Hollyhock Ridge (32 page)

“Come with me,” he told Kay and Claire, who followed him to
his squad car.

By the time they got to the mouth of the holler, they could
see black smoke rising above the treetops.

“Oh, no,” Claire breathed, and Kay grasped her hand.

They started out the narrow, rutted road, but had to pull
over to let an ambulance get past.

“This is all my fault,” Kay said.

“No, this is my fault,” Claire said.

“Ladies, this is most likely the fault of the criminals who
stole the vehicle,” Shep said. “One of the most recent developments in drug manufacturing
is the mobile lab, the better to evade detection by law enforcement. They
probably had a shake-and-bake lab in that station wagon, and the chemicals
outgassed in the interior, which is sealed. One spark or sudden influx of
oxygen, and the whole thing blows up.”

The chief pulled off the road a hundred yards back from the
barn, from which flames were shooting high up in the air. Pieces of ash and
burning hay were floating on the breeze.

“No, no, no,” Claire said.

Kay grasped her hand and held it.

Shep got out of the car, saying, “You two stay here; it’s
not safe to get any closer.”

He spoke to a fireman who was walking their way, and then
came back and leaned down to the open window.

“He’s alive,” Shep said, but his expression was grim.
“They’re taking him to town and then airlifting him to Morgantown.”

Claire dissolved into tears, and Kay put her arm around her.

“He’s strong,” she told Claire. “And he’s still alive. We’ll
meet them there.”

“I’ll drive you,” Shep said.

A few minutes later the ambulance rolled past and Shep
turned the car around.

“I’ll turn on the lights,” he said. “We’ll be there in
thirty minutes.”

When they arrived, the waiting room was full of police
officers. It took a few moments before Claire realized they were all there for Laurie.
Kay greeted the few she knew, and Skip arrived soon after them.

“I came as soon as I heard,” he said. “My mom notified the
IWS to start the prayer chain.”

“Who are all these people?” Claire asked him.

“People who worked with Laurie,” Skip said.

Another uniformed officer arrived along with a tall, thin,
pretty young woman with long dark hair. She looked familiar to Claire.

“That’s his ex and his best friend,” Skip said.

The woman was in tears. She went to the desk, showed them an
ID, and then was allowed to go back. The officer who had arrived with her
greeted his colleagues, who all had grim faces, and then sat a little way apart
from them. He put his face in his hands, his elbows on his knees.

“Why was she allowed to go back?” Claire asked. “They’re
divorced.”

“Her license probably still says ‘Purcell’ on it,” Kay said.

Claire felt helpless and frustrated.

“What can we do?”

“Let’s go get everyone coffee,” Kay said.

Claire followed Kay to the cafeteria, where they were
allowed to borrow two trays to take coffee back for everyone. Claire helped
pass them around, and introduced herself as Chief Fitzpatrick’s daughter, which
gave her immediate access to their inner circle.

“Laurie saved my life,” one officer told her. “I was still a
rookie, green as grass. We did a routine traffic stop together; the guy turned
out to be a wanted felon. He reached over to take something out of his glove
box; I thought it was the car registration, but Laurie saw the gun. He pushed
me out of the way and took a bullet in the shoulder. I’ll never forget that;
guy could’ve killed me.”

“He drove me to the hospital the night my daughter was born
two months prematurely,” another one said. “Stayed with us all night, made
calls, and drove to Oakland to fetch my mother-in-law. He’s been like a father
to me.”

“I’ve known Laurie all my life,” an older man said. “I
worked for his father while Laurie was still in school. Larry was tough on him,
but he was the apple of his eye. When Laurie graduated from the academy, his
old man cried like a baby. It was the proudest day of his life.”

Claire and Kay listened to story after story about Laurie.
Everyone had something good to say about him, or recounted some generous, kind
thing he did for them. As time went on, more and more people arrived, including
Laurie’s neighbors, friends of his parents, friends of his late wife, church
members, sheriffs from two adjoining counties, state police officers, and other
people Claire didn’t have a chance to meet.

The whole time, the man who had arrived with his ex-wife sat
a little apart, and stared into space with red-rimmed, weary eyes. Finally,
Claire sat down next to him and introduced herself. He said his name was Bobby
and shook her hand.

