From where the sun hung in the sky, it was at least a couple of hours past noon. The road couldn’t be far. If I went out to it, somebody was bound to pull over and either call the police or toss me in their trunk to pass around as a party favor later. More likely everybody would just keep driving past the bruised and—I lifted my head to look down at myself—very bloody, very battered naked woman wandering down the shoulder.
My head dropped back to the grass. Things were definitely starting to hurt. Who was I kidding? It had been hurting all along. I’d just been too cold then too busy to notice. But I was noticing now, and I really wanted some serious drugs to put me out of my misery.
After lying there for five minutes or so, I told myself to get up off the ground and to get walking. After another ten minutes, I managed to get myself up on my knees and then my feet.
I headed for the little rabbit track that cut through the grass and went up along the slope. The ground was reasonably smooth, but it didn’t really matter. My feet were hashed with cuts and purple with bruises. They were going to hurt no matter what I walked on.
I went uphill. When the track forked, I went in the direction of upstream. I’m not even sure why. Down was closer to home, and up relied on Damon to be waiting for me. I was pretty sure that the Banana Buddha didn’t have a phone or a car, though picturing him on the back of a Harley made me laugh. Which made my ribs ache and I started coughing, which only made things worse.
You’d think that a naked woman walking outside would automatically draw attention from everywhere. That satellites would shift in orbit and the whole world would get to see my humiliation. Weirdly, that didn’t happen. In fact, I heard nobody and saw nobody. I didn’t even hear the rush of cars on the road. Of course, if I hadn’t wanted to be seen, then a hundred people would have popped up out of nowhere. Murphy’s Law.
I came to a spot where a scree blocked my passage and I had to backtrack and hike up a steep ridge to go around it. That gave me a good view of the river. I’d gotten back up parallel to the Teeth. So I guessed I was around two miles from the sanctuary pool. The road was closer, but I’d have to finish hiking to the top of the ridge and then get down the other side. If I remembered, there was irrigated pastureland between the bottom and the road, not to mention several barbed-wire fences to cross.
I decided to just start walking and concentrate on the next ten feet, and then the next ten feet, and then the next.
The mosquitoes in the pasture ate me alive. I don’t even know why they bit me. They could have stuck their stupid straws into the leaking blood, but no, they had to make even more holes in me.
I got through the fences without raking myself too hard with the barbs and then waded through an irrigation runoff ditch full of cattails. That left me a five-foot embankment to the road. That, too, was more work than it should have been. I was shaking, the bank was steep, the grass was slick, and I was like a sasquatch just learning to walk. I finally made it.
Standing there, I felt idiotic. I had to look like something out of a horror flick. Bloody Beck. Say my name three times, and I’d fall asleep on top of you.
The first couple of cars whizzed by like I was invisible. The third, a beat-up blue pickup truck, flashed past then hit the brakes and skidded to a stop. The driver thrust open the door and ran back to me, leaving his truck running in the middle of the road.
“Are you okay?” he asked, coming to a stop a few feet away and looking like he was afraid he’d scare me. “I mean, do you need help?”
“I’d take a ride to the hospital,” I said.
“Come on.”
He reached out to help me and then blushed bright red. He wasn’t that old. Barely old enough to drink. He was wearing jeans covered in white plaster splatters and a blue button up shirt with the name “Liam” stitched in red on a white oval on his chest. He had hat hair, his brown curls stiff with dried sweat.
“Got something I could put on to wear?” I asked. “Or a blanket?”
“Oh, sure.”
He ran back to the truck and dug behind the seat, returning with a gray T-shirt.
“Thanks,” I said, taking it and pulling it over my head. It managed to just barely cover my crotch.
By this time, another couple of cars had stopped and were gawking. A woman rolled her window down. “Do you need help? Should I call 911?”
“I’m gonna take her to the hospital,” my rescuer said. He looked at me. “Did someone do this to you? Should we call the police?”
I shook my head. “I fell into the river. Went through Devil’s Jaw and the Teeth.”
Liam gaped, clearly awed that I’d lived. Lucky thing, too, because he didn’t ask how I happened to fall in or why I was totally naked.
“Here. I’ve got a throw.” The woman pulled a lap blanket out of her back seat and brought it over to me. I wrapped it around myself, feeling a bit less awkward.
“Thanks.”
“You really should get to the hospital. You look pretty bad.”
Liam glanced down at my feet. “Do you want me to carry you?”
“Thanks, but I think I’d be better off on my own.” I smiled and from the look on my two helpers’ faces, it was a scary expression.
I hobbled around to the passenger side of the truck, with both Liam and woman hovering in case I needed help.
