Margaret Maron - The Right Jack

She wasn't quite sure why she permitted it.

Slowly, she dressed herself in the rust and gold suit, repacked the drab bloodstained things, and was waiting under the hospital canopy when Oscar Nauman splashed up in his yellow, much-abused MG.

The morning was still gray with rain so he had the top up. The inside of the car smelled of damp leather and the clean blend of turpentine, cologne and pipe tobacco that she had come to associate with him.

"Sorry about this damn top," he apologized.

"I like it. You don't drive like Richard Petty when it's up."

She hated his competitive driving, especially since Manhattan 's streets belonged mostly to kamikaze cabbies, cumbersome buses and lane-hogging delivery vans. How Nauman hung onto a driver's license was something she'd quit wondering about. She had personally been present at four separate issuances of careless-and-reckless citations. Either the computer hadn't yet tagged him as a scofflaw or someone in DMV kept cleaning up his record for him. Probably the latter, since Nauman's circle of acquaintances was even wider than her peripatetic mother's.

Nauman seemed to have forgotten his earlier anger. On good behavior now, he drove at a moderate speed, obeying all the laws. At the first stop light, he twisted in his seat to study her.

"How bad is it really?" he asked, turning her bandaged left hand gently in his.

"Not bad," she answered, reclaiming her hand. "There's no nerve damage. The knife cut into some arm muscle, but they've stitched it all up and if I keep it in a sling, it's supposed to stop hurting in four or five days."

The light changed and Nauman allowed a cab to cut in front of him unchallenged.

"Your mother exaggerates a bit, doesn't she?" He smiled. "I expected black eyes, bruises, and slash marks all over."

"Mother enjoys dramatics."

"And you didn't actually wrestle with that guy?"

"No."

"But you did shoot him." Nauman had been truly shocked the first time he realized that she always carried a gun. "Yes."

"That doesn't bother you?"

"It's the first time I've ever shot someone," Sigrid said slowly. "I always wondered how I'd feel if I ever had to.

Now that it's happened, I don't know."

The windshield wiper on her sides wished back and forth erratically, smearing raindrops, and she stared blankly through the obscured glass.

"I guess I'm glad I didn't kill him."

"But you would have?"

"Yes."

They'd had this discussion before,

"He may have been poor and he may not have a father, but that boy wasn't looking for food or love or even money to feed a drug habit last night, Nauman.

It was violence pure and simple. Hew as there to rape that girl and he was ready to knife anyone who got in his way."

She leaned back against the headrest wearily. "Do me a favor, will you? Swing past Metro Medical?"

"What's wrong?" The little car swerved as Nauman's attention swiftly shifted to her pale face. "Are you bleeding? Your stitches come loose?"

"No, it's-Look out!" she cried and braced herself as the left fender kissed the side of a passing van. The driver gave them an obscene gesture and roared ahead while Nauman sheepishly wheeled back to the center of his own lane.

"Sorry about that, but why Metro Medical?"

"My partner's there. Tillie. He was nearly killed in that explosion at the Maintenon last night."

"That's why I tried to find you this morning."

Sigrid was puzzled. "Because of Tillie?"

"No, John Sutton. He was killed in that blast. He teaches- taught at Vanderlyn. He and Val-his wife-met in a seminar I gave one summer at McClellan. I've known them for years."

"I'm sorry, Nauman."

"Just the damn waste," he said, showing his anger and grief. "John was one of the best. Genuine idealist. Intelligent. And Val-I went as soon as I heard. Falling apart. Told her you'd, but your mother said slashed and anyhow so crazy."

When upset or distracted, Oscar Nauman's speech became almost telegraphic as his mind raced ahead, forcing his tongue to omit words in order to catch up.

"SDS, of course, but that was years . He's teacher. Real teacher. So why?"

By now, Sigrid could follow his words with a fair degree of comprehension. "Maybe he wasn't the intended target," she suggested. "Don't forget that a man named Wolferman, a banker, was killed, too. And others are in critical condition."

"Somebody killed him without caring ?"

That would be the sticking point, Sigrid knew. Nauman was an old-style liberal with a touching belief that, given adequate housing, full bellies, and meaningful work, mankind would automatically live the Golden Rule. The resistence of pure amoral evil was not something the liberal mind liked to admit.

"The police care," she reminded him quietly.

METRO MEDICAL CENTER was one of the city's newer hospitals, with shiny scrubbable polymer surfaces, bright colors, and, judging by the flow of people through its halls, a user-friendly attitude toward visitors. While Nauman circled the area to look for a parking space, Sigrid was directed up to a waiting room on the eighth floor where she found Marian Tildon surrounded by her sober-faced parents and several friends.

Normally Tillie's wife was a vivacious redhead, with an aura of wiry strength to her small-boned figure; but after a night in and out of the intensive care unit, where tubes and electronic monitors held her husband's life together, there was no sparkle left in her face and her green eyes were dull as she stared in bewilderment at Sigrid's bandaged hand and arm sling.

"Were you there, too, Lieutenant?" Briefly, Sigrid explained she'd acquired her wounds elsewhere. "How is he?"

"They've been letting me go in for ten minutes every hour," Marian replied, automatically glancing at her wristwatch. "He opened his eyes when I was in last time, but I'm not sure he recognized me."

"I think he did. Mare," soothed her mother.

Marian Tildon stood up. "They allow two of us in at a time, Lieutenant. Would you like to see him?"

They walked down a hall painted melon and turquoise to a pair of bright yellow double doors. Marian took a deep breath and pulled one open.

Sigrid had never been inside an intensive care unit before and her first thought was how mechanized it seemed. It reminded her of the modern diagnostic garage where she had her car serviced occasionally-the semicircle of bays around a central console, with a snarl of tubes and hoses hanging down. The tubes and hoses at the garage held oil, air, and brake and transmission fluid, while here the tubes carried oxygen, saline solution, or hemoglobin.

Two nurses sat inside a hollow circular counter at the center of the large room with an uninterrupted view of the electronic monitors connected to each of the fourteen stations radiating out from the middle. A strong medicinal odor hung in the air.

There were no regular hospital beds. Instead, patients lay on what looked like armless lounge chairs upholstered in creamy yellow plastic, extended to semi-reclining position and elevated so that the nurses could work on each without bending.

Sigrid followed Marian across the room to where Tillie lay swathed in so many bandages that she did not at first recognize him. His face was discolored, his lips swollen, his eyes half-open but unfocused.

Marian leaned over and kissed his bare shoulder gently. "Charles, darling, Lieutenant Harald's here."

There was no change in Tillie's expression, but Marian whispered that the nurses had told her that surgery patients could often hear and comprehend even if they couldn't respond, so Sigrid drew nearer and tried to keep her voice brisk and matter-of-fact.

It was a very long ten minutes, made more difficult by watching the other woman attempt an upbeat manner while her voice trembled and tears spilled down her cheeks.