Death by the Riverside (10 page)

“Did you see my mom get shot?” Patrick asked.

“No.” I shook my head. I was glad I didn’t have to tell him what it looked like. If I had seen it, I would have told him what happened. He wanted to know. He, they both, wanted to know any and everything that could explain why their mother was in a coma.

“I really like your mom,” I said.

“Yeah, Mom’s neat,” Patrick answered, a high accolade from an eleven-year-old boy. Cissy was starting to cry. I put my arms around her and hugged her close.

“It’s been real hard on Cissy,” Patrick said, the epitome of a strong, big brother. “Dad just left us when she was four.” (And he was six, I noted.) “Took all the money. Mom and Grandma have been taking care of us ever since. Cissy and I both have paper routes to try and help out.”

I had to say something or I’d start sniffling.

“The
Times-Picayune
? I carried that when I was about your age.”

“Yeah,” he said. We had a point in common.

“It’s hard on you, too,” I said.

“I’m older. I can take care of myself,” he replied. “I’m just tired of people telling us they know how we feel. They don’t unless…” He trailed off, still a young kid himself.

Of course, it took an eleven-year-old boy to point out to me why I was identifying so strongly with this boy and this girl.

“You’re right,” I said. “No one ever knows exactly how you feel. People often can’t imagine pain so they try to remember it.”

Patrick looked puzzled.

I wasn’t explaining myself clearly to these kids, perhaps not even to myself. I started again. “When I was five, my mother left. I don’t know why. I’ve never seen her since. When I was ten…my dad was killed. It’s not the same thing that happened to you, but…”

“But it’s pretty close,” Patrick finished for me.

“Yes, so I kind of know how you feel, but not exactly.”

“Yeah, you’re one of us,” Patrick said and he smiled at me. He had Barbara’s smile, warm and wide.

“How did your dad die?” Cissy asked, looking up at me.

I couldn’t think of what to say, how to explain something that I tried my best never to think about. “He died in a fire,” I finally said, leaving it as simple as I could.

“Did you see it?” Patrick asked, with the simple innocence of a child trying to understand death and dying because he had to.

“Yes,” I answered, staring at the green wall.

“I’m sorry,” said Cissy.

Mrs. Kelly came back. She was carrying a cup of coffee and a can of soda for Patrick and Cissy to share.

“I’m sorry I was gone so long,” she apologized for an offense she hadn’t committed.

A nurse stuck her head in.

“Mrs. Kelly? You and the kids can sit with her for twenty minutes, if you want,” the nurse said.

“Oh, thank you,” she replied to the nurse. “I’m sorry, Miss Knight.”

“Go sit with your daughter,” I answered.

They got up and started to leave. I wrote down my name and phone number twice and gave one copy to Patrick and one to Cissy. I told them to call me if they needed to.

“Thank you, Miss Knight,” Mrs. Kelly said, a polite and indomitable Southern woman.

I watched them disappear down the corridor. I took a long ragged breath. I wasn’t going to cry. Those kids didn’t need it. I stood for several moments, staring out the window at a nondescript gray building. At some point, I noticed a white-coated figure off in my peripheral vision, watching me. Damn, this was a hospital. You would think a woman with a bruise on her face was a fairly common sight.

“I thought it was you,” the figure said. I turned to face whoever it was. Cordelia Holloway, just the person I wanted to see.

“Small world,” I replied.

“What happened to your jaw?” she asked.

“Doorway.”

“Male or female?”

I could see what she was thinking. That I was the kind of girl who got involved with people who hit other people.

“Neither,” was the only reply I could come up with. “What are you doing here?”

“I work here. You?” she asked.

“Visiting a friend.”

“You didn’t put her here, did you?”

“No!” I almost yelled. “Don’t you have any lives that need saving?”

“Ah, Micky, winning friends and influencing people, as usual.” Sergeant Ranson had arrived on the scene and was standing in the doorway. Just the sort of cavalry I needed. She came in and handed me a plastic bag. I assumed that it contained the clothes and purse I had left in my favorite basement. She and Cordelia nodded to each other in greeting. I tossed the bag over onto the couch. It landed with a heavier clunk than I thought a dress would make.

“Don’t do that. It’s loaded,” Ranson informed me. As in loaded gun. We all looked at each other. How do you make polite conversation about loaded guns?

“Excuse me, Joanne,” Cordelia finally said, “But are you really giving a loaded gun to someone with suicidal tendencies?” she asked.

Ranson and I both looked at her and then at each other. Did somebody know something that I didn’t?

“Care to explain those?” Cordelia clarified, pointing to my bandaged wrists.

“Rope burn,” Ranson replied for me.

I started laughing. It wasn’t that funny, but it was too absurd for my present state of mind.

