his pocket and stood up. 'Maybe Lofland's settled in by now.'
When Ski entered the hospital room, no one was happy to see him. Not the nurse, who told him the patient was still very weak and asked that Ski not take too long. Not Mrs. Lofland, who when he introduced himself was polite, but only because she had to be. Not the patient, who seemed the least happy of all that Ski was there.
Ben Lofland, fresh from the surgical recovery room, was attached to various lines and tubes and looked like warmed-over death. Oren Starks's bullet had gone clean through him, creating entry and exit wounds but, miraculously, doing only moderate damage to tissue on its passage. It had missed all his organs and the bowel. The worst of the injury had been the amount of blood lost. Either Lofland was living right or he had the devil's own luck.
Ski was betting on the latter.
His condition was far from critical, but he came across to Ski as a whiner. Once introductions were out of the way and the nurse had left the room, he said, 'I really don't feel up to this right now.'
'I'll be brief,' Ski said.
'Why do you need to talk to Ben? Hasn't she told you what happened?'
Ski turned to Amanda Lofland, who'd placed hard emphasis on the
'You haven't caught him yet?'
Ski disliked the implication of incompetence that had underscored Lofland's question. 'Ms. Malone didn't see his vehicle. She was busy trying to keep you from bleeding out on her bedroom floor.'
Ski knew it was the mention of Berry Malone's bedroom and not pain that caused the guy to wince. Lofland shot a worried look at his wife, who was hugging herself as though at any moment she might fly apart.
Without further prompting from Ski, Lofland said, 'I heard Berry scream. Heard their voices. I ran--'
'Were you asleep?' Ski removed his notepad and pen from his pocket.
'What?'
'Did her scream wake you up?'
'Uh, no. I hadn't gone to sleep yet.' He cast another look at his wife, who had moved to the window and was looking through the blinds at the ventilation chutes on the roof.
'You were still awake,' Ski stated.
'Right.'
'But you hadn't heard Starks come into the house.'
'No.'
'Car engine? Boat motor?'
'You think he came by boat?'
'It's possible. We're checking it out.'
'I didn't hear a boat motor.'
'Anything?'
'No.'
'Okay.'
Lofland paused to see if Ski was going to ask something else, and when he didn't, Lofland continued. 'I ran along the gallery to the other side of the house.' He gave his wife another glance, as though to ensure she'd heard how far away from each other the two bedrooms were.
'When I got to Berry's room, I rushed over to the bathroom. That's where the voices were coming from. Oren was standing in front of the bathtub, his back to me. He must've heard me. He turned around and shot me.'
'Did he say anything first?'
'No.' Lofland grimaced with discomfort. 'Can I have some water, please?'
Amanda went to the bed. She poured water from a carafe into a plastic cup, then leaned over him and guided the bent straw to his mouth. When he'd drunk, he looked up at her and touched her hand. 'Thanks, sweetheart.'
She gave him a lukewarm smile, returned the cup to the nightstand, and then resumed her study of the ventilation apparatus outside the window.
'He just spun around, saw you in your undershorts, and pulled the trigger,' Ski said.
'Yes. He seemed completely unbalanced.'
'Why do you think? Jealousy over the two of you being together in the lake house?'
'I don't know the cause for Oren's precarious mental state, Deputy.'
Ski disliked his tone. To keep himself from knocking the sanctimonious jerk out of the bed, he scanned several of the sheets in his notepad. 'What happened after Starks shot you?'
'I can't tell you. I blacked out.'
'Ms. Malone says you were conscious right up till the paramedics got there.'
'I was? If so, I don't remember. I must've gone into shock. I don't even remember feeling any pain until I regained consciousness in the recovery room this morning. I didn't know where I was. I was so disoriented, I freaked out. The nurse told me I'd been shot and had undergone surgery. Things began coming back to me then, but between Oren firing that pistol and my waking up in recovery, everything is blocked.'
'How well do you know Starks?'
'Only as a co-worker.'
'You hadn't seen him since he got fired?'
'No.'
'You two ever hang out? Go for a beer after work?'
Lofland was shaking his head. 'I never saw him socially.'
'Mrs. Lofland?' When Ski spoke her name, she jumped and came around quickly. 'What are your impressions of Oren Starks?'
'I don't have any.'
'You never met him?'
'Well, yes. Ben introduced us at a company function.'
'You only met him that once?'
'Once or twice. I don't remember.'
'Nothing about him stood out to you?'
'They were casual introductions, Deputy. Insignificant. If I had known that one day he would try to kill my husband, I would have paid more attention.'
In Ski's opinion, these two people deserved each other. One was as unlikable as the other. He returned his attention to Ben. 'Did you and Starks get along okay in the office?'
'He was off-putting to some people, but I never had any issues with him.'
'Did Ms. Malone?'
'Wouldn't you call stalking an issue?'
Again, his smart-aleck tone grated on Ski. He wanted to yank hard on the catheter draining Lofland's bladder, see what effect that would have on his sarcasm, but he settled on glaring at him coldly.
Lofland got the message. His smirk dissolved. 'Berry told me Oren was stalking her.'
'When?'
'When did she tell me? First I heard of it was when she decided to spend the
