“Maisie, I need you to forget about everything else going on here and listen to me right now,” MacDougal said. “Can you do that? Can you listen?”
She couldn’t.
She couldn’t do anything except stare at Stuart’s mangled bike, stare at the sticky, wet blood that had seeped into the cracked asphalt like a crayon melted by the sun.
Blood.
There was a lot of it.
Enough to indicate someone had died here. But whom?
Stuart?
Someone else?
The driver of the coupe perhaps.
Yes, it had to be.
“Maisie?” MacDougal repeated. “Are you listening?”
The ambulance’s siren whined down the road while Maisie watched in stunned silence, unsure about whom was inside.
MacDougal placed a hand on her arm. “Maisie. Let’s talk. Okay?”
The tone of his voice was different today. Soft. Warm. Sympathetic.
Revealing.
“Why are you here? Why are you here instead of officers?”
He pointed at two officers standing by the SUV. “I’m not the only one here. See? I was on my way to work, saw the crash, and stopped to check things out.”
Maisie pointed. “That bike. It’s Stuart’s.”
MacDougal stepped in front of her, blocking the bike from her view. He wrapped his hands around her shoulders, stared into her eyes. “You’re right. It is Stuart’s bike.”
“What happened here? Where is he? In the ambulance? Is he hurt? How bad? I need to go to the hospital. I need to see him.”
“It was a college kid.”
Maisie moved a hand to her hip. “What do you mean? I wasn’t asking about a college kid. I was asking about Stuart.”
“I’m trying to explain what happened. A college kid was on his way to class this morning. His cell phone slipped off the seat. He reached down to pick it up, ran a red light, and smacked into the SUV. Then the SUV slammed into the car, and the car slammed into Stuart.”
She pointed at the pavement. “And the blood? Whose blood is this?”
MacDougal didn’t answer.
“I said whose is it?”
“I’m so sorry, Maisie.”
She slammed a fist onto MacDougal’s chest, once, then again, and again. “Don’t be sorry! I don’t need your sorry! I don’t need anyone’s sorry! I need Stuart! Alive!”