OFFICER D.C. WALKER SHOOK the rain off like a duck as he entered the small, quiet hospital. He caught his reflection in the window as he passed the empty nurses’ station. He looked like hell. But he felt worse as he pushed open the door to the doctors’ lounge.
Doc Brubaker glanced up from the chair where he was sprawled. It gave Walker little comfort that Doc looked worse than he did.
“Any luck finding the boy?” Doc asked anxiously.
Walker shook his head as he shrugged out of his rain jacket and tossed it onto one of the orange plastic chairs. He helped himself to a stale doughnut.
Without asking, Doc reached for the coffeepot and poured him a cup, then refilled his own.
“Thanks,” Walker said as he took the coffee and plopped down in an empty chair. The coffee looked like black sludge, but as long as it contained caffeine and was hot, he wasn’t about to complain. He couldn’t remember a longer night and it still wasn’t over.
“I called out Search and Rescue,” he said, between bites of the doughnut. “They’ve combed the shoreline and the woods, but so far nothing. It’s so damned steep where the car went off. Water’s deep there and with the spring runoff, real murky. The dive team’s gearing up to go down.”
Doc shook his head. “I hate to think of a four-year-old out there, as cold as it is. I suppose he could still be in the car.”
“If he was strapped in a car seat in back, she might not have been able to get him out.”
Dr. Brubaker rubbed a hand over his face. “The only way the boy might have survived is if there’s a trapped air bubble. Stranger things have happened.”
Walker studied him for a long moment wondering if the doc really put much store in that. “Mac’s gonna get his biggest tow truck up there at soon as it gets light. He’s not sure he has enough cable to pull the car out though. Might have to borrow a newer towing rig from one of the large towns. Your patient say anything else?”
Doc shook his head. He definitely looked older since his wife had died. Walker thought about the rumors he’d heard that Doc was dying. He didn’t put much stock in them though. Rumors were always circulating in Shadow Lake. And just because Doc was getting his affairs in order, so what?
Like the rumor going around about Police Chief Nash’s pretty young wife, Lucinda. But who the hell married a woman half his age and thought she’d be faithful? Walker had learned the hard way about infidelity during his one and only marriage. Not that he was bitter. Much.
Shadow Lake was a hotbed for affairs, especially during the long cold winter months when the population dropped. There was a standing joke that the residents who wintered-in here switched wives and girlfriends and then held a roundup in the spring to divvy up the kids. He used to think that was funny.
“Were you able to reach her husband?” Doc asked. He sounded tired and he certainly hadn’t been looking well lately. But Walker figured that was to be expected given how many years he and Gladys had been together. He imagined it must have been hell for Doc to watch his wife waste away like that and in so much pain.
“No answer at the husband’s house,” Walker said. “I left a message, but for all we know the husband was in the car too. Hell, he might have been the one driving.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Doc said. “All I could think about was the little boy.”
It was too bad Doc had never had any kids of his own, Walker thought.
Fortunately Anna Collins had been in a vehicle with an in-car emergency system that had notified the police department the minute her air bag deployed and tried to raise the car’s occupant on the built-in cell phone.
When no one responded, the operator had given the police dispatcher the location of the car via the in-car global-positioning system and the Shadow Lake dispatcher had radioed the police department where Walker had taken the call.
Walker pulled his pencil from behind his ear, touched the tip of it to his tongue and opened his small notebook. “You said she just stumbled up to the hospital?”
Dr. Brubaker nodded. “Half drowned, good-size knot on her left temple. Sheila was on duty and heard the alarm go off, looked up and saw her collapse just inside the front door. She said the woman regained consciousness, mumbled something about her car crashing into the lake before she passed out again.
“That’s when Sheila beeped me,” Doc said in an exhausted voice. “I called you right away and was told you’d gone out to the crash site.”
Walker had been taken aback when he’d seen where the woman’s car had left the road. “No way could she climb back up to the highway, so I guess it makes sense that she would come out on the beach. That would have put her out with the hospital being the closest building.”
“That’s probably what had saved her life,” Doc said. “Given the temperature of the air and the water, if she’d been out there any longer she wouldn’t have made it. She was already hypothermic when she reached us.”
“Did she mention her son when Sheila found her?”
“No.” The doctor poured himself more coffee. “She was confused and scared.”
Walker nodded. “I called her in-car emergency provider. The car is a blue Coupe de Ville Cadillac registered to her and a—” he consulted his notes “—Marc Collins, presumably her husband. The address is Seattle. No answer at the primary residence, but I had a black-and-white go over to see if anyone was home. She said her son’s name was Tyler, right?”
Brubaker nodded. “She became so hysterical I had Sheila give her a sedative to calm her down. Anything I’d have said would have only upset her more. She just assumed that her son was here at the hospital.”
“You can’t miss the spot where her car went off the road,” Walker said. “Right there by the cliffs. No sign of the vehicle. But lots of small trees down. Couldn’t have gone off at a worse place if she’d planned it.”
Doc looked up. “You don’t think she—”
“Purposely drove off there?” Walker shrugged. He’d long ago given up trying to guess what a woman might do. “There weren’t any skid marks that I could see. But it was raining, so I couldn’t tell if she tried to brake.”
Doc shook his head and closed his eyes as he leaned back in the chair. “I’m sure it was just an accident.”
Walker was never sure of anything. “She didn’t say what she was doing driving up here at that hour of the night?”
“No. She should sleep for a while. I’m hoping her son is found and I will have good news for her by the time she wakes up.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” Walker said, studying the doctor again. Since his wife’s death, Doc Brubaker had been trying to find a doctor for the town. Few doctors wanted to live in such an isolated town, let alone make so little money and work such long hours. Along with being on call for the town, the local doctor saw to the small nursing home facility attached to the hospital.
Doc hired young interns for the summer months to give him a break, but none of them had shown any interest in staying once the first snowflake fell.
Walker knew Brubaker had talked about retiring even before his wife had died. He figured it wouldn’t be long and Shadow Lake would be without a doctor. “You all right?”
Doc opened his eyes, seeming surprised by the question, then uncertain as he glanced toward the darkness beyond the windows. “It couldn’t have been a suicide attempt. Not if the boy was in the car with her.”
Obviously the doc didn’t read the papers. Not having