Death Notice (34 page)

Nick hurt so bad he wanted to puke. The pain was in his chest. His head. His back. But he felt it most in his right leg, which was like a fist continually punching.

When he opened his eyes, he saw nothing but clouds. Dark, unruly ones that rolled across his field of vision.

Then a figure emerged from them, obscured by their grayness. It was a girl. Moving toward him, she stopped a few feet away. Her long, dark hair was parted in the center, an
open curtain revealing tear-filled eyes, pale skin, and a sad smile.

It had been ages since Nick last saw her. Decades since she had waved to him as she left for work at the drugstore. But there she was, standing before him, smiling and crying at the same time.

Nick spoke her name. “Sarah.”

“Nick?” she said. “Can you hear me?”

The pain made it difficult to nod, but somehow he managed.

“Yes,” he murmured. “I can hear you.”

“Amber Lefferts survived,” Sarah said. “I thought you’d want to know that.”

The clouds took over again, churning past Sarah, erasing her features. Her hair drifted away in the swirl. As did her face, her body. In their place was someone else Nick knew. She was much older than Sarah and taller. But she was still sad, still crying.

Kat Campbell.

“Did you hear me?” she asked.

The clouds evaporated, clearing Nick’s vision. He saw gray walls and a white ceiling.

“Where am I?”

His question came out mangled. His mouth was parched.

Kat held a cup of water to his lips, tipping it gently. Nick savored the cool liquid that rushed into his mouth, soothing his throat. He swallowed before again asking, “Where am I?’

“The county hospital,” Kat said. “In ICU.”

Nick narrowed his eyes, looking down the length of his body. He was in bed, flat on his back. A cast covered his right leg from foot to thigh. It was elevated, held in place by a plastic sling hanging from a pole that had been attached to the bed.

His leg. He remembered how it had been run over in the
street. Pain like that was impossible to forget. Other memories flooded his head. The car. The chase. The deer.

And he remembered the van, running off the road and doing cartwheels next to the lake. Amber Lefferts had been inside, and now she was badly hurt. At least she wasn’t dead. If that was the only good news to come out of the whole mess, it was fine by him.

“How bad is she?”

Kat wiped away her tears. “She’ll live. But everything is just so—awful.”

Covering her mouth to stifle a sob, Kat rushed out of Nick’s view. In an instant, others took her place. One of them was Cassie Lieberfarb, who also had tears in her eyes. Rudy Taylor was there, too. And Tony Vasquez. Nick’s old team, reunited once again.

None of them spoke, which Nick found odd. They had always been a talkative bunch. But then he saw that someone else was with them—Gloria Ambrose. Even in his pain and confusion, Nick knew her presence spelled trouble. If she had come all that way, then he was in deep shit.

“Lieutenant Donnelly,” she said in a clipped voice. “Before we begin, I need to be certain that you can fully comprehend what I’m saying. Can you?”

Nick answered yes, although he had no idea just what it was they were about to start.

Satisfied he was of sound mind and half-sound body, Gloria asked, “Were you the person behind the wheel of your car when today’s accident occurred?”

Nick shook his head wearily. “No.”

“Was the person driving your car named Henry Goll?”

Henry.
Kat had said nothing about him. She only mentioned Amber. Worry flooded Nick’s body, temporarily erasing the pain.

“Is he okay?” he asked, throat again parched. “Tell me he’s all right.”

Gloria handed him the cup of water. As Nick gulped, she said, “Mr. Goll is fine. He suffered only minor scrapes and bruises. You bore the brunt of the injuries.”

Nick was okay with that. Since Amber was still alive and Henry escaped unscathed, he was happy to be the injured one.

“Did Mr. Goll get behind the wheel of his own accord?”

“No.”

“So you’re saying Mr. Goll only got behind the wheel because you encouraged him?”

Yes, Nick definitely did that. Driven mad by pain and a desire to stop the killer, he had pushed Henry into the driver’s seat and told him to chase the van. Now he was badly hurt, Amber was, too, and the whole situation was coming back to bite him in the ass. Hard.

“This is a serious matter, Nick,” Gloria told him, as if he didn’t already know that. “There will be an official inquiry into today’s events once you’re fully healed. Until that time, you are suspended from the state police without pay. Is that understood?”

Loud and clear. So loud that Nick silently begged for the pain to increase, only so it could drown out Gloria’s voice. He didn’t want to hear any more. It only made him feel worse.

But the pain humming through his body was no match for Gloria’s vocal cords. Her voice continued to penetrate his ears, saying, “You also will have nothing to do with the investigation into the Perry Hollow killings. I have officially taken control of it. All Perry Hollow law enforcement officials have been instructed to not speak to you regarding the case.”

“Is Kat in trouble?” Nick asked.

“No. I’ve spoken with her. She knew nothing about your attempt to chase the van. Not getting her tangled up in this is the only smart thing you’ve done all day.”

“And what about Henry? Is he in the clear?”

Knowing Gloria, Nick assumed she thought Henry definitely deserved a legal smackdown. He couldn’t let that happen.

“For the record,” he said. “I take full responsibility for what happened. Henry had nothing to do with it. He was only following my orders.”

Nick was digging his own grave. Not that it mattered. He was already a goner as far as the state police was concerned. The inquiry was just a formality, to make people like Gloria feel important. Since his days at the BCI were clearly over, Nick wanted to spare Henry as much trouble as possible.

“I’ll pass that on to the local authorities,” Gloria said. “Before I do, I need to ask you a few questions.”

Giving a feeble wave, Nick said, “Shoot.”

“Did you get a good look at the van’s driver?”

Thinking back to the moments before the crash, Nick realized he hadn’t. The van had been going too fast and the pain had been too extreme. All he remembered was the van itself and not the person driving it.

