The ping of the elevator outside the hospital waiting room woke Arn from a light nap. He sat up and looked about before standing and stretching. He’d stopped at the nurses’ station this morning to ask about Johnny: he was still in an induced coma, but his vitals were improving.
He walked to Johnny’s room to talk with the officer sitting in the hallway. Arn remembered such duty, and figured the officer must have pissed off someone to draw the boring assignment of sitting outside the room. “I don’t know how the chief’s doing,” the officer said, clutching the latest edition of Guns and Ammo magazine. “Only thing they told me is to keep everyone out except hospital personnel.”
Arn returned to dozing in the waiting room when an angry voice rose from the nurses’ station. A woman was yelling at two nurses, their blue scrubs barely visible as they cowered behind the safety of the counter separating them from the crazy woman. “This is bullshit!” the woman screamed. “I demand to see Chief White!”
The charge nurse walked around the counter and laid her hand on the woman’s fleshy arm. She jerked away. “I’m Adelle Dawes, bitch. Dr. Dawes’ wife. I pay your wages.”
“Then you’re the person I need to talk to about a raise.” The nurse’s lip rose slightly in a Mona Lisa smile before she became serious again. “And you still can’t go into his room.”
One of the nurses caught Arn’s attention, the panicked look on her face asking for his help as if he still wore a badge.
“Are you Adelle Dawes?” Arn asked, sliding between her and the nurse like a boxing referee. He recognized the name of Gaylord’s ex-wife, who’d married Dr. Dawes after Gaylord’s death. “I’m a friend of Johnny’s too. Can we sit for a moment?”
Adelle glared at the floor nurse before stomping past Arn into the empty waiting room. The nurse mouthed a “thank you” just before he turned and followed Adelle. He walked to the coffee pot and grabbed a Styrofoam cup. “Would you like a cup?”
“Is it as crappy as all other hospital coffee?” she asked as she wiggled and struggled to fit between the arms of the chair.
“It is.”
“Then count me out.”
“Can’t blame you.” Arn counted himself out on the crappy coffee as well and sat in a chair opposite her. He told her what the nurse had said of Johnny’s improving condition, and how only hospital personnel were allowed at his bedside. “Are you a friend of Johnny’s?”
“He was friends with my brother, Steve DeBoer.” Adelle took off her coat and tossed it on a chair.
Arn sat quiet, like he often did, waiting for someone to tell him things. All sorts of things. Which Adelle did.
“Johnny always treated Steve well,” Adelle volunteered.
“It must have been hard, losing a husband and brother the same year.”
Adelle laughed. “The husband was no great loss. He did pretty much whatever he wanted to do.” She flipped open a silver cigarette case and stuck a Virginia Slim into her mouth, then spied the No Smoking sign and stuffed the cigarette case back in her purse. “You’re that retired cop the station brought in to find Butch Spangler’s killer.”
“I am.”
“And to come up with a connection between Gaylord and Steve and Butch.” She laughed again. “That Villarreal woman’s come up with some doozies to boost her ratings, but this has got to take the cake.”
“You don’t see a connection between all three officers’ deaths?”
Adelle leaned forward for effect, and Arn backed away. Something about vodka breath at ten in the morning. “I watched Johnny on TV claiming that the Five Point Killer could be the link between them. That would leave Gaylord out. The little piss ant couldn’t find elephant tracks in the snow, no better investigator than he was. If it wasn’t for my brother, Gaylord would have been working animal control.”
“But he must have known as much as Butch about the cases, them being partners.”
“Only because Steve ordered Butch to take Gaylord under his wing. He would swagger through the front door every night, bragging. ‘We’re so close to catching the killer,’ he’d say. ‘By this time next week we’ll have an arrest.’ Big shot. But in reality, Butch was close. Gaylord was just along for the ride.”
Arn reached around the chair and grabbed his bag.
“What’s that?”
“My briefcase,” he answered digging for papers.
“Looks like a purse.”
Arn took out a notebook and flipped pages to notes he took about Gaylord’s death. “The initial report says you found Gaylord the evening he died.”
Adelle took out her cigarette case again. This time, she stuck a cigarette into her mouth. She aimed her shaking hand, holding a diamond-studded lighter, to it. She drew a deep breath and looked in the direction of the nurses’ station. Daring them. Blowing smoke rings their way. “When I came home from shopping, that damned fool Gaylord was in the basement. In that room he called his man cave.” She laughed nervously. “Except there were no men ever came around. Only Butch’s little kid now and again. Or Steve when he needed to ask Gaylord something. But yeah, I found him swinging. Butter smeared all over his little bitty cajones. Eyes bulging out like he was still looking at those porn mags. A connection with Butch and Steve? That Villarreal woman is really nuts this time.”
