Chapter Twenty-Seven

 

 

Rapid City Regional Hospital

 

Eileen walked down the hallway corridor, seeing the little figure slumped on the bench that served as a waiting area here. She felt tired still, even after a few hours sleep and a hurried breakfast.

She’d slept on the ride back from Sundance, slept against the window of Doug’s truck with Joe’s exhausted, sleeping weight against her shoulder. Lucy and Ted, with Hank between them, were fast asleep right next to them. Hank never stirred, but even in sleep he didn’t let go of his mother’s hand.

She’d woken in Hulett, after dark, to discover her parents weeping and hugging and laughing as they learned that the Reed Ranch hadn’t been touched. Rene’s fire, hot and explosive though it had been, had followed a valley three miles to the west of the ranch. The volunteer fire department in Hulett hadn’t been able to stop the course of the fire as it raced towards Devils Tower, but they’d contained the fire within the ridgeline where Rene had burned Sheriff King’s patrol car and the stolen Chrysler. The fire had missed another ranch on the way, a cattle ranch owned by the Schwartz family. The entire family worked through the day to create a fire line, down to the five-year-old grandson of old Charlie Schwartz. The Schwartz family and the people of Hulett were crying and hugging, too; they thought the Reeds and their clients had perished in the fire since they hadn’t been found at their ranch.

She didn’t remember the journey to the ranch. One moment she was watching her parents’ joy through the dirty windows of Doug’s horse truck, struggling to comprehend the excitement, and the next she was jolted awake in pitch darkness.

“Everyone in,” Paul said. “Right to bed, and we’ll go to Rapid City in the morning.” They were at the Reed Ranch, and it was exactly the way they’d left it. Eileen stared through the window at her parents’ home, trying to understand that everything was still there, unburnt, untouched. Doug’s Schwan’s truck sat parked in the yard, just as he’d left it.

“I have to go to Rapid City—” Eileen started to say, then caught sight of her father’s face. She stopped instantly and nodded. When Paul wore a look like that there was no arguing. She stumbled into the house and fell across her bed, fully dressed, and remembered no more.

Now the day was bright and she was still tired, but she was showered and dressed and had brushed her teeth before the long ride to Rapid City. The figure on the hospital bench straightened as she approached.

“Hello,” Beryl Penrose said.

“Hello, Beryl,” Eileen said. She sat down next to Beryl and took her hand. “Thank you.”

Beryl looked exhausted. She also looked serene, as though all decisions had been made. She was wearing the same clothes she’d worn when she’d taken Joe’s Mustang, and they were spotted with blood.

“He’d crawled back to the highway from the ditch,” Beryl said, allowing Eileen to hold her hand. Her voice was rough and unsteady. “He was kneeling, like he couldn’t go any further, and I knew who he was, of course. Sheriff King. So I could run, or I could try to save him.”

“And you saved him.”

“I don’t think so,” Beryl said, and touched her forehead with trembling fingers. “I don’t like the way the nurses look. Are you going to see him?”

“I would like to see him,” Eileen said. She found that she was gripping Beryl’s hand far too hard. “I’m sorry,” she said, letting go.

“It’s all right,” Beryl said. “I didn’t save him to try and get leniency, you know. I just—”

“You couldn’t let him die. I know. I’m so sorry this happened, Beryl.”

“Me, too,” Beryl said. “Are you going to arrest me now? I think – I think I’m ready.”

“Not now,” Eileen said. “Let’s wait a while.”

A nurse came out of the room and nodded at Eileen. She was dressed in bright purple scrubs. Her scrub jacket was patterned with purple and brown teddy bears. Her face, above the cheerful garb, looked fixed and sad.

“He can see you now,” she said. “You have five minutes, no more.”

“Thank you,” Eileen said, rising to her feet. “How is he?”

“Are you a relative?” the nurse asked crisply.

