Robert Lubrican - For Want of a Memory

"So will he live?"

"Yes, I am tinking so," said the doctor. "He vas loosing much blud ven he came here. He vas shooted, I am tinking."

"Shooted?" Mitch frowned.

"You know," said the doctor, making a gun with his thumb and finger. "Bang bang." The doctor then pointed to a thick bandage on the left side of the man’s head. "Zee boolet just touch heem little beet here."

"What makes you think he was shot?" asked Mitch.

The doctor just stared at him. "I am being from Pah-kees-tahn. I am, when I was there, seeing many, many shootings veecteems."

"Just there?" asked Mitch, pointing at the head.

"Only there, yes," said Massouf. "And many glass cuttings too, I am sure." He reached into a pocket of his lab coat and pulled something out. He offered it to the policeman. "I take thees froom hees skin." Again, he pointed at the left side of the man’s face. He waved his hand over the rest of the body. "Many contusions and lacerations and so on, but no more shootings."

Mitch picked up one of the unconscious man’s hands, and looked at it. There was mud under the fingernails, which was odd, because the hands were soft. There was the suggestion they had been callused in the past, but the thick skin was being replaced with new skin that did no manual labor.

"How long will he be out?" asked the policeman.

"I am not being in a position dat I can tell you deese answer," said the doctor, shaking his head. "He is being healing while slipping until his eyes are ready to be opening, yes?"

A nurse stuck her head in the door.

"You got a phone call, Mitch," she said.

"Thanks, Jessica," said Mitch. "Hey, were you here when this guy came in?"

"Yeah, but I wasn’t in on the team that cleaned him up."

"Was it really Lulu who brought him in?"

Dr. Massouf snorted.

"That’s what they said," said Jessica. "Can’t mistake her for anybody else."

"It just seems odd," said Mitch.

"Why?" asked Jessica. "She’s about the oddest person I know."

"She’s your best friend!" laughed Mitch.

"I know that," said the nurse. "That’s why I know how completely believable it could be that she’d happen upon some almost-dead guy and haul him in here. Why don’t you just go ask her about it?"

"I will," said Mitch, a little defensively. "I just have lots to do, that’s all." He moved toward the door. "Doc says he was shot. Is that right?"

"You’re asking me?" Jessica’s face was impassive. "He’s the doctor. If he says the guy was shot, then he was shot. Why are you harassing me? I just came to tell you to come to the phone!"

"I’m not harassing you," said Mitch. "I’m doing an investigation and questioning witnesses."

"Well I didn’t see nuthin' and I don’t know nuthin', so you can just go interview somebody else. And quit looking at my boobs, too!"

Doctor Massouf snorted again.

"I’m not looking at your boobs," said Mitch, sounding injured.

"You ALWAYS look at my boobs, Mitch. One of these days I’m gonna tell Carla about it, too!" she said, referring to Mitch’s girlfriend.

"OK, OK," said Mitch, holding his hands up. "You don’t have to get all upset. I’m just a trained observer, that’s all. I can’t help it if I observe. It’s instinct."

"I know what your instincts are, you heartbreaker," said the young woman. "Are you going to answer the phone, or should I just tell them you’re too busy investigating my boobs?"

While Officer Connel was being notified about the almost-dead man who had been in some kind of trouble, and had responded to the little ninety bed hospital that served Pembroke, Lou Anne-known to most of the town as Lulu, a name she wasn’t enthralled with, but was stuck with anyway-raised another uproar when she got to work.

"What in the nine hells happened to you?" asked Hank, when she stomped in the front door of the diner.

"I almost ran over somebody," she moaned. "He was lying in the road, half dead. I just dropped him off at the hospital."

"It looks like you just gutted a deer," said Hank.

Lou Anne looked down at her coat, which was smeared red with blood. There were twigs, and mud and water mixed in with it. It looked like she’d been rolling around on the ground.

"You can’t come to work looking like that," objected Hank. There were three customers in The Early Girl and all of them were looking at Lou Anne with interest.

"Are you telling me you want me to take the night off?" asked Lou Anne, a dangerous tone in her voice. "I couldn’t just leave him there to die."

She took her coat off. Her uniform, under the coat was fine. Her knees were white from the cold, and wet from the snow, but a towel would fix that.

"See? I’m OK. It’s just the coat that got dirty."

She looked dismally at the coat, holding it up to examine it. She was pretty sure it was ruined. It was a good one too, with down filling.

"Damn!" she moaned.

"Look on the bright side," said Hank, grinning. "At least you finally found yourself a man."

About an hour later, Mitch walked into the diner. He stopped to brush off the snow that had almost covered him on the way from the car to the building.

"Coming down hard," he said.

"I didn’t do anything wrong," said Lou Anne, automatically.

"I never said you did," said Mitch. "You got any coffee that’s hot and won’t spill?"

"Ha … ha," said Lou Anne. "I just found him lying in the middle of the road, over on Hopkins Lane. That’s all I know."

"Who said I was here to talk about him?" asked Mitch. "Maybe I’m just hungry."

"You want something to eat?" yelled Hank.

"No, I’ve got too much to do. Lou Anne has managed to find herself a real puzzle."

"He’s not mine!" said Lou Anne. "What was I supposed to do, just leave him there?"

"No, of course not," said Mitch. "You did the right thing. You probably saved his life. I just need to ask you some questions, that’s all."

"She’s on the clock," grumped Hank.

Mitch looked around. There was one customer, a trucker, and he was dozing in a booth. Mitch didn’t blame him. It wasn’t a fit night out for man nor dog.

"Official business," he said, trying to make it sound ominous.

"At least order something," complained Hank.

"OK, French fries with creamed gravy," said Mitch. "You want something, too, Lulu?"

"I don’t eat lunch until four," said Lou Anne.

"Your call," said Mitch. "This won’t take long."

He knew she wouldn’t have much information, but he needed to try to nail down exactly where she had found the man. The glass indicated there had been a car crash of some kind. The alleged bullet wound complicated things, but if he could find the car, he could probably find more evidence, and it might tell him enough to know what he was dealing with. Things like this just didn’t happen in Pembroke. It was a nice, quiet little town, and he liked it that way.

She wasn’t a lot of help. She knew she’d gone up the hill, and she knew it was just past a bend in the road. The problem was that there were a dozen bends in that road, where it paralleled the river. He asked her about tracks, even though, at the rate the snow had been falling, they wouldn’t be there anymore. He was quite sure he wouldn’t be able to find the car by tracks. The best she could do was to say she was pretty sure that it had been at the first curve after topping the hill.

It was two in the morning, and there was a blizzard out there. There wasn’t much he could do anyway, so he sat and chatted when he ran out of questions. Hank brought the French fries, and sat down with them.

"I saw your dark-skinned friend," said Mitch, around a mouthful of fries. "She’s on the warpath again."

"What about this time?" asked Lou Anne.

"She says I keep looking at her chest," said Mitch.