“Let me see,” Cordelia said. I offered one of my wrists, still laughing. She unwrapped the bandage, examined my wrist for a minute, then wrapped it back up. “Sorry, my mistake.”

“Don’t worry about it. Better people than you have thought Micky Knight to be crazy,” Ranson charitably explained.

“I’ve got to go,” Cordelia said. She left, shaking her head.

“How do you two know each other?” I asked Ranson.

“Danny introduced us a while back,” she answered. “Anything new on Barbara Selby?” It was my turn to shake my head no.

“I’m posting a guard. There are people who would prefer she never come out of that coma,” Ranson said.

I shuddered. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

“Ballistics has cleared you. Turner with a .38. Barbara with a .22.”

“Did you come all the way down here just to tell me that?” I asked.

“No, I came here to check on Barbara Selby and to give you your gun and to tell you to carry it.”

“What a nice idea.”

“At all times. It wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to take a vacation. Someplace like Nepal would be perfect.”

“Paid?” I asked. She ignored the question.

“What I’m saying, Micky, is be careful.”

“Gosh, thanks, Joanne. It’s nice to know you care,” I replied. “You had me fooled with that efficient, no-nonsense, businesslike exterior, but underneath, a heart of, golly, purest gold.”

She looked at me for a long time, then finally spoke, “Right. I do care. I don’t like hospital vigils. I don’t want to do one for you.” Ranson turned on her heel and walked out, leaving me no chance to reply.

Not that I could think of anything to say. I’m not real good at being serious. So in the unlikely event that someone should tell me that they care about me or that they really worry about me or that they love me, like Danny did a long summer ago, I’m not very good at replying. The last person I said “I love you” to was my dad and I was ten at the time. “You’re nice, I like you” is about as far as I go. It’s not something I’m proud of. Someday maybe I’ll be able to afford a shrink and find out why.

I decided that it was Ranson’s job to be concerned about people she worked with. She was a good cop because she really cared, but I wasn’t more important than anyone else.

It was time to get out of this hospital. If I stayed here much longer I would probably run into both Cordelia and Aunt Greta. Together, no doubt. Besides that, I had a cat that was, by this point, keeping the whole neighborhood awake with her famished cries.

Chapter 13

Fortunately, my keys were in the canvas bag that Ranson had returned. I let myself in and slowly trudged up the three flights. It was already starting to get dark outside, making the stairs very dark, since the light on my landing had burned out again. I would have to call my landlord and tell him that for the outrageous rent I paid, I was entitled to service. So far no starving cat cries. I put my key in the lock, turned it, and pushed the door open. I groped for the light switch.

I know my office quite well. That’s why I was very surprised to crash into something. I was even more surprised to realize that I had hit it hard enough to force me sprawling back out the door and down the stairs. I landed with a heavy thud, at the half-flight landing.

The object that I had hit, or more accurately, that had hit me, was coming down the stairs after me. I couldn’t see very well, since my nose was bleeding, and having landed more upside down than not, the blood was running into my eyes. But I could see that there were two objects tromping down the stairs and Hepplewhite wasn’t coming to my rescue. I had no idea where my bag with the loaded gun had landed.

Object one kicked me in the side. I started yelling, more in pain than as a clever move to attract attention. That kick hurt like hell. So did the next one. I rolled away and tried to get up, to at least get the blood flowing out of my eyes. I managed to get to my knees, but I was in a corner, with object two blocking my way downstairs. Number one pulled a knife out of his pocket and clicked the blade into place. Did I really want my eyes clear enough to see this? It looked like their orders were to rough me up, not kill me. For that, a quick gunshot would have sufficed. However, that knife didn’t look like a wonderful alternative to me. Number one took a swing at me. I managed to duck it. Then he made a lunge for my face. I got an arm up to block it, but the blade easily sliced through Danny’s gray sweater. It left a deep gash on my forearm. If I could get to my feet, I might make it. A couple of well-placed and lucky kicks were the only chance I had. Number one took another swing with the knife. I avoided it by hitting the floor. I tried to throw myself down the stairs with my hands, but they slipped in blood.
I wonder whose?
I slid down two steps, on my stomach, leaving my back exposed to the knife. Number two put his foot on my shoulder, none too gently, and pinned me down. I braced myself for the blade in my back.

There was a thunderclap in the stairwell. Plaster and sheet rock fragments poured over me.

“I’ve called the police and they’re on their way,” called an old woman’s voice from above us.

I looked up. Miss Clavish was standing there, in her prim navy blue dress, wearing white gloves and holding a large shotgun. That was the thunderclap—she had fired over our heads and into the wall.

“Get out of here, before I blow your brains out,” she continued. I liked the
blow your brains out
part.

They took the hint. Men that big don’t scamper, but number one and two did the best approximation that they could, down the stairs and out of the building. Probably nothing in their contract called for them to deal with shotgun-toting old ladies. Contract, because this wasn’t just some random robbery that I had interrupted. Those men had been waiting for me. What a welcome home. First Danny had been right, now Ranson. It was galling to have such perfect friends.