“I didn’t,” he replied. “Did Kat and Henry?”

Gloria’s silence was enough of an answer. They hadn’t.

“If Amber Lefferts was hurt in the van crash, does that mean the Grim Reaper was, too?” Nick asked.

“You’re off this case, Nick. You’re no longer privy to such information.”

Gloria was playing hardball, punishing him with the thing she knew would hurt the most—an unanswered question. But Nick needed to know. If the Grim Reaper had been caught, it would make things easier for him. He could accept being booted from the BCI if he knew this particular psycho was off the streets.

“Please,” he said. His throat grew dry again, as if he had just swallowed a bucket of sand. “I have to know.”

Gloria once again helped him take a drink. And when she spoke, her voice was softer. Both the gesture and her tone made it obvious to Nick that she was taking pity on him.

“The van was registered to a flower shop called Awesome Blossoms,” she said. “It was stolen back in March. Chief Campbell found it next to the lake about ten minutes after the crash.”

She told Nick the first thing Kat did was find out if he and Henry were alive. When she saw that they were, she rushed to the van, where she found Amber Lefferts in the back, unconscious.

“Chief Campbell then looked inside the front of the van,” Gloria continued. “Guess what she found?”

Nick managed a shrug. “No idea.”

“Nothing,” Gloria said. “There was nothing there. In the ten minutes between the crash and Chief Campbell’s arrival, whoever was behind the wheel of that van managed to get out and run away.”

The hospital’s cafeteria was a sad little box painted in shades of mauve and gray. Other than a bored volunteer manning the cash register, Henry was the only person there. He sat by the wall, next to a framed poster of purple wildflowers spreading across a meadow. Henry assumed the picture’s intent was to make those who saw it feel better. If so, it wasn’t working. He was in the throes of a dark and dangerous mood, and no piece of cheap art could change that.

A cup of lukewarm coffee sat in front of him. Looking like mud, it tasted that way, too. But the caffeine helped. It was just enough to chase the numbness from his limbs and the pain from his joints.

“Nick is awake.”

Henry looked up to see Kat leaving the cash register, stirring her own cup of mud.

“How bad is he?”

“He’s pretty banged up,” she said, taking a seat at Henry’s table. “But he’ll live.”

Henry thought of his own minor injuries. A square of gauze covered a stitched-up cut on his forearm, and his forehead still stung from the antiseptic dabbed onto a small scrape there. Other than that, he was fine. Miraculously so.

Yet Henry felt anything but lucky. He felt downright awful.

“I’ll understand,” he said, “if you want to press charges. It’s only fair.”

A girl was badly injured, a state police lieutenant was in intensive care, and a killer was still at large. All because of him. He couldn’t blame Kat if she threw the book at him and sent him immediately to jail. He deserved it.

But Kat showed no intention of locking him up. She reached across the table, taking his hands into hers.

“Nick claimed all responsibility for what happened. He made it very clear you were only doing what he told you to do.”

“But I was the one behind the wheel,” Henry said. “I could have avoided the crash.”

“How? It wasn’t your fault that deer jumped in front of the van. I know others might disagree with me, but you couldn’t have prevented any of this.”

Kat was right. Others
would
disagree with her. Henry imagined the rest of Perry Hollow demanding justice for what he had done. People were unforgiving. Experience had taught him that.

“This has happened before,” he said.

“What has?”

“What took place today. It happened five years ago, in almost exactly the same way.”

In the years since the accident, Henry had never felt
compelled to discuss it. But facing Kat, he felt like he needed to say something. The situation that day had opened up a floodgate of emotions, and the more he tried to contain them, the faster they flowed. Anger, sadness, regret—all of them gnawed at him.

He began slowly, starting with the basics. “It was during the worst storm I had ever seen.”

They had planned to spend the night inside, curled up with pizza and a DVD. But when Henry got home from work, he found Gia restless and irritable. She had cabin fever in a big way. The pregnancy didn’t help. It was the tail end of her ninth month, and she was ready to be done with the whole thing.

“I love this baby,” she told him, hands supporting her extended stomach, “but I just want it out of me.”

So instead of staying indoors that rainy Friday, she had convinced Henry to take her to their favorite Thai place outside the city. The restaurant itself was nothing special, just a plain, family-run joint in the suburbs. But the food was delectable and among the spiciest Henry had ever tasted.

As a reason for going, Gia jokingly mentioned a
Newsweek
article that said eating spicy food was a way to induce labor. Even though she spoke in jest, Henry knew she was secretly hopeful it might work. She was ready to be a mother. He was ready to be a dad.

It was raining when they took Interstate 279 out of the city. The forecast had called for it, so Henry wasn’t concerned.

The dinner of extra-spicy pad thai was excellent, as usual. To wash away the heat, Henry drank Singha beer. Four bottles of it. His rationale was that Gia could drive if he couldn’t. Being pregnant made her the ideal designated driver.

The rain was still falling when dinner was over, only
harder than before. And Gia said she wasn’t feeling well. Heartburn, she said. From the spicy food.

So Henry got behind the wheel. He wasn’t drunk. Just pleasantly buzzed. He could drive them home safely if he took it easy and really concentrated.

But merging onto I-279 again, they found themselves in the middle of an unexpected deluge. Nothing in the forecast had prepared them for the harsh conditions. The rain covered the windshield in seconds. When Henry swiped it away with a flick of the wipers, more water arrived to replace it.

He drove cautiously, traveling well below the speed limit. Visibility was next to nothing, but there were no other cars on the road to worry about. All he had to do was drive slowly and stay on the road. If he managed that, everything would be fine.

Then Gia’s water broke.

Because he was keeping his eyes on the road, Henry didn’t see it. Instead, he heard a hiccup of shock from Gia, followed by a muffled splashing as fluid spilled onto the passenger seat.