Summer of the Dead (32 page)

She paused. She wondered if Lindy would survive. She didn't have to finish the sentence for Fogelsong to know what she was speculating about.

The hospital cafeteria, a square room with a pale green tiled floor, long aluminum tables and chairs, and a row of vending machines for after-hours snacks, was almost empty. A woman and three small children sat at a table near the corner; the kids were eating cardboard cups of orange sherbet with tiny wooden paddles that served as spoons. Whatever had brought this family here tonight—a sick father, a suffering sibling, a declining grandparent—the mother had managed to keep the children happily oblivious. At another table, two women in blue scrubs and heavy white shoes sat across from each other, silently sharing a bag of Chili Cheese Fritos. They were clearly hospital employees, and they looked too exhausted to talk. Every few minutes, the PA system came alive, offering up an announcement that sounded mild and routine—too mild and routine. The nature of the emergency, Bell knew, was slyly embedded inside the mildness, interpretable only by those who knew the code words.

“You called 911,” Nick said. He was guiding Bell back to the story. Back to the events as they unfolded. Trying to steady her. “They did a good job, Bell. You watched the paramedics work and so you know that. They got her here real quick. She's alive. And that's all we can ask for right now. That's it.”

Bell nodded. Rattled off what the ER doctor had told her. “Scalp lacerations. Skull fracture. Probably subdural hematoma. If they can reduce the brain swelling, and if she regains consciousness—”

“Got to trust the doctors and nurses,” Nick cut in. “They know what they're doing.”

With a fingernail, Bell scratched at the side of the cardboard cup. “Any family members we should notify?”

“Charlie Mathers checked with the HR office at Lester Oil. There's a second cousin up near Morgantown. She's willing to come, but can't get away till morning. Not much family left, I guess. It was really just the girl and her father. Lindy and Odell Crabtree.”

Hearing the old man's name caused Bell to frown. “So he's in custody?”

“For the time being, yeah. Deputy Harrison handled it. We didn't formally arrest him, but we took him in for questioning. Although from the look of him, that doesn't sound too promising.” Fogelsong finished his coffee with a quick swig. “Not sure about this, Bell. Not sure about what actually happened out there. You think Odell Crabtree would attack his own daughter?”

“Scene was pretty damned incriminating. Blood all over his hands, mumbling to her about forgiving him.”

“Maybe the old man surprised the real assailant and ran him off,” the sheriff said. “We've had two murders this summer already. This might be part of the pattern. And it's not out of the question that Odell scared off the attacker. The man's as strong as an ox. Stands to reason—working all those years in the mines. He's old, but I bet he's quite a sight when he's charging at you with a full head of steam, fists up, fire in his eye. Maybe he didn't get an ID on the attacker, but he saved the girl's life. Got the blood on his hands when he was tending to her. And the forgiveness part? The thing he was babbling about? Maybe he felt guilty about not protecting her better.”

“So why didn't he call for help?”

“Not sure he'd be able to, Bell. To figure out what to do. You saw him.”

“Then why wasn't he with her in the living room? He was just sitting there, Nick. Sitting at the kitchen table like he didn't know where the hell he was.”

“Probably didn't. There's some serious mental incapacity going on with the man. No doubt about it. Fades in and out, most likely. That's how it happens sometimes—you've got periods when you're lucid and periods when you're not. He obviously can't handle his own affairs. His daughter's been doing it all. Takes care of everything.” He shook his head. “Good God. What the hell? Two homicides. This could've made it three.”

“Still might.” Bell's voice was grim. “Lindy's not out of the woods yet.”

Fogelsong pushed his hat back from his forehead. “The killer or killers,” he said, “could've been lying in wait. Maybe they cased the Crabtree place for a few days. Knew when to break in and jump her. She works third shift. Regular schedule. Easy to know her comings and goings.”

Bell looked across the cafeteria at the two hospital employees in the blue scrubs. They were rising now, returning to work; when they scooted their chairs back under the table—first one, then the other—the gestures ignited two short, sharp, overlapping squeals.

“Did Crabtree say anything?” Bell asked.

