Chapter 59

 

 

Sandy’s cell phone buzzed down inside her desk drawer. She took a peek. Trini. What could she want?

“Hey Sandy, is this a bad time? I tried to call Mary but didn’t get an answer.”

“I’ve got an employee review in five minutes, but this is fine. What’s up?”

“Remember the homeless guy, Ron? You were thinking he could be the thief …”

“Right.”

“I found him this morning outside the building next door. He looks like he’s been beaten pretty badly. I called an ambulance and they took him to Memorial.”

“What—oh my gosh. Um, let me think … I want to question him before he gets released.”

“I don’t know how soon that will be. He was unconscious and bleeding.”

“Thanks, Trini. We’ll check it out.” Sandy hung up, wondering if the police would get there first. Would hospital personnel call the law if they felt Ron’s injuries were the result of a crime? If so, they needed to hear about the bigger picture.

She called Gracie and passed along Trini’s news, then sent a memo postponing the employee review. This would not go over well if upper management learned she had put off one of her official duties to run off on a crime-solving errand.

Gracie met her at the ER waiting room. “Have you seen him yet?” Sandy asked.

“No. They tripped me up with the first question, which was the patient’s full name.”

“I’ll give it a try. He told his landlord he was Ron Smith.”

Sandy approached the glass window with a circular metal microphone built into it. “I understand my cousin has been brought here after some kind of incident. He was beaten and found unconscious.”

“His name?”

“Ron Smith.” She said it with as much confidence as she could muster.

The woman at the desk behind the glass reached for a manila file in a stand-up rack. Interesting that they still used those. She flipped it open; it appeared to Sandy the file contained only one sheet of paper.

“Ron Smith?”

She nodded and gave her best worried look.

“Good to know. He was brought in here with no ID and only the name Ron, apparently given by someone at the scene when the ambulance arrived. I’ll buzz you back there. It’s exam room 12.”

Sandy waved Gracie toward her and they walked through a heavy wooden door when the buzzer sounded. Exam room 12 turned out to be a curtained off section of a much larger space. An impossibly young nurse stood at the bedside, adjusting an IV line that led to the arm of a man lying under a sheet. At the head of the wheeled bed stood a monitor with about a dozen red, green, and blue blinking numbers. The nurse gazed up at them and turned to leave.

“Oh! I didn’t hear you come in. Relatives?”

“His cousin. I just got word he was here. What on earth happened to him?”

“In plain terms, he’s got lots of broken stuff.” The young nurse looked apologetic. “Sorry—that was a little inside hospital humor.”

The ’broken stuff’ was evident when Sandy and Gracie got close enough to see the man in the bed. One eye was completely swollen shut, the surrounding skin a deep burgundy, and the other eye was closed. His nose was twisted at an odd angle, and his lips were puffy with cuts in several places. His hair color was Ron’s only recognizable feature. His clothing had been removed and replaced by a flimsy hospital gown with snaps along the shoulders.

“The doctor will explain everything when she gets here. We had a cardiac emergency down the hall a few minutes ago.”

“Is it okay if we wait with him?” Sandy asked.

“Sure. Here’s a chair, and you can drag another one over from 11 if you’d like. No one’s in there.” She waved vaguely toward a corner filled with crutches and cast-building supplies. A stiff metal chair sat next to a portable x-ray unit on wheels.

Gracie watched until the nurse disappeared down the corridor.

“Well. You’ve got yourself in a fine mess here, Mr. Ron,” Sandy said.

No response from the unconscious patient. He seemed to be breathing all right, although a little raggedly, and none of the indicators on the monitor were screeching or anything alarming.

“I wonder what’s with the foot,” Gracie said. She pointed to Ron’s left leg, which had been left uncovered by the sheet. “Seems weird someone would beat the heck out of his face and then, oh yeah, let’s trounce his foot, too.”

Sandy was poking around the room. “I wonder what they’ve done with his personal effects. This might be our one and only chance to conduct our own search.”

Gracie spotted a large plastic bag with clothing in it. She pointed. “I’ll keep an eye on the hall.”

Sandy pounced on the bag. A quick pat-down revealed a set of keys, no wallet. She pulled the garments from the bag, one by one. Relatively new jeans, stained with some blood and plenty of dirt. Except for the fact the EMTs had cut them off the patient, they would have been in good shape after laundering. Same for a long-sleeved button-down shirt. One sock was clean, the other had some bloodstains and was stretched out of shape.

“Looks like he wore this sock over the injured foot. And there’s only one shoe. I’m thinking the foot injury happened before today.”

“Makes sense.” Gracie turned to look at the items Sandy had set on the bed.

“The jacket interests me most,” Sandy said. “It’s certainly not the big, filthy thing I’ve seen him wear on the street corners.”

She reached into the pockets, one by one, pulling out a pair of decent quality leather gloves and an empty silver money clip.

“No ID and no credit cards. Fits with the guy in the rented house who pays his rent in cash. Looks like a believer in living under the radar.”

“Kind of sad, really,” Gracie said. “What did he think would happen if, like today, he had an accident or something. There’s no family to call.”

“Maybe he had a wallet and it was taken by whoever beat him up. There’s also no watch or other jewelry.” Sandy held up the jacket and noticed the roomy inner pockets. “Oh ho, what’s this?”

Gracie glanced back through the opening in the curtain toward the corridor. “Hurry up!” she stage-whispered. “Here comes the doctor!”

From the inner pocket, Sandy grabbed the top of a large plastic zip-top bag. Inside, she got a quick glimpse of a small locket and a gold pocket watch. As Gracie greeted the doctor, Sandy had no choice but to drop Ron’s jacket and the plastic baggie back into the personal-effects sack.