He took out his cell phone and spoke to Sophie. “We’re going to the hospital.
”
“Okay
. . .
but
. . .
oh shit.
You
don’t
think it
could be
Stella
, do you
?”
Manny didn’t reply as he tapped
his
foot on the concrete, waiting for Stella to pick
up
. The call went to her voice mail.
His angst rose higher.
“Stella’s not answering. Let’s go.”
Sophie flipped on the siren and burned the tread off the front tires, heading for the hospital.
“Mike wasn’t lying. Stella
was
the shooter at
his apartment complex. But why make the call from the hospital?” asked Sophie, sliding on her NASCAR Victory sunglasses.
“It’s almost 11
p.m.
S
unglasses? Really?”
“Relax. I got this.”
Manny stared at the streetlights as they whizzed past his window. “Yeah. You got the first part. The call from the hospital only makes sense if she wanted us to know it was her. That means one of two things. She wants to get caught, to talk about whatever she’s done.
Or
. . .
”
“Or what?”
“Or she’s
lost it. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe something to do with Lexy’s death.
”
“Come on, can that happen
? I mean
,
especially to her.
”
“
I think it could. And
to almost anyone
,
if the circumstances
were
right. But I could be pissing in the wind. We need to talk to her.”
“What
d
o you mean
‘lost it’
? Like psycho?”
“It means she might become a second cousin to Argyle.”
“
Any
chance she’s just in a bad mood?”
“I wish it were that simple
. The thing is, I didn’t notice anything different about her
. . .
but again, I could be all wrong here.”
“You don’t sound too convincing.”
Manny sighed. “I don’t feel too convinced.”
Sophie adjusted her glasses. “That’s just plain scary.
”
“The mind can convince itself of anything, given the right conditions. Controlled studies show that with enough exposure, people will do just about anything
that
they have some predisposition
to do
. They just need a nudge in that direction.”
“
More scary crap
. . .
and how do you know this stuff?”
“
Sometimes I wish I didn’t.
Too many books.
”
Sophie pulled up to the front door of the hospital
,
and they
jumped
out of the car, light
s still
flashing.
“We
’
ll know in a couple of minutes,” he
said
.
They rode the elevator to the ICU and were greeted by the two officers standing in front of Gavin’s door. They were talking to the nurse Manny had seen earl
ier
in the
morning.
“Could you guys go get a cup of coffee?” he said to the two blues.
They nodded and left.
He turned to the nurse. “Don’t you ever sleep
?”
She grinned. “I might ask you the same thing. I’m pulling a double, or maybe a triple
.
I forget.”
“We know the feeling. How’s he doing?”
“He’s unchanged
,
but hanging in there.” She glanced at Sophie, then back to Manny. “What’s going on?”
He let out a sigh of relief. “Nothing. We got some bad info, that’s all. Is Stella in his room?”
The nurse shook her head. “No. She left a couple of hours ago. She said enough was enough for the day. She wanted to be alone.”
Manny ran his hand through his hair. No denying the truth now.
“Did she call anyone before she left?”
“She did, about 8:30. She asked to use the phone, saying her cell was dead. I reminded her there was no cell phone use inside the ICU anyway. We’re not supposed to do it, but I let her make the call.
It’s a
gainst hospital policy
,
but what
they don’t know won’t hurt them
. She thanked me and said she
’d
be back in a few hours.”
“In this case, I’m glad you ignored policy. Can you print out a phone log?”
She reached into her pocket and handed him a piece of paper. “I already did. Tech support brought it up a minute ago. I figured, once those officers got here, something was up
. I thought
you might need that number.”
“Good thinking. You want a job?” cracked Sophie.
The nurse laughed. “I wouldn’t trade places with you guys for a million bucks.”
“The feeling
’
s mutual,” smiled Manny.
A buzzer sounded
,
and a blue light flashed furiously outside one of the other rooms. “Gotta go.” Then she was hustling down the hall.
“I rest my case
.
I couldn’t do that
.
”
“I see what you mean. But those little nurse outfits are cute. I could get one and cut it really short. Do you think Josh would like it?”
“You mean Randy, your husband?”
“Him too. But I’m thinking about building a better relationship with the Feds. Couldn’t hurt.”
“You
’ve got issues
, you know that?”
“True, but that’s another reason to love me.”
“Keep reminding me.
Put out an APB on Stella
—
that sounds so damn ridiculous
—
I’m going to check on Gavin, and then we have to get to the airport. Alex would
n’
t be happy if we were late for the forensics meeting.
Maybe the six of us can figure out what she’s up to.
”
“I’ll wait here for the other guys to come back. Maybe I’ll get to see more blue lights.”
