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.I could expect, said the intern, to feel some soreness and discomfort over the next several days.“Soreness and discomfort” are medical code words that mean “pain so excruciating you won’t be able to blink,” which I gleaned when he gave me a stack of prescriptions for anti-inflammatories, muscle relaxers, and painkillers that was almost as thick as a Reader’s Digest.“Can I go home?” I asked him.I wanted to be near my television.“I’ll authorize your release provided you have someone who’ll stay with you for the next few days,” he said, “but I think you’re supposed to talk to Detective Haglund first.”Glad as I was to hear that Gus was at the hospital, I wished I’d had a chance to comb my hair.But judging from his expression when he entered the room, combing my hair would have done little to help.He stared at me with undisguised horror.“That good, huh?” I asked.I tried to pull myself into a sitting position.“No, lie still,” Gus said, rushing to my side.“Oh, good God, honey, why do you keep doing this to yourself?”“I didn’t do this to myself.”Glaring at me, he said, “You’re lucky that it looks like a truck ran you down, or I’d strangle you.”This was perplexing.I wasn’t sure what I’d done wrong.I asked the reason for the potential strangling.Gus was happy to explode at me, and he ranted, “Because you keep putting yourself in rooms with suspects and inviting them to try to murder you.I don’t understand why you refuse to tell me about these informational revelations until after the suspect has escaped or tried to bludgeon you to death.I could charge you with obstruction of justice.In fact, I’d like to.In fact, I may just do that right now.”“Would that involve a full body search? Because I’m a little sore tonight, but maybe tomorrow?”He refused to laugh at that.But he stopped yelling at me.“What’s happening? Did you get Charlene? Did anyone tell you what happened?”“We have Charlene Templeton in custody,” replied Gus, rather grudgingly.“And I have been to the basement of your firm’s building, where I was not at all happy to see about twenty-eight quarts of your blood and five hundred pounds of paper on the floor.Your boss Bill has been released with a strong suggestion that he stay where we can find him.He tried to come here, but I asked him to go home and leave you alone for now.”“Aw, Bill’s sweet.And he didn’t do anything,” I insisted.“Charlene’s the one who’s been killing the widows.”Gus looked toward the door, then moved closer to me and spoke as if he wasn’t really supposed to tell me these things.“She’s not speaking to anyone about that.We can keep her because she attacked you, but she says she only attacked you because you accused her of murder and threatened her.Charlene says you’ll do anything to protect your boss.”“If you thought Bill was guilty, you wouldn’t have just turned him loose.”“No, I wouldn’t have.”“So you believe me about Charlene?” I searched his sweet and caring face, but all I saw there was concern.I hoped it was concern, anyway, and not repulsion at my newly-stitched, Frankenstein’s monster look.About Charlene I said, “I think she’s been tracking Bill’s clients through his notes.” I recounted my theory on how Charlene may have managed to gain entrance to homes and convince widows to take suicidal doses of pain medication.“Okay, honey.I’ve got it.You know we’re going to have to get your statement, but…”“But she panicked when she learned that a witness saw her leaving Adrienne Maxwell’s house.And she started pointing me in the direction of Bill’s old files.She wanted to set him up.I didn’t even realize I was being led by the nose.I’ll bet she was the one who came to my house last Saturday and tried to make it look like Bill had been there.”“Someone was at your house on Saturday? You didn’t tell me this.”“There was a chair that I didn’t sand very well.”“Carol, would you like me to call the doctor back in here?”“She’s proud of what she’s been doing,” I remarked suddenly, as much to myself as to him.“I think she considers it a humanitarian act.Maybe if you appeal to her vanity, she’d be willing to talk.”I noticed that Gus was staring at me cockeyed, as if my words had struck him as precocious or possibly pretentious.I explained, “I watch a lot of detective shows.”“Yes.Yes, I do know that.”“There’s something at the office, some kind of evidence, that she said was in a file of Bill’s.She’s been keeping evidence from the crime scenes, maybe just for fun, but now she’s planted it somewhere so it can look bad for Bill.Have you found anything like that?”Gus looked anxiously toward the door before he responded, “Don’t you remember, Carol? According to your coworkers, you chased her down to the garage while she was trying to get away with the file.We have it.”I puzzled over this; my memory of everything from the time I’d been whacked over the head was hazy.After a long moment, some images came back to me: the file clerk, old Paul with his fax, Donna’s kindness toward me.“Oh, yeah,” I said.“Some hair fell out of it.Is it the victims’ hair? Has she been keeping hair samples? Ask her about the hair samples.I bet if you check that file for prints, Bill’s won’t be on it.Bill never goes in the file room.I do all his filing.Tell Charlene that.Maybe it’ll crack her!”“Maybe we should just wait until you can come down and conduct the interview yourself.”For a moment that booger got me excited about the prospect: a real police interview! But then I saw he was teasing me.I wasn’t going to be embarrassed, though.I said, “Whatever I can do to nail that six-ways-from-Sunday nut job, I’ll do.I thought she was my friend, but she attacked me.And she ruined my go-to skirt.And she also tried to push all the blame on poor nutty Bill.About the murders, not about my skirt.”Gus shrugged.“Since they were Bill’s clients and since he had an obvious mental illness, Bill Nestor would be an excellent fall guy.”Excellent fall guy.Now that sounded like detective talk.I realized that Gus and I were having a denouement just like they do on TV shows.It was really fun, especially since I was drugged to the gills.I smiled at Gus adoringly.“Don’t you grin at me, Carol My-Last-Name-is-Frank.I’m furious with you.”But he wasn’t furious at me.He was furious at what I’d done.That’s not the same.I couldn’t stop this so-called grin in the face of all that adorability.