Evidence of Mercy (10 page)

“What a relief to hear your voice,” he said. “I saw the crash on the news last night. I have to admit, I thought it would be a while before I'd hear from you again.”

“Sorry,” Lynda said in a saccharine voice. “No such luck. I am still in the hospital, which gives me all the time in the world to work on Paige Varner's case. And I called to tell you to warn your client that his harassment has got to stop.”

“What harassment?”

“For starters, he tried to take Brianna from day care, despite the restraining order, and he broke into Paige's home—”

“Give me a break, Lynda,” the man cut in, dropping the cordiality. “You know as well as I do that he has a key. It was his home.”

“
Was
being the key word. She was granted possession of the house in their divorce, and the restraining order stated that he wasn't to come near it. And as for Brianna, until we see him in court, he isn't to go near her either.”

“Put yourself in his place,” the man said. “He hasn't seen his daughter in over a month.”

“You're right. Not since he bashed her mother's head into the wall and knocked her out.”

“Her word against his. He contends that
she
knocked
him
out when he was defending the child from one of Paige's rampages.”

Lynda saw now what she was dealing with. “I'll have him arrested, Steve. If he comes near her again, I'll use every resource I have to get him locked up. Tell him.”

The man sighed. “Anything else?”

“Yes. I'm going to appeal to the judge for a court date as soon as possible. I won't let you keep dragging this out.”

“No need,” the man said. “I got a date this afternoon. Despite what you might think, we're anxious to bring this to a head, too. It's October 14.”

“That's six weeks away!” she said. “We need it earlier.”

“Too bad. That's as early as we could get it.”

She sank back onto her pillow and closed her eyes. “Six weeks is a long time, Steve. Tell your client that he'd better be on his best behavior during that time because I plan to pull out all the stops when we get into court.”

“Good luck,” he said. “You're gonna need it.”

She heard the phone click in her ear, and slowly she dropped it back in its cradle and collapsed into her pillow.

“Good going,” Sally said. “You told him.” She looked at the color draining from Lynda's face and said, “Now will you get some rest? Paige and Brianna are safe, you have a court date, Keith's hand has been slapped—All is well with the world. Please, just get some rest before the nurses convince the doctor to sedate you.”

“All right, Sally,” she said, already feeling herself slipping away. “Maybe for a minute.”

T
hat night, true to her word, Abby came down from ICU with a cart made especially for washing hair and had Lynda lie down with her head over the small tub full of warm water. Gently, carefully, she washed Lynda's hair, methodically pulling more tiny chips of glass from her scalp as she did.

“It's a wonder you could sleep with all this glass in you and your hair all matted like this,” she said. “Wasn't it hurtin' you?”

“Sure, it was,” Lynda said. “But I thought the pain was just from the cuts.” She closed her eyes as Abby poured more warm water over her head. “I thought they got all the glass out in surgery.”

“No, child,” Abby said. “It's hard to get it all, and the nurses don't have that kind of time when they're on duty. But we'll get every piece tonight if I have to work on it till my shift tomorrow.”

Lynda opened her eyes and gazed up at the woman. “Why would you do this?”

Abby smiled. “Because it needs doin'. We're supposed to wash each other's feet, but I figure washin' hair is just as good.”

The tear that rolled from Lynda's eye disappeared into the water Abby poured over her hair.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

T
here was little relief for Jake in being moved out of ICU to a private room on the orthopedic floor. He was still flat on his back, unable to sit up or stand, unable to take care of his own bodily functions without help, and his hope of being released from this place was as dismal as his hope for the rest of his life.

But the Clinitron bed they laid him in gave him some degree of comfort. For one thing, it reduced the likelihood of bedsores. It felt something like a waterbed, except that air was continually pumping through it, making it conform to his shape and weight. And this room had a television so that he could keep remembering what normal people's lives were like while he contemplated what he'd do now that his would never be normal again. And he had a phone—a reminder that he had no one to call.

At least no one in Florida.

He looked at it, wondering whether anyone in Texas had heard of his accident. He doubted it. As far as they knew, he was living it up, as he'd always done. If they could see him now.

He picked up the phone and tried to remember the number of someone—anyone—who might care what had happened to him. What about Sheila—red, flowing hair, big green eyes. She'd been in love with him forever and had followed him around like a devoted puppy, even when he'd shunned her. He'd broken her heart, finally, and sent her on her way. But she would never get over him. She would want to know about this accident.

He dialed her number and waited as it rang, wondering what to say to her. Would she be glad to hear from him? Would she fly to Florida to visit him?

Quickly, he hung the phone back up. She might. He couldn't take that chance. He couldn't let her see him like this.
No
one could see him like this. Not yet. Not until the bandages came off and he could see how extensive the scarring was. Then he would decide.

Loneliness filled him like a disease, further darkening the black places in his heart. Jake Stevens wasn't used to being alone. What he wouldn't give for someone he
could
talk to without fearing how that person would see him.

And then he thought of that little truck stop in Slapout, Texas, where Doris waited tables each day, always naively hopeful that one of the truck drivers who came through would be the one to rescue her from her own loneliness and shame, make an honest woman of her, and provide her with the white picket fence and the little pink house that she had done nothing to earn on her own.

He wondered if she'd found her dream man yet among the regulars who came and went. He wondered if she'd been able to forgive him for running away from her himself, putting her behind him like forgotten garbage. Maybe she'd realized somewhere along the way that he'd had a life to make for himself and that he'd had to make it without letting her pull him down.

Maybe
she
would care that he lay here now, unable to run anymore.

He reached for the phone, called information, and got the number of the truck stop. With a trembling hand, he punched in the number.

“May I speak to Doris, please?”

