“And the shooter at the mill leaves his gun behind?”
“Yup.”
“But not the shell casings.”
“Right.”
“And the shooter or shooters in the woods get rid of the rifles but leave shell casings everywhere.”
“That is correct, sir,” Broussard said.
“Christ,” he said. “I don’t get this.”
Angie came into the ward then, dabbing at her arm with a cotton swab, flexing the forearm up against the biceps. She came over to Poole’s bed and smiled down at him.
“What’d the doctor say?” Broussard asked.
“Low-grade hypothermia.” She shrugged. “He shot me up with chicken soup or something, said I’d keep my fingers and toes.”
Color had returned to her flesh—not nearly as much as usual, but enough. She sat on the bed beside Poole and said, “The two of us, Poole—we look like a couple of ghosts.”
His lips cracked when he smiled. “I hear you emulated the famous cliff divers of the Galapagos Islands, my dear.”
“Acapulco,” Broussard said. “There are no cliff divers in the Galapagos.”
“Fiji, then,” Poole said, “and stop correcting me. Again, kids, what the hell is going on?”
Angie patted his cheek lightly. “You tell us. What happened to you?”
He pursed his lips for a moment. “I’m not real sure. For whatever reason, I found myself walking down the hill. Problem was, I left my walkie-talkie and my flashlight behind.” He raised his eyebrows. “Bright, wouldn’t you say? And when I heard all the gunfire, I tried to head back up to where I’d come from, but no matter what I did, it seemed like I kept moving away from the noise, instead of toward it. Woods,” he said with a shake of his head. “Next thing I know I’m at the corner of Quarry Street and the off-ramp from the expressway, and I see the Lexus shoot by. So I walk after it. Time I get there, our friends have received their head taps and I’m feeling kind of dizzy.”
“You remember calling it in?” Broussard asked.
“I did?”
Broussard nodded. “On the car phone.”
“Wow,” Poole said. “I’m pretty smart, huh?”
Angie smiled and took a handkerchief from the cart by Poole’s bed, wiped his forehead with it.
“Christ,” Poole said, his tongue thick.
“What?”
His eyes rolled away from us for a moment, then snapped back. “Huh? Nothing, just these drugs they got in me. Hard to concentrate.”
The admitting nurse parted the curtain by Broussard. “You have to go. Please.”
“What happened up there?” Poole slurred.
“Now,” the nurse said, as Poole’s eyes rolled to the left and he smacked his dry lips, batted his eyelashes. “Mr. Raftopoulos is not up to this.”
“No,” Poole said. “Wait.”
Broussard patted his arm. “We’ll be back, buddy. Don’t you worry.”
“What happened?” Poole asked again, his voice fading into sleep as we stepped back from the bed.
Good question, I thought, as we walked out of ICU.
As soon as we got back to the apartment, Angie hopped in a warm shower and I called Bubba.
“What?” he answered.
“Tell me you have her.”
“What? Patrick?”
“Tell me you have Amanda McCready.”
“No. What? Why would I have her?”
“You took out Gutierrez and—”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Bubba,” I said, “you did. You had to.”
“Gutierrez and Mullen? No way, dude. I spent two hours with my face in the dirt at Cunningham Park.”
“You weren’t even there?”
“I got hit. Someone was waiting, Patrick. I took a fucking sledgehammer or something in the back of my head, knocked me cold. I never even made it out of the park.”
“All right,” I said, and felt clouds of oil swimming through my head, “tell me again. Slow. You got to Cunningham Park—”
“At about six-thirty. I take my gear, I cut through the park toward the trees. I’m just about to go into the trees and make my way to the hills when I hear something. I start to turn my head and fucking—crack—someone hits me in the back of the head. Which, you know, just annoys me at first, but fucks up my vision too, and I’m starting to duck and turn, and crack again. I go to one knee, and I take a third hit. I think there might have been a fourth, but next thing I know I’m waking up in a pile of blood and it’s like eight-thirty. Time I get into the trees again, the woods are crawling with Staties. I go back, go to Giggle Doc’s.”
Giggle Doc was the ether-snorting doctor Bubba and half the mob guys in the city used to repair injuries they couldn’t report.
“You okay?” I said.
“Got some serious ringing in my head and things are still going black and then clearing, but I’ll be all right. I want this motherfucker, Patrick. No one knocks me down, you know?”
I knew. Of all the things I’d heard in the last ten hours, this was by far the most depressing. Anyone fast enough and smart enough to take Bubba out of the equation was very, very good at his job.
Another thing: If you were to deal with Bubba in that way, why leave him alive? The kidnappers had killed Mullen and Gutierrez and tried to kill Broussard, Angie, and me. Why hadn’t they just shot Bubba from a distance and been done with him?
“Giggle Doc said one more swing probably would have severed the tendons in back of my skull. Man,” he said, “I am fucking pissed.”
“As soon as I know who it was,” I said, “I’ll pass it along.”
“I’ve been sending out my own questions, you know? I heard about the Pharaoh and Mullen from Giggle Doc, so I’ve got Nelson making some phone calls. Heard the cops lost the money, too.”
“Yup.”
“And no girl.”
“No girl.”
“You picked a fight with some serious motherfuckers this time, dude.”
“I know.”
“Hey, Patrick?”
“Yeah.”
“Cheese would never be stupid enough to send someone to take a pipe to my head.”
“Not knowingly. Maybe he didn’t expect you to be there.”
“Cheese knows how tight me and you are. He’s got to half figure you’d bring me in for backup on something like this.”