Jeffery Deaver - Bloody River Blues

"Oh, I'd guess it must've been-"

"That's okay," Pellam said, "I'll walk."

"To your camper?" one cop called. "Say, that's a long walk."

Another said, "Couple miles, easy."

He found a pay phone outside a closed deli and finally got the front desk.

Yessir, Mr. Weller had waited in the lobby until nine, then left with another gentleman. They were going to dinner. Would this be Mr. Pellam by any chance?

"Yes. Did he leave a message for me?"

Weller had. Pellam was to meet him at the Templeton Steak House at nine-thirty.

An hour and a half ago.

"Where is that?' ''

According to the young man's blithe directions, it was a half hour from Maddox.

"I'm calling from a pay phone. You wouldn't happen to have their number, would you?"

"Well, I do. Were you thinking of having the steak?"

"What?"

"I was wondering if you were going to eat there or if you were going to meet Mr. Weller. Because if you were going to meet Mr. Weller, he was leaving the restaurant at ten-thirty. He had an eleven o'clock flight out of Lambert Field."

"He's checked out?"

'That's right. Believe he mentioned a trip to London."

Pellam sighed. "And the other gentleman? Mr. Telorian."

"I believe he was flying to Los Angeles tonight. I should say, sir, Mr. Weller was pretty anxious to see you. He asked a number of times at the desk if you'd called."

Pellam was staring at the number pad on the phone.

"Hello?" the pleasant desk clerk asked.

"Still here."

"Don't be too fast to pass up Templetons. For my money, best T-bone in the county. You still want that number?"

Pellam declined.

He dug another quarter out of his pocket, made a call and sat down on the curb.

A half hour later the headlights of Stile's Taurus swept around a curve, and the car braked to a stop beside him. It was the first car he had seen on this road all night.

"What you're experiencing is called phantom pain."

"Like Ghostbusters," Donnie Buffett said. The woman smiled.

Buffett shook his head as he laughed at his own tiny joke. Mostly, though, he was studying her. All right, she was a doctor and she was a woman. Well, Buffett knew better than to think it was weird that Dr. Weiser, this famous SCI specialist, wasn't a man. But he could not get over what kind of woman she was: young, early thirties, a sleek, pretty face, short, punky auburn hair, a pug nose, a chin dimple. Fingernails painted glossy white. Lipstick red as a stop sign. Under a white lab coat was a silk blouse printed with red and green and blue geometric shapes. And-in addition to dark stockings and black ankle boots that had hooks, not eyes, for the laces, she wore a black leather skirt. Almost a miniskirt.

When she'd entered the room, the woman had stuck her hand out, firmly shook his, and said, "Wendy Weiser. Your SCI doctor. You're the cop, right?"

Buffett had cocked his head, brushed off the surprise, and said, "Hope you don't mind if I don't stand up."

"There you go," she had said. "Today's men. No chivalry to speak of."

Then Weiser had plopped down in a chair and started right off talking, flashing her green eyes at him. She repeated a lot of what Dr. Gould had said. She didn't use the word "nonambulatory," though her message was no better than his.

She explained the pain he had been feeling in his legs was common in SCI trauma and was called "phantom pain." That's when he had made the Ghostbusters comment.

Now, as Buffett studied her'outfit, Weiser suddenly hopped up. She strode to the dotir and swung it closed, then returned. "There are rules, but… what's life without risks, huh?"

"I'm a pretty safe man to be in a closed room with, wouldn't you say? I mean, I can't exactly chase you around the room.

When I get a wheelchair you better watch out."

"You and me, we'll race someday." She examined him * with a curious smile. "Sounds like the gunman didn't get your sense of humor."

"Hey, Doctor." Buffett looked overtly grave. "If you're gonna help me I'm gonna help you. I'm gonna teach you to speak cop."

"I say something wrong?"

"Shooter."

"I'm sorry?"

"Not gunman."

"Oh. You don't say gunman?"

"On TV they say gunman. We say shooter. Or perp."

"Perp?"

"Perpetrator. Perp."

"That's great." Her eyes widened. Buffett did not for a minute believe this enthusiasm but he appreciated it anyway. She added, "I'll have to use that sometime. Perp. Would a perp also rob somebody? Like a burglar?"

"Yup. Perp equals bad guy."

"So my ex-husband is a perp."

"Could be," Buffett said. "And, while I'm giving you a lesson. He doesn't shoot. He smokes them. Or dusts them. Or he lays the hammer on somebody. And if he tolls them, he offs them or ices them or whacks or does them."

"You have to learn all this in cop school, huh?"

"It's more your postgraduate work."

"Officer…"

"Donnie."

"And I'm Wendy. Everybody calls me Wendy." She looked at him with mystified, amused eyes. "Donnie, I've got to say that most people aren't quite so chipper after they've been through what you have."

He waved his arm vaguely toward his feet, signifying his injury. "This goes with the job description. You're not willing to accept it you don't sign on in the first place. Doesn't mean I like it."

Could he really call her Wendy? She was a doctor. Then again, she was wearing earrings in the shape of tiny hamburgers.

Weiser opened her purse and took out a pack of cigarettes; a lighter was stuffed efficiently into the cellophane wrapper of the pack. "You mind?"

"No."

She asked, "You want one?"

"No."

"Don't tell," Weiser said.

"I don't work vice." Buffett realized he hadn't shaved since he had been in the hospital. He guessed he looked like shit.

Well, that was her problem. He didn't have to look at himself.

Weiser pulled the gray chair closer, inhaled deeply on the cigarette several times. She crossed her legs and bent down to stub out the cigarette on her boot heel. She dropped the butt in her pocket.

"Evidence," she said. She straightened up, put both feet on the floor.

"Doctor-"

"Ah…" She cocked an eyebrow. "Wendy," he corrected. "It seemed so real."

She raised an eyebrow. "The pain."

She stood up and opened the window, to air the room out, and returned to the chair. He felt the cold air on his arms and face. But he didn't feel it on his legs. She said, "It's both psychological and physiological. Amputees have the same sensation. It's real in the sense that pain is a subjective experience and what you're experiencing is just like any other pain. But it's phantom because you aren't feeling a pain response to stimuli at the nerve endings. Say, wasn't your wife going to be coming by?"

"She was. A while ago. She'll be back tomorrow." He tried to picture Penny Buffett and Wendy Weiser chatting at a barbecue or PBA picnic. It was impossible to imagine this scene.

Weiser nodded. "Well, next time. This is mostly a social visit, Donnie. We've done a lot of tests and we're going to do a lot more. I'll be talking to you more specifically about the results of those tests in the next couple days. What I'd like to do now is just talk with you about your injury in general."

He looked away. She shifted her chair casually so that she was closer to his line of vision. He glanced at her and he felt compelled to hold her gaze.

"I want to tell you what I'm going to do, as your doctor, and talk to you about what you're going to do for yourself."

"Fair enough."

She said, "First, I want to do something I don't do with all my patients: I'm going to tell you what's going to be going on in your mind over the next several months. This is sort of like-what's that they say on Wall Street?-insider information. Normally this is what we doctors keep in mind as we work with our patients but you seem like somebody who's got a good handle on himself. You look skeptical. Donnie, I've had SCI patients that won't even let me in the room for the first month after their trauma. I've had vases thrown at me. See this scar? It's from a dinner tray. I've had patients who don't seem to see me. They watch TV while I'm talking to them. It's as if I'm not even in the same room. They don't acknowledge me, they don't acknowledge their injury. You're in a different league from them."