Just Intuition (12 page)

Kathy took in Erin
's burnt face, bandaged arms, and sizzled hair, her gaze penetrating and a little bit uncomfortable. "You look like you've been staked out in the hot desert for a week. You need to go home now." She turned back to her investigation, leaving Erin to Officer Zimmerman.

"You heard the lady, Cinder Princess," he said. "Let
's get you back home and tucked in. If you want, I'll set you up a little old lady command post like I did for my mama." He guffawed and slapped his knee at precisely the same moment Erin cuffed him on the shoulder.

"So, what
's in the bag, Zeee? You find evidence across the road?"

His Adam
's apple bobbed before he answered. "Bugs. I found a few nice fat mealworms in the ditch." He patted the plastic bag in his breast pocket. "I thought my little buddies might appreciate a treat."

"So, Picasso is the speckled frog and Merlin is—" she teased.

"No," he interrupted impatiently. "Merlin is my veiled chameleon and Picasso is a leopard gecko." He looked at her, suddenly realizing she was teasing. "I guess you knew that. They're very hungry," he added in his defense.

He dropped Erin off at home and she headed up to the front door, Fiona happily following as if she
'd actually gone for a walk. It was after noon and she had only a few hours left to make good on her promise to Allie. She thumbed the screen on her iPhone as soon as the door closed.

"Hello, Children
's Services. How can I help you?" The voice on the phone sounded bored and not eager to help at all. Erin decided to sound business-like and see if she could wheedle a few snippets of information out of professional courtesy. To her surprise she was soon chatting to the supervisor. Joan Watson said she was a distant relative, and how was her mother? Go figure. Erin knew her family was big, but she had never bothered to keep track of who begat who. She should pay more attention. There might be vast untapped investigative resources to which she was oblivious.

Joan turned out to be quite a nice lady, but a terrible gossip, which
pleased Erin. During the half hour conversation, she learned that a number of social workers had been out to Gunther Schmidt's house over the last two years after Lily's mom ran off. At first, they had considered placing the child up for adoption, but Gunther had stepped forward. As her grandfather, he'd committed to raising her himself and nine-year old Lily wanted to stay. He only had his pension to live on, so they arranged a monthly stipend to help with costs, provided the social worker checked up on her from time to time.

He was testy about the whole situation but tolerated it for about a year. After that, he became increasingly paranoid. He said he was tired of social workers going through his stuff all the time, and told them he didn
't want their money after all. The stipend stopped and since then, no one had officially been allowed on his property.

That
's when the Lutheran Ladies took up the cause. They delivered baked goods weekly under the guise of doing their Christian duty for the old widower. He ate their pies and their cakes and their Nanaimo bars until one day, they suggested his place wasn't good enough for Lily. They told him Lily needed a mother and would be better off in a God-fearing Lutheran home.

The ladies later reported to Children
's Services that Gunther went nuts. He yelled that they could all burn in hell and chased them off his property. The story varies about whether or not he had his shotgun, but the Lutheran Ladies never returned.

Joan said she had gone to the school to check on Lily herself, but the girl told her she was fine. Said she liked living with her grandpa. Her school attendance was satisfactory so there really was nothing else they could do.

Erin made notes while Joan talked. When they finished, she sat back and read through them again. She underlined the word paranoid and then she underlined Lutheran Ladies. She was pretty sure Dolores Johnson belonged to that group. She wrote a $ sign and circled it. Where was Gunther getting the money? A senior's pension was not enough to pay for beer and raise a young girl. Is that why he took it from Gina's store? Why would he want to hurt her if she didn't make him pay? What secrets did he keep?

Erin closed her notebook. She needed to talk to Gina.

CHAPTER TEN

I walk straight in through the main doors and nobody notices me at all. I
'm not sure why I came. I don't even have a plan. They were making such a big deal on the news yesterday, and I guess I'm curious.

The people that I pass look through me like I am invisible, or like I belong, which are really the same thing. I must be here to visit a relative. Everyone is going somewhere and they just can
't get there fast enough. A red-faced nurse brushes past me, her attention on an old man who's making his big getaway in a wheelchair.

