J. Jance - Long Time Gone

“You’re with me,” I said.

Sticking close to the wall of the house where the Dunleavys had once lived-the house where Elvira Marchbank had died-Mel and I made our way up the shared driveway. When I could peek around the corner, I half expected to see the run-down building and the weedy backyard Sister Mary Katherine had described. Instead I saw a state-of-the-art greenhouse and a well-tended expanse of yard.

From the greenhouse came the sound of voices. I motioned for Mel to be still in hopes we could hear what was being said.

“I’m leaving now,” Bill Winkler announced. “The only question is whether or not you’re coming with me.”

“I’m afraid,” Raelene returned. “There are too many cops.”

“And they all know that I shot a cop, too,” Winkler replied. “Even if they haven’t already, they’ll figure out the rest of it soon enough. We’ve got to get out of here. Now.”

As Winkler spoke, he and Raelene stepped out of the greenhouse.

There they are, I thought. But where the hell is Sister Mary Katherine?

The words had barely crossed my mind when Sister Mary Katherine appeared, stepping like an apparition out from a sheltered spot between the greenhouse and a towering laurel hedge.

“You won’t get away,” she said. “I know who you are.” She turned on Bill Winkler and added, “When I first saw you, I thought I was seeing a ghost. But you’re his son, aren’t you-Detective Winkler’s son. You look just like him.”

“Who the hell are you?” Bill Winkler asked.

But Raelene knew the answer. “She’s the nun I told you about,” Raelene said. “She’s the one who started all the trouble.” I heard the note of rising hysteria in Raelene’s voice. By then she must have realized that things were going terribly wrong.

I knew for sure that Bill Winkler had a weapon. But the automatic wasn’t in his hand right then, and he and Raelene were so mesmerized by the unexpected appearance of Sister Mary Katherine that I knew this was our only chance.

“Come on,” I whispered over my shoulder to Mel. “You go for Raelene; I’ll take Winkler.”

Adrenaline is a wonderful thing. I was never much good at distance, but I can sprint like hell when I have to. So can Mel, I came to discover. We burst out from behind the house, screaming like banshees. I hit Bill Winkler with a full-body tackle before his hand got anywhere near his pocket. We both fell backward, and the weight of our two bodies together was enough to shatter the glass in the greenhouse wall.

I heard the sound of falling glass tinkling around us. It seemed to be falling in slow motion, reflecting back the sun as though someone had thrown out an armload of diamonds. Somehow Winkler had managed to extract the automatic from his pocket as we fell, but when he hit the ground the impact of the fall popped the weapon out of his hand. It flew up in the air and landed a good ten feet away. Winkler hit the ground hard and was immediately out cold. Looking back, I could see Raelene and Mel still struggling on the wet ground.

Kendall Jackson arrived on the scene first. He grabbed me by the shoulder, dragged me off Winkler, and hauled me to my feet. “You’re hurt,” he said.

That was when I realized there was blood dripping down the side of my face and running into my eye. As I was unable to see, my first instinct was to use my sleeve to wipe it away.

“Don’t,” Jackson admonished. “There’s glass everywhere. You’ll get it in your eye.”

Out of my other eye I saw Detective Ramsdahl pull Raelene to her feet and snap a pair of handcuffs on her. As soon as she could, Mel hurried over to me. “Damn,” she said. “Come on. I’ll take you to the hospital.”

“Does anyone want this?” Sister Mary Katherine asked. I looked around in time to see that she was using her thumb and forefinger and gingerly holding Bill Winkler’s weapon by the barrel.

“Isn’t that how you’re supposed to do it?” she asked. “So you don’t wreck the fingerprints on the handle?”

Having just cuffed the unconscious Bill Winkler, Kendall Jackson reached for his pocket. “That’s exactly right, lady,” he said. “You hang on to that thing while I find an evidence bag.”

Mel wasn’t willing to wait around for more cops or an ambulance. She took me to the emergency room herself-in a hell of a hurry. Instead of going to Harborview, she opted for the U. Dub hospital only a mile or so away.

People who arrive at ERs puking, bleeding, screaming, or all of the above tend to get treated faster than those who have invisible ailments or who are willing to suffer in silence. I was only bleeding, and what Mel did wasn’t exactly screaming, but once she got the young resident’s attention and he took a good look at her, he was suddenly far more interested in my plight. It turned out that Mel Soames was handy to have around for more than one reason.

She spent the next two and a half hours sitting beside my gurney in the ER while the doctor picked glass out of my face and hands. They had to shave half my head to sew up a jagged cut that went from my hairline to just over my ear. Mel teased me that eventually it would look just like Harry Potter’s scar, only in the wrong place. Then she took me home.

As we rode up in the Belltown Terrace elevator I noticed the blood-my blood this time-that was spattered on both her blouse and blazer. The knees of her slacks were grimy with grass stains. “I can’t take you anywhere nice,” I said.

She gave me a rueful grin. “I told you I was messy.”

The doc had given me something for the pain before we left the hospital. By the time we got to my condo, I was done for. When she began stripping off my clothes, I was too out of it to object. Once I was in bed, she closed the blinds, shut off the lights, and left me drifting off to sleep.

When I awakened, it was daylight. The clock beside the bed said 10:09, which meant I had been asleep for the better part of twelve hours. My head hurt, I was still feeling groggy, and I had to pee like a racehorse. A look in the mirror was nothing short of scary. Half my head had been shaved, the stitches were ugly as hell. My face and hands were pitted with dozens of cuts that hadn’t been big enough to sew up.

Showering was a painful process. I remembered the doc telling me not to get my head wet, so I did the best I could. When it came time to towel off I found out there were plenty of tiny shards of glass that he hadn’t managed to locate with his tweezers.

It was when I was coming out of my bathroom that I smelled coffee and heard the sound of voices. I stood at the door long enough to pick out Beverly Piedmont’s voice as well as Mel’s, chatting away quite happily. Realizing I had company, I went back to the closet and found something to wear.

“There he is,” Beverly said cheerfully when I finally wandered down the hall and into the dining room. “Alive,” she added, “but looking a little the worse for wear.” Of course, since she was still in a wheelchair, I didn’t figure Beverly had much room to talk.

I was astonished to discover that my living room was full of people, including Harry I. Ball and Ross Connors in addition to both my grandparents. Sister Mary Katherine was there along with Sister Elizabeth and a third nun I’d never met before. What the hell were all these people doing here? They all had coffee cups and plates loaded with food. Couldn’t they all do Sunday brunch somewhere else?

Mel Soames came in from the kitchen just then carrying the coffeepot and wearing the pair of sweats that I keep on hand in the guest bedroom, which meant that she’d evidently spent the night.

“They came over to check on you and see how you’re feeling,” she said.