“A good friend,” Eileen said. “But I’m a fellow cop. Could you tell me?” The nurse shrugged, nodded. They walked a few steps down the hall, away from Beryl.

“He was shot in the stomach,” the nurse said. “Perforated his intestines and he lost part of his liver. The surgeons fixed the injury, but he’d eaten a full meal before he was shot.”

“A full meal,” Eileen said in a voice that didn’t sound like her own. She knew what meal it was, too. The meal she’d served him in the Tower Pub and Grill, meat loaf and gravy with French fries.

“So the infection is in his blood stream now, and that’s called sepsis. His liver is damaged and having a difficult time dealing with the infection. We’ve got every big gun antibiotic we have, but he’s not responding as well as he should. Be positive, be cheerful. He needs good thoughts right now. He might turn around, still. I’ve seen some that do.”

“Okay,” Eileen said, and found to her surprise that she was speaking in a whisper. The nurse gestured her inside the I.C.U. and she walked in feeling as though she were going before a judge who would find her guilty, guilty.

But it was only Richard King after all, a very pale Richard King who was swathed in bandages from his chest down, with horrid looking drains and tubes seemingly everywhere. King turned to look at her, his head moving slowly on the fresh white pillow.

The whites of his eyes were yellow, bright chrome yellow. Eileen tried not to gasp. She’d never seen someone’s eyes look like that. Liver damage, the nurse had said. Other than the yellow eyes, he didn’t look so bad. The yellow eyes fixed on her and his lips drew back from his teeth. It might have been a smile, or a snarl.

Eileen dropped into the seat by his bed and took his hand in hers. She bent her head over his hand and tears burst out of her eyes and flooded down her face.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, choking. “I’m so sorry, Rick.”

“Tears,” he whispered. She looked up and he was looking with amazement at his hand, which was wet. He looked at her face with great effort and she looked back, unflinching, though she desperately wanted to hide her face.

“I should have made you come with us—” she started, and he moved his head back and forth on the pillow, one tiny inch one way and one tiny inch the other way. She stopped.

“Never saw you cry before,” he said, his whisper even fainter. “Ever.”

“Just learning how,” Eileen said, and wiped her chin. More tears followed, making her feel sticky and hot and horrible. “Can’t seem to stop, now.”

“Loved you,” he said, though there was no sound.

“I should have kissed you,” Eileen said, and she meant it with all her heart. “I was so young, and I was still hurt over Owen even though I knew he wasn’t for me. I hit you. I should have kissed you,” she finished miserably. His hand moved under hers and she gripped it, and the tears dripped from her chin and wet their hands.

“Loved me?” he mouthed, his strange yellow eyes slipping closed.

“Yes, I could have loved you, Richard, I could have,” Eileen said, and she was lying but she felt as though her heart were breaking. “Don’t go, please. Don’t go from us. You’re everything you didn’t know you were, Richard King. You are the king.”

“Time to go, Miss Reed,” the nurse said at her elbow, and Eileen started. She let go of Richard’s hand and wiped hastily at her face. “He needs to rest, now.”

“Hang on, Rick,” Eileen said as she got to her feet. She patted his hand gently and let the nurse lead her from the room. She looked back and saw his sleeping face, smoothed free of anxiety and pain. She might have imagined the slight smile.

When the doctor came into the first floor waiting area three hours later Eileen was calm. She’d washed her face with icy cold water, twice, scrubbing at her face as though the sticky tears would never come off. Joe sat by her side. Everyone was there. Doug and his pretty wife, Howie and the hunters, Lucy and Hank and Ted, Beryl and Jorie sitting side-by-side as though nothing had changed from a week ago. Tracy and Paul Reed sat with the mayor of Hulett and with the Olsens, who had shut down their Tower Pub and Grill and driven to Rapid City. The waiting area was overflowing with Schwartz’s and Hammond’s and the families that Sheriff Richard King had served. Among them was Owen Sutter, her boyfriend from high school, who’d hugged Eileen and looked, as she felt, bewildered with loss. His wife, Molly, was with him, and three tall boys who looked exactly like Owen.

