Charlaine Harris (90 page)

Detective Flemmons was a Believer.

People who meet me in my line of work fall into three categories: those who wouldn't believe me if I produced an affidavit signed by God, those who are open to the idea that there are strange things in this world that they might encounter (the “Hamlet” people, I call them), and the people who absolutely believe I can do what I do—and furthermore, they
love
that connection I have with the dead.

Believers are likely to watch
Ghost Hunters
, go to séances, and employ psychics like our deceased colleague Xylda Bernardo. If they aren't willing to go quite that far, they're at least open to new experiences. There are not many law enforcement people in the Believer category, not too surprisingly, since law enforcement professionals meet liars every single day.

I'm like catnip to Believers. I'm convincing, because I'm the real deal.

I knew that from now on, Detective Rudy Flemmons would show up more and more often. I was living confirmation of everything he'd ever secretly believed.

And all because I'd gotten struck by lightning.

I wanted to get in the shower, but I pulled off my shoes and lay down on the bed. I called Tolliver to tell him that I had to go by the police department in the morning, and that I'd come by God's Mercy afterward to tell him all about it. He sounded as drowsy as I felt, and instead of getting in the shower after I put my phone on the charger, I shucked off my pants and slid between the sheets.

I
woke up with a jerk. I lay there for a few seconds, trying to pin down the reason I was so unhappy, and then I remembered that Tolliver was in the hospital. I relived the moment he'd been shot with gruesome clarity.

Since I'd been shot through a window before, I had to wonder what it was with us and windows. If we stayed away from buildings, would we be okay? Though Tolliver had been a Boy Scout and had camped out with them, I didn't remember his particularly enjoying the camping experience, and I knew I wouldn't.

It was four thirty in the morning. I'd slept through the dinner hour and the whole night. Not amazingly, now I was wide awake. I piled up the pillows behind me and turned on the television, keeping the sound very low. Watching the news was out of the question: it's always bad, and I didn't need to witness any more bloodshed and cruelty. I found an old Western. It was phenomenally soothing to watch the good guys win, to see the hardened dance-hall floozies reveal their hearts of gold, and to observe that once upon a time, when people got shot and collapsed to the ground, they didn't bleed. This was a much better world than the one I lived in, and I enjoyed visiting it, especially in the wee hours of the morning.

After an hour, I must have fallen back to sleep, because I woke up again at seven o'clock, and the TV was still on. The remote was clutched loosely in my hand.

When I was showered and dressed and groomed, I went down to the complimentary breakfast buffet. If I didn't eat more regularly, I'd collapse. I had a big bowl of oatmeal and some fruit, and then two cups of coffee. I returned to the room to brush my teeth. Foundation was out of the question since my face was so cut up, but I did manage a little eye shadow and mascara. I made a wry face as I looked at the result in the bathroom mirror. I knew I looked like something the cat dragged in. I might as well give up on trying to improve my appearance.

It was time to go to the police station to watch the videos from the Texarkana mall. My stomach fluttered uneasily with suspense. I'd done my best not to think about the Cameron sighting, but I noticed my hands were shaking as I took my vitamins. I'd called the nurses' station to ask about Tolliver, and the nurse said he'd slept most of the night, so I felt all right about putting off a hospital visit until later.

The rest and food had really helped, and I felt much more like myself, despite my apprehension. The city police department was housed in a one-story edifice that looked like it had started out modest and taken steroids. It had obviously been added onto, and just as obviously it was bursting at the seams. I had a hard time finding a parking spot, and just when I got out of the car, rain came down. At first it was a light sprinkle, but as I hesitated about getting out the umbrella, the downpour started. I whipped out the umbrella and unfolded it in record time, so I wasn't too wet when I got to the lobby.

One way or another, I've spent a lot of time in police stations. New or old, there's a sameness about them; they're just like schools and hospitals, in that respect.

There wasn't a good place to stow my dripping umbrella, so I had to carry it with me. It sprinkled raindrops all over the floor, and I knew the janitor would have a lot to do today. The Latina behind the counter was thin and muscular and all business. She used an intercom to call Detective Flemmons, and I didn't have to wait more than a couple of minutes until he appeared.

“Good morning, Miss Connelly,” he said. “Come on back.” He led the way into a warren of cubicles created by chest-high partitions, the kind with carpeting on them. As we went past, I noticed that each cubicle had been decorated to suit the person who used it. All the computers were dirty: smudged with fingerprints, their screens so dusty you had to peer at them to read the type. A hum of conversation hung over the bullpen like a cloud of smog.

This was not a happy place. Even though law enforcement people usually thought I was a fraud and a con, which meant that often I didn't get along with them individually, in the abstract I thought it was wonderful that anyone would choose to do this job. “You have to listen to people lie all the time,” I said, following this line of thought. “How do you stand it?”

Rudy Flemmons turned to look back at me. “It's part of the work,” he said. “Someone's gotta stand between regular people and bad ones.”

I noticed that the detective didn't say “good” people. If I'd been a cop as long as Flemmons had, I wondered if anyone would seem truly good to me, either.

There was a sort of conference room at the end of the cubicles, with a long table surrounded by battered chairs. Video equipment was set up at one end. Flemmons darkened the lighting after I sat down, then he pressed a button.

I was so tense I felt like the room was humming. I stared at the screen, afraid I would miss something.

