Bathroom? Not away to therapy or anything like that, not at this hour. He looked around, saw the closed bathroom door, and walked around the bed.
He was almost to the bathroom when someone entered the room behind him, saying, ‘Doctor, we’d rather nobody touched anything in what the hell, we can turn the light on.’
He spun around as the overhead fluorescents flickered on, and saw the rangy man in tan sheriff’s uniform in the doorway, and thought, I can be a doctor. Thirty seconds and I’m out of here.
‘Whatever you say, Sheriff,’ he said with an easy smile, and started toward the door.
But the sheriff was suddenly frowning. ‘What’s that under your scrubs?’
He wasn’t prepared for in-close observation. ‘Just my shirt, Sheriff,’ he said, already stooping toward the boot with the Beretta in it, as he casually talked on, saying, ‘I get chilly at night.’
‘Stop,’ the sheriff said, and all at once had his side arm out and aimed, in the classic two-handed bent-kneed stance. ‘Straighten up with your hands empty,’ he said.
He didn’t dare bend any more, but he didn’t straighten either. ‘Sheriff? What the heck are you doing?’
‘I always hit what I aim at,’ the sheriff told him. ‘And with you, what I’ll aim at is your knee.’ Then he raised his voice, shouting toward the doorway behind him: ‘Reese! Jackson!’
He heard the rumble of running footsteps as he said, ‘Sheriff? I don’t know what your problem’
Two uniformed deputies appeared in the doorway, trying not to look excited, one of them black, the other one white. The black, staring, said, ‘Sarge? Who’s this?’
‘Exhibit one,’ the sheriff said. His hands holding that automatic were as solid as a rock. ‘You two search him, see what armament he’s got on him.’
He thought: Can I go through the window? Thick plate glass, I’d either bounce off or get cut to pieces on the way out. Third floor. Three of them; what to do?
The deputies approached him, keeping out of their sergeant’s line of fire. The sergeant said, ‘If it happens you do have to shoot the son of a bitch, take out his legs. Thisone we’re gonna keep alive.’
12
After lunch, Lesley went shopping for Daniel, using the list he’d given her of his sizes. He had nothing, so she bought two sets of everything from the skin out, plus one pair of black loafers, and a small canvas bag to put it all in. It stretched her credit card, but he had given her a bank to call in San Antonio and a PIN, and the man there had confirmed that ten thousand dollars would be shifted to the real estate agency’s escrow account by noon tomorrow, where she’d be able to withdraw it without trouble.
Be nice to have a banker in San Antonio who’d wire you ten thousand dollars whenever you felt like it. Be nice to understand Daniel Parmitt, too, but she doubted she ever would.
Done shopping and with the canvas bag in the trunk of her car, she next showed seven condos to a couple from Branson, Missouri, who didn’t like any of them, and when she got back to the office Sergeant Farley was there, the sheriff from Snake River.
She’d been expecting this, she having been Daniel’s only visitor in the hospital, but it still frightened her when she saw the man standing beside her desk in his crisp tan uniform. It made her tense up, suddenly unsure of her ability to deceive him.
‘Why, Sergeant,’ she said, smiling, coming boldly forward, ‘what brings you here?’ Then, affecting sudden concern to hide her nervousness, she said, ‘Has something happened? Is Daniel all right?’
‘Something happened, okay,’ he said, and gestured at the client chair beside her desk. ‘Okay if we sit for a minute?’
‘Of course. Do.’
She was aware of the other reps throwing little surreptitious glances in this direction, but they were the least of her worries. She’d intended to bring Daniel his new clothes after writing up this afternoon’s wasted work, but did she dare, with Sergeant Farley around?
They sat turned toward one another, and he said, ‘To come right out with it, Parmitt’s gone.’
She acted as though she didn’t understand. ‘Gone? You don’t mean no. I don’t know what you mean.’
‘He left the hospital last night,’ Farley said.
‘But how could he? He’s so weak.’
‘We figure,’ Farley said, ‘somebody gave him some help. I was wondering, would that be you?’
‘Me?’ Don’t overplay this, she told herself. ‘He never askedme,’ she said, then frowned at the papers on her desk as she said, ‘I don’t even think I would. He shouldn’t be out of the hospital, he’s too sick.’ Then she looked at Farley again, saw him coolly watching her, and said, ‘He shouldn’t beanywhere else. Are you looking for him?’
‘Checked all the motels round about,’ he told her. ‘Talked to the cabbies, checked the bus terminal. Got no cars stolen. You’re right, Parmitt didn’t go out of there on his own, he had help.’
‘Well, it wasn’t me,’ she said. ‘Last night, was it?’
‘Sometime before one. Between eight and one, we figure.’
‘I was home,’ she said, ‘with my mother and my sister, watching TV. I don’t know if your own family is considered a good alibi, but that’s where I was.’
‘Okay,’ he said, then seemed to think things over for a minute. ‘The point is,’ he said, ‘anybody around Parmitt is likely to be in trouble.’
‘For helping him, you mean.’
‘No, a different kind of trouble. We caught a fella in the hospital last night, came there to kill our Mr