“Here, dear, I think we’d better bind that arm,” said Miss Clavish, arriving at my side, armed now with a first aid kit. She pushed back the torn sweater sleeve to expose my cut. I maneuvered myself to a sitting position, then slumped against the wall when I saw all the blood coming out of my body. Miss Clavish had me hold my cut arm up, to help slow the bleeding while she bandaged it. With my other arm, I rummaged in her first aid kit, got out a gauze pad, and held it against my nose, in an attempt to staunch the blood.

Now, the police arrived. They tried to ask a few questions, but every time I took the gauze pad off my nose to answer, blood gushed out. I gave up and clamped the bloody pad back over my nose. Miss Clavish suggested that these nice young policemen speed me to the nearest emergency room. Since Miss Clavish sounded like the fifth-grade teacher whom you always obeyed, they did so.

So for the second time today, I found myself at Aunt Greta’s favorite hospital. The only thing I like less than visiting hospitals is being a patient there. I didn’t have to wait in the four-hour emergency line. They let me inside very quickly. That’s the nice thing about blood, it gets attention.

I heard a couple of voices confer outside my cubicle. The only thing I caught was a, “Yes, Doctor James.” I gathered that a Doctor James was going to have the privilege of binding my wounds. I didn’t care who, I just wanted them to hurry.

Dr. James entered. Of course, I should have known. I had assumed that Cordelia was a Holloway. She wasn’t. Somehow she had ended up being a James. She didn’t look too thrilled to see me, but whether it was the mess I was making or me personally, I couldn’t tell. She started working on my arm.

“What happened?” she asked, as she finished taking Miss Clavish’s bandage off my arm.

“The big brother of that first doorway I ran into.”

“This is a knife wound,” she pointed out.

“So it is.” Blood started running out of my nose.

“We have to report this to the police,” she said.

I did the best shrug I could from flat on my back. The police already knew.

“Hold still,” she said as I flinched at something she was cleaning my arm with. She finished cleaning and started stitching the wound. I did my best to hold still and not make my nose bleed any more than it had to. I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to watch the needle going in and out. But that started to make me feel queasy and light-headed. So I settled for staring fixedly at the ceiling, trying to find patterns in the water stains, until she was finished.

Then she started on my nose, taking my hand, with its bloody gauze pad, away. She poked and prodded for a moment, then said, “It’s not broken.”

Good, I’d hate to have my beauty ruined. She tilted my head back and told me to breathe through my mouth. She started cleaning the blood off my face. We were very close and I found myself looking into her eyes. They were a deep blue, flecked with gray. There was a depth and intensity in them that I hadn’t noticed before. If her eyes were any true indication, then I had underestimated Cordelia James. For a moment, we were both aware of it, then we broke off, she by looking off to the side for something. I stared up at the ceiling.

“You need to find some new friends,” she said as she started packing cotton up my nose. I grabbed her hand and held it, so I could reply.

“There was nothing friendly about this,” I said, then let her hand go. “My friends don’t beat people up.”

“An everyday mugging?”

“Not quite,” I answered, between pieces of cotton.

“Couldn’t use your loaded gun?”

I shook my head no, which started it throbbing.

“Sorry,” she said. “It’s not fair of me to ask questions when you’re like this.”

Someone else appeared on my other side.

“Can she talk yet?” Sergeant Ranson on the scene.

“Let me finish packing her nose,” Cordelia answered. She worked quickly. “You can talk, but try to keep your head tilted back.” She started attending to a cut on my thigh that I didn’t know I had. Shit, that meant Danny’s pants were torn.

“Did you recognize those men from the old Riven place?” was Ranson’s first question.

I gingerly shook my head no. I had never seen those two before and I didn’t want to see them again.

“The Riven place?” Cordelia said. “That’s next to Granddad’s estate. That’s where that woman up in ICU was shot.”

“Right,” Ranson replied. “Our hero here would have been shot, too, if that basement she was tied up in didn’t have an old coal drop for her to climb out of.”

“The rope burn on your wrist,” Cordelia said, putting two and two together.

“Yeah,” Ranson replied for me. “And it looks like the mob sent you a message.” She put a hand on my side for what she intended to be a comforting gesture. It wasn’t, it was too close to where I had been kicked. I jerked up and rolled away from the pain. I hadn’t paid much attention to my side while my arm had been bleeding. Now I was paying attention. Cordelia pulled my arm away from my side.

“Take it easy,” she said. “Breathe in…out…in,” and she paced me until I had stopped gasping and the pain was down to a dull throb. Then she cut away the sweater.
Sorry, Danny.

“You got kicked,” Ranson said on seeing my bruises.