“Not so far. Doesn't seem to know where he is. Just rocks back and forth and mutters to himself—and then he explodes, throwing himself against the wall and yelling and cursing.” Fogelsong stretched out his right leg and moved his booted foot up and down, then around in a tiny circle, trying to keep the circulation going. He didn't like sitting. Made him antsy. “Can't get over how strong that old man is. Sick as he is, it took Harrison and a couple of paramedics to get him in the squad car.”

“He's dangerous,” Bell muttered.

“He's a handful. Grant you that. But capable of assaulting his own flesh and blood?”

Her answer came in a flash. “Hell, Nick. You know as well as I do that anybody's capable of anything.”

 

Chapter Thirty-three

The call came shortly before 4
A.M.
Bell was still awake and sitting in her chair, and answered before the end of the first ring. “Elkins,” she said. The caller was an ICU nurse; Bell had left her number at the desk, along with a request that she be notified if Lindy Crabtree regained consciousness. “She's awake,” the woman said. “I wouldn't have predicted it, but with brain injuries, you just never know. Sometimes it's a three-month coma and permanent impairment—and sometimes, they wake up with nothing but a bad headache, asking for butter pecan ice cream. This girl's young and healthy. I'll say that. Makes a big difference.”

The hospital parking lot was black and empty at this hour, a ghostliness ground in by the fact that a majority of the streetlights ringing the space had been turned off for the night, leaving a lonely few to keep the vigil. Bell had her pick of parking spots. Hard to believe, she thought as she hurried toward the ER entrance—the nurse had instructed her to come in that way, because the main entrance was locked up tight when visiting hours concluded at nine each night—that just a week ago, this same expanse had been bristling with light and people and noise and sweaty chaos, when Riley Jessup came to town.

“Hey,” Bell said.

She'd approached the corner in which Lindy's bed was situated as quietly as she could, not wanting to startle the young woman. The ICU was a long rectangle with separate areas for each patient, like a car-repair shop with bays for individual vehicles. It was a place undergirded by the densely woven hum and rhythmic swish of the workings of complicated monitors.

Lindy was sitting up, sipping a cup of water through a bendy straw. She wore a hospital gown, white cotton printed with a pattern of small blue diamonds, and it was much too large for her, ballooning from her thin neck like a barber's smock on a toddler getting her first haircut. The white sheet that covered her was tucked around her midsection. The wall behind the bed featured a variety of bright screens across which drifted green and yellow horizontal lines, lines that spiked now and again.

The young woman looked at Bell with a blank expression. The wallet-sized bandage on the side of her head had been secured with a circle of gauze that resembled a headband.

“I'm Belfa Elkins. County prosecutor. We met the other day. How're you feeling?”

Lindy's expression didn't change. She set down the cup on the bedside table and peered at her right index finger, to the tip of which was affixed a small white clamp that looked like a plastic clothespin; the clamp, in turn, was attached to a cord and the cord to yet another monitor. In the crook of her other arm, an IV line had been inserted.

The lights were low. The patient beds Bell had passed on her way to Lindy's were bathed in the strange, flickeringly iridescent ambience that defined ICU units. Even though this area of the hospital lacked windows, somehow you still could tell that it was late at night.
Kind of like Crazy Dave's,
Bell thought. Probably the first and last time that particular comparison would ever be made.

A nurse arrived, black-haired and bustling. It wasn't the nurse who had called her, and Bell was required to explain why she was there; visiting hours were severely restricted in the ICU. The nurse checked Lindy's temperature and blood pressure. “You're a very lucky young lady,” she said. “Hope you know that.”

Bell addressed the nurse while she refolded the blood pressure cuff. “I'm going to have some questions about these injuries. This is a criminal investigation. Where's the nursing supervisor?”

“She'll be right back. Said she had a phone call to make. Something personal.”

The nurse departed. Bell stood uncertainly by Lindy's bed, not sure if she should offer a sympathetic platitude or two before diving in. Bell had often interviewed victims and witnesses in hospital rooms, but usually there were family members here, hovering at the periphery, and they handled the emotional duties, doling out the optimism, so that Bell could focus on the fact-gathering. Lindy, though, was alone.

