Dead Harvest

  'Let's have a look, then, shall we?'

  I watched as the doctor cut through my second pair of pants in a day, this time following upward along the inseam and peeling back the fabric like a denim banana. Her brow furrowed. 'You got this here?'

  'Yes,' both Kate and I replied, doubtless a little more forcefully than was required.

  'You're sure.'

  'Yes,' I repeated, more casually this time. 'I was in line for a pretzel when it happened. Next thing I knew, I was flat on my back, a hunk of metal sticking outta my thigh. I know I probably shoulda stuck around, but I was scared. I hobbled home, and my niece here patched me up, only it didn't take.'

  The doctor jabbed a needle into my thigh, and soon the wound went blissfully, disconcertingly numb. 'No, I wouldn't expect it would have. Probably the worst thing you could have done was removed the shrapnel on your own – as it stands, you've lost a lot of blood. Speaking of, where is it?'

  'Where is what?'

  'The metal fragment,' she said, her hands expertly drawing the nylon thread through the meat of my thigh and closing the wound tightly. 'The police have requested that any shrapnel be saved and cataloged, so they can better reconstruct what happened.'

  Kate and I shared a glance. No doubt the doctor noticed. It was Kate that answered. 'We, ah, left it at home.'

  'That's fine,' the doctor replied, though her expression was not as light as her tone implied. 'An officer will be by to take your statement, and I'm sure they can send someone along to collect it.' The stitching done, she began wrapping my leg in layer upon layer of gauze.

  'Our statement?' asked Kate.

  Her wrapping stopped. The doctor sat there, roll of gauze in hand, and met both our gazes in turn. 'Yes, your statement. Like it or not, you are both material witnesses to a federal crime – the police are going to want to know where you were when the blast went off, as well as what you saw. If I were you, I'd cooperate, and that means you'd better get your facts straight.'

  'Meaning what?' I asked, feigning offense.

  'Meaning there's no way that wound was made by a flying hunk of twisted metal. The surrounding flesh is too clean, the borders too discrete.'

  'I don't know what you're talking about.'

  'I'm pretty sure you do.' The doctor finished wrapping the wound and taped the gauze in place. 'This,' she said, 'is a knife wound.'

25.

I said, 'Listen, lady, I think you've got this all wrong.'

  The doctor raised her hands, a placating gesture. 'I'm not the one you should be talking to,' she said. 'I'm just here to patch you up – I don't much care what happened. But if you know something about what happened here, they will find out. You two don't look like terrorists to me – make things easier on yourself and cooperate.'

  Kate opened her mouth to protest, but I silenced her with a glance. 'You're right,' I said. 'Of course you're right. About the wound. About everything.'

  The doctor said, 'So you were stabbed.'

  Kate looked at me – puzzled, frightened. 'Sam, don't–'

  I shot Kate a silencing look and said, 'It's all right, Mary – we have to tell her.'

  'Tell me what?'

  'About the bomb. See, my brother – her father – he's always talking crazy, like one day, he'll have his revenge – that sort of thing, you know? He's been that way forever, and didn't nobody think he'd ever do anything about it. Only last week, when the city laid him off, he started gettin' twitchy – leavin' at all hours of the night, holing up in the basement for hours on end working on God knows what. I mean, I got worried. We both got worried. I took to snooping around, trying to figure what he was up to. That's when I found the book.'

  'The book?' the doctor asked, rapt.

  'That's right. Some sort of anarchist's handbook. It was full of crazy crap about napalm and explosives and stuff. Truth is, it scared the shit out of me. So this morning, I followed him to the basement and confronted him – least, that was the plan. When I got there, there was one o' them bombs, I mean right out of the pictures, and when he saw I saw it, he freaked. Stabbed me in the leg, and just left me there. I musta passed out, because by the time this one brought me to, it was too late.'

  'And your brother?'

  'I can't say for sure, but if I had to guess, I'd say he died in the blast.'

  'And you'd be willing to cooperate with the police on this?'

  I nodded solemnly. 'I guess at first I figured you got to stick up for your family, no matter what, but you're right – we owe it to everybody here to tell the truth.'

  She put a hand on my shoulder and gave it a comforting squeeze. 'Stay here,' the doctor said. 'I'll be right back.' Then she ducked out of the tent, setting off toward the makeshift command center the cops had established on the other side of the street.

  'Sam, what the hell was that about?' Kate demanded.

  'I was buying us some time,' I said. I swung my legs down off the bed – a little easier, now that the wound was good and numb – and, with a little help from Kate, managed to find my feet. There was a pair of crutches lying