“We got a play-by-play on tape,” he said and winked. Billy Morehead, head of the Special Operations
Branch, local police, had Kraut written all over his battered face. He stared down at me through pale
blue, hooded eyes that lurked behind gold-rimmed glasses. Morehead was the size of a prize bull with
hands like cantaloupes, sandy hair going gray, a soft but growling voice, and a penchant for swearing
in German, all of which had earned him the nickname Dutch. He was cordial, but cautious, and
although I had known him for only thirty minutes, I was beginning to like his style.
I said, “Well, so much for them. Let?s hope his widow makes it. Maybe she saw something.”
“She?ll never stool if she did. They?re all alike.”
There was nothing more to do there until the autopsy, so we went up to the intensive care unit on the
second floor. Mrs. „Tagliani looked like she was on her way to the moon; lines sticking out of both
arms, a mask over her face, and behind the bed, three different monitors recording her life signs, what
was left of them. The coronary reader seemed awfully lazy, bi, bin, bipping slowly as its green lines
moved across the centre of the monitor screen, streaking up with each bip.
Nobody from the family was in sight. asked Dutch about that. He shrugged and smoothed the corners
of his Bavarian moustache with the thumb and forefinger of each hand.
“Probably hiding under the bed” was his only comment.
The intern, a callow young man with a teenager?s complexion, told us the widow had suffered firstdegree burns over seventy percent of her body, had glass imbedded in her chest and stomach, and had
been buried under debris which had caused severe head injuries.
“What?re her chances?” I asked.
“A Kansas City shoe clerk might take the odds,” he said, and went away.
“I got a man on the front door, another one in a green robe on this floor,” Dutch said. “Nobody can
get near her. Whyn?t ya come with me? I gotta debrief my people.”
Mrs. Tagliani made the decision for mc. While we were standing there the heart monitor went sour. It
stopped bipping and the green lines settled into a continuous streak.
The machine went deeeeeeeeee.
“Schmerz!” Dutch muttered. I had heard the expression before. Roughly translated, it meant a sorry
state of affairs. I couldn?t have put it better.
A moment later the intern and two nurses rushed in, followed by the trauma unit with their rolling
table filled with instruments.
We stayed around for ten minutes or so until they gave it up.
“Eins, zwei, drei,” Dutch growled. “One more and we?d have us a home run. Looks like you made a
long top for naught, Mr. Kilmer.”
“Yeah,” I said.
