The Crush Part 28

"Hardly how I would describe it. I was afraid if I resisted I would wind up like Sally Horton."

"You might have."

"Then why do you always put me on the defensive?"

He only looked at her before turning away. "I need to be on my way."

As he headed for the door she rushed after him, grabbed his arm, and brought him around. "I deserve an answer, Detective."

"Fine. Here's my answer," he said tightly. "You haven't given me any reason to trust you, Doctor, but you've given me a lot of reasons not to."

"What would convince you I'm telling the truth? Would

you have been convinced if Lozada had killed me tonight?"

"Not really," he returned with a blase shrug. "Before Sally Horton became his victim, she was his lover."

Chapter 20.

He wants only to make her happy." "Are you kidding?"

"Stop looking at me like that, Wick," Oren complained, "/didn't say it. She said he said it."

Wick had stayed in ICU for two days. For the past five, he'd been in a private room that afforded a view of the downtown skyline. He was able to lie on his back now. It still hurt like h.e.l.l, especially when he was forced to get up and walk around, which was at least twice a day.

Each of those hikes, as he called them, was an ordeal equivalent to climbing Everest. It took him five minutes just to get out of bed. At first he was able only to shuffle around his room, but earlier today he had managed to make it to the end of the hall and back, which the nursing staff claimed was a major breakthrough. Big woo. They commended his progress. He cursed and asked them where they stored their n.a.z.i uniforms. When he returned

to bed, he was sweating and feeling as helpless as a newborn.

He looked forward to the pain medication that was regularly dispensed. It didn't eliminate the pain but made it tolerable. He could live with it if he didn't think about it too much and focused on something else. Like Lozada.

This morning he'd been taken off the IV. He'd been glad to get rid of it, but then the nurses had begun bullying him to take in lots of fluids. They brought him fruit juice in little plastic cups with foil lids. He hadn't succeeded in opening one yet without spilling half of it.

"Are you eating?" Oren asked.

"Some. A little. I'm not hungry. Besides, you wouldn't believe the c.r.a.p they try to pa.s.s off as food."

His cheek was still the color of an eggplant going bad, but the swelling had gone down enough for him to see out of both eyes. For instance, he could see that Oren's eyebrow was in its critical-arch position. "What?" he asked grouchily.

"How're your privates?"

"Fine thanks, how're yours?" For several uncomfortable days he had straddled an ice pack, but, as Rennie had promised, his b.a.l.l.s had returned to their normal size.

"You know what I mean," Oren said.

"They're okay. Wanna check 'em out?"

"I'll take your word for it." Oren shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "I haven't had a chance to tell you. I'm sorry about your chin."

"Least of my problems."

"Yeah, but I shouldn't have hit you."

"I struck first."

"Stupid of both of us. I apologize."

"Noted and accepted. Now get back to what you were

saying about Lozada and his fixation on Rennie."

"I've told you already," Oren complained.

"Tell me again."

'Jesus, you're cranky. They haven't taken the catheter out yet, have they?"

'This afternoon. If I can pee they'll leave it out."

"What if you can't?"

"I can. I will. If I have to squeeze it out, I'll pee. No way are they putting that thing back in while I'm conscious. I'd jump out the window first."

'You're such a crybaby."

"Are you going to tell me or what?"

"I've told you. I've repeated it word for word several times. The neighbor said they looked cozy with each other.

Dr. Newton says that Lozada was terrorizing her, that she was afraid to fight him off for fear that he would do to her what he'd done to Sally Horton."

Wick sank back into his pillow and closed his eyes. The reminder of what had happened to that girl was painful.

He would never forget seeing her lying dead. While he'd been enjoying a shower, she had been killed in cold blood.

Leaving his eyes closed, he said, "She makes sense, Oren. Lozada's a threat to her. Especially if he thinks it comes down to a choice between him and me, and she's favoring me."

"I don't suppose she's talked to you about it."

"No. If you hadn't told me what went down the other night, I wouldn't even know about it."

He couldn't figure Rennie's att.i.tude, and that was the primary reason he was so grumpy. Yeah, he hurt. Yeah, the food was lousy. Yeah, he was ready to be peeing on his own.

Yeah, he didn't like walking around bare-a.s.sed and feeble.

But what really had him bothered was Rennie's aloofness.

She came in every morning and every evening, usually with her head down, her eyes on his chart rather than on him. "How are you, Mr. Threadgill?" Always the same ho-hum inflection.

She gave his incision a cursory inspection, asked how he was feeling and nodded absently to whatever answer he gave her, like she wasn't really listening and didn't really give a d.a.m.n. She told him that she was pleased with his progress, then smiled mechanically and left. He realized that he wasn't her one and only patient. He didn't really expect preferential treatment.

Well, maybe he did. A little.

He'd been heavily medicated when he was in the ICU, but he remembered her sitting near his bedside and giving him sips of Sprite. He remembered her applying the lip balm. He remembered the way they had looked at each other and how long that look had lasted and how significant

it had seemed.

Or had any of that actually happened?

Maybe he'd been so drugged out he'd been hallucinating.

Had it been a pleasant dream he'd mistaken for reality?

Possibly. Because that was, after all, the night Oren had caught her and Lozada in a "cozy" clench in her kitchen.

d.a.m.ned if he knew what was going on with her.

"When she's on her rounds she's all business," he told Oren. "We haven't even talked about the weather."

"It's hot and dry."

"Looks it."

"She took that chief of surgery position."

"I heard," Wick said. "Good for her. She's earned it."

Oren continued to look at him meaningfully. "That doesn't signify anything, Oren."

"I didn't say it did."

"You didn't have to."

A nurse came in with another container of juice. "I'll drink it later," he told her. "I promise." She didn't look convinced, but she set it on the bed tray and left. He offered the juice to Oren.

"No thanks."

"Cranberry apple."

"I'm fine."

"You sure? Forgive me for saying so, but you don't look too healthy yourself." Oren had arrived looking wilted not only from the summertime heat, but ragged out in spirit as well. "What's up?"

Oren shrugged, sighed, glanced out the window at the hazy view before coming back to Wick. "The DA called about an hour ago. The big cheese himself. Not an a.s.sistant."

Wick had guessed that Oren's glumness had something to do with their case against Lozada. If he'd had good news to impart, he would have imparted it before now.

Discomfort made getting bad news worse. He adjusted himself to a more comfortable position that favored his sore right side. "Let's hear it."

"He says that what we've got on Lozada is weak. Not enough to take to the grand jury. In any case, he refused to."

Wick had guessed as much. "He came to see me yesterday.

A pillar of goodwill and good cheer right down to his Italian loafers. Brought those." He gestured at a tacky bouquet of red, white, and artificially blue carnations.

"He went all out."

"I gave him a full account of what happened the night I was stabbed. Told him that as sure as I was still breathing, it was Lozada."

"How'd he react?"

"Let's see, he tugged at his turkey wattle, scratched his temple, rubbed his gut, frowned, expelled his breath through his pursed lips, and winced several times. He looked like a guy who had gas and was trying to figure out a polite way to fart. He told me that I was making some serious allegations. 'Well, no s.h.i.t,' says I. 'Murder and attempted murder are pretty f.u.c.king serious.' He had trouble looking me in the eye as he left. He didn't come right out and say it--"

"He's not a politician for nothing."

"But I gathered from all his seeming distress that he had problems with my story."

"He did."

"Such as?"

"I won't bore you with the details," Oren said. "G.o.d knows he bored me with them. For about thirty minutes he stammered and stuttered, and did that bellows bit with his cheeks, but basically ..."

"No soap."