“Can I see her?”
“Sure, come on with me.”
We went through two sets of those bang-and-they-open doors designed for gurneys, and down a long, brightly lit corridor.
“She seemed to be in a lot of pain,” I said.
“X rays showed two teeth sheared off, and one other cracked. Must have been very painful. She’s lucky it missed the nerves in there. She could have had a permanent paralysis of the facial muscles on that side.”
That had never occurred to me.
“I was worried that it broke her jaw,” I said. Just making hospital conversation.
“If her teeth hadn’t gotten in the way,” said Henry, as cheerful as ever, “she could have had very severe bleeding in the oral cavity. She’s pretty lucky.”
It’s all in your point of view, I guess.
To see Hester in the light-blue hospital gown was a surprise. She looked a lot smaller and more, well, delicate that I’d ever imagined her. She was very pale, and had an enormous dressing on her cheek.
They had an IV drip going, and her eyes were closed.
“Hester,” said Henry, and her eyes snapped open, “you have a visitor.”
She smiled with the half of her face that wasn’t covered in gauze. “How’d it go, Houseman?”
“You knew about the ambulance?”
“Yeah, I heard it go up.” Her speech had improved greatly.
“No survivors. Suicide bomber. Can you believe that? A Goddamned suicide bomber.”
She shook her head. “I’m glad you made sure I got a separate ambulance,” she said softly. “Thanks.”
“Me, too,” I said. “And you’re welcome.”
“Did we get everybody?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea,” I said. “HRT was doing its thing when I got out, so I don’t expect too many of the bad guys made it. I think they were being dumb enough to try to shoot it out with our troops, so they probably got flattened. I don’t know, though. I’ll find out what’s happening down there. I’ll let you know. You better get some sleep. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”
I think she was asleep before I left the room. I glanced at my watch. It was only 21:51 hours, 9:51 P.M.
CHAPTER 24
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2001 22:08
My car was down at the HEINMAN BOYS’ Farm, just the first of several complications that were to crop up in the next hour or so. I called the office on my cell phone and asked for a ride.
The Maitland officer was at a domestic call, and their other car was down at the old Dodd place, where all the action was. I asked Dispatch to make sure that somebody drove my car back, and decided to walk up to the office. It was about fifteen degrees by now, and the fresh air would wake me up. I also wanted time to think. Things had started happening too damned fast after the ambulances got into the yard, and I need some time to try to figure stuff out.
My biggest question had to do with what the hell all those terrorists had been doing there in the first place. It looked like they’d sure been there when we arrived, and just didn’t see us until we were standing around in the farmyard. What the hell could they have been up to that they didn’t even have a lookout posted?
My house was only a half-block out of my way to the sheriff’s department. I figured the county could afford the extra overtime if I stopped and saw Sue.
She was really glad to see me. We talked for about five minutes, mostly about how I was safe now, and how frightened she’d been when she’d seen the explosion on TV. One of the reporters had kept saying that the barn had blown up.
I told her that I had to go to the office for a while, but that I’d be very safe.
“You said that last time.”
“Well, now I’m a witness,” I told her. “We always take better care of witnesses.”
It was about three-quarters of a mile to the office, almost all residential, with the last third being up a rather steep hill with cracked and tumbled sidewalk. I took my time in the dark, not wanting to break my ankle at this late date.
I passed a house with a dog in the yard. I was just about under a streetlight, and the porch light was on, but he didn’t notice me because he had his head in the bare branches of some bushes, hot on the scent of a rabbit. It was kind of cute, because from my angle he was mostly wagging tail. I even stopped for a second, but thought better of whistling. I didn’t want him to start barking.
I knew what was distracting the dog. Not because I could smell the rabbit, too, but because I knew about dogs. What did I know about terrorists? Not much. But I knew a lot about criminals, and people of that mind-set. Most of the people we were dealing with down at the old Dodd place, I reminded myself, were not terrorists in the strictest sense. They seemed to be criminal types recruited to fill gaps. Second-stringers, but controlled by a terrorist “boss.”
If I assumed the “boss” was not present, I was left with a bunch of second-rate criminals doing their thing. I remembered one bunch we had busted years back, after the only member of the little gang with a brain and a personality had been hurt in a car wreck. The original four had broken into a toy store in Dubuque and stolen a whole consignment of those remote-controlled toy cars. After their car wreck, the other three were a piece of cake, and we got ‘em when they were actually racing several of the little cars up and down the only street in a little town. One of our marked cars had come through on routine patrol and damned near ran over some of them.
So what did I know about second-rate criminals? They were not only pretty stupid, but they tended to hang around the stuff involved in their crimes because it was fun. It made them feel good. It gave them a sense of importance.
The parking lot, and the street immediately adjacent to the office, looked strangely empty. Not one single media vehicle present. Not one. They must have all gone down around the old Dodd place. I shook my head. It had to be really crowded on that gravel road.
Once in the office, I called Lamar.
“How you doin’?” he asked.
“Just speak up a bit, and I’m fine,” I said.
“How’s Hester?”
“Pretty well sedated, I think, but they say she’ll be fine after some surgery tomorrow.”
“Good. Good.”
“So, how’s it going down there? “I asked.
“Well, there was a bunch of shooting, but that FBI team went through ‘em like a knife through butter. Hasn’t been a shot fired in quite a while. FBI’s going through the area, seein’ what they got. You want,” he asked, in a rare moment of insight, “to talk to Volont about this? He’s right here…”
Volont came on the line. “How are you?”
I told him, and also about Hester. He seemed pleased. “How’d we come out down there?”
“This isn’t a secure line,” he said. “If you’re up to it, come on down. We have some questions, and George isn’t sure about everything.”
“No car,” I said. “It’s down there where you are.”
“You don’t have a spare vehicle in the lot?”
“We don’t have a single vehicle in the lot, as a matter of fact. The media must have you surrounded.”
“We got all of that stuff way back out at the highway, except for one rig. Let me get back to you. You don’t have to come back down unless you feel up to it.”
“I’m fine.”
I sat down at Dispatch and sipped a cup of coffee.
“Did they really blow up the ambulance?” asked Pam.
“Yeah.”