I got up inside and settled back against the seat with a sigh. God but it was good to sit down.
“You want to put on the seat belt?” the woman asked.
I shook my head. “I’m good.” I looked at her. “What’s your name? How do I get this blanket back to you?”
“Cammie Pilts, and don’t worry about it. Just get yourself better. God bless.”
With that, she swung the door shut, and then my other savior hopped into the driver’s seat.
“Your name’s Liam?” I asked.
He startled like I’d pinched his ass. “How did you know that?”
“Your shirt.”
He flushed and looked down at his name tag as though he’d never seen it before. “Right. Yeah. That’s me. We’d better go.”
The drive didn’t take long. He pulled in to the emergency drive-up entrance and came around to help me out. I guess I looked pretty bad because I was barely out of the truck when an orderly in green scrubs whipped up with a wheelchair and gave me a ride inside.
After that, it was that annoying hospital game where they see how many times they can jab you with something sharp. I had an MRI and a CT, blood tests, shots, an IV with antibiotics and another with blood, seventy-three total stitches, and they made me stay overnight. They kept asking me what had happened and didn’t seem to believe my story whatsoever. Through it all, I kept wondering about Ajax. I hoped Damon was taking care of him. What if he’d dumped the poor dog at the pound? What if Ajax had run off?
When I got the chance, I called Lorraine. I got her voicemail and left a message telling her where I was. I tried Stacey, but she didn’t answer either. She was probably at work. Last I called Jen.
“What happened to you?” she asked. “I thought we were going to go hike Overland Trail today. I waited for you, like, two hours.”
“I’m in the hospital.”
A beat of silence. I could hear her grabbing control of herself and the carefully articulated, “What?”
Someone knocked on the door. I looked up. My two favorite detectives stood in the doorway. Or rather, they knocked and walked in without any invitation at all.
“I’ve got company. Bring me some clothes, would you? Something loose. And maybe some slippers. They’re keeping me overnight, but I don’t have anything to wear home.” I hung up. “What do you want?”
“The hospital called in a potential battered woman. When we heard your name, we figured we’d come check in on you,” Jeffers said blandly.
His eyes were all over me, cataloging every stitch, bruise, scrape, and who knew what else. Ballard wasn’t any better. She’d come around to the other side of the bed, so I was between them, and was giving me the same scrutiny. I felt like a bug under a microscope.
“What happened to you?” Ballard asked.
I grimaced. “Like you care. Here’s what you really want to know. Nobody attacked me. This had nothing to do with my mother.” Well, except for her curse. “I went to the river to lay out in the sun and fell in. Got banged up on the rocks. Then I managed to get out of the water and walk to the road for help.”
Neither one of them appeared to have bought my story. Fuck them. Most of it was true, and they sure as hell wouldn’t believe the part about me being cursed or the bit where I transformed into a cloud.
Ballard had whipped out her notebook and pen. “Go over that again. Start with where you went to sunbathe. Was anybody with you?”
I sighed and looked up at the ceiling as I relaxed back into my pillows. “You know what? I’m really tired. I’d like you to go away.”
I hit the nurse-call button on my little remote control. She must have been eavesdropping because she popped into my room before either detective had a chance to answer. She bustled over to my side, elbowing Jeffers out of the way and offering him a brilliant smile. She was Latina or maybe Indian, with dark eyes, thick black hair, and dimples. She stood about five foot nothing and had the kind of curvy body that made men drool. Jeffers was no exception.
“How are you, Miss Wyatt?” she asked me, reaching over to shut off the call button and then check my IV and the machine it hung on. “I’m your nurse, Esme. How can I help you?”
“I’m really tired and hurting a lot.” Both were true, though I could tolerate a lot more pain without more drugs. They’d told me not to let it get bad, though, or it would be harder for them to get it under control.
She grabbed my chart and looked at it, made a notation, and set it aside. “You’re due for your medication. But first, let’s get some readings.”
She then took my blood pressure, temperature, my blood oxygen, and who knows what else.
“Hmm,” she said as she wrote things down. “You’ve got a slight fever, and your blood pressure is low.”
“And I’m hungry,” I said. “I haven’t eaten since—” I had no idea. “What time is it, anyway?”
She smiled. “Nearly eight p.m. I’ll send for something for you. In the meantime, I can bring you some juice and your medication. What would you prefer?”
After hearing my choices, I picked orange juice.
She smiled. “I’ll be right back.” She gave the detectives a stern look. “Please remember that Miss Wyatt has been severely injured. Do not tire her.”
