Theresa Weir - Bad Karma

He kept forgetting he was a cop, that he was supposed to be the one in control. Dazed, he put in a call to Jo, telling her to contact the state police. Then he found a chair and dropped into it.

He stared at the floor, skin tight, eyes gritty. He needed to call Cleo’s brother. But he didn’t know anything yet. As soon as he knew something, he would call. God, he couldn’t think straight.

A nurse appeared with a clipboard.

“She’ll be okay?” he asked.

“She’s getting fluids and Naloxone, so she should come around pretty quickly. Now for the fun part. I have all these tedious question to ask, just the standard, basic stuff.”

He gave them as much information about Cleo as he could, which wasn’t much more than her first and last name. He didn’t know if she had insurance. “I doubt it,” he said. “But the Egypt Police Department will pick up the tab.” It wasn’t his place to make such a decision, but he was pretty sure he could talk Jo into it, and she could talk the board into it.

“Allergic to any medications?”

He didn’t know.

“Next of kin?”

He didn’t know that either. “Her brother, I guess.”

“Religious preference?”

He didn’t know.

“Previous surgeries? Mental illness, depression, anything going on in her life that could affect what’s happening now? When we were changing her into a hospital gown, we noticed a scar on her abdomen. Has she had a cesarean delivery?”

Daniel jumped to his feet. “I don’t know! Christ, quit asking me this shit. I don’t know!”

The next morning, Daniel stood a few feet from the bed, arms crossed, letting Jo fuss over Cleo. Cleo was sitting up, a tray of half-eaten food pushed aside. Her color was better, her face a little more filled out. But she still didn’t look good, didn’t look healthy. An IV bag hung from a metal frame while a monitor digitally registered her pulse rate.

“We don’t want to bother you with this right now, dear,” Jo began, taking Cleo’s free hand in hers. “But we have to know who did this.” Jo was dressed in her police outfit, from the shiny badge to her shiny black shoes.

Muted sunlight fell across Cleo’s face, making the dark circles under her eyes more pronounced. She looked from Jo to Daniel, then back to Jo. Daniel saw her uncertainty, and wondered at it. What didn’t she want to say? What was holding her back?

“Cleo,” Jo urged gently, “you must tell us, dear.”

Cleo pulled her hand free and leaned against the pillow behind her back. She turned her face to stare out the window. From the second-story room, the only thing that could be seen was an occasional pigeon. She might have looked calm, but the digital readout on the flashing pulse rate monitor jumped from 90 beats per minute to 120.

In a flat, emotionless voice, she said, “Burton Campbell.”

Daniel saw Jo stiffen, heard her gasp.

Leaving Cleo to gaze blankly into nothing, Jo spun around, grabbed Daniel by the arm, and pulled him from the room and down the hall, out of earshot of Cleo.

“Don’t you breathe a word of this,” she whispered, her eyes intent. “ Burton Campbell! If this got out, think how bad it would make the town look.”

“What if he did it?”

“That’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard. I’ve known Burton Campbell for over twenty years. He comes from good family.”

“And that makes a difference?” Daniel asked.

“You know as well as I do that Burton Campbell didn’t kidnap that woman in there.”

“Do I?”

“You want to believe her because you never liked him.”

“Maybe I always had a feeling about the guy.”

“You believe he did it?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re a bigger fool than I am. What reason would he have for doing such a thing?”

“That’s what we’re going to have to find out.”

“This isn’t Los Angeles. Don’t you think I know how bored you’ve been here? You’re just looking for excitement. Well, this kind of thing doesn’t happen in Egypt.”

“You want to keep your town on that top-ten list so badly that you can’t see a serious crime when it’s right in front of you.” That was the problem with small towns. Keeping up appearances was a priority even if it meant ignoring the obvious.

“There’s been a crime all right, but Cleo Tyler committed it,” Jo said. “Can’t you see this was orchestrated to make us look bad? Isn’t it too convenient the way she told us exactly what was going to happen to her before it happened? That’s because she knew. She did it to herself.”

“Why?”

“To blackmail us. Or maybe for the media attention.”

“So does this mean you won’t put a guard on her?”

“Of course I won’t put a guard on her!”

“Do you plan to question Campbell?”

“Listen to me, Daniel Sinclair. I stuck up for you when the whole town was on my back about hiring you. I’ve put up with your nonconformist, radical ways. With your refusing to wear a uniform, refusing to arrest teens for underage drinking. But I’m the chief of police. I tell you what to do. Understand? And I don’t want an investigation launched. It would make us the laughingstock of the county. I don’t want people to know I was taken in by a con artist from the big city.”

She ran her fingers over her brown tie, making sure it was straight, then turned and marched away.

There had been a time when Daniel had had some influence over Jo. But she’d quit listening to him ever since some pot she’d confiscated had vanished. She’d accused Daniel of smoking it. Truth was, she’d seized a joint from a sixteen-year-old. The boy would have been put away for a year, so Daniel flushed the evidence.

He wasn’t cut out to be a cop. All the damn rules-that was his problem. He could never obey blindly, not when a rule didn’t make any sense. But there had been one time when that tendency to disobey rules had caused the death of four people…

Daniel walked back to Cleo’s room, rapping on the open door before stepping inside. She was exactly as they’d left her, staring out the window at the expanse of sky.

“I knew nobody would believe me,” she said in the monotone she’d used before.

“Did he give you any reason for abducting you?” Daniel asked.

“I guess it’s all for the best,” she said, her mind apparently still caught up in Jo’s reaction. “Now I can just leave. No tedious questions. No statements to make.”

“Cleo, I believe you.”

She turned. There was no relief in her flat eyes. “Why? Why now?”

“I just do. Accept that so we can concentrate on putting together enough evidence to bring him in.”

She was silent a moment. Then, “He said I knew something about him. Something he didn’t want anybody to know.”

“What?”

“I have no idea. That’s what I told him. I don’t know anything. But he insisted I do, and that it will eventually come out.”

“Is there anything else you can think of? Anything at all?”

“He said something about not meaning to hurt somebody.”

Daniel approached the bed and checked the IV. It would be empty in a few hours. “The nurse said this is your last bag of fluid. When it’s finished, I want you out of here. It might not be safe.”

Her skin grew paler. “I can’t go back to that motel.”

“I want you to come home with me.”

At first he wasn’t sure she’d heard him.

“That’s ridiculous.”

He rushed on to explain. “I want to keep an eye on you. You can use my mother’s old room.”

From behind him came the soft-soled footsteps of a nurse. “Your brother’s on the phone,” she said. “Do you want us to transfer the call to your room, or tell him to call back later?”