Fourth Day (32 page)

Hospitals smell the same and look the same everywhere in the world, and the Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center was no exception. The sharp tang of antiseptic and disinfectant overlying the faintest trace of fear.

I’d been told that County General, as it was known, was one of the finest teaching hospitals in California, that its Level One trauma centre was second to none. That it provided immediate treatment for more than a quarter of all serious emergency cases in the city and the southern half of the state.

But none of this excellent pedigree could alter the fact that Sean had nearly died on the flight in, and again on the table during the seven hours of surgery to remove the shattered fragments of bone from his brain.

The 9 mm Hydra-Shok round had entered his forehead just above the outside corner of his left eyebrow, and ploughed a destructive deadly furrow rearwards through his temple before exiting just above his ear. Along the way it had cleaved a path through the side of his skull like an ice-breaker, scattering deadly shrapnel as it went.

The damage, the surgeons told us in sombre tones, was confined to the left frontal and parietal lobes. If the shock of the injury itself didn’t kill him, then some level of brain damage was almost a certainty. It was not their business to give us false hope.

They used a confusing mixture of technical medical phraseology interspersed with oversimplified terms, as if speaking to children. In the glazed eye of my mind, it sounded like another language altogether, where only some of the words were familiar and others were completely incomprehensible.

No doubt my father would have been able to translate their prognosis into simple, logical, and unflinching terms. Just one of the many reasons I did not call him. I did not call anyone. As if by not telling them what had happened, I could make it all go away.

Of course, there was a slim chance Sean would awaken and be almost normal, but the odds were not in favour. It was far more likely, the doctors announced, taking the areas of injury into account, that he would have significant cognitive, memory, movement and coordination problems. We should prepare ourselves. They would not know more until he woke from his coma.

If he woke.

Until then, I lived in twenty-minute snatches, three times a day, which was as long as they’d let me into Intensive Care to sit by his bedside and listen to the ventilator pushing air in and out of his lungs, and to clutch at his waxy fingers. As if by doing so I could physically pull him back into this world.

The rest of the time I haunted the waiting area, dead-eyed. As much in limbo, in my way, as Sean.

Detective Gardner came in, sat with me in the waiting area and told me, in hushed tones, how the siege of Fourth Day had ended before it had begun, with no casualties except for Tony. She’d been informed, unofficially, that his death would be judged a good shooting and she was in the clear. If I read the hand of Conrad Epps behind the suspicious speed with which the incident had been laid to rest, I didn’t say so.

‘It’s Beatrice, by the way,’ she said as she was leaving.

Foggy, distracted, I could only stare at her.

‘The “B” on my card.’

‘Oh, right.’ I paused. ‘Does this mean you have to kill me now?’

She smiled, told me to look after myself, and departed.

Randall Bane paid me a visit, seeming to bring with him a little oasis of calm. He was treated with a reverence by the staff that I could not initially understand, until they explained, shocked by my ignorance, that he was a considerable benefactor.

Bane thanked me gravely for my part in proceedings, only too aware of the cost. He told me that, miraculously, by the time the police did finally start taking statements from the members of Fourth Day, Dexter and the remaining Debacle crew had slipped away like they’d never been.

Maria was still shaken from the attack by Nu and disturbed by the upheaval. She had her good days and bad days, he said. Being with Billy helped. Being close to her father helped. He hoped, in time, she would be able to put it all behind her and move on.

Just as, he hoped, I would be able to do the same.

‘That’s not up to me,’ I said, eyes drifting along the corridor in the direction of the ICU.

‘For the moment, just try to think of the reasons to stay, Charlie,’ he said, deep as a winter lake, ‘rather than the reasons to leave.’

Conrad Epps never put in an appearance. I would have been more surprised if he had. But I learnt from Parker that Chris Sagar had been spirited away somewhere, as had Yancy. I guessed their debriefing would not be as passive as my own.

I was briefly assailed by fears that Sagar would manage to strike some kind of deal, end up with his freedom and a new identity, but I reassured myself with the knowledge that he had caused the deaths of three of Epps’s people. Not only the two men guarding Thomas Witney, but the technician from the mobile command post. He’d been airlifted out on the same helicopter flight as Sean, but massive internal injuries saw him dead on arrival.

I clung to the tenacity that had kept Sean alive through that same short flight, as if proof of his determination to survive.

Parker Armstrong took complete charge of me, offering neither questions nor condemnation. He arranged somewhere close by to sleep and shower, and brought me food I didn’t want at regular intervals, which he then coaxed me into eating.

On the fourth day, in a nearby diner, he said, ‘Sean wanted you back, you know. He thought he’d blown his chances after we had to debrief you and then you bailed. It was like you’d chosen Bane over him.’

I pushed away my half-eaten omelette and sat back. ‘I didn’t want to accept it, but Sean did the right thing – the
only
thing – he could do,’ I said dully. ‘I put you in an impossible situation and, knowing Epps, he gave you no choice.’

