Consider the Crows Page 24
The dog, crouched beside the blanket-wrapped body on the sled, shot to her feet when Susan approached. Susan spoke softly. The dog whimpered anxiously as Susan struggled with the cord, but didn’t snarl or attempt to bite. Susan peeled back the blanket from Carena Egersund’s face; eyes closed, deathly pallor, dark bruise on one cheek. Leaning an ear close to the cold lips, Susan felt a faint whisper of breath.
An eternity passed before she heard another siren, then paramedics were swarming around. With deliberate care, they placed Edie on a narrow wooden backboard, secured her head and neck with a cervical collar and covered her with the padded blankets used for hypothermia victims. The trail of IV tubes meant she was still alive.
Susan forced herself to stay out of the way; inactivity didn’t sit well and it took conscious effort. The paramedics used the same maddening slowness and same procedures to get Egersund on a backboard and carried her with great gentleness toward the ambulance. The dog got frantic and Susan almost strangled the poor thing hanging onto her.
Chilled to the bone, Susan watched a paramedic speak to the woman in the raincoat, get no response, then untie her, wrap her in a blanket and lead her docilely away.
Susan loaded the dog in Parkhurst’s Bronco and drove to Brookvale Hospital. An empty ambulance, door still open and red lights flashing, sat at the emergency entrance. The hospital doors slid silently back as she walked up. She went in search of the doctor and waited for what seemed like hours sitting on a black-vinyl and chrome chair in a dim hallway.
Finally the doctor came through swinging doors at the end of the hallway and spoke with a nurse who nodded at Susan. Susan stood up.
“Chief Wren? Dr. Kyle.” He led her along the corridor into a small conference room and slumped into one of the plastic chairs around a table. She sat down across from him.
“The Vogel woman didn’t make it,” he said. “We worked on her, but— I’m sorry.”
“What about Parkhurst?”
“I clapped him in bed with my direst threats.” Dr. Kyle smiled wearily. “He didn’t seem too impressed. He’ll be fine. We’re treating him for hypothermia. Probably release him tomorrow.”
She felt an easing of tension in her shoulders. “The catatonic woman?”
“Physically, she seems all right. Showing some effects of exposure. Mentally—” He shook his head. “That’s not my field. You have any idea who she is?”
“No. She looks a lot like Carena Egersund. Maybe a sister. How is Egersund?”
“Concussion. Abrasions and contusions that are minor. Also effects of exposure. Just what went on out there anyway?”
Macabre scenes that would live on in nightmares. “Will she be all right?”
“Should be. Barring complications. I need to run some more tests. She’s conscious now. That’s a good sign.”
“May I see her?”
He hesitated. “You can’t subject her to questions.”
“Okay.”
“Just listen to what she says and then leave.”
“Okay.”
He rubbed his tired face and putting both hands on the table for leverage pushed himself to his feet. “She’s been asking for you. Might be better for her to get rid of whatever’s on her mind. You can have three minutes. If she gets agitated, I’ll yank you.”
Susan simply nodded and followed him into an elevator and along another corridor.
“Three minutes,” he warned.
Lying in the bed with monitors and IV tubes, Carena Egersund looked very bad to Susan. Her face was almost as pale as the sheets, except for the dark bruise on one cheek. Her eyes, fixed on Susan, seemed too bright as they sometimes were with the seriously ill. Susan hoped the doctor knew what he was talking about.
“I have to tell you about Edie. She killed Lynnelle. She—” Those bright eyes filled with tears.
“I know,” Susan said gently. “You don’t have to tell me now.”
“Audrey fired her. And Edie hit her with a stool, some kind of child’s chair.”
Susan recalled the square stepping block sitting by Edie’s coffee table. “This can wait until you’re feeling better.”
“I don’t remember much. Sort of a dream. Cold and being dragged along, and dark.”
“Edie was pulling you on a sled.” Susan yanked tissues from a box on the bedside table and handed them to her.
“I’ve been so worried—so—” Carena Egersund blotted at her face. “Caitlin is missing and—”
“Caitlin is your sister?”
“Yes. She’s—she was— Lynnelle was her child, but she—Nobody knows where Caitlin is. I’m afraid—”
“She’s here in the hospital. She’s—,” Susan started to say just fine, then changed it to, “not hurt.”
“Here?” Much of the anxiety eased from Carena Egersund’s face, leaving it slack and even more pale and corpse-like. “Oh thank God. I was afraid she’d hurt herself and—” The tears kept coming.
Susan thought it was time to leave. “I’ll let you sleep now, but I do need to know where Caitlin lives, who to contact.”
“Her husband. Phil Avery.” Her voice now breathless, she gave Susan an address and phone number.
“I’ll talk with you more later. Try not to think too much and just concentrate on getting well.”
Worry came back to cloud her eyes.
“Is there anything you need?” Susan asked.
“The dog—Lynnelle’s dog. She’s in the house. She’ll starve. She—”
“I’ll take care of her. Don’t worry.”
Susan stopped at the nurses’ station to ask where Parkhurst was, then took the elevator down a floor and paused in the open doorway. Parkhurst lay on his side with his eyes closed; face gray, dark circles under his eyes, dark stubble of beard.
She came in quietly and sat in the chair by the bed. Almost immediately, his eyes opened, gazed at her unknowing and then focused.
“Hi,” she said softly. “How are you?”
“Fine.” He flopped onto his back and doubled the pillow behind his head. “Edie?”
“She didn’t make it.”
He closed his eyes, took a breath and blew it out. “You know, Susan, we didn’t exactly shine through any of this.”
“True.” They were almost too slow for Carena Egersund and would have been if it wasn’t for the dog. Caitlin was in a padded room staring at the wall. Edie was dead. Her parents had lost a daughter, her daughter had lost a mother. Susan stood and hitched the strap of her handbag higher on her shoulder. “I’ll try to spring you out of here tomorrow.”
* * *
For a week, the Herald ran lurid headlines along the lines of “Creighton Well Claims Next Victim,” “Tragedy Strikes Twice,” “Is There a Curse On The Creighton Place?”
On the following Sunday morning when Susan scooped up the newspaper from the driveway, she noticed crocuses poking up green shoots through snowy slush and smiled at them ridiculously. Snapping off the rubber band, she unfolded the paper and glanced at the headline. UNSEASONABLE WEATHER.
The sun, so warm the air smelled sweet, sparkled through the trees with the bright light of premature spring. A pair of cardinals dipped and swooped like scarlet kites through the blue sky. After she took the dog back, she had the whole day free, and Daniel’s clothes waited in the closet.
Also by Charlene Weir
The Winter Widow
CONSIDER THE CROWS. Copyright © 1993 by Charlene Weir. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
ISBN 0-312-09772-7 (hardcover)
eISBN 9781466834521
First eBook edition: November 2012