‘ Trashing is not the term I would use. Damage was caused, yes, but it was minimal. The cost of repair will be relatively small.’
‘ I am tempted to have you disciplined for this,’ Crosby growled.
‘ What? So you can have your investigation back? Because your beloved CID aren’t running the show? Grow up, Mr Crosby… I know you don’t like me, or the fact that I’ve got this job, but I’m doing it to the best of my ability and I’m that far off getting a result.’ She held up her thumb and forefinger with just a sliver of daylight between them. ‘And I won’t be browbeaten or bullied by the likes of dinosaurs like you two…’
‘ Dinosaurs!’ he blasted.
‘ If you want to sulk, then do so. But if you hinder the investigation, so help me God, I’ll bring you down — and you, FB.’ She pointed a finger at Fanshaw-Bayley.
‘ So what’s it going to be?’ she demanded. Her mouth was a tight angry line. Her eyes had large bags under them the colour of prunes and she’d been wearing the same outfit for a long twenty hours. Her hair felt like straw and she needed a bath followed by twelve hours’ sleep. What she didn’t need was this shit!
‘ The answer’s no,’ Crosby said.
She wheeled round and marched out of the office.
Two minutes later the tension that had been welling up inside Crosby’s chest reached a climax. It burned up through his arteries like razor blades on fire, from his heart to his left arm and up the side of his face.
He clutched himself.
Then keeled over off his chair onto the floor with a crash, taking the contents of his desk with him.
FB looked on bemused for a moment before he realised what was happening.
His boss was having a major heart attack.
Whisper had been moved to a side ward, but other than that no one had touched him. He still lay on the hospital bed in his dying position: head lolling to one side, arms hanging loosely off the bed. The nurse who’d discovered him had tried to save him. She’d ripped the bedclothes off him and torn open his pyjamas, but it had been too late for Whisper. Despite all his gurgling and blowing of bubbles of blood through his nose and mouth, he was already dead.
Kovaks’ weary but sharp eyes gazed at the wounds. There were at least twelve punctures in the chest around the heart and innumerable ones in his face and neck. One of his eyes had been gouged out, an ear sliced off and his cheek carved open. Kovaks could see Whisper’s teeth through that particular wound.
Blood was everywhere. The bed was soaked, his body was drenched in it. Crimson was splashed ten feet up the wall behind the bed and’ across the floor. It had started to congeal in tar-like clods on the tiles. There were many footprints in it. It had been a frenzied attack. Kovaks was puzzled.
He looked quickly from the body to the blood splashes and back to the body. A police photographer asked him to step aside while he took more shots from a different angle. Another photographer was videoing the scene for evidential purposes.
The stills man bent down on the far side of the bed. His camera flashed. He stood upright and said, ‘Have you seen this?’ He pointed down to the corner of the room.
Kovaks walked over carefully.
A piece of thick, pink, blood-oozing meat lay on the floor skewered by a knife. The knife was thin, as long as a stiletto but with one jagged cutting edge. Kovaks had no doubt he was looking at the murder weapon.
He had no doubt, either, that he was looking at Whisper’s tongue.
The message it conveyed was not lost on him.
He turned to the local sheriff who was standing at the door. ‘I assumed he’d been killed out on the ward and his body moved here after. ‘
‘ Apparently not.’ The man shrugged. His thumbs were tucked into his gun belt. He seemed slow-witted, but Kovaks knew not to underestimate such people.
‘ I’ll be moving a team in here,’ Kovaks informed him, ‘but we’d sure appreciate your cooperation. I think that together — our skills and your local knowledge — we’ll crack this.’
The sheriff smiled. ‘Us and the FBI, working together? Sure thing,’ he said, pleased.
‘ And obviously we’d like to set up an incident room to run from your office, if that meets with your approval?’
‘ Yeah, sure. From my office. No problem.’ His smile widened even further.
‘ But first can you tell me where I can locate the nurse who found him?’
The sheriff cocked a thumb. ‘Down there. She’s pretty shook up.’
Kovaks strolled down the ward, muttering, ‘Keep ‘em sweet, keep, em sweet.’
The eyes of the patients were on him. Some sneered at the sight of the badge pinned to his lapel. None spoke. He doubted if any ever would.
The nurse was a middle-aged lady whom he’d seen earlier. She was sitting in an office, her head buried in her hands, being comforted by the bored-looking doctor whom Kovaks had also met before. As Kovaks came to the door the doctor immediately ushered him back out.
‘ She is in no condition to be interviewed yet,’ he said. ‘I’ve given her a tranquilliser to get her this calm. Her husband should be here soon to take her home.’
‘ When will I be able to speak to her?’
‘ Tomorrow at the earliest.’
Kovaks nodded. ‘OK. Can you tell me why Whisper was transferred to that side ward, doc?’
‘ To aid speedy recovery. He needed complete isolation, in my opinion.’
‘ Did you see anything that might be of use to us?’
‘ Such as?’
‘ Such as who stuck a knife into him a million times.’
‘ No, I didn’t and frankly, I don’t have the time to talk to you just now. I need to care for this nurse, then I need to get the hospital back to normal.’
‘ When can I see you then?’
‘ Ask my secretary. Make an appointment.’
Jack Crosby was still alive when he was slid on a stretcher into the back of the ambulance some fifteen minutes later, but only just. His heart and breathing had stopped at one point, but FB’s half-remembered first-aid training had saved him. For the time being at least.
Karen watched the ambulance race away, blue light flashing. She was standing at a first-floor window.
The small crowd of people who had gathered outside dispersed slowly, leaving only two standing there: a pale, shaken FB and a worried-looking Chief Constable. FB began talking animatedly, arms waving, fingers pointing, voice obviously raised.
Karen’s mouth twisted sardonically. ‘I wonder who he’s talking about,’ she said under her breath.
She watched them turn and walk into the HQ building, FB not letting up for a second.
Karen made her way to the Chief Constable’s secretary’s office and sat down to wait. A wave of tiredness enveloped her. This was the longest single uninterrupted period she had ever worked in her life. It was all she could do to prevent herself falling asleep.
Jean, the secretary, glanced up at her.
‘ I do hope he’s all right,’ she said.
‘ I do too,’ said Karen. She meant it.
‘ Is there anything I can get you? You look exhausted.’
Just a warm bed and a stiff drink. Karen shook her head, too tired even to speak.
‘ Don’t blame yourself,’ Jean said softly. ‘He’s been warned about his condition often enough. It was only a matter of time.’
Karen managed a wan smile.
FB and Dave August entered and the Chief went straight into his office without acknowledging Karen. ‘I’m not to be disturbed,’ he announced. ‘I’m going to call Mrs Crosby.’
‘ Boss…’ Karen began, getting to her feet.
‘ Disturbed by no one,’ he reiterated and slammed the door.
