Harper Connelly [3] An Ice Cold Grave Read online

  That was two questions. I tried to nod to show I could understand him. That was a big mistake. What fingers?

  The next thing I knew, I was in a dim warm room, and I had the impression I was wrapped in swaddling clothes. No room at the inn? I opened my eyes. I appeared to be in a bed, and very snugly wrapped in white cotton blankets. There was a light on over my bed, but it was on low, and there was a hush that told me the night was in its small hours, its weak hours…probably about three a.m. There was an orange recliner by the bed, and it was as stretched out as it could get. Tolliver was asleep on it, wrapped in another hospital blanket. There was blood on his shirt. Mine?

  I was very thirsty.

  A nurse padded in, took my pulse, checked my temperature. She smiled when she saw I was awake and looking at her, but she didn’t speak until her tasks were complete.

  “Can I get you anything?” she asked in a low voice.

  “Water,” I said, hopefully.

  She held a straw to my lips and I took a tug or two on the cup of water. I hadn’t realized how dry my mouth was until it filled with the refreshing coldness. I was on an IV. I needed to pee.

  “I need to go to the bathroom,” I whispered.

  “Okay. You can get up, if I help you. We’ll take it real slow,” she said.

  She let down the side of the bed, and I began to swing upright. That was a real bad idea, and I held still as my head swam. She put an arm around me. Very slowly, I finished straightening. While her arm continued to support me, she spared a hand to lower the bed. I slid off slowly and carefully until my bare feet touched the chilly linoleum, and we shuffled over to the bathroom, rolling the IV along. Getting down on the toilet was tricky, but the relief that followed made the trip worthwhile.

  The nurse was right outside the partially open door, and I heard her talking to Tolliver. I was sorry he’d been wakened, but when I was on my journey back to the bed, I couldn’t help but feel glad I was looking into his face.

  I thanked the nurse, who was the reddish brown of an old penny. “You push the button if you need me,” she said.

  After she left, Tolliver got up to stand by my bedside. He hugged me with as much care as though I were stamped “Fragile.” He kissed my cheek.

  “I thought you’d fallen,” he said. “I had no idea anyone had hit you. I didn’t hear a thing. I thought you’d had—like maybe a flashback, from the crime scene. Or your leg had given way, or something else from the lightning.”

  Being struck by lightning is definitely an event that keeps on giving. The year before, out of the blue, I’d had an episode of tinnitus that had finally cleared up; and the only thing I’d ever been able to attribute it to was the lightning strike when I was fifteen. So it wasn’t surprising that Tolliver had blamed my old catastrophe when he’d found me on the ground.

  “Did you see him?” he asked, and there was guilt in his voice, which was absurd.

  “Yes,” I said, and I wasn’t happy with the weakness of my voice. “But not clearly. He was wearing dark clothes and one of those knitted hoods. He came up out of the darkness. He hit me on the shoulder first. And before I could get out of the way, he hit me in the head.” I knew it was lucky I’d been dodging. The blow hadn’t landed squarely.

  “You have a hairline fracture in your ulna,” Tolliver said. “You know, one of the bones in your lower arm. And you have a concussion. Not a severe concussion. They had to take some stitches in your scalp, so they had to shave a little of your hair. I swear it doesn’t show much,” he said when he saw the look on my face.

  I tried not to get upset about a couple of square inches of hair that would grow back. “I haven’t had a broken bone in ten years,” I said. “And then it was just a toe.” I’d been trying to cook supper for the kids, and my mom had lurched into me when I was taking a nine-by-thirteen glass dish from the oven, which incidentally had been full of baked chicken. My toe had not only been broken, but burned. I was awake enough to realize that the pain I’d experienced then was nothing compared to the pain I’d be feeling now if I weren’t heavily drugged.

  I wasn’t looking forward to those drugs wearing off.

  Tolliver was holding my right hand; luckily for me, the broken arm was my left. He was staring off into space. Thinking. Something I was way too foggy to attempt.

  “So, it must have been the killer,” he said.