“I’m already tired,” I said, crossing my arms as best I could and giving them a defiant look. “Sick and tired of you. If you’re going to start calling me a liar and a murderer again, then just go away. Or better yet, I’ll get myself a lawyer and you can talk to him.”
“Now, Miss Wyatt,” Jeffers began.
I cut him off. “No. I like Detective Ballard marginally better than you. She can ask questions.”
Jeffers turned a little red, and his jaw clamped. He nodded to Ballard as if she needed his permission, which I doubt she did, but sometimes you played the game to get ahead. Cop work wasn’t really welcoming of women was my bet. That was probably amplified in the elite world of the detectives.
“Miss Wyatt, if I understand correctly, you were not attacked. Was anybody else present at the time of your fall?”
I cocked my head, annoyance starting to peg into the red. “Exactly how would that matter? Why don’t you get to the meat of your questions because I’m a gnat’s ass away from telling you to fuck off again. Let’s start with the fact that my adventure in the river has nothing to do with my mother’s murder, nor was I attacked, so it’s not police business. I’m done talking to you about it.”
Ballard nodded and Jeffers made a noise and folded his arms over his chest. Ballard lowered her notebook and looked me in the eyes. She was probably around thirty with creamy smooth brown skin, straight black hair caught up behind her head in a ponytail, and wearing a blue suit with an ivory blouse. Her gun and badge hung on her hip.
“Frankly, Miss Wyatt, the mayor and governor are chewing our asses to make an arrest in your mother’s case. We’ve got shit for leads. From what we can tell, the murder was carefully planned and carried out. The killer left no prints of any kind, no DNA, nothing at all. It’s like he was a ghost. And yet your mother’s place is practically a fortress. There’s no way someone could sneak in and out without being seen unless they had inside help. We also think, given the circumstances, there might have been two perps, maybe three.”
Her candor surprised me. Pissed off Jeffers, too, who looked ready to throttle his partner.
“What do you want from me?”
“Information. The kind only you can give. We need you to walk us through the crime scene and the grounds, tell us if anything is unusual or out of place. We’d like you to give us anything you can about your mother’s last few weeks, her social and work lives, and anybody who might have had a grudge.”
“When I told you we weren’t close, I wasn’t lying, Detective. I did not know my mother particularly well.”
“All the same, you knew her better than anybody else except maybe some of the servants, and they refuse to say anything to us. They might be more forthcoming if you were present.”
It was true I knew a lot of the staff, though in a distanced way. I had no idea exactly what they knew about my mother and what she did to me, or whether they knew she could work magic or not. I’d never done anything magical on the property, so it was a safe bet that they didn’t know about my ability.
“We have yet to find a will, nor have her attorneys been able to provide any information concerning her heirs. Have you been contacted by the executor?”
I shook my head. “If my mother left me dirty toilet water, I’d faint. She wouldn’t give me the time of day if it would save her life.”
“Can you tell me exactly why your relationship was so poor?”
I shrugged and winced at the pain that ran through my banged-up shoulder. “If you figure it out, I’d like to know. I don’t remember her ever liking me, much less loving me. Maybe I was a shitty baby. Maybe I crapped on her best shoes. Maybe I ruined her figure and made her breasts sag. Whatever crime I committed, I did it before I developed a memory, and she punished me for it my whole life.”
That was met with startled silence. Even Jeffers had lost his just-ate-rotten-eggs look.
Ballard recovered quickly. “And your father?”
“No idea who he was. Never saw a picture or heard a name. If not for the fact that a woman needs sperm to get pregnant, I wouldn’t even know he ever existed.”
“So they weren’t in touch?”
“Not that I know of, but like I said, I didn’t know much about my mother.”
“All right, then,” Esme said as she bustled in with orange juice and a small plastic tray with a tiny plastic cup containing three pills. “Swallow these with water.” She handed me the pills and then a plastic insulated cup with a bendy straw and Doggett’s Memorial Hospital printed on the side.
I did as told and handed the water back. She gave me the juice.
“Your meal will be here shortly.”
She turned a sunny smile on the detectives. “I’m afraid it’s time for you to go now. Miss Wyatt needs rest, and visiting hours are over.”
Nurse Esme didn’t fool me or the cops one bit. She might be small and have a megawatt smile, but she expected to be obeyed or else. I kind of hoped Ballard and Jeffers would refuse so I’d get to watch her mow them down. Sadly, they nodded and started for the door. Ballard turned around and came back, handing me her card. I think it was the third one she’d given me.
“Please call when you are ready to take us through your mother’s home.”
What she didn’t say was, and do it soon, or we’ll be back to get you, but I heard it anyway.