“Look,” Bell said. She didn't want to bother the other patients and so she spoke softly, as softly as she could without whispering. Whispering attracted more attention than shouting. “I know you feel like hell right now, and I'd love to let you rest, but I have to find out what happened. No easy way to ask this—so I'm just going to do it.” Her eyes locked on to Lindy's. “Did your father attack you? Is he the one who did this?”

Lindy's body recoiled. Her small hands fluttered on top of the blanket. She swallowed before she spoke, frowning at the feel of what must've been, Bell thought, a red-raw, severely dry throat. “
Daddy?
No, no,
no
. God, no. He didn't—he
couldn't
—no. No. No.”

“So you remember the attack.”

“Yeah. I mean—well—” Lindy shook her head. That brought another frown, tailing off into a wince. “Okay, no. But it wasn't him. I'm positive, okay?”

Bell waited. When Lindy was first brought in, the ER doctor had told Bell that most trauma patients don't remember their ordeals; they believe they do, picking up on clues from what other people say must have happened. But their own memories stop well short of the event that caused the injury.

Lindy looked down at the white sheet. She smoothed out a wrinkle. Fingered the hem. “Okay,” she said. The anger had been replaced by resignation. “Okay. Fine,” she went on. “The whole thing's pretty much a blank. I drove home after my shift ended at seven and—and that's it. Nothing past that. I woke up here.” She grew agitated again. “But it couldn't be Daddy. It
couldn't
be.”

“You don't know that. You don't remember.”

“I'm telling you.
It wasn't him
. It had to be somebody else.”

Another ICU nurse showed up, drawn there by the rising agitation in Lindy's voice. She was a thin-cheeked woman in bulky black glasses who wore her frizzy gray hair in two stubby braids. When she reached up to adjust the dial on a monitor, the ends of her braids twitched against her shoulders.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“Fine,” Lindy said.

Gray Braids nodded and checked a second monitor, eyeballed the IV drip, then looked sternly at Bell. “Okay, but let's wind this up,” she said. “She needs her rest.”

In the silence that ensued until Gray Braids departed, the swishing noise seemed to grow louder and more assertive. It was coming, Bell realized, from a ventilator hooked to the patient in the adjacent bay.

And then they were alone again. “That nurse was right. You're damned lucky,” Bell declared. “Had you been hit harder with that rock—or at a slightly different angle—you could very well have been killed. Or suffered an even more serious brain injury. As it is, whoever attacked you must've been in a hurry. They weren't able to do much damage. They hit you once with a glancing blow. Not full force.”

“I know what you're getting at. That somebody hit me who didn't really want to hurt me. Or maybe thought they did—and then couldn't go through with it.” Softer now: “Like Daddy.” Lindy swallowed and winced, swallowed and winced. “But it wasn't him. Couldn't be.” The certainty was pure theater; she was plenty scared, a fact that Bell had picked up on the moment she'd stationed herself at Lindy's bedside.

“You're not sure,” Bell said quietly. “No matter what you say to me, I know that you suspect him, too.”

“No.” Softly, but urgently. “No. No.
No. No. No
.” Her eyes drilled into Bell's with dark intensity.

“You've wondered for some time,” Bell went on, “about your father. Wondered if he was capable of something like this. Because there are days when he doesn't even know who you are. And he lashes out at you.”

Bell was guessing. She had no idea if she was correct or not. But she had glimpsed, within Lindy's instant reaction to the idea that Odell Crabtree had attacked her, something more than mere defensiveness. More than daughterly love. Bell had seen something desperate and inchoate in those eyes. Lindy might be horrified at the idea of her father's guilt, but she also was not entirely surprised by it.

“No,” Lindy said firmly. “No.”

Bell switched tactics. “Okay, then. Let's say it wasn't your father. Who else, then? Who might've done this? Who'd attack you? And why?”

“Whoever did those other murders, maybe. The ones everybody's talking about.” A thought flared in her mind: “Where's Daddy? What've you done with him?”