“Yeah,” I replied.

Cordelia was gently feeling my side. She stopped and said, “Damn it, it’s horrible enough to treat people with cancer and heart disease, the things that have no fault or blame. Then there are the car accidents and gun accidents and any other kind of accident stupidity can come up with. I don’t like those either. But how can someone deliberately come at another person with a knife and break a couple of ribs just for good measure?” She was very angry. “We don’t need people like you clogging up our hospitals.”

“Sorry, Dr. James,” I said in my now small and very nasal voice, “New Orleans’s finest wouldn’t let me bleed to death on the stairs.”

“No, I’m sorry,” she said. She bent over until her eyes were looking into mine and she held my gaze, deliberately this time. “I’m not angry at you. I’m furious at the men who put you here.” She paused and took a deep breath. “Okay, enough soap-boxing for today.” She went back to caring for my bruised ribs.

Ranson asked me some more questions about who, what, how, and why. Unfortunately my answers weighed heavily on the I-don’t-know side.

“I’ve got to head back to the station,” she said, finishing her questioning. “While I’m there, I’m going to talk loudly, and at length, about how you want nothing more to do with any of this and that you have no intention of testifying.”

I started to protest, to say that as long as Barbara Selby was in this hospital, I wasn’t dropping out, but Ranson waved me silent.

“This was a warning, Micky. You’ve caused them a lot of problems. Someone connected to the police force is passing information on and I want it passed on that you’re not going to have anything more to do with the police or fighting drug rings. Understand?” Ranson said.

“She’s not going to be doing much of anything for a while,” Cordelia answered.

“Good. I’ll come back later to see you,” she said to me. Then to Cordelia, “Take care of her and make sure she doesn’t try anything foolish.”

“You’ve got it, Joanne. Say hello to Alex for me,” Cordelia replied and Ranson left.

Alex? Who was Alex? As in Alexandra Sayers, perhaps? Cordelia started poking on my side some more and I became preoccupied with more important things, like my threshold for pain. After a long (it seemed long) while, she said, “You’re lucky. It appears your ribs are bruised and not broken.”

“Good, can I go home now?” I asked.

“I think you should stay at least overnight for observation,” she answered, in typical doctor fashion.

“If I promise not to sue you for malpractice, can I leave?” I asked. Being sick is not a luxury poor people can afford in this country. I always rate my medical needs on whether or not I worry about how much it costs. If the first thing that struck me about staying overnight in the hospital was how much it was going to cost me and how little I could afford to pay it, then I wasn’t damaged enough to have to stay in the hospital.

“What’s your hurry?” she asked.

“I hate hospital food.”

She chuckled, then asked, “What’s the matter, don’t have health insurance?”

“Only the Mack truck variety.” She gave me a questioning glance. “In case of getting hit by a Mack truck and being in bed for six months,” I explained.

“Well…did you get hit in the head?”

“No, I’m always like this.”

“I want some X-rays of your ribs, if they’re negative and nothing else shows up—and you make good on your promise not to sue me—we’ll work something out.” She smiled at me and then got an orderly to wheel me down to X-ray. After X-ray, I was deposited in an out-of-the-way examining room, given some pain medication, and left to enjoy it. Cordelia showed up a couple of hours later.

“Your X-rays are negative. How do you feel?”

“I’m not ready to race the Iditarod, but then it doesn’t snow down here enough for me to worry about it.”

“So you say. Let’s see you stand up and walk a straight line.”

I slowly sat up, then slid off the examining table and assumed a standing position.

“Should I touch my fingers to my nose and recite the Pledge of Allegiance?” I asked to cover my unsteadiness.

“Not necessary,” she replied. She gave me a thorough look over. “Okay, let’s go.”

She threw me an old sweatshirt to put on, obviously hers. Good thing America’s getting in shape these days and wearing baggy clothes or I’d have nothing to wear. I followed her all the way out of the building.

“No, this way,” she said as I started to branch off.

“But the bus is this way.”

“My car is this way.”

She led the way to the parking lot. This was fortunate, because I wasn’t sure I had bus fare. Her car was a silver Toyota, a couple of years old. We got in and I gave her my address. She pulled out of the parking lot.

“How do you know Joanne Ranson?” Good detectives always ask questions, even if their noses are packed with cotton.

“Grandpa Holloway is a staunch law-and-order supporter. Every year around Mardi Gras, he has a big formal party for assorted law enforcement people. I always have to attend. So I’ve seen Joanne in passing for a while now. Where did you meet her?”

I had to stop and think for a minute. I had met Ranson through Danny, but it had been socially, not professionally. I didn’t know if Cordelia knew that Ranson was gay and I didn’t think I should tell her I met Ranson at a party for girls only down in the Quarter. I was trying to come up with an alternate story, but the pain and drugs were slowing me down.