“Seat belt…” Gemma repeated. “So, it was a car accident?”
“We’ll know for sure when you locate your vehicle.”
“Then…I’m outta here?”
He nodded once, shortly. Gemma had already spoken on the phone to someone from administration and given them information about herself, which though meager, was enough to satisfy them. She knew her own social security number, or at least one that popped into her head, so she’d rattled it off and the woman at the end of the line had typed it into her file. It had to be hers. It wasn’t like she would know anyone else’s, right?
She was torn between just skedaddling and throwing herself on the hospital administration’s mercy, asking for some cold hard cash to find her way home.
The doctor stood for a moment, rocking on his heels, as if he had something else he wanted to say. Gemma waited somewhat impatiently. She’d redressed in her blood-spattered clothes, knowing she was going to burn them the first chance she got. She just wanted to get out of here and find a way back to Quarry. She couldn’t recall her address but she had a murky idea of the direction to go.
Maybe if Detective Tanninger were around today, trying to meet with that EMT…maybe he’d give her a lift. It was as good a plan as any.
Dr. Avery finally headed toward the door and Gemma swung her legs over the bed. But the doctor hesitated before entering the hallway, gazing back at her thoughtfully. “I haven’t told anyone my son’s getting married. Didn’t want the hospital staff talking about something that might not happen. My son and his fiancée have had a very on-and-off relationship. I don’t know how you knew.”
“You must have told me earlier. I drifted in and out for a while.”
“I wouldn’t have,” he said positively.
Something feathered along Gemma’s skin. A cold whisper of awareness. “Maybe I dreamt it and it just happened to be true.”
He gazed at her a long moment, then pushed out the door.
I’m a mind reader.
She rolled that idea around and found she didn’t like it much. But it felt…real.
Gemma didn’t waste any more time. She found her shoes again and after a quick, horrifying look in the mirror—the whole right side of her face was a technicolor mess—she took a deep breath and prepared herself for an uncertain future.
She was in the hallway when an orderly holding a wheelchair stopped short. “Ma’am, you need to take a seat. Hospital policy.”
She suspected it was hospital policy to take her to administration for check out, too, but the orderly did not appear to be someone who would take no for an answer so she perched on the wheelchair, wondering wildly if she could make a break for it when he rolled her near an exit.
Mind reader, she thought again, and felt decidedly uncomfortable.
Billy Mendes was lanky and bowlegged, as if he’d just gotten off the ranch. He walked with a kind of cowboy strut as well, though it wasn’t an affectation, more like a natural hip swing to get his bowed legs in line.
He came inside the ER and shot a look at Lorraine, the battleaxe nurse with the dyed black hair and orange lips, before crossing the waiting room in a couple of big strides and walking up to Will.
“You the guy lookin’ for me?” he asked. “From the sheriff’s department?”
“Detective Will Tanninger,” Will acknowledged, and the two men shook hands. They moved toward a section of striped chairs near the window where no one else was sitting at the moment.
Mendes kept standing, his hands shoved in his pockets. “You wanna know about the woman who staggered in on Saturday? The one that got out of the silver Camry? I thought the guy who dropped her off was gonna park and come inside and help her, but he never came back. He just drove off and then she just kinda walked from side to side, like she had no balance, y’know? Swaying, like. And then she makes it inside and just crumples to the floor. I came runnin’ from the ambulance.” He waved in the direction of the portico outside the ER. “We were just gettin’ ready to go, but there she was, and I got my ass chewed for that one.” He threw a dark look in Lorraine’s direction. “But hey, we had an accident victim right here. I thought we should help her first.”
“It delayed you from making your call?”
“Not much, it didn’t,” he asserted. “Thirty seconds? Lorraine started screamin’ and I helped the woman to lie down flat. She was out cold by then, but breathin’ okay. ER team grabbed her up and Pete and I took off to the accident on Highway 217. One of those nights where everybody smashes up their cars. Couple of fatalities.”
“So, you saw a man drop her off in a silver Camry?”
He nodded.
“It was definitely a man?”
“Yeah…” He started to sound uncertain.
“Can you remember why you thought so?”
Billy looked puzzled for a moment. “I guess ’cause he was drivin’ kinda fast. Not that girls can’t, too, but not so much in a hospital parking lot. He kinda screeched in and then she got out, and then he reached over and pulled the door shut and left. I thought it was weird he didn’t help her when I saw that she couldn’t walk so well. Maybe it was a chick. Since she didn’t even try to help her friend? But then I thought he or she or whoever was gonna park the car and come back. I don’t know.”
“Could the driver have come back after you left in the ambulance?”
“I suppose…you can check with Lorraine…” He grimaced, letting Will know exactly what he thought of that idea.
“Was there any body damage to the Camry?”
“Uh…I was lookin’ at the girl, and I just saw the car’s rear end, mostly. Don’t recall any passenger-side damage. Didn’t see the front.”
Will grilled him some more and learned Gemma had arrived at the hospital in the early evening, just as it was getting dark. If she were the woman who’d run down Edward Letton, that would mean there had been a lot of hours in between the accident and her appearance at Laurelton General.
There didn’t appear to be anything more to learn from Billy, so Will shook his hand and thanked him for the information, then he turned back to the exit. He was out the door and heading to his department vehicle, when he abruptly changed direction and returned to the hospital, making for the bank of elevators. What was it about Gemma LaPorte that kept him wanting to see her again? Was it just this investigation? The fact that she was an enigma that he couldn’t quit puzzling over? Was it that he both wanted her to be innocent of hit-and-run, and yet somehow hoped she was that avenger? Someone who wanted to rid the world of sick scum no matter what the cost?
That was the kind of thinking that could get him fired, or worse, he knew. That kind of vigilante philosophy that the bad should be punished without benefit of a trial. That murder, in the name of good, was almost okay.
He’d seen it a couple of times in his career. Law enforcement officers who, burned out and frustrated, took their job to that next level. Not waiting for the judicial system to pass its verdict. Deciding to wipe out the offender first and ask forgiveness later.
Only there was no forgiveness. There was prosecution and jail time.
But Will didn’t think he had burned out. He didn’t truly condone Gemma’s behavior. Vigilantism was not to be tolerated at any level. It was just that inwardly—and this Will would never admit to anyone—he applauded