“He was my best friend,” Bobby said. “This is all my fault.”

“How can that be?” Claire said.

“You don’t know?”

Claire shook her head, not wanting to admit all the gossip
she’d listened to.

“He left his job because of me,” he said. “If I hadn’t got involved
with Daphne, he’d still be chief and none of this would have happened.”

“You don’t know that,” Claire said. “I don’t think they were
happy together.”

Bobby shook his head.

“Daphne adored him,” Bobby said. “She only left him as an
ultimatum, to get him to stop drinking. The thing between us just happened. Too
many nights spent worrying about him, looking for him in every sleazy bar he’d
passed out in and then dragging him home. We got close because we both loved
him. I mean, we do love him. If he dies, I will never forgive myself.”

Daphne came through the swinging doors and walked straight
toward them.

“You Claire?” she asked.

Daphne’s mascara was a little smeared, but she was still a
beautiful woman. She had dark brown eyes, so dark you couldn’t see where the
pupils ended and the irises began. Her fingernails were expertly manicured, and
the complicated abstract design exactly matched her toenails. Her hair had been
blown out to a shiny waterfall of deep brown, not quite black. Claire felt
self-conscious of her own, more casual appearance as Daphne looked her up and
down.

“Yes,” Claire said.

“Come with me,” she said.

Daphne didn’t look at anyone else, not even at Bobby; it was
as if he did not exist.

Claire got up and followed her back through the swinging
doors. If Daphne was worried anyone would stop her, she didn’t show it. She
held her head high as she tip-tapped down the hallway in her spike heels, her
long dark hair swinging behind her, and didn’t stop until they reached a
curtained cubicle.

“He looks like hell,” she said to Claire. “Only one person
can be in here at a time; if anybody questions you, show them this.”

She peeled off the visitor’s sticker that was adhered to her
blouse and stuck it on Claire’s shirt. She looked Claire up and down.

“He certainly has a type, doesn’t he?” she said.

Claire realized then why Daphne looked so familiar. Other
than eye color, they could have been mistaken for sisters.

“Thank you,” Claire said, and steeled herself to go inside.

“They said he asked for you on the way here,” Daphne said.
“Otherwise, it would be me.”

With that, she turned and walked back down the hallway,
wiping her eyes as she went.

Claire parted the curtain and went inside the cubicle.
Laurie was on a hospital bed, covered from his feet to the waist with a sheet.
His clothes were heaped in bloody tatters on the floor; it looked as if they
had been cut off his body. Broken glass sparkled on the floor around his bed. His
hands and arms were swaddled in bandages; a gash on his forehead was held
together with a butterfly bandage; there was dried blood on his face and neck;
an oxygen mask was affixed over his mouth and nose.

His chest, dotted with round rubber stickers holding
electrodes connected to wires, was crisscrossed with shallow cuts. The wires
adhered to his chest were attached to rolling monitors on one side of the bed.
One IV was inserted in his arm, connected to a bag of dark red blood hung up on
the IV pole; another attached a port in his neck to a large bag of clear liquid
and a smaller bag of yellow liquid.

A nurse was recording his vital signs, and she glanced at
Claire’s sticker.

“You the wife?”

Claire nodded, her eyes fixed on Laurie.

“He’s stable but barely,” the nurse said. “They lost him on
the way here but were able to revive him. He has an advance directive on file
at the state registry that calls for no resuscitation, but in the heat of the
moment, emergency personnel are focused on saving people, not checking to see
if they have a living will.

“He has chemical burns on his arms and hands. Whatever
chemical he inhaled after the explosion may have permanently damaged his lungs
and possibly his eyes. He was in so much pain that they’ve put him on a Roxanal
drip; that’s morphine. His pulse is too thready and his pressure’s too low to
do surgery, so we’re making him comfortable and giving him fluids and blood.
We’ll move him to ICU as soon as there’s a bed available; if he stabilizes,
then they’ll reassess.”

“Can I stay?”

