“Why don’t you go back out? Someone will let you know if there’s a change.”
The cops left. We were alone in the waiting area then, except for the triage nurse behind his Plexiglas window. I doubted it would be quiet for long. Matthias asked me if I wanted to risk a cup of coffee from a machine against the wall.
“Why not?” I said. “We’re close to medical attention.” He paid.
“Pardon me for sounding like a cop,” Matthias said when we were seated with our coffee, “but was Bobbi working last night?”
I told him about Ms. Waverley and her boat. He made notes while I talked, then asked me to describe Ms. Waverley, which I did.
“Do you know if Bobbi met her at the marina?” he asked.
“No, I don’t. She left the studio a little past seven and I haven’t spoken to her since.”
As I sipped the coffee, I remembered Bobbi telling me that she and Matthias were supposed to have had a late dinner to discuss their relationship. The coffee tasted awful, weak and bitter, but it was hot and I needed the caffeine. Obviously, Matthias and Bobbi hadn’t met, so I didn’t bring it up. I took another sip of coffee instead. It hadn’t improved.
“Do you have an address for her?” Matthias said.
“Eh?”
“Anna Waverley. Do you have an address for her?”
I shook my head. “Only that she lives in Point Grey,” I said. He made another note. “She paid cash up front,” I told him. “I was supposed to do the job, but I had to meet with one of our other clients, so Bobbi took it.”
“It’s not your fault,” Matthias said.
“Nevertheless, I feel responsible.”
“I understand,” he said. He looked as though he was having trouble framing his next question. I beat him to the punch.
“The client’s name is Jeanie Stone. I’ll have to get back to you with her contact information. She left a few minutes past nine. I got home around ten, watched a little TV, and went to bed at eleven-thirty. Not much of an alibi, is it?”
“I’ve heard better,” he said, smiling thinly. “Where did you meet with her?”
“At the studio,” I said. I took a breath and asked, “Was she raped?”
Matthias shook his head. “It doesn’t appear so.”
“From the look of her hands, she must’ve put up a hell of a fight,” I said. “Whoever attacked her wouldn’t have escaped unscathed. That’ll help you find the bastard, won’t it? And convict him when you do?”
“Perhaps,” Matthias said, in a voice like glass. “We ran an assault kit and took scrapings from under her fingernails, but the doctor who examined her thinks her hands were stomped on.”
Anger rose in my throat. I swallowed it and drank some more of the cooling coffee, but it just made me more nauseous. There was a water fountain by the coffee machine. I got up, drank some water, then dumped the coffee into the drain and refilled the cup with water.
“Sorry,” I said when I’d returned to my seat, not sure what I was apologizing for.
“It’s me who should apologize,” Matthias said, running his hand through his hair, which was the colour of wet sand. “I forget sometimes that not all my friends are cops.”
I found it strangely reassuring that Greg Matthias thought of me as a friend, even though I didn’t know him all that well. It made me feel as though my world was a slightly safer place somehow, until I remembered why I was sitting in the emergency waiting room of the hospital.
We turned at the sound of a commotion by the entrance to the ER. The two uniformed cops were confronting a heavyset, middle-aged man who was waving his arms and shouting, trying to push his way past them. It was Norman Brooks. He’d put on weight since the last time I’d seen him.
“That’s Bobbi’s father,” I said to Matthias.
“Yeah,” Matthias said. “Christ, is he drunk?” He got up and went to the entrance. I followed. “It’s all right,” Matthias said to the uniformed cops. “I’ll handle this.”
“Who the fuck are you?” Norman Brooks demanded.
“Greg Matthias. I’m a detective sergeant with the Vancouver police. I’m also a friend of Bobbi’s.”
Brooks glared at me. His chin was stubbly and eyes were bloody and a match would have ignited the alcohol on his breath. Did he drive to the hospital in that condition? I wondered, with a feeling of horror.
“McCall,” he barked. “Where’s my daughter? What the hell’s going on?”
Bobbi’s father and I had never got on. The very first time we’d met, he’d evidently taken an instant dislike to me. I had no idea why; I’d always treated him with deference and respect, but to no apparent avail.
“Mr. Brooks,” Matthias said, taking the older man by the arm, leading him toward the chairs. “Try to calm down, please. Would you like some coffee?”
“Take your hand off me,” Norman Brooks said, trying unsuccessfully to wrench his arm from Matthias’s grasp. “I want to see my daughter, goddamn it.”
“Then settle down,” Matthias said sternly. “Okay?” Brooks glared at him, face flushed. Matthias gave his arm a squeeze that made him wince. “Okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” Brooks said.
“Because if you don’t settle down, I’ll have these officers arrest you for being drunk and disorderly and you’ll spend the night in jail. Understand?”
“Yeah, yeah. I understand. Now let me see my daughter.”
“Wait here,” Matthias said to me, then led Brooks through the automatic doors into the examination area.
While I waited, the waiting room began to fill up. A man and a woman came arm-in-arm into the ER. They were in their fifties, I guessed, well-dressed and both more than a little inebriated. The knees of the man’s light grey trousers were torn and bloody. They spent a few minutes talking with the triage nurse, then took seats in the waiting area. The woman asked the man if he wanted a cup of coffee. He said, “Yes.” I wanted to tell him not to bother.
A few minutes later a scruffy-looking man came in, wearing filthy jeans, a ratty leather jacket, and a toque that looked as though it had been used to wash floors pulled down over his ears. He cradled his left hand, which was wrapped in a grease-blackened rag that dripped blood on the floor as he spoke with the triage nurse. He too was consigned to a seat in the waiting area.
A woman came in with her son, who looked about eight, and threw up twice while his mother shouted at the triage nurse. They were admitted immediately.
Matthias and Bobbi’s father came back into the waiting room. Norman Brooks looked as though he wanted to kill someone. I couldn’t blame him. Except that evidently the someone he wanted to kill was me. He lurched at me, lifted me out of my chair by the lapels of my jacket, and shoved me hard against the wall.
“You son of a bitch,” he snarled into my face, breath sour, spittle flying. “This is your fault.”
Matthias pulled him off me. Although he was shorter than Brooks, and not as heavy, he didn’t have any trouble handling the bigger man. “Mr. Brooks,” he said, marching him to a chair and pushing him down into it, while the middle-aged couple and the scruffy man watched cautiously. “I don’t care if you used to be a cop. I will have you arrested if you don’t pull yourself together. Mr. McCall had nothing to do with your daughter’s attack. If you lay a hand on him again, I will make damned sure he presses charges against you for assault. Do you understand me, sir?”