On hold, he waited long, threatening moments, wanting to hang up. Finally, he heard her familiar voice, though it had grown raspier and deeper from cigarette smoke and booze.

“Yeah, hello?”

Jake swallowed, almost hanging up, but finally forced himself to speak.

“Mama? It's me. Jake.”

Silence.

“Did you hear me, Mama?”

“I heard you,” she said. “What do you want?”

If it was possible for his heart to fall further, it did. “I know it's been a long time. I've just been real busy, and—”

“Busy gettin' rich,” she said. “I know why you haven't called. It's because you were afraid you'd have to let go of a few bucks if you talked to me. What made you call me now?”

He thought of telling her that he was lying in the hospital, that his charmed world hadn't been so charmed, that it had all come crashing down, that he didn't know if things would ever be the same. But something told him it wouldn't make any difference. He had never been there for her, though he could have been. Why did he expect her to be here for him now?

“Answer me, Jake. What do you want?”

“I just wanted to see how you were.”

“Oh, I'm great,” she rasped. “I just got a secondhand stove put in since mine has been out of commission for ten months. And my trailer is fallin' apart, but hey, at least it's a roof over my head. May not be a fancy condo like you've got . . . ”

He didn't know whether to offer her money or an apology, but that old anger that he'd nursed since childhood began to fill him again, keeping him from offering either.

“Look, I'm sorry I bothered you. You might as well get back to work.”

“Yeah, I think I will. I can't afford to miss any tips. It's not like I have anybody to take up the slack if I can't pay my rent, is there?”

The click in his ear startled him, and for a moment, he held the phone to his ear as the dial tone hummed out its indifference. Then, as his face reddened, he hung up and lay glaring at the ceiling, trying hard to push the stark self-recriminations out of his mind. He'd been good at it before, but that was when he'd had life to keep him busy. There was always a party somewhere. Always a woman. Always a drink that could make him forget.

Until now.

He flung the telephone across the room, and it crashed with a final, protesting ring. There would be no parties now and no relief from his despair. But he didn't need his mother, and he didn't need his friends. They would all only let him down in the long run.

M
ommy, is this gonna be our house?”

Paige smiled at her daughter, who sat on the floor playing with some of the blocks a police officer had gotten from their house, along with most of their clothes. “No, sweetheart. We're just staying here for a while.”

“Until that lady gets well?”

She left the spaghetti she was cooking and bent down to her daughter. “Maybe. I don't know how long we'll be here. But it's nice, isn't it? It's a lot better than that old motel room.”

“But why can't we go home?”

“Because. . . .” She lowered herself to the floor to put herself at eye level with the child and met her big, innocent eyes. There was so much Brianna didn't understand, and Paige didn't know how to explain it to her. How could she tell her that her father was a threat to them, that she feared for her life around him, that she feared for Brianna? “Because it has bugs,” she said finally.

Brianna's face twisted. “Bugs? What kind of bugs?”

“The gross kind,” Paige said. “A man's spraying so they'll go away, but it's gonna take a while.”

“You mean spiders and stink bugs?”

Brianna might never want to go back into the house if she made it sound too horrible. “No. Roly-polies and grasshoppers.

But this man is getting them out.”

“Oh.” Brianna got quiet, and Paige could almost see the wheels turning as the child imagined her bedroom full of roly-polies and grasshoppers. She hoped it didn't give her nightmares. She got up and went back to the spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove.

“Mommy?”

She looked back at Brianna.

“Can I keep just some of them? In a jar with holes in the top?”

She laughed out loud and realized it was the first time in weeks. “Yes, sweetheart. You sure can.”

J
ake, are you up to seeing that insurance guy?” Beth, Jake's nurse in orthopedics, asked him later that day. “I told him it was your first day in the private room and that you weren't up to seeing anybody, so if you don't want to, I'll nix it right now.”

Jake looked irritably at her. “What insurance guy?”

“Something about the plane.”

Jake had nothing better to do, and he'd grown so tired of being alone that he had actually been lying here wishing Lynda would come by. But after the way he'd treated her yesterday, he didn't really expect her back.

“Yeah, all right,” he said. “Tell him to come in.”

Beth disappeared, and Jake waited until a man in a dark suit came into his room and introduced himself as Rick Malone, investigator for the company that covered Lynda's plane.

“I just want to ask you a few questions,” Malone said.

“About the crash?” Jake asked. “I would think the condition of the plane pretty much tells the whole story.”

Malone consulted his notes, disregarding the comment. “Mr. Stevens, could you tell me if you or Miss Barrett did a preflight inspection of the plane?”

“Of course,” Jake said. “I did it myself. I never fly without a preflight.”

“And everything looked fine?”

“It looked perfect. And the day before I had really given the plane a once-over. I checked everything. I was thinking of buying it, you know. I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything. It was the best-maintained plane I'd ever seen for its age.”

Malone plunked down, as if too tired to stand. “Is there anything you could tell me about Miss Barrett's behavior that day? Did she seem nervous, jumpy?”

Jake frowned. “What are you getting at?”

“I just want to know how she acted, Mr. Malone. Did she seem to behave normally?”

“How do I know if she was normal? It was the first time I'd met her. But yeah, I'd say she was pretty normal. She wasn't crazy about selling her plane. That was obvious.”

“Did she suggest you test fly it alone? Or balk at going up with you?”

Jake thought for a moment. “No. She mentioned something about the crosswind, but I really don't think she would have let me go up alone.”

“Did she mention her financial condition?”

Jake stared incredulously at him. “You don't think
Lynda
had anything to do with this.”

Malone shifted in his seat. “We've been on the site since the crash yesterday,” Malone said. “And we've found evidence that a hose was partially cut so the hydraulic pressure would pull it completely apart as soon as the landing gear was lowered.”