  I shuddered. As slow as my brain processes were at the moment, the thought that that person—the one who’d done those unthinkable things to the boys in the ground—had been so close to me, had touched me, had looked at me through the eyes that had enjoyed the sight of so much suffering, was absolutely revolting.

  “Can we leave tomorrow?” I asked. I couldn’t even draw enough breath for the words to come out in a strong voice.

  “No,” he said. “You’re not doing any traveling for a couple of days. You have to get better.”

  “But I don’t want to stay here,” I said. “Leaving was a good idea.”

  “Yeah, but now we’re pinned here for a little while,” he said, trying to sound gentle, but the undertone of anger was clear and strong. “He took care of that. The doctor said you were lucky to have a concussion; at first he thought it would be a lot worse.”

  “I wonder why he didn’t go on and kill me?”

  “Because you hit the panic button and I got to the door pretty quick,” Tolliver said. He got up and began pacing. It made my head hurt worse. He was very angry, and very worried. “No, I didn’t see a soul in that parking lot, before you even ask. But I wasn’t looking. I thought you’d fallen. He might have just been a yard away when I came through that door. And I was moving pretty fast.”

  I almost smiled, would have managed the real thing if my head hadn’t been hurting so badly. “I’ll bet,” I whispered.

  “You need to sleep,” he said, and I thought it might be a good idea if I closed my eyes for a minute, sure enough.

  The next thing I knew, the sun was coming through the curtains, and there was a sense of activity all around me; the hospital was awake. There were voices and footsteps in the hall, and carts rumbling. Nurses came in and did things to me. My breakfast tray came, laden with coffee and green Jell-O. I discovered I was hungry when I put a spoonful of the Jell-O in my mouth, surprising even myself. When I found I’d swallowed the jiggly green stuff with actual pleasure, I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. Jell-O was better than nothing.

  “You should eat some breakfast yourself, and go to the hotel and get a shower,” I said. Tolliver was watching me eat with horrified fascination.

  “I’m staying till I talk to the doctor,” he said. “He’ll be by soon, the nurse says.”

  The gray-haired man I remembered from the night before turned out to be Dr. Thomason. He was still up. “Busy night last night, for Doraville,” he said. “I’m on call for the ER three nights a week. I’ve never worked as hard.”

  “Thanks for taking care of me,” I said politely, though of course it was his job.

  “You’re welcome. In case you don’t remember, I told you and your brother last night that you have a hairline fracture of the ulna. It’s cracked, not completely broken through. The soft cast will protect it. You need to keep it on as close to 24-7 as you can manage. The cast’ll have to stay on for a few weeks. When you check out of the hospital, you’ll have directions on when to get the arm checked. It’s going to hurt for a couple of days. Combined with the head injury, you’ll need some pain meds. After that, I think Tylenol will do you.”

  “Can I get out of bed and walk a little?”

  “If you feel up to it, and if you have someone with you at all times, you can stroll down the hall and back a time or two. Of course if you experience any dizziness, nausea, that kind of thing, it’s time to get back in the bed.”

  “She’s already talking about checking out of the hospital,” Tolliver said. He was trying for a neutral tone, but he fell far short.

  The doctor said, “
You know that’s not a good idea.” He looked from me to him. I may have looked a little sullen. “You need to let your brother get some rest, too,” the doctor said. “He’s going to have to take care of you for a few days, young lady. Give him a break. You really need to be here. We need to observe that head of yours. And you’ve got at least a bit of insurance, I think?”

  Of course there was no way I could insist on being released after he’d said that. Only a bad person would refuse to give her brother a break. And I hoped I wasn’t such a bad person. Dr. Thomason was counting on that. Tolliver was counting on that.

  I debated making myself so unpleasant the hospital would be glad to be rid of me. But that would only make Tolliver unhappy. I looked at him, really looked at him, and I saw the circles under his eyes, the slump in his shoulders. He looked older than twenty-eight. “Tolliver,” I said, regret and self-reproach in my voice. He stepped over and took my good hand. I put his knuckles against my cheek, and the sun came in the window and made a pool of warmth against my face. I loved him more than anything, and he should never know that.

