Charlaine Harris - An Ice cold Grave

"Okay, I'll agree he really loves the old bat," he said. "And he does take her wherever she wants to go, as far as I know."

That was as much of a concession as I was going to get, but at least it was something. I hated the idea of Tolliver and Manfred meeting up and getting into it with each other.

"Are they at our motel?"

"Yeah. There aren't any rooms anywhere else, I can tell you. The road up the mountain is nearly blocked off to traffic because there are so many news trucks and law enforcement vehicles. There's one lane open with guys with walkie-talkies at either end of the bottleneck."

Again, I felt a twinge of guilt, as if I were somehow responsible for the disruption of so many peoples' lives. The responsibility, of course, was the murderer's, but I doubt he was staying up worrying about it.

I wondered what he was thinking about. He'd vented his rage with me. "He'll lie low now," I said. Tolliver didn't have to ask me who I was talking about.

"He'll be cautious," Tolliver agreed. "That turning out to try to get you, that was just rage that his games were ended. He'll have cooled off now. He'll be worried about the cops."

"No time to spare for me."

"I think not. But this guy has to be a loony, Harper. And you never know what they're thinking. I hope you get out of the hospital tomorrow. Maybe the cops'll be through with questions and we can leave this place. If you feel well enough."

"I hope so," I said. I was better, but it would be stretching a point to say I felt good enough to travel.

Tolliver gave me a hug before he left. He would pick up something to eat on his way back to the motel, he said, and stay in the rest of the evening to dodge the reporters. "Not that there's anywhere to go," he said. "Why don't we get more work in cities?"

"I've asked myself that," I said. "We had that job in Memphis, and that other one in Nashville." I didn't want to talk about Tabitha Morgenstern again. "And before that, we were in St. Paul. And that cemetery job in Miami."

"But most of our calls are from small places."

"I don't know why. Have we ever done New York?"

"Sure. Remember? But it was really really hard for you, because it was right after 9/11."

"I guess I was trying to forget," I said. That had been one of the worst experiences I'd ever had as a professional…whatever I was. "We'll never do that again," I said.

"Yeah, New York is out." We looked at each other for a long moment. "Okay then," he said. "I'm gone. Try to eat your supper, and get some sleep. Since you're better, maybe they won't come in so much tonight."

He fussed around for a minute or two, making sure the rolling table was positioned correctly, clearing it for the supper tray, drawing my attention to the remote control built into the bed rail, moving the phone closer to the edge of the bedside table so I could reach it easily. He put my cell phone in the little drawer beneath the rolling table. "Call me if you need me," he said, and then he left.

I dozed off for a little while, until the supper tray came. Tonight I got something more substantial. I'm embarrassed to say that I ate most of the food on my tray. It wasn't awful. And I was really hungry. I hadn't exactly been packing in the calories the last two days.

After that, by way of excitement, a different doctor dropped in to tell me I was making progress and he thought I'd be able to go home in the morning. He didn't appear to care anything about who I was or where home was. He was as overworked as everyone else I'd encountered there at Knott County Memorial Hospital. He wasn't from around these parts, either, judging from his accent. I wondered what had brought him to Doraville. I figured he worked for the same emergency-room-stocking service that employed Dr. Thomason.

Barney Simpson's assistant, a very young woman named Heather Sutcliff, came in soon after the doctor's visit.

"Mr. Simpson just wanted me to stop by and check with you. Lots of reporters want to see you, but for the peace and privacy of the other patients we've been denying them visiting privileges. And we've screened the calls to your room…that was your brother's idea."

No wonder I'd been able to recover in peace. "Thanks," I said. "That's really a big help."

"Good. Because it really wouldn't be fair to the other people in this wing, to have all kinds of strangers tromping through." She gave me a serious look to show she took my reporter problem as a bad thing. And then she slipped out the door, closing it gently behind her.

The most interesting thing that happened after her departure was the tray guy removing my emptied tray. After that surge of excitement, I tried to watch television for a while; but the laugh tracks made my head ache. I read for maybe half an hour. I gradually grew so sleepy that I left the book where it fell on my stomach and just moved my hand enough to switch out the light I could control from my bed rail.

I was awakened by a brilliant flash and the sense of sound and movement very close to me. I cried out, and flailed my good arm to drive the attacker away. In a moment of sense, I punched the button that turned on the light and the one that called the nurse. I was stunned to see there were two men in the room. They were bundled up in coats and they were yelling at me. I couldn't understand a word they said. I punched the nurse's button over and over, and I yelled louder, and in about thirty seconds there were more people in my room than it was designed to hold.

The evening nurse was a starchy woman of considerable width. She was tall, too, and she scorned makeup, but she'd met a bottle of red hair dye she was real fond of in the past week or so. I admired her more by the second. She went for those reporters with both guns. Actually, if she'd had guns, the two men would've been dead without a doubt. Hospital Security was there (a man older than my doctor and not nearly as fit), an orderly was there (satisfyingly tall and muscular), and another nurse who added her opinion to that of my big nurse, as I thought of her.

Of course this was a silly episode, and one I should have been able to throw off; and once I considered it, one I should have anticipated. Right at the moment, I couldn't recognize any of those points. I'd been scared very badly, and my heart was thumping like a rabbit's, and my head was hurting as if someone had hit me again, and my arm ached where I'd bumped it when I'd lurched sideways against the railings in my panic.

When it all got sorted out the nurses had given the reporters a first-rate tongue-lashing, the security guard and the orderly were escorting the intruders out, and the two men were trying to hide their smiles.

And I was a mess: frightened, hurting, and lonely.

TOLLIVER was livid when he came in the room the next morning. The nurses had been full of the night's excitement, and they'd been quivering to fill him in on the big event. They'd pounced on him with avidity. The result was that Tolliver was all but breathing fire when he flung open my door.

"I can't believe it," he said. "Those bastards! To sneak into a hospital in the night and actually into your room! Jeez, you must have…were you asleep? Did they really scare you?" He went from rage to concern in two seconds flat.

I was too tired to put a good face on for him. I'd come awake with a jolt at least three times during the night, sure there was someone else in the room with me.

Tolliver said, "How'd they even get in here, anyway? The doors are supposed to be locked after nine o'clock. Then you have to punch a big button outside the emergency room door to get in. At least that's what the sign says."

"So either a door was left open by accident or someone let them in. Might not have known who they were, of course." I was trying to be fair. I'd really gotten good treatment at this little hospital, and I didn't want to believe any of the staff had been bribed or were malicious enough to simply let reporters in for the hell of it.