"Hi," she said. Her voice was high and light. It sounded more like that of a girl than a woman, though she was undoubtedly over twenty-one.
"Hello," he said.
She seemed to be looking at him like she wasn't sure she was in the right place.
"You're Kris ... right?" She confirmed his guess.
"That's what they tell me," he said.
She came further in, but still stood in the door. She looked a little apprehensive.
"I'm Lou Anne," she said.
That didn't mean anything to him. "Well hi there, Lou Anne," he said.
"You don't remember me, do you?" she suggested.
He examined her, briefly. If he'd ever seen her before, he
should
remember her. She was about five-ten, and slim, but curvy at the same time. She was wearing a pink and white striped dress that was obviously a uniform of some kind and had on pink Converse high tops. From the neck down, she looked like any other woman that a man would enjoy looking at. She had curves in all the right places. It was her head that made her look strange. The sides of her scalp had been shaved clean, leaving a strip of hair about three inches wide down the middle. It wasn't a mohawk in the normal sense, where the hair stood straight up. Instead, the strip of hair fell down the right side of her head, to the top of her ear. At that, it was longer in the front, because it also fell forward and almost obscured her right eye. That hair was the color of black cherries, with distinctly red tones in it. It wasn't the red of genetically red hair and obviously came from a bottle.
The side of her head that was exposed looked like it belonged on a much younger woman, like her voice sounded too young. The one dark green eye that stared at him was flanked by ears that glittered. The left had two small silver hoops, with a silver ball on one and a black ball on the other, hanging from the lobe. The right one, visible beside the hair that almost covered her right eye, had a silver hoop with a blue ball in the lobe and, higher up in the cartilage, a silver hoop with a silver ball.
She had the smoothest skin he'd ever seen, despite the sprinkling of light freckles that lay as if strewn there, from one cheek, across her nose, to the other. The sweep of her jaw line made him want to touch it, because there wasn't anything angular about it. Her neck looked long, but he couldn't decide if that had anything to do with the odd haircut or not. What surprised him the most, for some reason, was that her appearance didn't put him off at all. He thought she was cute, verging on something very close to disturbingly good looking. There was no way in the world he could forget having seen this woman. It suddenly occurred to him that she might be on the payroll of that policeman, who seemed so suspicious of him, and might be there to get information.
"I don't remember much of anything right now," he replied, vaguely.
"I'm the one who found you," she said, taking another step into the room. Still, she held the door open with one hand, as if she was ready to bolt at any second. "On the road," she added. "You looked a lot different then."
Kris spent a few seconds trying to dredge up some memory of anything that might involve this woman, but couldn't.
"I don't remember any of that," he said. "But thanks for helping me."
"Oh!" she yipped. "I didn't mind. Anybody would have done it."
"Knowledge" leapt into his mind. It was a story he'd heard as a child. It was about the good Samaritan, from the Bible. A rush of thoughts went through his mind as he remembered being confused when a woman whose name he couldn't remember told the story. He had been in a dim room, with other children around him. Sunday School. He'd been in Sunday School. His father was the minister of the church.
He remembered how, in some recent past, he'd been in the car with his parents and they'd seen a man on the side of the road, with his arm out, and his thumb pointing skyward. His father had been driving and had slowed down. His mother had upbraided him and told him not to stop.
"You know better than to pick up a hitchhiker!" she had complained. Then she'd turned to Kris. "Don't
ever
pick up a hitchhiker!" she'd ordered him sternly. He'd only been about ten at the time, but her tone of voice had impressed him.
Then, within a week or two, the Sunday School teacher told them about the good Samaritan and, just as sternly, informed the class that it was
always
their Christian duty to help those in need.
It had been very confusing.
"I just wanted to stop and say hi," said the young woman. Her body language told him she was getting ready to leave.
"Don't go," he said suddenly.
She stopped, as if frozen. "Oh?"
"You were a good Samaritan," he said.
She blinked. Then she smiled. It was a beautiful smile. "I guess so, huh?"
"Won't you stay for a while?" he asked.
"I'm not actually supposed to be here," she said, apology in her voice. "It isn't really visiting hours."
"But it's me you're visiting," he said. "Shouldn't I have some say about that?"
"I have to go get some sleep and then pick up my little boy," she said. "I work at night. I just got off."
"Oh," he said. "Okay. Well ... thanks."
"Anybody would have done it."
"But nobody else did. You did. So thanks."
"No problem," she said. "See you later."
She turned to go.
"Hey." His voice wasn't loud, but it stopped her and her head swiveled, so that she was looking at him over her shoulder. His eyes slid down to a uniform skirt that was packed in the back with what looked like a very nice ass. "Will I?"
"What?" She looked confused.
"Will I see you later?" he asked. "I'd like to ask you some questions, but I don't want to get you in trouble with your husband."
She looked surprised. "I'm not married," she said, as if it should be obvious.
"Oh," he said. "I just thought ... "
"Are you a mobster?" she asked suddenly.
"A mobster?" His eyebrows went up. Again, he thought about the policeman, and how she might be in league with him.
"Yeah, like in organized crime." Her body turned just a little, but she still stood in the open doorway.
"I'm an author," he said, sure of that somehow. "Why would you think I was a mobster?"
"Somebody shot you!" she said, looking surprised. "Why would anybody shoot you if you weren't involved in some kind of funny business?"