In the next minute, I was watching a woman who seemed to be in her late twenties or early thirties walk across a parking lot. Her face was not clearly visible. She was partially turned away. She had long blond hair. She was short. Her build was compact. I put my hand over my mouth so I wouldn't speak until I was sure about what I was going to say.

The scene shifted abruptly to a shot of the same woman walking inside the mall. She was carrying a shopping bag from Buckle. This clip was taken from the front, directly facing the woman. Though the film was grainy and she wasn't on it very long, I closed my eyes and felt my stomach plummet.

“It's not her,” I said. “That's not my sister.” I thought I would cry—my eyes got that hot feeling—but I didn't. But the shock of the anticipation and my subsequent disappointment (or relief) was immense.

“You're sure?”

“Not completely.” I shrugged. “How could I be, unless I saw her face-to-face? It's been eight years or more since I saw my sister. But I can tell that this woman's face is rounder, and the way she walks is not the way Cameron walked.”

“Let's watch again, to be completely sure,” Flemmons said in a very neutral voice. I sat up straighter and watched again. This time it was possible to take more notice of the little things.

The woman in the parking lot film was toting a huge purse that I didn't think my sister would ever choose. Granted, people's tastes changed as they grew up and grew older, but I didn't think Cameron's choice of purses would be that drastically different. The shopping woman wore high heels with her dress slacks, and Cameron disdained heels for everyday wear. She could have changed her style in shoes as well as purses, though. I wasn't wearing the same accessories I'd had in high school. But the shape of the woman's face, and the way the woman in the film moved along at a fast clip with her shoulders hunched a little forward . . . no, I was sure this woman wasn't Cameron.

“Definitely not,” I said, after the second viewing. I was a lot calmer now. The shock was over, and the reality of another dashed hope had settled in.

Rudy Flemmons looked down for a minute, and I wondered what expression he was concealing. “All right,” he said quietly. “All right. I'll tell Pete Gresham. By the way, he asked me to tell you hello.”

I nodded. Now that I'd seen this film clip, and I knew the woman in it wasn't my sister, I was very curious about the man who'd called it in.

I tried to ask some questions, but Detective Flemmons wasn't spilling any beans. “I'll let you know if more information comes in,” he said, and I had to be dissatisfied with that.

I redeployed my umbrella and dashed back to the car, feeling the phone in my pocket vibrate as I shook the umbrella off and got into the driver's seat. I tossed the umbrella into the rear, slammed the door, and opened the phone.

“Mariah Parish did have a baby,” Victoria Flores said.

“Should you be telling me that?”

“I've already talked to Lizzie Joyce. I'm tracking down the kid now. Since Lizzie hired me, I've spent hours on the computer, and I've gotten out and done some legwork. This whole thing is weird, I'm telling you. Since she said you could talk to me, I take that to mean I can talk to you, too.” Victoria, who'd always seemed so closemouthed and prosaic, was practically bubbling.

“That doesn't exactly follow, but you know I'm not going to tell anyone.” I admit, I was curious myself.

“Want to have dinner together? I figure you're not getting to chat to too many people since your sweetie's in the hospital.”

“That sounds good.”

“Okay, how about the Outback? There's one close to the hospital.” She gave directions, and I said I'd meet her there at six thirty.

I was not a little surprised that Victoria was being so forthcoming. In fact, her interest in talking to me was almost odd. But the truth was, I was feeling lonely. It felt good to know someone wanted to talk to me. Iona had called exactly once to ask after Tolliver, but that conversation had been brief and dutiful.

Hospitals are all self-contained worlds, and this one was spinning relentlessly along on its own axis. When I got to Tolliver's room, he'd been taken away for tests, but no one could tell me what tests or why he was having them.

I felt oddly forlorn. Even Tolliver, confined to a hospital, wasn't where I thought he'd be. My cell phone rang, and I started guiltily. I wasn't supposed to have it on in the hospital. But I answered it.

“Harper? Are you all right?”

“Manfred! How are you?” I was smiling.

“I got the feeling you were in trouble, and I had to call. Is this a bad time?”

“I'm glad you called,” I said, probably more fervently than I should have.

“Oh, well, then,” he said. “I'll be on the next plane.” He was only half joking. Manfred Bernardo, developing psychic, was younger than I by three or four years, but he'd never made any bones about how attractive he found me.

“I'm lonely because Tolliver got shot,” I said, and immediately realized how egocentric that sounded. After I'd explained to Manfred what had happened, he got all excited. He was actually serious about coming to Texas to “give you a shoulder to cry on,” as he put it. I was absurdly touched, and for a crazy minute I considered saying yes. It would be comforting to have Manfred around—piercings, tattoos, and all. Only picturing Tolliver's face as I told him what I'd done stopped me.

By the time Manfred was ready to hang up, I'd promised I'd call him if “things got any worse,” which was vague enough to satisfy both of us. And he'd sworn he'd check in with me by phone every single day until Tolliver got out of the hospital.

I felt a lot more cheerful when I hung up. To make my day even brighter, an orderly wheeled Tolliver in right after I'd shut my phone. His color was better than it had been the day before, but I could tell he was very weak, just from the way he slumped in the wheelchair. Tolliver was ready to get back into the bed, though he hated to admit it.

After the orderly had made sure Tolliver was settled and comfortable, he left with that quick, quiet walk hospital staff members seem to acquire as part of their job description. Tolliver had had another X-ray to check on his clavicle, he told me, and a neurologist had come in to verify that there hadn't been any nerve damage to the shoulder.