, and began walking up toward Fairview. Eileen had told him they'd be planting her in a joint called Larry's Bar, on Fairview and East Fourth. This side of the river, the city got all turned around. What could have been North Fourth in home territory was East Fourth here, go figure it. Like two different countries, the opposite sides of the river. They even spoke English funny over here.