"Mr. Stevenson! Mr. Stevenson," she calls. "No, dear. You can
't go that way." In a few hurried strides, she catches up to him and takes hold of the handles. He sits there like a potato. Suddenly he flaps his arms around.

"No! I have to get on the train!"

The nurse dodges his poorly aimed punch. Unfazed, she briskly pivots the chair around. She doesn't even glance toward me. Not once.

It would suck to be a nurse chasing forgetful old guys around in your multicolored cartoon character pajamas all day long. She
's telling him he can get on the train tomorrow, but now it's time for his medicine. He's still pissed and is grumbling loudly, but he can't do anything about it. Stupid old man. I'd kill myself before I ever let that happen to me. As they pass, I turn to closely examine a poster on the wall about hand washing. I wait until the nurse has wheeled him away and avoid the elevator to take the stairs up.

Halfway down the hall on the second floor I slip inside a little kitchen when no one is around. There is a sink and a coffee maker with a stack of insulated cups beside it. There is also an
ice maker and a fridge. I open it, of course, and see the shelves lined with juice boxes, cans of ginger ale, and plastic wrapped sandwiches. I take a random sandwich and pocket it. I swipe a ginger ale too, popping the top right away. It's nice and cold.

I am starting to enjoy my visit.
All the activity and the smells, and so many people to watch. Downstairs, the visitors are agitated. There is lots of pacing and checking the clock and tense faces. Up here, they are relaxed, sitting around in the patient lounge watching TV or staring out the window. It's like the worst has already happened and there is nothing more they can do but wait it out.

I pause by a laundry cart in the hallway and consider stealing a lab coat or something but I decide there is no need. No one has noticed me. I walk past and keep going. Lots of people hate the smell of hospitals but I don
't mind at all. It smells like antiseptic and cleaning products, and who doesn't like that?

Finally, I see Gina
's name on the whiteboard by the nurse's station and walk down to Room 34B. Outside, I stop for moment with my hand on the door, and almost change my mind. I take another sip of my ginger ale and swallow slowly. My heart pounds quicker when I think about what I might find inside. That's more like it.

In case she has a visitor, I open the door real slow. She is alone. There she is, lying on the bed. She looks dead to me. Her hair is squashed all flat under white gauze dressing that wraps around her head, but short choppy hairs are poking out the sides. She has one tube in her vein, one in her nose, and her face is swollen up like a jack
'o lantern. I hold my hand out in front of her mouth and remember how she looked with the duct tape. I rise up on my toes and my body begins to vibrate. I realize I am feeling a little intoxicated thinking about it. Maybe I should have brought more tape.

I grin and bend close to her for a better look. She doesn
't smell like shampoo any more. She looks like shit and smells like hospital. I can't believe I accomplished all that with one tap from the fire extinguisher and a half roll of duct tape. It was so easy, and so worth it.

Her eyelids are shut tight but they start twitching and I wonder
what she is dreaming about. Dying? I back out and quietly close the door behind me.

* * *

Erin tentatively entered room 34B. Gina was asleep. Her eyes were swollen and she would have a couple of shiners to show for a while. The small basket of flowers Erin had purchased at the hospital's gift shop seemed so inadequate. Erin slid her offering onto the tray table and sat in the plastic visitor's chair, tapping one foot.

She watched Gina
's vital signs displayed on the monitor, heart rate steady at seventy-five and blood pressure one-twenty-four over seventy-two. That, at least, was completely normal. The occasional bleep of medical equipment, the ticking of the clock and the whisper of the oxygen feed were the only sounds in the room. She fidgeted in the veritable vacuum of activity. Acutely aware of the large-faced analog clock grinding away each minute as it passed, she straightened the flower basket on the table. Then she aligned it with one edge. She straightened it once more before she was satisfied.

Someone had carelessly dropped a magazine beside the bed, so she picked it up and rifled through. She was pretty sure it wasn
't being read for the articles about motorcycles. The object of interest was probably the cover image of a scantily clad blonde astride a shiny Harley. Nearly half the pages also featured young women wearing bikinis. Erin placed it onto the table and straightened it too. Then she jumped to her feet to pace. Sitting still was not something she enjoyed.