“Stop that,” he commanded [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.I could expect, said the intern, to feel some soreness and discomfort over the next several days.“Soreness and discomfort” are medical code words that mean “pain so excruciating you won’t be able to blink,” which I gleaned when he gave me a stack of prescriptions for anti-inflammatories, muscle relaxers, and painkillers that was almost as thick as a Reader’s Digest.“Can I go home?” I asked him.I wanted to be near my television.“I’ll authorize your release provided you have someone who’ll stay with you for the next few days,” he said, “but I think you’re supposed to talk to Detective Haglund first.”Glad as I was to hear that Gus was at the hospital, I wished I’d had a chance to comb my hair.But judging from his expression when he entered the room, combing my hair would have done little to help.He stared at me with undisguised horror.“That good, huh?” I asked.I tried to pull myself into a sitting position.“No, lie still,” Gus said, rushing to my side.“Oh, good God, honey, why do you keep doing this to yourself?”“I didn’t do this to myself.”Glaring at me, he said, “You’re lucky that it looks like a truck ran you down, or I’d strangle you.”This was perplexing.I wasn’t sure what I’d done wrong.I asked the reason for the potential strangling.Gus was happy to explode at me, and he ranted, “Because you keep putting yourself in rooms with suspects and inviting them to try to murder you.I don’t understand why you refuse to tell me about these informational revelations until after the suspect has escaped or tried to bludgeon you to death.I could charge you with obstruction of justice.In fact, I’d like to.In fact, I may just do that right now.”“Would that involve a full body search? Because I’m a little sore tonight, but maybe tomorrow?”He refused to laugh at that.But he stopped yelling at me.“What’s happening? Did you get Charlene? Did anyone tell you what happened?”“We have Charlene Templeton in custody,” replied Gus, rather grudgingly.“And I have been to the basement of your firm’s building, where I was not at all happy to see about twenty-eight quarts of your blood and five hundred pounds of paper on the floor.Your boss Bill has been released with a strong suggestion that he stay where we can find him.He tried to come here, but I asked him to go home and leave you alone for now.”“Aw, Bill’s sweet.And he didn’t do anything,” I insisted.“Charlene’s the one who’s been killing the widows.”Gus looked toward the door, then moved closer to me and spoke as if he wasn’t really supposed to tell me these things.“She’s not speaking to anyone about that.We can keep her because she attacked you, but she says she only attacked you because you accused her of murder and threatened her.Charlene says you’ll do anything to protect your boss.”“If you thought Bill was guilty, you wouldn’t have just turned him loose.”“No, I wouldn’t have.”“So you believe me about Charlene?” I searched his sweet and caring face, but all I saw there was concern.I hoped it was concern, anyway, and not repulsion at my newly-stitched, Frankenstein’s monster look.About Charlene I said, “I think she’s been tracking Bill’s clients through his notes.” I recounted my theory on how Charlene may have managed to gain entrance to homes and convince widows to take suicidal doses of pain medication.“Okay, honey.I’ve got it.You know we’re going to have to get your statement, but…”“But she panicked when she learned that a witness saw her leaving Adrienne Maxwell’s house.And she started pointing me in the direction of Bill’s old files.She wanted to set him up.I didn’t even realize I was being led by the nose.I’ll bet she was the one who came to my house last Saturday and tried to make it look like Bill had been there.”“Someone was at your house on Saturday? You didn’t tell me this.”“There was a chair that I didn’t sand very well.”“Carol, would you like me to call the doctor back in here?”“She’s proud of what she’s been doing,” I remarked suddenly, as much to myself as to him.“I think she considers it a humanitarian act.Maybe if you appeal to her vanity, she’d be willing to talk.”I noticed that Gus was staring at me cockeyed, as if my words had struck him as precocious or possibly pretentious.I explained, “I watch a lot of detective shows.”“Yes.Yes, I do know that.”“There’s something at the office, some kind of evidence, that she said was in a file of Bill’s.She’s been keeping evidence from the crime scenes, maybe just for fun, but now she’s planted it somewhere so it can look bad for Bill.Have you found anything like that?”Gus looked anxiously toward the door before he responded, “Don’t you remember, Carol? According to your coworkers, you chased her down to the garage while she was trying to get away with the file.We have it.”I puzzled over this; my memory of everything from the time I’d been whacked over the head was hazy.After a long moment, some images came back to me: the file clerk, old Paul with his fax, Donna’s kindness toward me.“Oh, yeah,” I said.“Some hair fell out of it.Is it the victims’ hair? Has she been keeping hair samples? Ask her about the hair samples.I bet if you check that file for prints, Bill’s won’t be on it.Bill never goes in the file room.I do all his filing.Tell Charlene that.Maybe it’ll crack her!”“Maybe we should just wait until you can come down and conduct the interview yourself.”For a moment that booger got me excited about the prospect: a real police interview! But then I saw he was teasing me.I wasn’t going to be embarrassed, though.I said, “Whatever I can do to nail that six-ways-from-Sunday nut job, I’ll do.I thought she was my friend, but she attacked me.And she ruined my go-to skirt.And she also tried to push all the blame on poor nutty Bill.About the murders, not about my skirt.”Gus shrugged.“Since they were Bill’s clients and since he had an obvious mental illness, Bill Nestor would be an excellent fall guy.”Excellent fall guy.Now that sounded like detective talk.I realized that Gus and I were having a denouement just like they do on TV shows.It was really fun, especially since I was drugged to the gills.I smiled at Gus adoringly.“Don’t you grin at me, Carol My-Last-Name-is-Frank.I’m furious with you.”But he wasn’t furious at me.He was furious at what I’d done.That’s not the same.I couldn’t stop this so-called grin in the face of all that adorability.“Stop that,” he commanded [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]