Manny moved closer to Gavin’s bed and wondered what his take would be on all of this. Then it occurred to him
what Gavin’s view would
be
.
“The truth,” he would say. “Always go after the truth. It might hurt sometimes, but you can’t go wrong with it.”
He wondered if Gavin could follow his own advice
, g
iven that
his wife probably shot him at point
-
blank range. Manny thought he could.
Turning to leave, he saw a yellow piece of paper on the table beside Gavin’s bed.
Manny’s
name was printed near the fold in Stella’s handwriting. His heart rate pranced as he reached for the note
and unfolded
it slowly, reluctantly
,
l
ike the words would speak a sermon he didn’t care to hear
, one of damnation and revelation at the same time
. He was right.
“
Don’t worry about looking for me. I’m in the wind for as long as I want to be. There’s another mess that I cleaned up for you. You’ll have to find it yourself, if you can
.
”
Several blank lines down, written as an afterthought was a three
-
word warning
.
“
Your time’s coming.
”
Chapter
-42
“We have trouble. She didn’t go where she was supposed to
,
and I think she figured out it was a setup somehow.” The tall woman took a long draw from her cigarette and released it. The gray-blue smoke rose and danced in front of her face, then slowly drifted away.
“
I know
,” replied the
shorter
member of the Justice Club.
“What? It’s only 11:30. How in the hell do you know?”
“How in God’s name do you think I know? The real question is how did Stella find out this gig was a
con
?
”
Curiosity dripp
ed
from
the shorter woman’s voice
.
“
Oh no. Not me.
Let’s get this out of the way. It wasn’t me. I didn’t tip her off. I agreed with you on this one. Remember?”
The
shorter
woman heard the anger in the other’s voice. That was good enough for her. “Fair enough. I believe you. But that’s not important now anyway.”
The
taller
woman let out a long breath. “You’re right. If she’s gone rogue, we’re all in
trouble
.
”
“
She knows everything about us. What we do. Where we go
. . .
and what we’ve done.”
“Almost true. She doesn’t know
everything.
”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we have a trick up our sleeve
,
”
said the tall woman.
“What kind of trick? When we did this
,
we promised no secrets
,
and now you’re telling me that’s not true?”
“Relax. I’m pretty good at covering our asses
,
and this was a need
-
to
-
know thing.”
“I appreciate your concern. But trust is trust
,
and right now I’m not feeling it. So
,
no more horseshit. What is it?”
demanded the shorter member of the Justice Club.
“You’re kind of cute when you get pissy,” the tall woman
giggled
.
“I don’t feel cute. Get to it.”
The tall woman
took another drag
from her cancer stick
and released it. “There’s a fourth member of the club.”
Chapter-43
Sophie stood near the door of the waiting room, killing time fumbling through her bag until Manny came out of Gavin’s room. She wanted to remind him of their busy dance card for the next few hours and
that
they needed to go, but she suspected he was
close to
full-bore cop mode and didn’t need any reminders
—
of anything. He was almost scary when that persona
kicked
in. Like he was born to pull miscellaneous facts into full
-
blown pictures that made sense. There were things no one else could see
,
and
leaps no one else could make. Putting together Stella with Gavin’s shooting, Mike’s gun, Blake Harris’s murder, then the setup at the apartment complex had to be killing him on the inside. And she suspected he had it figured out long before he said anything.
She dabbed on a few strokes of lip liner and pulled out a stick of gum. Manny told her once that he had had dinner at the Crosby’s place so many times
that their home
felt as familiar as the rural farmhouse near
the town of
North Star where he’d grown up. Stella and Gavin had even become somewhat surrogate parents after his
parents had
died in a car accident fifteen years ago. He and his family had become a real part of Gavin
’s
and Stella’s lives, even being a kind of big brother to Mike. Now everything was haywire, nuts, and changed forever. Stella’s newfound purpose, or whatever the hell she was thinking, was at the cent
er of it all.
Sophie
shivered.
How would
she
handle finding out that her
surrogate
mother had gone off the deep end, shot her
husband
, and was murdering men after burning off their
j
ohnsons with acid
?
(Although she’d met a few men over the years
that could use the
acid treatment
:
her ex, for one.)
Manny’s MO was about to come into play
, like usual
. He’d
suppress
any emotional ties and go to work. She admired that trait in him
and
, although it exacerbated the workaholic addiction he fought so hard to control, it also scared her. How far into the dark
would
he choose to walk to totally disconnect his emotion from the job? She worried a time was coming when he couldn’t make it back, that the dark would be more appealing than the light. But as long as Louise and Jen were with him, she thought he’d be okay. They were his
reason
.