Twenty minutes later, she sat down in the plastic chair and reconsidered the merit of the motorcycle magazine. She had already fetched a plastic tumbler of ice water, placed atop a carefully arranged napkin on the side table. The straw had been bent to a perfect ninety-degree angle. Erin thumbed halfway through the magazine and then returned to page twenty-three. That dark haired girl with the tool belt had amazing abs.

"You like my motoporn mag?" Gina tore the oxygen tubes from her nostrils and rolled over, grunting in the process.

She stood up so quickly she almost toppled the table. Like a kid caught snooping through adult TV channels, she hastily closed the magazine and put it back. "I was just reading—" Erin cut short the
clichéd lie.

One corner of Gina
's cracked lips pulled upward and she focused a pair of amused but bloodshot eyes on her. Lying in stiff wrinkled sheets, swathed in gauze bandages, Gina looked unfamiliar, for the first time truly vulnerable. Erin was unsure of how to proceed. She held the straw in the glass of ice water while Gina drank.

"Page twenty-three is my favorite too," she said after sating her thirst.

Erin placed the tumbler back on the table, squarely in the middle of the napkin. She flushed when Gina's lips curved upward again.

"You
're cute when you blush." Gina's eyes took in Erin's bandaged forearms and singed hair. "But that's not why you're here."

Erin shook her head silently.

"You want to know what I remember." Gina sighed and leaned back on the pillow. "The nurse said that your boys already came but I don't remember what I told them."

"Detective Williams is investigating the fire and the attempted
mur—what was done to you." Erin paused for a second but Gina's eyes did not stray from hers. "I talked to him this morning and he said he came by to see you about three o-clock yesterday afternoon, after I'd already gone home. He took your statement but you weren't making much sense. He's going to come see you again later."

"I sort of remember weird stuff."

"Weird how?"

"The nurse said I was ranting about an evil troll stalking me." She held two fingers to her lips.

"Maybe it was the medication," Erin offered.

"Yeah, maybe it was the drugs, but I still feel creeped out, and a bit paranoid, because I felt like I was being watched that night too."

"After I left the Stop 'N Go, what do you remember about that night?"

"Your girlfriend is really cute." Gina tried to waggle an eyebrow under the bandages.

"Stay on task here."

"Fine. I remember being pissed about how Gunther treated me. Yeah, he
's a piece of work, like me," she snorted, "but he wasn't really a bad guy. I already mentioned that he used to come in once in a while when I was closing up for the night. We would sit on lawn chairs behind the store, slap blackflies, and talk for hours. He told me all about fishing and hunting, but he didn't hunt much any more. He liked to go out and watch the animals. Any time of day or night, he knew where they were feeding, or where they bedded down. Sometimes I'd be putting out the garbage at the end of shift and I'd see him appear out of the bush across the road like a ghost. Then he'd see me and he'd get this goofy smile on his face. He'd come over and greet me like family." Gina motioned for the water and Erin passed it to her. She sucked through the straw before continuing.

"Anyway, after you left that night I remember doing the cleanup, washing the floors, restocking and facing all the shelves. That
's when I got the heebie jeebies, like someone was watching me, but there was nobody around."

Erin nodded without interrupting.

"I went to the bathroom where I keep the supplies and I cleaned the mop in the utility sink. I remember grabbing the window cleaner because I wanted to get all the slimy handprints off the front glass doors but I don't remember actually cleaning them. There's like a gap in time there. Then I remember hallucinating about us laying outside together looking at the stars." Gina looked to Erin who neither confirmed nor denied.

"I dunno," Gina said finally. "It was a nice hallucination. Better than the troll. Anyway, the next thing I remember was when the nurses cut duct tape out of my hair in Hospital Emergency."

"Do you know who did this?" Erin asked her point blank.

Gina raised a hand to cover her trembling mouth. "I think I was closer to him than my own dad. I can
't believe he would—"

"You think Gunther did this?"

"Don't you? He was so angry that I barely recognized him." Gina twisted her body under the wrinkled sheet. "Who else would it be? He's suddenly not the guy I know. If he's capable of this, what is happening to Lily?"

"Omigosh!" Erin bolted for the door.