“I’ve got to make a phone call,” Becker said.
“To the station?” I said.
“Where do you think? There’s been an assault.”
“Becker,” I said, “you’re off-duty, remember?”
“It was just a little misunderstanding,” Susan said.
“They’ve learned their lesson,” George said. “Kevin, there, will drive them home. He knows where they live.”
Becker was breathing through his nose. He was very pale and his hands were clenched into fists at his side. There was a nasty little pause.
“Jim?” I said. “James T. Kirk? Speak to me. Is it? Oh, God! Not… the goat poison?”
The corner of his mouth twitched.
“Who’s James T. Kirk?” Susan said. Becker said nothing, kept on breathing. His eyes were bugging out. I stepped in closer.
Becker’s breath hissed loudly through his clenched teeth. Susan moved in as well, worried now.
“Relapse,” Becker said softly into Susan’s ear. “Tell McCoy to beam us up.”
“Is he all right?” she said, turning to George.
“Nothing that a Deacon can’t fix, I think,” George said.
“Who’s McCoy?” Susan said, turning back to Becker, who hadn’t moved. Susan had never watched much TV.
I reached into my pocket for the condom-packet, which I slipped into George’s hand. “Dr. McCoy says play safe,” I said.
He handed it right back. “Dr. McCoy should teach her grandmother,” George said.
Becker and I headed for the parking lot.
I drove. I told him I didn’t think he should be behind the wheel after receiving a blow to the head, and he agreed. Gosh. Jeep Cherokees sure go fast.
“Hey, slow down,” Becker said, “or I’ll have to pull you over.”
“Show me your flashing lights.”
“I think they got punched out.” He laughed, a little wildly.
I pulled over to the side of the road and turned on the overhead.
“What?” Becker said.
“Detective Mark Becker, what you did back there was noble and totally right-action, but I want to thank you for not arresting anybody.”
“Well, I was off duty, right?”
“Right. So. I guess dinner and pool in Laingford’s out.” The cut over his eye was still bleeding. “How hurt are you?” I said. “You want to go home? Are you dizzy? Should we go to the hospital?”
“I think sick bay would be better.”
“Sick bay your house or sick bay my house?”
“You’re the doctor.”
“You got gauze and disinfectant at your place?”
“No.”
“The Deacon residence it is. Anyway, when you’re suffering from goat poisoning, you have to return to the source.”
I headed for the Dunbar sideroad and home.
Twenty-One
Move me I’m steel pipes
bashing demented in the gale
—Shepherd’s Pie
I handed the keys over reluctantly. It had been a nice ride. Driving the Cherokee after three years of mollycoddling George’s cranky old pickup was like a snort of fine brandy after years of drinking lemonade. It would never do to own a vehicle that powerful. No wonder that the men who drive those things act like teenagers with painful erections.
“I can feel the testosterone just pumping through me,” I said.
“What?” Becker said. He slammed the passenger door and winced as something in his arm reminded him that he had been rough-housing with the locals.
“The Jeep,” I said. “Getting behind the wheel turns you into a seventeen-year-old boy with his baseball cap on backwards.”
“Not me, ma’am,” Becker said. “I drive like a cop.” Lug-nut jumped up and put his paws on Becker’s chest, wagging his tail.
“Down!” I said, but it was too late to save the shirt. “Sorry. He likes you.”
Becker patted the dog’s head. “It’s only a shirt. So, medicine woman, you got the cure down here or in your cabin?”
“Are you up for the hike?”
“No problem. I’m tough. I own a Jeep, remember?”
He slowed down halfway up the hill. The stars were out, in a navy blue sky.
“Hey, Polly, come here a sec,” he said.
It was dark where he was. There was moss and bracken on the ground. We stayed there a while.
“Mmm, Bkrr?”
“Mmmmn?”
“You’re still bleeding.”
“How come you’re still calling me Becker?”
“I hardly know you.”
“Oh. You have a thing in your hair. Wait.”
“Mmmmn.”
Later, we finished the climb. At a trot. I lit the lamps and put the kettle on.
“You cleaned up in here,” Becker said.
“Yeah, well. Sit here where the light is. We’ll fix that eye.”
“Now?”
“There’s clean pillowcases,” I said. “I don’t want blood on them.” It was a lie, but still. Tending to the wounds of a devastatingly handsome officer by lamplight has got to be the biggest Florence Nightingale wet-dream in the world.
“Don’t move.” I washed the cut with a goldenseal solution to disinfect it, then mixed up a bit of myrrh and goldenseal into a paste.
“What the hell is that?” he said.
“If we had gone to the hospital, they would have given you a couple of stitches. This is cheaper, and you won’t have a scar.”
I used a couple of tiny strips of surgical tape to close the wound, which was a split just above the eyebrow. Then I dabbed a bit of herbal paste on, added a scrap of gauze and a band-aid.
“I did this a while ago when I slashed my finger with an Olfa knife,” I said. “It works. Trust me. Just don’t wiggle your eyebrows for a couple of days.”
“Whatever you say, ma’am. As long as I don’t wake up with three eyes in the morning. Some kind of spell involved here?”
“You’re not religious, are you?”
“No.”
“Thank heaven for that,” I said and poured a couple of brandies.
“It’s quiet up here,” Becker said. “How do you stand it? You listen to music at all? Have you got a CD player? Tunes?” There had been CDs in his Jeep. I hadn’t thought to look at them.
“There’s no hydro and batteries are expensive,” I said. “I do have a radio that winds up like clockwork, though. It gets the CBC.”
“You’re kidding. Clockwork?”
“Yeah. They were designed for the third world. I