“Sure, sweetie,” the nurse said. “Someone will be in to
clean him up. Press the red button on the remote if you need anything. He’s
wired for sound in here so if anything happens we’ll know it.”

Claire sat down. Her eyes went from Laurie’s face to the
heart monitor. Even with all the noise in the ER, she felt she could hear her
own heart beating as well.

A man wearing green scrubs came in and said, “Hey there,
campers,” in way too loud and chipper of a voice.

“Hello,” Claire said.

“I’m gonna get him cleaned up and put a gown on him,” he
said. “I hear he’s headed to ICU soon.”

Claire asked if she could help.

The man said “sure” and shrugged his shoulders.

He hummed under his breath, and for some reason, this
irritated Claire to no end. He picked up Laurie’s pants and shirt. They were
stiff with blood and smelled like copper pennies. He threw them in a lined bin
marked, “Biohazard.” As he worked on Laurie, he was a little too brisk for
Claire’s liking, and not nearly as gentle as Claire wanted him to be, but she
bit her tongue.

Claire took the pan of warm water and sponge he prepared,
and gently washed Laurie’s face as well as she could around the oxygen mask.
There was blood in his hair, and in every crease on his face.

 “What happened to him?” the man asked.

“A car blew up,” Claire said. “He’s a policeman.”

“Well, we won’t hold that against him,” the man said.

Claire gave him a look that conveyed her opinion of that
remark.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ll just keep my mouth shut now.”

Claire bathed his upper body. The man then swabbed his cuts
with an orange-red liquid and applied antibiotic ointment to them. Claire noted
the puckered shoulder wound where years ago he had been shot saving his fellow
officer.

Once he was bathed, with a hospital gown on, and covered in
a sheet and several warm blankets, the man quietly took his leave, turning the
lights down as he left.

Claire pulled her chair up next to the bed. Using the
remote, she lowered the bed until her face was level with Laurie’s.

“I’m going to be here when you wake up,” she said. “I won’t
leave you.”

Nurses came and went, and each one said he would be moved to
ICU soon, but he was still in the ER four hours later. Claire was finally
overcome with fatigue, and could hardly keep her eyes open. She put her head
down on her arms on the bed for a minute to rest her eyes. She lost track of
time. She could hear the ER noise and the beeps of the monitors, so she wasn’t
quite asleep, but she still couldn’t seem to wake up.

She heard someone in the room and looked up.

Laurie was standing at the foot of his bed.

“What happened to this guy?” he asked, gesturing to the bed.

“The car blew up,” she told him. “It’s all my fault.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head.

“But I wanted you to find the car,” she said.

“It was my job to find the car,” he said. “If it hadn’t been
me it might have been Donald or Goofy.”

“Everyone’s here; your best friend, your ex-wife …”

“I know,” he said.

“You need to get back in bed,” she said. “You need to rest
so you can get out of here.”

“I am out of here,” he said. “Don’t you hear that? They’re
playing our song.”

Claire could hear Claire de Lune being played on a piano, faintly,
as if from far away. A door opened, one that Claire hadn’t noticed before, over
in the corner on the other side of the bed. The bright light that streamed in
was blinding after sitting in the darkness for so long. There seemed to be a
crowd of people in the hallway beyond it.

“They’re waiting for me,” Laurie said.

There was a new, loud, insistent noise.

“Time to go,” he said.

“Wait,” Claire said.

“It’ll be all right,” he said. “You’ll see.”

Claire awoke with a sucking feeling in her stomach, as if
she had just gone over the tallest drop on a roller coaster. A nurse rushed in,
quickly followed by another.

Claire realized the loud noise was the alarm on Laurie’s
heart monitor. The display showed a long flat line, unrelieved by peaks and
valleys.

“No,” Claire breathed. “Laurie.”

When Claire got back to the waiting room, there were still
many people there from before, and most were crying. Kay reached her first, and
pulled her into a warm hug.

“Oh, honey,” she said. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Sonny was there with Kay, and he patted Claire’s arm. When
Kay let go, he put an arm around each of them.

“It’s all my fault,” Kay said.

“No,” Claire said. “It just happened.”

Chief Shepherd from Pendleton came up to Claire and shook
her hand.