On the third floor were Richard’s parents and sisters, in the family waiting room. They’d already gotten the news that this doctor was going to tell them, and Eileen felt her heart sink as she saw his set, grim face.

“We lost him twenty minutes ago,” the doctor announced. “I’m very sorry.”

There was silence. Eileen swallowed hard and bowed her head. She couldn’t bear it if she started crying again.

“Sir,” Paul Reed said. “Doctor? If he’d gotten to the hospital sooner? If we’d found him earlier?”

“I doubt it,” the doctor said. He was tall and imposing, an older man who looked as though he was used to telling people bad news. “The injury was extreme. We did everything we could. Thank you folks, for being here for him. He knew you were here, and I think that was a comfort to him. Thank you.”

“Thank you, doctor,” Paul said. Tracy turned to him and they held each other. The doctor turned and left the room and quietly shut the door behind him.

 

Rapid City Regional Hospital

 

“He’s going,” the nurse said to them. “You want to visit him? He hasn’t had any family in.”

“He doesn’t have any family,” Lucy said. They stood like a panel of judges behind the intensive care unit glass: Lucy, Joe, and Eileen. Lucy wondered if Joe or Eileen had thought about what Rene Dubois meant to them. His hobby of killing missile defense scientists had brought the three of them together. Lucy was investigating the murders when she came across Eileen and Joe.

Lucy couldn’t help but feel a surge of excitement when she realized she could close an open file that had existed for decades, close it with damning evidence from the killer’s own mouth. She’d already made two copies of her digital tape, even though it made her sick and faint to listen. She couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to listen to Rene tell of his killings while leaning over his roasted body.

He looked peaceful through the glass. They’d given him enough painkillers to float him away as his burned body shut down. The intensive care unit nurses had wrapped his crisped flesh in special bandages that would help him if he was going to live, and that should at least deaden some of the pain. Lucy thought of the couple he’d talked about drowning in fresh cement and felt her stomach do a slow, unpleasant flip. She didn’t want to deny Rene pain medication, though he hadn’t bothered with his own victims. Even Sully, Joe’s girlfriend, had her neck broken and then was left to die, alone and paralyzed, on a dark country road. Sully died without anyone to care for her, to comfort her as her body shut down and she died.

Lucy realized her nose was pressed against the glass and the nurse was giving her a strange look. She stopped and looked at Eileen guiltily. Eileen looked through the glass silently, her profile proud and disdainful. Joe looked miserable, his body drooping with weariness.

“What a waste,” he said. “What a waste.”

“Excuse me,” the nurse said abruptly. She left them and there was a brief consultation behind the glass. Lucy watched as the bulk in the bed twitched, and the monitors started beeping and hooting. Someone touched her hand and she realized it was Joe. She held his hand, hard, knowing Eileen was holding his other hand and feeling a circle closed and complete and strong.

“He’s going,” Joe whispered, as the nurses calmly disconnected the monitors and pressed buttons to stop the beeping. A doctor came in leisurely and pressed a stethoscope to the bandages that covered the man on the bed. He spoke briefly to the nurse and they made notes on a clipboard. This all took place behind the glass like a play performed for them, a death play without words.

“He’s gone,” Lucy breathed.

They watched as the nurses pulled the sheet up to cover Rene’s face. Joe squeezed Lucy’s hand and let it go. She looked up at him.

“Enough of death,” Joe said, with a ghost of his old smile on his face. “Beryl saved the Mustang. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“You got it,” Eileen said.

“First one to the car gets to drive it,” Lucy said, and as they headed for the elevator she wiped unexpected tears from her eyes. Tears, she supposed, for the little boy who loved his father. Tears for everyone that he’d ever hurt. And happy tears, too, because what she felt deepest in her heart was relief. He was dead, the wicked monster was dead, and would hurt people no more.