The nurse finished her duties and exited, leaving Radar and me alone with Colleen Hayes.
To me, hospitals don’t just smell sickly clean, they also seem to be permeated with the stench of death from those who’ve died inside them. And-
Man, there was just too much death on my mind today. With the weight of my job and my troubling dreams, the morning already felt heavy, too heavy. I needed to find a way to lighten things up.
But, unfortunately, that wasn’t going to happen at the moment.
“First of all, Ms. Hayes…” I saw a rosary on her bedside table and was hit with the tragic truth that she would never be able to work her way through the beads again. “I’m very sorry you were attacked. I promise that we’re going to do everything we can to catch the man who did this and we’re going to put him away.”
She was quiet.
“I want you to know that Vincent is alright. He’s in-”
“What,” she said abruptly, “did he make Vinnie do?” The fact that she was already speaking to us took me aback. Her words were tight with concern, but also sharp with anger: “The guy who sawed off my hands.” She paused. “The doctors told me Vinnie is okay, but that he couldn’t come to visit me because he’s in jail. What did that man make my husband do?”
It was her right to know what Vincent had done and I summarized what’d happened last night concerning Lionel. I didn’t mention Vincent’s flight through the neighborhood or the fact that he’d physically assaulted me when I was apprehending him, but Colleen stared at the bruise on my jaw and I imagined she was able to put two and two together. I slid my left hand over my right to hide the swollen, discolored finger.
“So my husband is in jail.” It didn’t sound like a question.
“I understand you must be-”
“You understand what? Exactly?” She glared at me, then pulled her arms out from under the blankets and held them up in front of me. Where her hands used to be were nothing but thick bandages. That was all. “What is it you understand?”
I felt so underqualified to be here. She needed a minister or a psychiatrist rather than a detective. “I’m sorry,” I told her truthfully. “You’re right. I don’t understand. I couldn’t possibly.”
“And this man…” She fumbled to stick her arms under the blanket again. Radar was closer to her than I was and he quietly helped pull the blanket back for her. She finally got her arms beneath it. “… Lionel, he’s alright?”
“He is,” Radar answered. “He’s already back home and it doesn’t look like he’s going to press charges.”
She said nothing, looked toward the window again.
I waited a few moments to let her sort things through, then pulled out my notebook and said softly, “Mrs. Hayes, can you tell us anything about the man who hurt you?”
She took a deep breath but didn’t answer. I noticed the tear in her eye and felt even less qualified than before to be here. Thankfully, Radar put one hand on her shoulder, and with the other, he wiped away her tear. He was a married man, had a daughter and a son; I was neither a father nor a husband. He knew a lot more than I did about how to comfort hurting people and I was glad he was here.
Neither of us told her things would be okay; rather, both of us were silent and that seemed to be the better choice at the moment. She began to instinctively reach for her face to dry her tears, but stopped just short of removing her arm from beneath the blanket. I found some tissues, handed them to Radar, and he gently pressed away her tears.
At last she took a deep breath. “He wore a black ski mask. But I saw his skin. He was white. Had brown eyes. I saw that too, before he blindfolded me. After that I only heard his voice.”
“Could you tell how tall he was?”
“Big. I’d say over six feet tall.” She looked at me. “Kinda like you. And strong too.”
“Was there any indication that there was more than one person?”
“No. I mean, nothing that I could tell.”
Radar cut in, “Colleen, do you have any idea where he took you?”
“No. I was in his trunk.”
Good. That was something. The car had a trunk. The man drove a sedan of some type.
“He never took off the blindfold. My arms were tied up when he did it. I was in a chair. He didn’t knock me out when he cut off my hands. I screamed, I just kept screaming. Then he gave me a shot and I fell asleep. I woke up in the hospital like…” She let her voice trail off, then stared down at the blanket covering her arms.
