Hunting Sweetie Rose

CHAPTER 43.

Something small dragged itself across the skin of my hand.

I blinked my eyes until they’d cleared enough to see a fuzzy rectangle of light high up, past my feet. I blinked some more. Hospital light. Hospital bed.

A technician was swabbing my left hand. She finished and stepped away.

“What’s that for?” I asked, through a mouth full of cotton.

A different woman came to stand next to my neck. “Gunshot residue,” she said.

“Then swab my side. That’s where the bullet went in.”

“You’re damned lucky, Vlodek Elstrom, you didn’t put that bullet into your heart.”

I strained to look up at her, but her face was a blurred circle in the glare of another fluorescent fixture, this one mounted right above my head.

She moved back so I could see her. She was attractive, in her early forties, Nordic blond and blue-eyed. She wore a tan uniform shirt, dark green trousers, and a black leather gun belt.

“You’re a cop?”

“Of course I’m a cop. We get called on gunshot wounds, even if they are self-inflicted.”

“I didn’t shoot myself, damn it.” I grabbed the bed rail with my left hand, to pull myself up, but my foot tugged back from the end of the bed. “You cuff suicides up here?” I said.

“When requested.”

“I didn’t put a bullet anywhere. It was put into me.”

“By who?”

“I don’t know.”

“Would you like a lawyer?”

“I want to speak to your superior.”

“I am the superior. I’m the sheriff, Ellie Ball. I’m also the newest friend of a Lieutenant Plinnit, down in Chicago. He responded right away to the inquiry I sent. He’s quite interested in your, ah, accident, and is on his way up here.”

It explained why I was cuffed to the bed frame. Plinnit.

“It was no accident. It was no suicide. I was shot.”

“Mind if I record this?” She pulled a bed tray over and set a small recorder on it.

I rattled the cuff chain with my left foot. “Obviously, you can do whatever you please.”

She spoke the date and then the time-5:15 P.M.; I’d lost almost the whole day-named the hospital, and identified a deputy, standing against the wall, as a witness to the proceedings. “Mr. Elstrom has consented to this interview without presence of counsel to represent him,” she said to the recorder. “Right, Mr. Elstrom?”

“Why is this necessary?”

“Lieutenant Plinnit asked that your statement be taken promptly. He said he was worried you’d find another gun and finish the job.”

“How did you find me?”

“One of our locals was driving by at daybreak, and recognized Ralph’s truck parked out in the middle of nowhere. He couldn’t find Ralph, but he did hear you, moaning, not far off the road.”

Even through the drugs, I had an inspiration. “I’ll bet you didn’t find the gun.”

“Actually we did, right where you dropped it. We’re testing it now.”

“So you’re arresting me for attempted murder on myself?”

“I’m merely taking a statement, Mr. Elstrom.”

“Then remove the cuff.”

“You’re being held as a courtesy to Lieutenant Plinnit. He said he wants to arrest you. He’ll detail his charges against you when he arrives tomorrow morning.”

“What charges?”

“Suspicion of murder.”

“Who got killed?”

“You can ask the lieutenant.”

“I need to call my attorney.”

Ellie Ball and her deputy left the room.

I called Leo’s cell phone. “Where are you?” I asked when he clicked on. Loud accordion music was playing at his end.

“I just got home from Los Angeles. Ma has the stereo guy over. He’s setting up huge television speakers in the basement. I want to cry.”

“I’m in Hadlow, Minnesota.”

“Doesn’t sound as good as L.A.”

“I’ve been shot, and I am leg-cuffed to a hospital bed.”

“Definitely not as good as L.A., though I hear those movie star types go for cuffs.”

“I’m serious.”

“You’re not.”

I gave him a one-minute summary.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“Neither do I, but I’m medicated and in deep shit.”

He said he was on his way back to the airport.

“No surprise, Mr. Elstrom,” Sheriff Ellie Ball said when she came back in. “You had residue on your left hand.”

“I fired no-” I stopped, remembering the touch of someone’s hand as I lay on the ground in the woods. I remembered the explosion.

Someone had fitted my hand to a gun-and fired.

“Son of a bitch,” I said.

“I thought you’d say something like that,” she said. “What were you doing in those woods? Nearest house is a half mile away.”

I’d stumbled far enough from the shack for her not to make the connection. She would, though, when she learned I was in Hadlow tracking Darlene Taylor, and I had no doubt that she’d find that out. Hadlow was a small town.

“I’ll wait for Plinnit,” I said.

She clicked off her recorder and headed for the door.

“By the way, Chief…?” I said. My pain medication was wearing off.

“It’s Sheriff,” she said. “Sheriff Ellie Ball.”

“By the way, Chief. Something you’ve neglected: I’m right-handed.”

My pain meds were in full retreat now, chased away by the hot fire from the hole in my side.

“So what?”

I wanted to scream for a nurse, but first I wanted to scream at the sheriff.

“I want you to ponder how the hell I got gunshot residue on my left hand when I’m right-handed.”

“Oh, I thought of that, Elstrom. I’ll consider it again, and out loud, if you’d like. You had to use your left hand, if your intent was to wound your right side.”

“Where’s the sense in that?”

“To make it look like you didn’t shoot yourself. I’ll tell the nurse you might need a pill,” she said and walked out.