Twenty-Seven Bones

10

Dawson was separated from Pender at the hospital, but somebody must have passed on the word that she was his fiancee, because in a few minutes the neurosurgeon, an East Indian doctor with a name that was so close to Ramalamadingdong that that was how she would remember it for the rest of her life, came out into the waiting room to tell her that they were taking Pender down to Radiology for a CAT scan.

Nobody said she could come along, but nobody said she couldn’t. She followed the gurney to the elevator, then took the stairs to the basement. For pure, concentrated suspense, waiting alone in a molded plastic chair in the corridor outside the swinging doors marked RADIOLOGY beat everything that had come before, because there was nothing she could do but wait. No cave to find, no buckets to pass, no stretchers to bear.

There was a clock at the end of the hall, by the elevator. She couldn’t see the second hand, but the minute hand was moving so slowly she decided the clock had to be broken. She closed her eyes and forced herself to count to a hundred; when she opened them to see if the minute hand had moved, Dr. Ramalamadingdong was standing over her.

“How’d it go? Is he going to be all right?”

“We didn’t get a chance to run the scan. Follow me.”

“How are you feeling?” Chief Coffee asked Lewis.

“Much better.”

“Do you remember-”

Lewis interrupted him. “Like I’ve been telling everybody, I don’t remember much about last night.”

“I wasn’t going to ask you about last night.”

“I’m sorry, go on.”

“I was going to ask you about last Thursday, when Agent Pender and I informed you that Hokey had been murdered.”

“What about it?”

“Do you remember the last thing you asked me, just before we parted company?”

“Afraid not,” said Lewis.

“You asked if you could be present when we hanged whoever was responsible for Hokey’s death.”

“And…?”

“And the answer is yes, you will be.”

Dawson’s heart sank. She followed Dr. Ramalamadingdong numbly through the swinging doors and saw Pender struggling to sit up on the gurney, with a tech and a nurse fighting to hold him down.

“Ed!”

“Dawson?”

He stopped struggling, went limp. The tech and the nurse stepped back. Dawson found herself standing beside the gurney without any memory of having crossed the room. They had started to unwind Pender’s bandage-he was trailing gauze like the Mummy. “The little girl?” he said hoarsely.

“She’s fine-she’s back at the Core with Holly.”

“Thank God.”

The doctor cleared his throat. Dawson turned, slightly surprised-for a moment there she’d forgotten there was anybody else in the room. “I’ll leave you alone with your fiancee for a moment,” he told Pender, in a hearty doctor’s voice. Then, sotto voce, to Dawson, “Persuade him to let us do the CAT scan-we want to be sure there are no hematomas.”

“Fiancee?” said Pender, when they were alone.

Dawson felt herself blushing. “I had to tell them that so they’d let me ride in the ambulance.”

“Did they catch the Epps?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Apgard?”

“He’s the one who saved Dawn.”

“He’s also the one who had the Epps kill his wife, then he killed Bendt.”

“Are you sure?”

“The damn fools wrote it down.” He raised his head, wincing, looked around wildly. “The manuscript-where’s the manuscript?”

“That must have been what Chief Coffee was reading when he came out of the tunnel. He couldn’t tear his eyes away.”

Pender’s head fell back onto the gurney. “That’s okay, then-it’s all in there. I even dog-eared the pages.”

Dawson bent over him, stroked his brow. “Ed, the doctor wants to take a CAT scan, make sure there’s no…I don’t know, hema something.”

“Subdural hematoma,” said Pender, who’d been down that road before. “Scout, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last couple of years, it’s that you can’t kill a Pender by hitting it over the head.”

Dawson laughed. That was a mistake-it opened the emotional floodgates, and before she knew it she was sobbing, her head resting on Pender’s massive chest while he stroked her hair. “I thought I’d lost you,” she said, when she could speak again. Her head was facing away from him, which made it easier to talk. “I was so scared I made a vow that if you and Dawn got through this, I’d turn myself in.”

“Lewis Apgard, I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Francis Bendt, and for suborning the murder of Lindsay Hokansson Apgard. Both of which are hanging offenses. And I’m sure we’ll be adding more charges as the investigation progresses. Say, two counts of kidnapping, two counts of attempted murder-I’ll let you know. In the meantime, you have the right to remain silent-anything you say may be taken down and used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney-if you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand these rights?”

“Sure, but-”

“Do you wish to waive them at this time?”

“Chief, this is crazy-the Epps killed Hokey. And Bendt-I saw them Friday night, at their house, when they were supposed to be in Puerto Rico. They must have snuck back or something.”

But having read the dog-eared pages of the Epp manuscript, and never having been much of a proponent of the affective school of interviewing anyway, Julian was in no mood for any of Apgard’s bullshit.

“Stick it where the monkey hid the nuts,” he said as he handcuffed the Baby Guv to the rail of his hospital bed.

Dawson luxuriated in the touch of Pender’s hand on her hair. He had enormous hands, but a surprisingly gentle touch.

“You know, I’ve had two or three concussions tonight, so maybe I’m not thinking too clearly,” he whispered as she raised her head from his chest. “But it seems to me you put yourself in a no-win situation. And you’re not the only one who’s gonna lose. What about the wife and kids of that researcher who died? If I were them, about the last thing I’d want is to have the whole goddamn can of worms opened up again.”

“Horseshit,” said Dawson.

“Granted. But what about me? What about us? You gonna throw that all away for some silly superstition?”

“No,” said Dawson.

“Because if you think…What?”

“I said I made a vow, I didn’t say I was gonna keep it. I just don’t want to bullshit myself as to why.”

“Fair enough,” said Pender. “Now help me get the hell out of here-I hate hospitals.”

“No way,” said Dawson. “You’re here ’til the doctor says you’re okay.”

“Traitor.”

“Only for the best of causes.”