  With a sudden briskness, Dr. Thomason said, “Then I’ll see you tomorrow morning, at least. You can have a regular diet the rest of the day, I’ll tell them at the desk. You take it easy today, and get well.” He was out of the room before I could say anything else, and I let go of Tolliver’s hand, guiltily aware I’d held on to him far too long. And I didn’t mean holding his hand against my cheek, which was comforting for us both.

  He leaned over to kiss my cheek. “I’m gonna go shower and have breakfast and a nap,” he said. “Please, don’t try to get out of bed by yourself while I’m gone. Promise you’ll ring for a nurse.”

  “I promise,” I said, wondering why everyone seemed to think I would break the rules as soon as their back was turned. The only odd thing about me was that I’d been struck by lightning. I didn’t think of myself as a rebel, a hell-raiser, a rabble-rouser, or anything else exciting or upsetting.

  After he left, I found myself at a loss. I didn’t have a book; Tolliver had promised to bring me one when he returned. I had doubts about whether my head could tolerate reading anyway. Maybe I’d ask him to bring an audiobook and my little CD player with its headphones.

  After ten minutes’ boredom, I carefully scrutinized the controls on the side of my hospital bed. I succeeded in turning on the television. The channel that came on was a hospital channel, and I watched people come in and out of the lobby. Even though my boredom threshold was quite high, that palled after ten minutes. I switched to a news channel. As soon as I did, I was sorry.

  The quiet, derelict home in its picturesque setting looked a great deal different now from how it looked a day before. I remembered how lonely the site had felt, how isolated. And after all, there’d been enough privacy there to bury eight young men with no one the wiser. Now you couldn’t sneeze up there without four people rushing at you with microphones.

  I was assuming the film I was seeing was very recent, maybe even live, because the sun looked about in the same position as the sun I could see outside my window. By the way, it was nice to see the sun; I only wished I could be out in it, though from the bundled look of the people I could see on the screen it was still pretty damn cold.

  I ignored the commentary and stared instead at the figures behind the newscaster. Some of them were wearing law enforcement uniforms but others were wearing coveralls. Those must be the tech guys from SBI. The two men in suits, they would be Klavin and Stuart. I was proud of myself for remembering their names.

  I wondered how long it would be before someone came to see me. I hoped no one from the media would try to call me in the hospital or come in to see me. Maybe I could be released tomorrow and we could follow our plan of getting out of town to keep a little distance between us and the crimes.

  I’d been rambling on in my head about this for a few minutes when inevitability knocked at the door.

  Two men in suits and ties; exactly what I didn’t want to see.

  “I’m Pell Klavin, this is Max Stuart,” the shorter man said. He was about forty-five, and he was trim and well dressed. His hair was beginning to show a little gray, and his shoes were gleaming. He wore wire-rimmed glasses. “We’re from the State Bureau of Investigation.” Agent Stuart was a little younger and his hair was a lot lighter, so if he had gray he wasn’t showing it. He was just as shipshape as Agent Klavin.

  I nodded, and I was immediately sorry. I gingerly touched my bandaged head. Though that head felt like it was going to fall off (and that would be an improvement over how it felt now), the bandage still felt dry and secure. My left arm ached.

  “Ms. Connelly, we hear you got attacked last night,” Agent Stuart said.

  “Yes,” I said. I was angry with myself for sending Tolliver away, and irrationally angry with him for taking me at my word and going.

  “We’re mighty sorry about that,” Klavin said, exuding so much down-home charm I thought I might throw up. “Can you tell us why you were attacked?”

  “No,” I said. “I can’t. Probably something to do with the graves, though.”

  “I’m glad you brought that up,” Stuart said. “Can you describe how you found those graves? What prior knowledge you had?”

  “No prior knowledge,” I said. It seemed they weren’t interested in the attack on me anymore, and frankly, I could understand why. I’d lived. Eight other people hadn’t.

  “And how did you know they were there?” Klavin asked. His eyebrows shot up in a questioning arch. “Did you know one of the victims?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ve never been here before.”