I leaned close. “Think about the drive there, Colleen, the time you were alone with him. Could you tell how long you were in the car or how many times he stopped at traffic lights or stop signs?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know how many times we stopped or how long we drove. I was too scared. It seemed like forever.”
“Did you hear anything unusual-sirens, trains, whistles, alarms, anything? Or notice any odd smells that might help us narrow down our search? Cologne, body odor, anything like that? Maybe he was a smoker?”
She thought about it for a long time. “I smelled yeast. That I remember. It was a little faint, so I’m thinking we were somewhere near the breweries, but not too close.”
Wind, temperature, and humidity as well as production schedule would all affect how far the smell of the breweries would have spread. Things to look into.
“That’s good,” I told her. “Very good. That helps. Anything else?”
“It was cold when he did it, like we might have been out in a garage or something. He carried me there from the car. When I screamed I could hear it echo a little, but it was sort of muted too. I don’t know. I can’t think of anything else.”
“Do you think you could recognize his voice?” Radar asked. She shook her head again.
And then she was quiet and we didn’t want to press her, but we also didn’t want to leave her alone, so we sat with her for a while even though it meant being late for the briefing at police headquarters. But Thorne wasn’t exactly famous for starting his meetings on time and there are some things that are more important than punctuality.
Finally, our police chaplain, Reverend Padilla, who served the force but also comforted the victims of violent crimes, came in. We excused ourselves, left the room, and silently passed down the hallway.
Although we needed to get to the department, before leaving the medical center I called Taci’s wing to see if she could meet me by my car. She was in the next building over and by the time I’d made it outside, she was already on the sidewalk that led to the parking lot.
“Hey, Pat.” She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, the kind you might give when greeting a friend. Just a friend.
“Hey.”
Radar went on ahead to give us a chance to talk.
Today Taci, a brunette with striking dark brown eyes and a kind smile, wore a cream-colored double-breasted peacoat, cerulean skirt, white tights and modest heels. She looked as charming and attractive as ever.
“I got your message last night,” I told her as we started for the car. “But I didn’t get in until after one. It was too late to call.”
“Our schedules make this hard, don’t they?”
“It’s been a little rough lately, sure, but things will settle down once your residency is over.”
She was quiet. “I heard about everything that’s going on. About Mrs. Hayes. All the doctors are talking about it. That poor woman.” Her words were marked with deep compassion, one of the qualities that had caught my attention the first time we met. “It’s horrifying what happened.”
“Yes.”
“How are you? Through all this?”
“Focused.”
“You’re going to catch this guy, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I am.”
A moment passed. “Pat, I’d hate to be the person you’re after.”
I hadn’t really wanted our conversation to be about the case or about Ms. Hayes, so I tried to lighten things up a little. “You are the person I’m after.”
I was sort of hoping she’d say, “You too” or “You already have me” or something along those lines, but instead she looked a little uncomfortable. “Thanks.”
This whole conversation was becoming slightly discomfiting.
“Listen,” she said. “About tonight. Dinner.”
“Yes. Pasta. My place.”
“I’m…Well, it’ll be good. Give us a chance to talk.”
With the briefing at the department coming up, I really didn’t have a lot of time, but I offered anyway. “We can talk right now.” A few flecks of snow began to meander around us. We were almost to my car.
“No. Not in the parking lot.”
“There’s something we need to talk about in private?”
“No.” But then she hesitated and backpedaled a little. “I mean…Well. No. Anyway…” She gave me another peck on the cheek. Friendly once again. “I’ll see you tonight. At seven.”
“See you at seven.”
Then she returned to the building, leaving me to wonder what exactly she wanted to discuss with me privately tonight on the one-year anniversary of the day we first met.
I climbed into my car.
When I radioed the department to tell Thorne I might be a little late, I found out the meeting was postponed until nine thirty, which gave me a few extra minutes. The alley where we’d found Lionel wasn’t too far out of the way, so I decided to swing by and have a look at it in the daylight.