Close Encounters (8 page)

“We have just a few more questions. Have you ever walked your dog in that block before?”

“Sure. But I usually pretty much stayed within a two- or three-block radius from my apartment. My dog is …
was
old. I didn’t like making him walk far.”

“I understand. Now about the two men you were seen with…”

“What did they do with him? After he was taken to the ASPCA, I mean?” Carol asked, staring at the official.

“Well, the body would have been disposed of, ma’am. You know, the dog was dead, so…”

“So no one thought it mattered what happened then, is that it?”

“Ms. Taggart, perhaps I can try and get some more information for you about that. Maybe you can be compensated.”

“No, thank you,” Carol said, angered by the suggestion. “It’s not like replacing my leather parka because it had a bullet hole in it. You can’t make up for my dog. You can’t make this wound go away.”

“Yes, ma’am, we understand that. I have a dog myself.” He stood up. “Why don’t we continue this later? The doctors say if all goes well they’ll send you home…”

“Can I ask a question?” Carol interrupted again as the three men prepared to leave.

“Certainly.”

“Who shot me?”

None of the officers answered as they straightened their jackets and put on identical trench coats. Carol stared at the one who had been questioning her and waited.

“We’re trying to establish that, Ms. Taggart. The ballistics report hasn’t been completed yet—”

“But it happened three days ago.”

“Yes, but there’s a procedure that has to be followed before any official announcement can be made. Someone in the department will notify you when we’re ready with the findings.”

One by one they filed out the door, the last one thanking Carol for her cooperation and, finally, wishing her well. Almost as an afterthought. She watched the empty doorway, puzzled by the interview. Certainly the police would want to clarify the events of that early morning, but they seemed to have so little understanding of what had actually happened. Or perhaps they just didn’t want her to know what they knew.

Something else nagged at Carol. All the questions had been framed to suggest that the police were not responsible for what had happened to her. And yet the newspapers were beginning to suggest otherwise. There were unconfirmed reports that the bullet that had struck her came from a police-issue semiautomatic. The idea had not occurred to her before. What if it were true?

Carol gnawed the inside of her cheek as she imagined the public outcry in a city where charges of police brutality and excessive force constantly stirred the pot of racial tensions. For the moment the reports were unsubstantiated.

But what if they could be?

Tired of lying in bed, she’d taken to spending much of her time here in the lounge. She was armed with a small sketch pad that Matt had brought her, and she entertained herself by doing covert studies of the staff, patients, and visitors. She had also attempted other sketches of people from memory. Vignettes from that night, although it had been too dark for details—except for the large, still body of Max. She would always remember exactly what he had looked like in death.

Carol flipped past the most recent sketch of Max she’d been working on and revealed beneath it a half-constructed face of a man. She remembered the eyes, the set of the mouth, the shape of the jaw. But when she tried to put the parts together the image didn’t quite mesh. It wasn’t a face she recognized. So where had the details come from?

She sighed, frustrated. She
really
wanted to go home.

As soon as the thought was formed, Carol realized that she didn’t mean home to her one-bedroom apartment, where she would be alone, but rather to the large wood-frame house in which she’d been raised, just north of Chicago. The evening before, her parents had urged her to come home for a visit as soon as she was able to travel.

They’d brought her a new bathrobe, mail from her apartment, and a small bag of her favorite powdered-donut holes. The thought of going for a visit appealed to her. They would coddle and fuss over her… and maybe she would let them. Their love had been a sure and steady force all her life, though often she hadn’t fully appreciated it. Now she needed their unconditional love. Right now, it was the only thing she was absolutely sure of.

Carol sat still and waited for the rise of anger, which she’d allowed to rule her emotions for much of her life. The sense of great injustice because she had been a hand-off, an afterthought, a remainder. She recognized that she had let the circumstances of her family define her whole life. Until that night a few days ago, when who and what she was hadn’t mattered.

She’d almost been killed. She had survived, but
everything
had changed. Forever. She was still trying to figure out how. She only sensed that perhaps things had happened for a reason.