A tall, fit man entered the room, the graying around his temples setting off his nearly black hair. He seemed to glide as he walked, lithe, sure of himself. He glared at Adelle, who hurriedly snubbed her cigarette out in a coffee cup. “This is my husband,” she said quickly. “Doctor Jefferson Dawes.” She tailed out “doctor” so that Arn knew he was in the company of royalty. “What are you doing here?” she asked him.
“I’m a doctor. Doctors frequent hospitals. Especially when their damned nurse claims she can’t read my orders and I have to come here and tell her in person.”
Adelle looped her arm through his. “Jeff is in demand as an orthopedic surgeon.”
“I doubt Mr. Anderson is interested in my life history,” Jefferson said.
He was turning to leave when Adelle stopped him. “Lunch?”
“I can’t,” he answered. “I’ve got to prep for that marathon.”
“Then what time should we have dinner?”
“Don’t wait for me. I’ll be late checking on a patient here.”
She looked after him walking down the hallway, as if expecting his return. “We usually have dinner,” she volunteered. She shook out another cigarette. It dangled out the side of her mouth making her look like a drunken sailor about to order another Singapore Sling. When she turned back to Arn, her faraway look was replaced by one of desperation. “We have a good marriage,” she blurted out. “You and that Villarreal woman remember that in your reports to the public. Jefferson has never had an affair.”
Pieter Spangler appeared, walking down the hall alongside a young nurse in blue scrubs. He saw Arn in the doorway of the waiting room and waved. Adelle stiffened. She jabbed her cigarette in his direction. Ash fell on the carpeting, and she ground it in with her shoe. “That kid … you watch out for him. He’s creepy.”
“He can’t be too creepy with that good-looking lady on his arm.” And creepy people don’t rise to become one of the region’s top architects, Arn thought.
“He hung around with Gaylord. A kid!” Adelle’s voice was loud enough that nurses at the nurses’ station looked her way. “And he bought our old house after I moved out. What sicko would want to buy a house where a man hung himself?”
Pieter stopped when he saw Adelle staggering toward the elevator. He bent and whispered something to the nurse beside him before they continued to the waiting room. Adelle dropped her cigarette into a Styrofoam cup and brushed past Pieter without acknowledging him.
Pieter looked at Adelle as she waddled into the elevator. “Adelle doesn’t like me much,” he told Arn.
“She’s got bad memories of you spending time with Gaylord, by the sounds of it.”
“I spent time with all dad’s fellow officers.” Pieter turned up his nose at Adelle’s still-smoldering cigarette in the coffee cup. “As I recall, Adelle never had any use for Gaylord when they were married. No, what she’s mad about is that I bought that ratty old house of theirs for a song.”
The elevator dinged and Pieter jumped, perhaps expecting Adelle to return. “Excuse my manners. Let me introduce my fiancée, Meander Wells. Meander, this is Arn Anderson.”
“Pieter says you were a friend of his father’s,” Meander said, offering her hand.
“A long time ago,” Arn answered.
“After Gaylord died,” Pieter said, as if needing to clarify Adelle’s hatred, “she boarded up the house and moved in with Dr. Dawes. It was the very week after Gaylord’s death. She let the house go to seed, and I picked it up for taxes. That’s why she’s got it in for me. She thought it was worth a lot more because it was in that historic part of town south of the tracks the railroad used to own. Fact was, no one wanted a house where a hanging took place. Even if it was in a historic district.”
“Historic or not,” Meander said, “Pieter paid too much in taxes for that spooky place.”
Pieter grinned and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “Meander wanted to see where a man died … an autoerotic death.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “I intend on restoring the place. It’ll be our first house when we’re married.”
Meander swiped at his shoulder, but he drew back in time.
“Actually, I’ve got no time to restore any house now, as busy as I’ve been. So, I just replenished the boards that had rotted away, against vandals and homeless like I do all my old homes. Someday I’ll get the time to restore them.”
“Like I’m doing with my mother’s old house,” Arn said, leaving out that fact that the old place came with an emaciated homeless Indian.
Meander checked her watch. “Break’s over. I have to get back to the floor.”
Pieter looked after her as she disappeared down the hallway before turning back to Arn. “Are you here to see Johnny too?”
Arn nodded.
“Meander said they brought him out of the coma for a few minutes today. That’s a positive sign.” He checked his own watch. “Got a ten o’clock appointment with the developer of that new shopping center south of town.” He started out the waiting room. “Meander’s going to keep her ear to the floor. If there’s any change in Johnny, I’ll call you.”
“Thanks,” Arn called after him.
He walked to the nurses’ station. The charge nurse saw him and came around the counter. “Thanks for taking Adelle away. She likes to throw her weight around. Which is considerable.”
“Understood,” Arn said. “Does a Dr. Delaney still work here?”
“Ralph?” The nurse sighed and picked up the phone. “He’s been in the cafeteria for an hour. I’ll tell him you’re coming. And tell him his nurse called and said he’s got patients waiting.”
