Cole stood with the everyone else clustered outside the exam room doors in SF General’s ER…Razor, Willner, Galentree, Lexie, several uniformed officers…watching through the windows while doctors and nurses worked over Irah amid a web of IV and oxygen lines, ECG and blood pressure leads. The head of a portable x-ray machine darted in and out over her, recording the bony trauma.
“Isn’t that a waste of medical resources?” one of the uniformed officers said.
A number of expressions agreed.
“Razor!”
Warmth flooded Cole at the voice. He turned happily. “Sherrie!”
She walked past him to Razor. “What are you doing here?” Her voice sharpened in concern. “Who’s been hurt?”
“Not an officer,” Razor reassured her.
“She’s a cop killer,” Willner said.
Sherrie caught her breath and looked quickly at Razor. “The Benay woman?”
“No.” He reached out to put an arm around her. “Someone else, who really killed Cole.”
He might as well have dropped a match into gasoline. Stiffening, she knocked the arm away. Her eyes flamed, and the heat of her fury crackled out through her hair. “And you brought her
“You want her to stand trial for his murder, don’t you?” Razor said.
Her hands clenched. “I want her
“Why don’t you let us drive you to pick up the kids and take you all home.” Razor caught the eye of a uniformed officer, who nodded. “We know where Cole’s body is and are going after it.”
She froze. As if someone had thrown a switch, she went eerily calm. “Thank you. Will you call my mother and tell her I’m coming home?” And she walked out with the officer.
After calling Joanna, Razor called Lauren. At the other end, his ex-wife said, “I’m just about off duty. I’ll pick up Holly and go over.”
Cold trickled through Cole. The ritual had begun, family and friends gathering around the bereaved family. Lieutenant Lafferty and the chaplain would come to notify her when his body was found. Then there would be the funeral. He hated police funerals…the church full of officers in dress uniforms, eulogies about laying down one’s life and giving the last full measure, the street full of vehicles topped by light bars. The long cortege of police cars down to Colma. Rather than think about it, he wandered into the exam room.
The doctor stood studying x-rays hanging up on the view boxes. He turned away, grimly shaking his head at a nurse. “Let’s get a CT and MRI and see just how bad a prognosis we have.”
What? Cole circled them to the view boxes. He had seen enough x-rays over the years to know what the human skeleton should look like. Irah’s rads recorded disaster. Two cervical vertebrae had shattered. One fragment looked driven into the spinal cord itself.
On the exam bed, Irah groaned. The heart monitor beeped faster.
“She’s regaining consciousness,” another nurse said.
The doctor quickly stepped back to the bed. Cole moved to the foot of it.
Irah opened her eyes. She stared around with the dazed expression of the half-conscious, her mouth working behind the oxygen mask. After several tries, she managed a weak, ragged: “Where…”
“You’re at San Francisco General,” the doctor said.
Irah stared up at him. “Alive?”
“Yes.” He smiled at her. “You’re alive.”
Her face twisted. “No!” The whisper rasped, enraged. “
Cole smiled in grim satisfaction. “Hey, Irah…can you say quadriplegia?” Much of the lead in his gut dissolved. This time they had her for good.
The cervical collar prevented her from lifting her head, but Irah’s eyes shifted to stare toward the foot of the bed. “You! How can you be here?”
He started. Now she saw him?
“I’m an ER doctor,” the doctor said. “Dr. Anson.”
Irah’s eyes stayed focused on the foot of the bed, furious. “You’re dead!”
Anson and the nurses exchanged puzzled glances.
Triumph warmed Cole. Maybe being so close to death herself broke down her blindness. “That’s right. I’m dead. While you’re still alive. That truck needed to be a bigger or going faster to do the job you wanted. But you’re alive just from the neck up.” He gave her a knife-blade smile, savoring justice. “No matter what kind of defense your attorney mounts, you’ve got a life sentence in an escape-proof prison. With no possibility of parole. I can’t see a jury sentencing a quadriplegic to death, so on behalf of Sara and myself, I wish you a long, long life.”
Staring at him, her glare turned to horror, and she began screaming…her voice rising higher and higher toward hysteria that was equal parts fury and despair.
But before Cole could enjoy it, weakness swept him. Suddenly he stood in evening light looking into a grave. A body was being lifted out of it in a canvas sling. In the bottom of the grave, next to a trenched section, part of another body showed through a layer of dirt…a female hand, blonde hair. Sara.
Cole swung into the grave and knelt to touch the hand. “We got Irah. She’s going down for what she did to you. I only hope you can feel how sorry I am for what
Did he see a stir in the air beside him, or only imagine it and a brush of warmth across one cheek?
Before he could decide, more weakness hit him. He looked up to see the sling being spread open. A camera flash went off several times. The Colma lieutenant said, “God…700 pounds of concrete vault did a job on him.”
Cole climbed out of the grave and, feeling oddly detached, stared at his crushed body as Hamada went through the pockets. He thought of the dead airmen movie. Was he about to disappear? He checked himself and saw with relief that he still looked solid.
Then he realized the world had changed. Things looked…translucent. Instead of him fading, the world was. Protest rose in Cole.
“Imagine that,” the lieutenant said as Hamada found a billfold in one hip pocket and Cole’s cell phone in the coat. “A killer too squeamish to clean out her victim’s pockets.”
Hamada grunted. “More like she reckoned he’d never be found.”
Cole stared at the phone. It still looked in good shape. Hope sparked in him. He leaned down close to Hamada’s ear and strained to put substance into his voice. “See if the phone still works!”
Hamada froze. Cole saw goosebumps rise on his neck.
“Try the phone.”
Hamada just stared at it for several moments, then pushed the power button.
Hope surged higher as the screen lighted. “Play the voice mail messages. My password is 03686.”
Hamada stood, hefting the phone, an inner struggle visible in his eyes.
“Something wrong?” the lieutenant said.
“I reckon I’ll see.” Hamada punched up the menu and went to voice mail. Playing the messages, his expression turned bemused.
“My wife needs to hear those messages,” Cole said. “Call her on your phone and play them for her. Please?”
Hamada looked around…and stared incredulously at him.
“Please call her.”
“What are you looking at?” the lieutenant asked.
Hamada quirked a brow. “Maybe the explanation for a lot of weirdness. Excuse me. I need to make a phone call.”
Cole quickly zipped back to the hospital, to Razor, still standing outside the exam room.