"Somebody shot me?" His voice was hollow.
Lou Anne felt exasperated.
"That's what the doctor said," she explained. "Didn't they tell you that?"
"They haven't told me anything," he said. "And they for
sure
didn't say anything about me being shot." He lifted his head and looked down at his body. He lifted both hands, even though he'd already examined them. "Where did they shoot me?"
"Jess said it was a head wound," said Lou Anne. This felt all wrong, somehow. Why hadn't anybody asked him who shot him? Why hadn't they even told him he'd been shot? "You have a big bandage ... right there." She pointed to the left side of his head. He'd felt that bandage there, but there were bandages all over his head.
"Jess?"
"My best friend. She's a nurse. She's been taking care of you."
"The cute black one," he said, intuitively. He couldn't see any of the other nurses hanging out with a woman who looked like this.
"That's her," said Lou Anne. "Look. Maybe I shouldn't have said anything. Maybe they're wrong. I have to go, okay? Please don't tell anybody I told you about that ... the shooting, I mean. I don't want to get in trouble."
His worries about her being somehow involved with law enforcement flew. If she was acting, she was a pro, and there was no way that she could be an actual law enforcement officer. Not with that haircut.
"Anybody who tries to give you trouble will have to deal with me," said Kris, his voice strong. "You did me a favor, and I remember things like that."
She looked at him oddly, as her head tilted. The hair completely covered her right eye. That would drive him nuts and he wondered how she stood it. The other dark eye stared right at him, and for some reason he noticed she wasn't wearing any makeup.
"That's what they say about mobsters," she said softly. "They remember people who do them favors."
"I'm not a mobster," he said firmly. "I write books."
"Really?" She sounded excited. "I
love
to read." Then she jerked. "I
have
to go! I'll see you later."
She was out the door, which sighed closed and then reopened suddenly. That amazing head was thrust through.
"I
will
see you later," she said. "Bye!"
Then she was gone again, and the door stayed closed.
Chapter Six
The news anchor's face lit up. Her perfectly coiffed hair didn't move, even though her entire face changed. Her bright red lips split into a cultivated smile and showed a row of perfect white teeth.
"And we have an update on the continuing saga of the attempted kidnapping on Governor Custer's wife."
She then went on to explain that the governor's wife was named Chantal, as if there actually might be some idiot in the viewing area that didn't already know that. That was followed by a recap of the same news that had been splashed on every airwave and in every newspaper for three days, as if maybe the same idiot that didn't know who Chantal was also might not know that somebody had tried to kidnap her.
Oddly, perhaps, several million people who had heard it all before ... again and again ... leaned forward to listen carefully, instead if hitting the "Mute" button and talking with others nearby about something actually interesting.
"Chantal announced today that a reward is being offered to the man who saved her life on that fateful day, when three armed men tried to force her into a van while she was visiting a childcare center."
People leaned forward even farther and waved at others around them to hush.
"Chantal and the governor are offering two hundred thousand dollars for her savior to come forward, so that she can thank him."
The picture changed suddenly and there was Chantal, tall and lovely as usual, with a bevy of microphones almost obscuring her face as she spoke.
"His car was damaged in the act of saving my life," she said dramatically. "We feel we owe it to him to offer some token of our gratitude. People who act so heroically are an example to us all that, no matter who you are, you can impact other people's lives in a powerfully positive way."
The happy anchor took back over and, for possibly the hundredth time, told everyone listening that virtually nothing was known about Chantal's savior.
"Please come forward," she intoned, staring intently into the camera. "All of us here at Channel 27 want to thank you as well."
Within a hundred and twenty seconds, the switchboard of every television station that had broadcast Chantal's offer - and that was all of them - was clogged with calls from people claiming to be Chantal's savior. Women even called in, insisting that Chantal had it wrong ... that it wasn't a man who had saved her, but a woman.
911 was instantly clogged with calls as well. Over a period of fifteen minutes, while people continued to call the emergency number, fifty-four citizens who were in actual need of emergency medical response died. Thirty people had heart attacks. There were two fires, in which six people were trapped and burned to death before the firemen arrived, and fifteen collisions in which people were critically or mortally injured. Three people died of self-inflicted injuries - two who overdosed on medications and then decided not to end it all after all, and one who slit her wrists and then changed her mind as well.
The administrative number at every precinct in the city wasn't immune either. The class of people who called those numbers was a bit elevated, by comparison to those calling 911, but the result was the same.
Emergency services came to a screeching halt for half an hour, in a city with ten million people in potential need of those services.
Nobody actually cared that all the media outlets were swamped. Stories would be written for days about the event and it would be weeks before the crush of people, all claiming to have been driving the car that saved Chantal from a fate worse than death, would be sorted out. Most of that sorting was done simply by asking the claimant what color car he or she was driving that day. Almost all the rest were discarded when they couldn't produce the car. Many couldn't produce any car at all and, in fact, according to the division of motor vehicles, didn't even own a car. Hundreds insisted that they had been worried about getting in trouble for some reason and had sold the car they'd been driving. Twenty five people said they'd dumped the car in the ocean, but none could remember where, exactly. One woman, in a fit of imagination, said she'd driven the car to California, where she'd sold it to a homeless man for ten dollars, because she'd felt sorry for him.