They left him lying on the kitchen floor and walked out the back door of the house and to the alley.
Strange handed Quinn his gun. Quinn slipped it into his waistband and side-glanced Strange.
“You got some anger management issues you need to work on, Derek. You know it?”
“My anger’s been working pretty good for me today so far.”
“Thought you were gonna use the forty-five for a second back there.”
“Couldn’t have used it if I wanted to. I emptied the magazine before I came to the house.”
“That gun felt too good in your hand, didn’t it?”
“Scared me how good it felt,” said Strange. “Your bullets are in the ashtray, back in the car.”
ON the way to the Caprice, Strange answered his cell. He continued his conversation with Janine as he got under the wheel of the car. Quinn slipped the .45 back under the seat. As Strange listened to his call, writing in his notebook, Quinn’s cell chirped. He answered, got out of the Chevy, and leaned against the rear quarter panel as he took the call.
Strange waited for Quinn to get back inside. He noticed that some of the color had drained from Quinn’s face.
“Janine got me a name and address on that boy Lamar saw,” said Strange. “Charles White. And guess what? His credit record shows his last address is up on Warder Street. I bet you he was the only one of the three qualified to sign for the utilities. She got me the phone number there, too.”
“Guess you got enough to call Lydell,” said Quinn, his eyes showing he was somewhere else. “Time to send in the troops.”
“I’m not ready to do that yet,” said Strange, watching Quinn’s stare go out the window. “Terry, you all right?”
“I just got a call from the MPD. They got a girl down in the ER at Washington Hospital Center, she’s all fucked up. Beaten close to death. It’s an informant of mine, helped me on that snatch I did. She gave my name as the first contact. Girl named Stella.”
“You want to go there, then go. I can drop you at the hospital and pick this up my own self from here.”
“All right,” said Quinn. “Let’s go.”
Quinn phoned Sue Tracy as Strange turned off Georgia Avenue and headed east on Irving Street. Strange entered the complex of hospital buildings five minutes later and stopped the Caprice near the heliport adjacent to the ER entrance. Quinn opened his door and put one foot to the asphalt. He turned and shook Strange’s hand.
“Don’t do anything without me, Derek.”
“I won’t,” said Strange.
Even as he said this, Strange was weighing a plan. It went against most everything he believed in. Still, he couldn’t shake it from his mind.
chapter 27
QUINN went directly past the check-in desk, through the waiting area, and into the treatment facility. A security guard stopped him and walked him over to a plainclothes MPD cop who wore a black mustache. He held a go-cup of coffee in his thin, veined hand.
“You got a minute to talk?” said the cop.
“After I see the girl,” said Quinn. “How is she?”
“According to the people here, she got beat up pretty bad. The man did it used his fists, but he didn’t hold back. He punched right through her. Broke a few ribs, and she’s bleeding inside. They’re trying to stop that, and the doc thinks they will. Also, whoever this prince was, he carved up her face with a knife.”
“She gonna live?”
The cop shrugged. He sipped from a hole torn in the lid of the cup and looked Quinn over. “You know, I recognized your name on the sheet, and then when you walked in, from the pictures they used to run in the papers. You’re the same Terry Quinn used to be on the force, right?” The cop’s eyes said curiosity rather than aggression.
“Yeah. Can I go?”
“Why’d she have you as contact number one?”
“I don’t know why.”
“No fixed address, no mention of parents. And she wants to talk to you?”
“That’s right.”
“Okay. She claims she got blindsided and never saw a thing. You got any idea who did this to her?”
“None.”
“Here’s my card.”
Quinn took it and slipped it into his coat.
“Excuse me,” said Quinn.
Stella was on a gurney behind a portable curtain, at the end of a row of makeshift stalls. Her forehead and cheeks were nearly covered in surgical tape, damp and brownish red in spots. Her thin right arm, lying outside the blanket, was bruised black with large defensive marks and also in several places where a nurse had tried to find a vein for the IV. Tubes ran from somewhere under the sheets and into her nostrils. The fluid in the tubes was dirty, and brown particles ran through it as Stella inhaled, her breath labored and ragged.
Quinn found a hard chair and placed it beside the gurney, where he took a seat and held her hand. A nurse came by and told him that they were preparing to move Stella to the ICU and he couldn’t stay much longer. Ten