Parker nodded. ‘Either Sean did the interrogation, or Epps let his own people handle it. No way was Sean going to let anyone else in there with you. He knew you’d go crazy when you realised what had been done, but he also knew it was better than the alternative.’ He went quiet, settling his fork on his empty plate very precisely, as if he was looking for a way into what he had to say and was totally at a loss how to begin.

‘What else, Parker?’

His eyes flicked to mine, troubled. ‘Apparently, when they were almost done, he told Epps’s guys to turn off the recorders and he sent everyone out.’

The unease formed a lump behind my breastbone. ‘What for?’ I asked. ‘What else did he want out of me that he didn’t want the rest to hear?’ But I already knew.

‘I would guess it was about the baby,’ Parker said. ‘How you really felt about the pregnancy. What you were planning to do, if you hadn’t miscarried.’

The lump began to thunder, as if trying to hammer its way to freedom or escape. I had to swallow before I could speak. ‘And what did I say?’

He shook his head. ‘Sean never told me,’ he said. ‘That was private between you and him. I don’t know.’

‘That makes two of us,’ I muttered.

‘Well, whatever it was, it must have been the right answer. Last thing he did before we went out to wait for you and
Bane was ask for leave so he could take you away for a while, after this was over. Do some talking, he said, get things straightened out.’

I clutched gratefully at the consolation his words offered with a fervour that was almost pathetic in its intensity.

His voice softened. ‘Soulmates come along once in a lifetime, Charlie, if that. You find one, you’d be a fool to let them slip away. And Sean is no fool.’

His face dissolved suddenly in front of me. I ducked my head sharply, blinked a few times and gazed out through the tinted glass to the traffic running past outside, the shadows knife-edged and defined in the California sunshine.

But sitting there, I was overcome with a sense of utter desolation. Who knew what Sean would be, if and when he woke? In the meantime, I was told not to hope, yet robbed of the freedom to grieve. Stuck in the No Man’s Land between holding on and letting go.

And a part of me began to wish, when I’d had the chance to do so, that I’d pulled the trigger and saved myself this pain.

As always, there are a lot of people without whom this book would not have made it into print. The following folk provided the usual help, inspiration and advice, some of which I took on board absolutely, and some of which I ignored at my peril, or twisted for my own sinister ends. The facts are probably theirs – the mistakes are undoubtedly my own.

DP Lyle MD is my first port of call for all medical information and he came up trumps yet again; Douglas Giacobbe provided SWAT info; Robin Burcell told me how the LAPD would conduct an interview; Linda L Richards pointed me in the direction regarding the behaviour of cults; travel consultant Chris Sagar explained how to transport a corpse from one country to another; Stuart and Fiona MacBride gave me a virtual tour of the seedier side of Aberdeen; JT Ellison very kindly corrected my accidental Britishisms, and my UK copyeditors corrected just about everything else.

I’d also like to thank everyone on the
www.Murderati.com
blog site, who diligently answered obscure questions like how
the doors operate on a Gulfstream G550 and the availability of free walk-in medical clinics in Manhattan.

Of course, the real hard work to make something of this book was done by the amazing team at my literary agents, Gregory and Company, including Jane Gregory herself, Stephanie Glencross, Jemma McDonagh, Claire Morris and Tess Barum.

I’m immensely grateful to my UK publisher, Susie Dunlop, and all the talented crew at Allison & Busby; to my new US publishers, Pegasus and Busted Flush; and to all the sales and marketing people, and the bookstores and libraries on both sides of the Atlantic. Thank you all.

Various people read this at the early stages, and made great suggestions and comments, including Iris, Sheila and Graham from the Lune Valley Writers’ Group, Derek Harrison, Shell Willbye, and Dina Willner. And my husband, Andy, of course, read every chapter as it was written, and kept me going right to the end. You are all stars.

Finally, a big thank you to BG Ritts, who made the winning bid in the charity auction at the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention in Baltimore, to become a character in this book. I have included her very carefully, in accordance with her instructions (I hope!) and I was delighted to do so. The auction was in aid of Viva House, a Catholic Worker House of Hospitality and Resistance, and the Enoch Pratt Free Library.

I
N THE
C
HARLIE
F
OX SERIES

Second Shot

Third Strike

Fourth Day

Fifth Victim

Z
OË
S
HARP
was born in Nottinghamshire, but spent most of her formative years living on a catamaran on the north-west coast of England. She opted out of mainstream education at the age of twelve and became a freelance photojournalist in 1988. She turned to crime writing after receiving death threat letters in the course of her work, which led to the creation of her no-nonsense heroine, Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Fox. The fourth book in the series,
First Drop
, was nominated for the 2005 Barry Award for Best British Crime Novel. Zoë lives on the edge of the Lake District, where she and her husband, a
nonfiction
writer, have recently self-built their own house. Zoë blogs regularly on her own website,
www.zoesharp.com
and also on the award-nominated
www.murderati.com
.

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Fourth Day
, read on to find out about the
other thrillers in the Charlie Fox series…

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