  I lay back wearily, able to predict the whole conversation. It was so unnecessary. They weren’t going to believe, they would try to discover some reason I’d be lying about how I found the bodies, they’d waste time and taxpayer money trying to establish a connection between me and one of the victims, or me and the killer. That connection didn’t exist, and no amount of searching would uncover one.

  I clutched the covers with my hands, as if they were patience.

  “I don’t know any of the boys buried in the graves,” I said. “I don’t know who killed them, either. I expect there’s a file on me somewhere that you can read, that’ll give you the background on me. Can we just assume this conversation is already over?”

  “Ah, no, I don’t think we can assume that,” Klavin said.

  I groaned. “Oh, come on, guys, give me some rest,” I said. “I feel terrible, I need to sleep, and I have nothing to do with your investigation. I just find ’em. From now on, it’s your job.”

  “You’re telling us,” Stuart said, sounding as skeptical as a man can sound, “that you just find corpses at random.”

  “Of course it’s not at random,” I said. “That would be nuts.” Then I hated myself for responding. They just wanted to keep me talking, in the hope that I’d finally reveal how I’d found the bodies. They would never accept that I was telling them the truth.

  “That would be nuts?” Stuart said. “You think that sounds nuts?”

  “And you gentlemen are…who?” asked a young man from the doorway.

  I could scarcely believe my eyes. “Manfred?” I said, completely confused. The fluorescent light glinted off Manfred Bernardo’s pierced eyebrow (the right), nostril (the left), and ears (both). Manfred had shaved his goatee, I noticed distantly, but his hair was still short, spiky, and platinum.

  “Yes, darling, I came as soon as I could,” he said, and if my head hadn’t felt so fragile, I would have gaped at him.

  He moved to my bedside with the lithe grace of a gymnast and took my free hand, the one without the IV line. He raised it to his lips and kissed it, and I felt the stud in his tongue graze my fingers. Then he held my hand in both his own. “How are you feeling?” he asked, as if there were no one else in the room. He was looking right into my eyes, and I got the message.

  “Not too well,” I said weakly. Unfortunately, I was almost as we
ak as I sounded. “I guess Tolliver told you about the concussion? And the broken arm?”

  “And these gentlemen are here to talk to you when you’re so ill?”

  “They don’t believe anything I say,” I told him pitifully.

  Manfred turned to them and raised his pierced eyebrow.

  Stuart and Klavin were regarding my new visitor with a dash of astonishment and a large dollop of distaste. Klavin pushed his glasses up on his nose as if that would make Manfred look better, and Stuart’s lips pursed like he’d just bitten a lemon.

  “And you would be…?” Stuart said.

  “I would be Manfred Bernardo, Harper’s dear friend,” he said, and I held my expression with an effort. Resisting the impulse to yank my hand from Manfred’s, I squeezed his bottom hand as hard as I could.

  “Where are you from, Mr. Bernardo?” Klavin asked.

  “I’m from Tennessee,” he said. “I came as soon as I could.” Manfred bent to drop a kiss on my cheek. When he straightened, he said, “I’m sure Harper is feeling too poorly to be questioned by you gentlemen.” He looked from one of them to the other with an absolutely straight face.

  “She seems all right to me,” Stuart said. But he and Klavin glanced at each other.

  “I think not,” Manfred said. He was over twenty years younger than Klavin, and smaller than Stuart—Manfred was maybe five foot nine, and slender—but somewhere under all that tattooed and pierced skin was an air of authority and a rigid backbone.

  I closed my eyes. I really was exhausted, and I was also not too awfully far from laughing out loud.

  “We’ll leave you two to catch up,” Klavin said, not sounding happy at all. “But we’re coming back to talk to Ms. Connelly again.”

  “We’ll see you then,” Manfred said courteously.

  Feet shuffling…the door opening to admit hospital hall noises…then the muffling of those noises as the SBI agents carefully pulled the door shut behind them.

  I opened my eyes. Manfred was regarding me from maybe five inches away. He was thinking about kissing me. His eyes were bright and blue and hot.