Arn took the elevator to the cafeteria and followed workers on their late lunch break, a cornucopia of colored scrub uniforms: blue and browns and green, intermingled with white lab coats here and there. Arn got in line at the salad bar and dished some greens onto a plate. He figured if he were talking to a doctor, it couldn’t hurt to show solidarity by eating healthy. At least until the interview was over. “Could you tell me where Dr. Delaney is?” he asked as the clerk weighed his salad.
“That white-haired vacuum cleaner in the corner,” she answered, handing Arn change for the salad. “Notice he’s alone? That’s ’cause no one can stand to eat with him. Bon appetite, big guy.”
Arn picked his way through the crowd toward the corner table. Dr. Delaney, a thin man in his seventies not much bigger than Danny, sat shoveling food in. Stripped chicken bones were piled high on one plate as the doctor worked on his last drumstick. Two cheeseburgers waited on another plate. He saw Arn standing over him and wiped barbeque sauce from his lips. “They had a special on ribs.”
Arn introduced himself, and Delaney shook hands sticky with barbeque sauce. He motioned to an empty chair. “Sallie called and said a knight in dull armor rescued her from Adelle Dawes.” He striped the chicken leg and attacked one of the cheeseburgers. “You’re that retired cop the TV station brought in as a consultant on Butch Spangler’s murder.”
“I am. I’d like to ask you some questions, since you were his primary care physician.”
“What about patient confidentiality?”
“The man’s been dead for better than ten years.”
“Good point.” Lips smacking. “If Butch don’t like it, he can sue me.” Lip smacking. “What do you want to know?”
“Butch was admitted to the ER a couple weeks before he died to have his stomach pumped.”
“He OD’d on the Xanax I prescribed,” Delaney mumbled, halfway through the first cheeseburger. “The man was a bundle of nerves. A patrolman brought in the empty prescription bottle the night they admitted him. Butch must have taken a month’s worth—the bottle was near empty. That quantity should have killed him.” Delaney motioned to Arn’s salad plate. “You going to eat those?”
Arn shook his head, and Delaney grabbed his pack of croutons and opened them. “I ripped Butch’s behind for that stunt once he came around. I told him to go easy on the Xanax, and he started bawling. First time I saw that in him. He said he needed extra Xanax to fall asleep. That he’d probably taken more than he should have with his nightly dose of Budweisers. I almost upped his dosage—the Xanax, not the beer. But then I thought better of it and just refilled the prescription. Two weeks later, he was worm food.”
Delaney wolfed down the second cheeseburger and stood with his tray in hand. “If Butch loaded up on the Xanax that night and took a few too many beers, he would have passed out cold.”
“And he might not have been aware if someone walked in on him?”
“That’s almost a certainty,” Delaney said. He was walking toward the tray drop-off when he stopped and turned back. “You want some free advice?” He nodded to Arn’s plate. “If you have another salad, skip the cheese. Causes hardening of the arteries. You got to start eating healthy, Mr. Anderson.”
Arn pulled out of the hospital parking garage as his cell phone chirped. He pulled to the side of the road and accepted it. When no one talked on the other end, he said louder, “Arn Anderson.”
“It’s me,” Ana Maria said in barely a whisper. “DeAngelo wants me to go on air tonight again. Give an update on Johnny’s shooting.”
“And you don’t want to?”
“Does it show?” she asked.
“It does if you connect Johnny’s shooting with your television special. This morning you were gung ho about going ahead with tonight’s airing. What happened today?”
“Your ratty old slippers,” Ana Maria said, her voice trailing off, shaky.
“I lost them,” Arn said. “What’s that got to do with you not wanting to go on tonight?”
“I got your slippers. The ones you thought you lost,” Ana Maria’s voice wavered.
“What do you mean, I thought I lost?”
“They were on the front seat of my car when I came out of Sanford’s restaurant today. You didn’t lose them. Someone took them—”
“Sometime last night,” Arn breathed. “While we were sleeping.”
“I’m scared, Arn. I don’t know if I should treat this as a warning to back off the special or be on notice that the killer can take us any time.”
“Or he’s toying with us,” Arn said. “Maybe you ought to turn it over to Nick Damos.”
“I need this. We need this, to catch this guy.”
“All right,” Arn said. “Do you want me to hang around the station until you get off work tonight?”
Ana Maria paused, her breaths coming in quick gasps. “I’ll be all right. I’ve got police protection sitting in the parking lot. And I still have your gun.”
“I’ll call Oblanski and ask him to beef up security.”
“Don’t,” Ana Maria said.
“What?”
“Don’t,” she repeated. “There’s just enough investigative reporter in me to want not to scare him away. Or her. Besides”—she waited while footsteps walked by—“Nick Damos will jump on this like a crazed dog if he thinks I’m too scared to finish the series.”
“All right. It’s your call.”
“But if you happen to replace your doors and window locks in the house, I’d be a happy woman.”
“I’ll get Danny on it. Just as soon as I go to Frontier Arms and buy a gun.”