Yes, I knew. Serious scalp wounds bled like beheadings. Okay, I thought, that explained the itch on top of my head. When Ruth Heller hesitated, I prompted her. “And the second bullet?”
Heller let out a breath. “That one was a bit more complicated.”
I waited.
“The bullet entered your chest and nicked the pericardial sac. That caused a large supply of blood to leak into the space between your heart and the sac. The EMTs had trouble locating your vital signs. We had to crack your chest—”
“Doc?” the leaning man interrupted—and for a moment, I thought he was talking to me. Ruth Heller stopped, clearly annoyed. The man peeled himself off the wall. “Can you do the details later? Time is of the essence here.”
She gave him a scowl, but there wasn’t much behind it. “I’ll stay here and observe,” she said to the man, “if that’s not a problem.”
Dr. Heller faded back and now the man loomed over me. His head was too big for his shoulders so that you feared his neck would collapse from the weight of it. His hair was crew cut all around, except in the front, where it hung down in a Caesar line above his eyes. A soul patch, an ugly smear of growth, sat on his chin like a burrowing insect. All in all, he looked like a member of a boy band gone to serious seed. He smiled down at me, but there was no warmth behind it. “I’m Detective Bob Regan of the Kasselton Police Department,” he said. “I know you’re confused right now.”
“My family—” I began.
“I’ll get to that,” he interrupted. “But right now, I need to ask you some questions, okay? Before we get into the details of what happened.”
He waited for a response. I tried my best to clear the cobwebs and said, “Okay.”
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
I scanned my memory banks. I remembered waking up that morning, getting dressed. I remembered looking in on Tara. I remembered turning the knob on her black-n-white mobile, a gift from a colleague who insisted it would help stimulate a baby’s brain or something. The mobile hadn’t moved or bleated out its tinny song. The batteries were dead. I’d made a mental note to put in new ones. I headed downstairs after that.
“Eating a granola bar,” I said.
Regan nodded as if he’d expected this answer. “You were in the kitchen?”
“Yes. By the sink.”
“And then?”
I tried harder, but nothing came. I shook my head. “I woke up once before. At night. I was here, I think.”
“Nothing else?”
I reached out again but to no avail. “No, nothing.”
Regan flipped out a pad. “Like the doc here told you, you were shot twice. You have no recollection of seeing a gun or hearing a shot or anything like that?”
“No.”
“That’s understandable, I guess. You were in a bad way, Marc. The EMTs thought you were a goner.”
My throat felt dry again. “Where are Tara and Monica?”
“Stay with me, Marc.” Regan was staring down at the pad, not at me. I felt the dread begin to press down on my chest. “Did you hear a window break?”
I felt groggy. I tried to read the label on the drip bag to see what they were numbing me with. No go. Pain medication, at the very least. Probably morphine in the IV pump. I tried to fight through the effects. “No,” I said.
“You’re sure? We found a broken window near the rear of the house. It may have been how the perpetrator gained entry.”
“I don’t remember a window breaking,” I said. “Do you know who—”
Regan cut me off. “Not yet, no. That’s why I’m here asking these questions. To find out who did this.” He looked up from his pad. “Do you have any enemies?”
Did he really just ask me that? I tried to sit up, tried to gain some sort of angle on him, but there was no way that was going to happen. I did not like being the patient, on the wrong end of the bed, if you will. They say doctors make the worst patients. This sudden role reversal is probably why.
“I want to know about my wife and daughter.”
“I understand that,” Regan said, and something in his tone ran a cold finger across my heart. “But you can’t afford the distraction, Marc. Not right yet. You want to be helpful, right? Then you need to stay with me here.” He went back to the pad. “Now, what about enemies?”
Arguing with him any further seemed futile or even harmful, so I grudgingly acquiesced. “Someone who would shoot me?”
“Yes.”
“No, no one.”
“And your wife?” His eyes settled hard on me. A favorite image of Monica—her face lighting up when we first saw Raymondkill Falls, the way she threw her arms around me in mock fear as the water crashed around us—rose like an apparition. “Did she have enemies?”
I looked at him. “Monica?”
Ruth Heller stepped forward. “I think that might be enough for now.”
“What happened to Monica?” I asked.
Dr. Heller met up with Detective Regan, standing shoulder to shoulder. Both looked at me. Heller started to protest again, but I stopped her.
“Don’t give me this protect-the-patient crap,” I tried to shout, fear and fury battling against whatever had put my brain in this fuzz. “Tell me what happened to my wife.”
“She’s dead,” Detective Regan said. Just like that. Dead. My wife. Monica. It was as if I hadn’t heard him. The word couldn’t reach me.
“When the police broke into your home, you had both been shot. They were able to save you. But it was too late for your wife. I’m sorry.”
There was another quick flash now—Monica at Martha’s Vineyard, on the beach, tan bathing suit, that black hair whipping across those cheekbones, giving me the razor-sharp smile. I blinked it away. “And Tara?”
“Your daughter,” Regan began with a quick throat-clear. He looked at his pad again, but I don’t think he planned on writing anything down. “She was home that morning, correct? I mean, at the time of the incident?”
“Yes, of course. Where is she?”
Regan closed the pad with a snap. “She was not at the scene when we arrived.”
My lungs turned to stone. “I don’t understand.”
“We originally hoped that maybe she was in the care of a family member or friend. A baby-sitter even, but . . .” His voice faded.