Her father had suggested that God had other plans for her. But during the past few days Carol had begun thinking that maybe she had been given a second chance to make some new plans of her own.

Lee hesitated outside the door. At first he imagined the worst, but there could be lots of reasons why Carol Taggart was not in her room. Maybe she’d been moved somewhere else. Maybe she’d already gone home.

Lee suddenly realized that he was feeling ambivalent about the possibility that Carol was gone and he might not ever see her again. For him, she had ceased to be an anonymous black woman who’d been accidentally shot in a street altercation between known criminals and the police. It was impossible to go back to not knowing her.

Despite what had happened, there was still one single overriding consideration. And one thing he knew for sure—he wanted to see Carol Taggart again.

Several times Lee had considered calling Dr. Amos. Which was certainly an about-face from the first time, when he hadn’t felt the need to speak with the psychologist at all. Lee didn’t know if Dr. Amos could explain the terrible pressing sensation in the middle of his chest that at times threatened to suffocate him. Was it the weight of guilt? The fear of damnation?

Lee was also conflicted about the internal triage being conducted by the department in an attempt to avoid accepting responsibility. The whole business made him uneasy. The department might not deliberately set out to distort the case, but he’d seen it happen. Twice in his career he had indirectly participated in what amounted to cover-ups. The difference was that no one’s life had hung in the balance, on a truth or a lie. And the results had seemed to justify the means so he hadn’t lost any sleep over it.

But this time was different.

This time he realized that what eventually happened
would
matter. To him as a police officer. And as a man.

Lee was about to pass the visitors lounge when he glimpsed Carol Taggart sitting in a chair by the window.

He stood stock-still in the corridor and watched her. For the first time he was seeing her not as a shooting victim or as a hospital patient but as a woman. She was very attractive, her skin the color of brown sugar, her body slender, her carriage regal—even dressed in a robe and slippers.

She appeared to be sketching in a spiral pad, her head tilted in concentration, her thick hair making a soft cloud around her face. Lee told himself that he could still walk away. But he didn’t.

He entered the room. An older woman sat in a corner, staring at the TV. Lee crossed to Carol. It wasn’t until he was standing right next to her that she became aware of his presence.

She looked up, distracted. Her gaze cleared immediately upon recognition. And she slowly smiled.

Lee found that he couldn’t return the greeting. If he did, he might completely lose the emotional distance between them. Neither of them said anything for several seconds, but it was enough for an unspoken shift to occur in their relationship.

Lee could see that she was examining him again, taking in everything about him. This time he wasn’t uncomfortable under her scrutiny.

Carol’s surprise was tempered by the sensation that she was seeing Lee Grafton for the very first time, even though he was not an absolute stranger. She was noticing things about him she hadn’t seen before. He was a tall man, casually dressed. He seemed fit and athletic without looking pumped and self-conscious. Years of experience were evident in the angles and lines of his face. His dark eyes were knowing and alert. His hair, brown with gray sprinkled throughout, was cropped very short. She liked it. It was masculine. Natural. Carol found herself facing someone who presented himself as simply a man, not a cop. So why had he come to see her again?

“Another unofficial visit?” she questioned with a lift of her brows.

“Do you mind?”

Her expression was thoughtful. “I don’t know. I guess I’m curious. Why?”

“Well, I’m curious, too,” Lee improvised. He looked around, found another chair and positioned it at her side, then sat down. He didn’t want to sit directly opposite her, already knowing he would stare too openly.

Carol Taggart didn’t appear to be ill or incapacitated or in pain. The only evidence that she was a patient was the sling around her neck that held her left arm immobile against her chest.

“Don’t tell me you were just in the neighborhood. Don’t you have patrol or rounds or something you should be on?”

He couldn’t help grinning as he shook his head. “You’ll be happy to know that we’ve discontinued the surveillance of your room.”

Carol shrugged. “I didn’t know that having the police outside my room meant house arrest. It didn’t really bother me. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong.”

