Sorrow's crown

SIXTEEN

I knelt beside by grandmother. The bullet had passed through the thick folds and layers of clothing near her neck. The heavy sweater had scorch marks on it, and her hair had been slightly singed. I tore the tiny rip open wider to get a better look, and vaguely wondered why I was using my left hand instead of my right. The ridge of her shoulder had an inch-long crease that had mostly crusted, yet still dribbled a little blood.

"I'm fine, dear, I'm fine."

"You're bleeding."

"No, look," she said. "It has already stopped. Let me attend to you."

"Me?"

I stared down at myself and saw my right hand still opened into a claw as though waiting for Jocelyn to press her throat back into it. My arm dangled oddly and was entirely drenched with blood.

"Jesus," I said. "I don't feel it."

"Jonathan, you're in shock."

"That's pretty helpful."

"We've got to staunch the wound." She stretched like she would hug me or pull me down onto her lap. Instead, she lifted my jacket and untucked my shirt. "You're not wearing a belt."

"So I put on a little weight. I think you're supposed to tear the hem of your skirt at a time like this."

"Perhaps if I was your love interest and we were fleeing mafiosi."

My arm kept leaking. I shook free of my jacket and Anna yanked out the lining, making a tourniquet. It wasn't until she said, "There," that I started feeling woozy.

Lowell hadn't used his siren. Like Nick Crummler, he simply appeared in the room, his gun drawn but pressed down tightly to the side of his leg.

I hadn't realized Nick was even still in the house. He looked over his shoulder at Lowell and muttered, "Oh hell."

Lowell took it all in, stood beside me, and said, "Your phone ain't worth shit."

"I've begun to realize that."

"Ambulance is on its way."

Harnes and Jocelyn lay unconscious on the floor, tangled in the dark corner that reminded me of the tapered lighting effect of Crummler's cell. Li Tai sat in the center of the room, her hands folded in her lap, showing no emotion besides a ruddy glow of vindication lighting her visage. Nick and Lowell eyed each other very carefully.

"This is Nick, huh?" Lowell asked without really asking. I nodded. "Think you can explain this all to me in less than an hour, Jonny?"

I thought it would take a month to clear it up, but the short form only took ten minutes.

"Who killed the guy out in the limo?"

"Maybe cancer, or maybe Harnes poisoned him.”

“Why?"

"He's a psychopath."

"Christ, we're going to have Wallace exhuming bodies for weeks."

Nick Crummler scratched at his beard and said, "Well, now that we all know my brother is innocent, I guess I'll be going."

"You killed a man," Lowell said.

"Whatever he was, he was less than a man. If you'd seen him in action you'd understand that and would've done it yourself. I saved the kid's life."

Lowell was actually three months younger than me. He nodded and said, "I know, but you realize I can't just let you leave."

"I have to admit I was hoping."

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't give me a bothersome time here."

Nick cocked his head, considering it. "I understand your situation, Deputy Tully. But if I get taken in there're a lot of reasons a man like me can get put away for good that have nothing to do with what I'm arrested for." He pointed at Harnes, but Lowell didn't turn his head. "It's happened before, and I wound up in that asylum under the care of a bastard who liked to wear steel-toed boots to crack ribs and sap somebody three times a day for the fun of it." He smoothed his beard again. "I'm sorry, I can't go with you."

"I wasn't actually asking," Lowell said.

"No, I figured you weren't."

I'd helped to put an innocent man inside the perverted corridors of Panecraft, and had been forced to watch him slowly dying in sorrow because I hadn't had enough faith in him to help out when I should have.

Shit.

Anna knew what was coming and said, "Oh, Lord."

I spun and caught Lowell in the stomach with my left. It was like smashing my knuckles into a marble statue. He looked more startled than hurt, but dropped back a few steps with his mouth open and raising the gun. Nick had already vanished. Lowell let out a short bark of disgust, his bunched muscles shifted beneath his uniform, and I wondered if I should shut my eyes or take it like a man. I shut my eyes. He hit me only twice, but it hurt worse than when Sparky had kicked the crap out of me all over the place. I went to my knees trying to suck wind and retch at the same time. It was like that for a minute, and then my mind whirled pleasantly for a moment and I felt warm and comfortable. I screamed from the bottom of my nuts when he jerked my wounded right arm, snapped the cuffs on me and dragged me across the yard and threw me into the back of his parked police car without a word. I sat staring over at the dead chauffeur's head lolling against his steering wheel until the ambulance and other police arrived. Lowell took me to jail without a word.

Five days later I sat in a hospital bed with my good arm cuffed to the railing, trying to think of something to do besides play with the tiny cups of mashed potatoes and gelatin. Sheriff Broghin came in and took a slow gander at me. He seemed highly pleased with himself that the wheel of our situations had turned again. The last time I'd seen him he'd been vomiting on Alice Conway's floor. Now I was under arrest for obstruction of justice.

He said, "Lowell had a reason to put you in here, but he wouldn't give me all the details, and now he's changed his story some."

"When did he do that?" I asked.

Broghin smiled and his enormous gut shook with the force of the laughter he continued to swallow. He took deep breaths and let out little sniffles of giggles. "Two days ago. So I'm forced to let you go, you pain in the ass." He grinned as he uncuffed me, and leaned so far over the bed I had to pull back or be smothered. "I'll tell you this though, Jonny Kendrick. You pissed off about the only good friend you had, and he's truly a man to be reckoned with. I've got the feeling that the next time you tangle with him he's really going to put the serious hurt on you." He picked up the little cups and headed for the door. "Now you just lie there and reflect on that some."

I did.

The cops finally got the full story and released Li Tai late the following afternoon after an interpreter flew up from Manhattan and translated the woman's entire twelve-year-long imprisonment, as well as her preceding years as Theodore Harnes' mistress. Since she didn't understand English, and never spoke, Dr. Brennan Brent had allowed her to participate in all activities, despite her constant attempts at escape. The guards called her Rapunzel because of her long hair and flair for pleating together ropes in the recreation room which she had at various times used to attempt climbing from her window, strangling Brent, and hanging herself.

Anna, Oscar Killion, and I sat at her kitchen table eating breakfast. Even before Broghin stole my hospital food I'd been starving. Oscar had his arm around me and occasionally tugged me to him during his sporadic but generous fits of emotion.

"She's got a case that will net her millions," Oscar said. "The way these reporters are trolling around the Grove, we're going to be seeing her on talk shows for a long time to come. She'll be the queen of Hong Kong when she gets back!"

"If she does indeed return," Anna said. I noticed the stiffness in her shoulder was nearly gone already as she speared more sausages and placed them on Oscar's plate. "Apparently Li Tai has always wanted to see America, and despite her awful travails she has never let Theodore Harnes steal that passion from her. Her first stop will be Disneyland."

"I've never been there, either," I said. "What's going to happen to Harnes?"

Oscar jabbed loudly at his food, and Anna's lips drew into a pale line. "He's gone, of course. Fled the country during the night. His lawyers were extremely effective, and there truly isn't much concrete evidence against him. Not until the bodies of his victims are exhumed."

"I was hoping he'd wind up in Panecraft."

She smiled. "Yes, poetic justice would be so fulfilling.”

“And Jocelyn?" I asked. I knew the answer but didn't want to know it.

"He took her with him."

"Damn it."

My grandmother put her arm around me even as Oscar did the same, and years spun from the three of us. I thought they might elope one day soon, on a gorgeous morning like this one.