Julia Spencer-Fleming - To Darkness And To Death

His wife, still weeping, broke free of her daughter and laid her hands over his shoulders. “It wasn’t your fault, Ed. It wasn’t your fault.”

“It was!” Ed Castle stood abruptly, walking around them in short, jerky steps, propelled by the galvanic force of his pain. “Who told her she had to see Eugene van der Hoeven? Me!”

Okay. At least this thorn she could pull. “Becky wasn’t hurt when she went to see Eugene van der Hoeven,” Clare said, projecting her voice just enough to arrest Ed Castle’s attention.

“What?” He turned to her.

“I was there. I saw the confrontation. Things got very tense, yes, but Becky walked away unhurt. In fact,” Clare smiled crookedly, “she was full of what my grandmother would have called ‘spit and vinegar.’ Yelling at Eugene that she would be coming back and he couldn’t stop her.”

Bonnie and Suzanne bumped together and wrapped their arms around each other. Ed Castle squinted at Clare. “What do you mean, things got tense?”

Clare hesitated, uneasy. She hadn’t even had a chance to tell Russ about Eugene’s behavior that morning. “You know. Some conflict. Some shouting. Eugene wouldn’t let her into the house.”

“Did he… did he lay hands on her?”

“Good Lord, no. He did… okay, he did point a rifle at her. Ordered her off his land. But I swear, nothing happened. He was overwrought, she was overwrought. She left, he put the gun back in its case, that was the end of it.”

“When was this?”

“Midmorning. About an hour after you left, I guess.”

Ed’s bald head flushed red. Bright spots appeared high on his cheekbones. “I sent her to get insurance papers from Eugene this afternoon. At lunchtime.”

A ghastly silence filled the waiting room. No one moved. Ed stared sightlessly into nothing. “Eugene van der Hoeven,” he whispered. He blinked. A tear spilled over his cheek. Clare thought, It’ll be all right, it’s grief, it’s just grief, but then Ed’s face crumpled into a tinfoil ball of rage.

“Eugene van der Hoeven!” he snarled. “I’ll kill the bastard! I’ll kill him!” Then he was gone, pounding down the hallway.

Suzanne Castle screamed. Clare turned toward her. She was crumpled in Bonnie’s arms, wailing. Her daughter looked at Clare through a swamp of disbelief. “I’ll get him,” Clare said.

She sprinted toward the elevator, but it had closed and was already descending by the time she skidded to a stop in front of it. “Stairs?” she shouted to an unnerved technician. He pointed toward the end of the hall. She thundered past him, dodged an elderly lady in a walker, and whipped the heavy door open. Down the stairs she thunked, two at a time, until she reached the first floor. She flung the door open, spotted Ed crossing the lobby, charged toward him, and slipped and fell on a sopping-wet piece of tile flooring. She hit with enough force to knock the breath from her body. The first thing she saw, when she levered herself up on one elbow, was a bright yellow plastic floor sign. piso mojado, it warned her.

“Holy cow, I’m sorry!” A young man in janitorial green sloshed his mop into a bucket and reached to help her to her feet. He had the wide-spaced eyes and curving cheeks of Down’s syndrome, knit into a look of fierce remorse. “I shoulda put the sign closer to the elevator before I started cleaning the mess. Are you okay?”

Clare squeezed his hand. “It’s my fault. I was running not looking where I was going.” Her backside was damp and smelled-she sniffed-bad.

“A little kid threw up,” he confided. “It’s still pretty stinky.”

She squeezed his hand again. “Gotta go.” She took off, his warning trailing after her: “Don’t run!”

She dodged past visitors and patients being discharged, shoving against the automatic-opening doors in a hurry to get outside, but once she had stumbled out of the lobby foyer and into the cool sunlight, she couldn’t catch a glimpse of Ed Castle.

She mentally reeled off a string of curses. She abandoned the idea of racing to the visitor parking lot in the hopes of spotting his SUV. It wasn’t as if she could stop him once he was behind the wheel. Call the police. That was the best thing she could do.

She slapped her pockets. She had left her cell phone in the car. She loped to the admissions desk, leaving a trail of wrinkled noses behind her. Holli Murray, LPN, CMA, looked at her with unconcealed dismay.

“Can I use your phone?”

“Pay phones are over there.” Murray pointed across the lobby.

“I don’t have any change on me. It’s an emergency.”

Murray opened her mouth, then paused. Her lip curled. “What is that smell?”

“The phone?”

“The admissions phone is not for the use of hospital visitors or patients.”

“Look.” Clare leaned over the desk. “Here’s the deal. You let me use the phone, and I won’t hang around you smelling like baby barf for the rest of your shift.”

Murray hooked the phone in her fingers and slid it across the desk.

Clare dialed Russ’s cell number. It rang once.

“Hello.”

She closed her eyes at the sound of his voice. “It’s me,” she said.

She could hear him smile. “Hey, you.”

“Are you anywhere near Haudenosaunee?”

“No, I’m at the Washington County Hospital.”

She stared at the phone. “Are you here to talk to the Castles?”

“How do you know about the Castles? Where are you?” he asked.

“In the lobby of the Washington County Hospital.”

He made a noise that might have been a snort. “I’m headed that way from the ER. I’ll be there in thirty seconds. I take it I’ll recognize you by your all-black outfit accessorized by a classic white collar?”

“No, but don’t worry. Unless you have a head cold, you won’t be able to miss me. Bye.” She hung up.

Murray pounced on the phone. “That didn’t sound like any emergency to me.”

Only the sight of Russ emerging from the hallway stopped Clare from telling Holli Murray, LPN, CMA, what she thought of her little admissions Nazi routine. She left the woman wiping down the receiver and crossed the lobby to his side.

“Cell phones. You gotta love ’em.” He grinned at her. “You look like you came straight from the search party. How did you know about-” He paused. Sniffed. “What in God’s name is that smell?”

“Don’t ask.” She sketched in her involvement with the young woman she had thought was Millie van der Hoeven and with the Castles. When she got to the part where she spilled the beans about Eugene and Becky’s confrontation, Russ frowned.

“How come I haven’t heard this before?”

“I was going to call you. It’s been kind of a crazy day.”

“Jesus, you can say that again.” He winced. “Sorry.”

She flipped the blasphemy away. “This is why I was calling you. When Ed heard about what happened, he just about bust his gut. He ran out looking like the wrath of God, swearing he was going to kill Eugene van der Hoeven. Eugene might not even be at Haudenosaunee-I told him the injured girl was his sister, and I doubt anyone called him from the hospital to tell him otherwise. Did you?”

Russ shook his head.

“I was worried Ed might be a threat to Eugene. Was I overreacting?”

Russ looked down at her. “No. Ed Castle’s been known to have a temper. You don’t run a successful logging business for forty years by always being Mr. Nice Guy.” He glanced at his watch. “Tell Suzanne there’ll be an officer in to speak with her and to gather as much information as possible about Becky.”

She nodded. “I’ll stay with them until Becky’s out of surgery.”

“Okay. I better head out and stop Ed before he does something stupid.”