He shifted in his chair, glancing around the plain room. “How is your family taking the news? I suppose they’ll want to speak to someone at headquarters.”

Carol knew he couldn’t have missed noticing the unusual makeup of her family the day of her parents’ arrival. She held her chin up, fighting the urge to become defensive.

“My father called the head of the investigation this morning. He went over there this afternoon, but I haven’t heard from him.”

“There may not be a lot they can tell him yet. He’ll probably want to speak with a lawyer first, anyway.”

“Do you think I’ll need one?”

Lee shifted again. He shouldn’t have said that. “I think it’s important for you to know what your rights are and what recourse is open to you, given what’s happened. Just to protect yourself.”

She stared off into space for a second and nodded. “I’ll talk to my father. See what he thinks. But… I don’t see any need to make a fuss.”

That surprised him. “You don’t,” he half stated, half asked.

“Not yet,” Carol clarified. “The police don’t need that kind of publicity, and I don’t want it. You do know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

“Oh, yeah. But you might still get swept up in something.”

Carol’s expression was reflective. “Not if I can help it,” she said softly.

“Can I see?” Lee suddenly asked, wanting to get off the subject.

“What?”

“Are you sketching?” He reached for the pad and waited until Carol handed it to him.

Lee looked at a line drawing of the old woman sitting watching TV. He briefly glanced in her direction and saw that she hadn’t moved an inch since he’d entered the room. To Lee she appeared to be hypnotized by the action on the screen. But Carol had seen much more. The pencil lines accurately captured the slope of the woman’s back, shoulders, and neck with their evidence of slight osteoporosis. Her hair had the wiry texture of the aged, her face lined and flaccid. Her expression was gentle and distant, and Lee studied the sketch long and hard because it seemed that Carol had sympathetically rendered not just a picture of an old woman but a likeness of someone who had lived a long and full life.

He found Carol watching his reaction closely, but not as if she was anxious for his response or held any store by it.

“You’re very good,” he said simply.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Are there more?”

“A few.”

Lee began to leaf slowly through the rest of the drawings. Neither spoke while he looked at the half dozen or so pictures. It was a diverse collection. One of a doctor bent over the counter of the nurses’ station. A picture of a small child sitting on the lounge floor entertaining himself with toys while two adults conversed in the background. What looked like an incomplete portrait of a man. Other studies included the flowers in her room, an old black man sleeping in a wheelchair in the hallway.

She
was
very good.

After a while he returned the book to her. “Outstanding. I’m impressed. My daughter likes art. Has since she was very small.”

“Oh, really?” Carol asked, interested. She couldn’t help but notice the lilt of pride in his tone. She gazed at him again, trying to figure out how old Lieutenant Lee Grafton was. A year or two either side of forty, she guessed. “How old is your daughter?”

“Fifteen.”

“What kind of art does she like?”

“She… doodles. Fashion stuff…” His beeper began to vibrate and Lee reached blindly to turn it off. “She, ah… she also likes to make jewelry. Drills holes in coins to make necklaces. Nuts and bolts for earrings.”

Carol nodded. “She sounds talented and clever.”

“She is,” Lee agreed thoughtfully, as if it had not fully occurred to him before.

“I teach art,” she volunteered. “Advanced anatomy and still-life classes at City College.”

“Ever exhibited anywhere?”

She chuckled. “Mostly in my parents’ house. My work is all over the place.”

He nodded, watching her closely. “They’re proud of you,” he suggested, then noticed that she seemed thrown by his observation.

“They’re biased,” she countered, then realized what she’d said. “I… I mean…”

“I know what you mean. You’re their daughter, so you can do no wrong in their eyes.”

“Right.”

“So who do you get your talent from? Mom or Dad?”

He might as well have asked whose genes she’d inherited. But he’d seen her parents and so she answered straightforwardly.

“My father plays the piano and has a great singing voice. Mom makes wonderful original quilts. She’s won ribbons for them. Does that count?”