'How old?'
'Six and seven.'
'No wife?'
'No.' I took a deep breath. 'Should someone go get the kids? Bring them to the hospital?'
The doctor shook his head. 'No. He's in surgery now. It'll be several hours. If he makes it through that…' His voice trailed off.
'Look, doc. How bad is it?'
He looked me straight in the eye. 'Bad,' he said quietly. 'His neck's broken. He has lost a tremendous amount of blood.'
His words zinged around in my head like wildly ricocheting bullets. 'But will he make it?' I demanded.
The doctor shrugged. 'Maybe,' he said. The doctor spoke quietly, but his words washed over me with the crushing roar of breaking surf.
Stunned, I rose from the chair. I couldn't breathe. I scrambled away from the doctor, from the brutal hopelessness of that maybe. I battled blindly for a way to escape that tiny, oppressive room before its walls caved in on me.
Powell caught me by the arm before I reached the door. 'Beau, where are you going?'
'To Kirkland. To talk to his kids.'
'I can send somebody else,' Powell told me. 'You don't have to do it.'
'This is unfortunate,' the doctor said. 'Perhaps it would be better if someone else…'
I turned on him savagely. 'Unfortunate?' I bellowed. 'You call this unfortunate!'
Powell gripped my arm more tightly. 'Hold it, Beau. Take it easy.'
I glared at the doctor. 'I'm going to Kirkland,' I growled stiffly through clenched jaws. 'Don't try to stop me.'
I shook off Powell's restraining hand and strode from the room. They let me go.
When I pushed open the swinging door at the end of the hall, the waiting room was more jammed than it had been before. I recognized faces, but I spoke to no one. The room grew still when I appeared. Silently, the crowd stepped aside, opening a pathway to the outside door.
On the outskirts of the crowd, just inside the sliding glass door, I saw Maxwell Cole. He stepped in front of me as I tried to walk past.
'I just heard, J.P. Is Peters gonna be all right?' he asked.
I didn't answer. Couldn't have if I had tried.
Max gave me a clap on the shoulder as I went by him. 'Too bad,' I heard him mutter.
He made no attempt to follow me as I got into the car to drive away.
Maybe Maxwell Cole was growing up.
Maybe I was, too.
CHAPTER 32
I started the engine in the Porsche. Instantly, a mantle of terrible weariness fell over me. It was as though all my strength had been sapped away, all the stamina had drained out of me and into the machine. Gripping the wheel, I felt my hands tremble. I was chilled, cold from the inside out.
It was well after ten. I understood why I had hit a wall of fatigue. The days preceding it, to say nothing of that day itself, had taken their toll.
Common sense ruled out hurrying to Peters' house to tell his girls. It was long past their bedtime. They were no doubt already in bed and fast asleep. Let them sleep. The bad news could wait.
I decided to go home, shower, and change clothes before driving to Kirkland. Mentally and physically, I needed it. Besides, a detour to my apartment gave me a little longer to consider what I'd say, what I'd tell Heather and Tracie when I woke them.
When I got to the Royal Crest, it was all I could do to stay awake and upright in the elevator. I staggered down the hallway, opened the door to my apartment, and almost fell over what I found there. My newly recovered recliner had been returned and placed just inside the door. How Browder had gotten it done that fast I couldn't imagine. But he had.
Unable to walk through the vestibule, I turned into the kitchen. There on the counter sat my new answering machine with its message light blinking furiously.
I counted the blinks, ten of them in all. Ames had told me that each blink indicated a separate message. I pressed rewind and play.
The first two were hang-ups.
The third was a voice I recognized as that of Michael Browder, my interior designer, telling me he was on his way to downtown Seattle. He was bringing the chair in hopes of dropping it off on his way.
The fourth call was Browder again, calling from the security phone downstairs this time, asking to be let into the building.
The fifth call was from the building manager, explaining that he was letting someone deliver a chair and that he hoped it was all right with me.
The sixth was someone calling to see if I was interested in carpet cleaning.
The seventh was from Ned Browning. He didn't say what day or time he was calling. He said he had just discovered that the keys to the Mercer Island team van were missing from his desk. Checking in the district garage, he had discovered that the van was gone as well. He had reported it missing, but did I think it possible that Candace Wynn had taken the keys from his desk while he was down in the locker room?
I stopped the answering machine and replayed Browning's message. Possible? It was more than possible. You could count on it. So that was why she had insisted on meeting Browning at school, why she had pretended to have just learned about the names in the locker the night before. She had lured Browning there so she could get the keys and steal the van.
But why? That still didn't give me the whole answer. Parts of it, yes, but not the whole story. Maybe she had known we were getting close and had wanted to use another vehicle in case we were already looking for her truck. But why a school van? Surely she must have known that by Monday at the latest someone would have noticed and reported it missing.
Unless, by then, she no longer cared whether she got caught. I remembered the fearless, single-minded way she had crashed through the barriers onto the exit ramp. Maybe she had reached a point where being caught was no longer the issue. Now, with Candace Wynn dead, hope faded that I would ever learn the answers to those questions.
I turned back to my answering machine to play the next message. The eighth one was from Joanna Ridley, asking me to call her as soon as I could. She left her number.
The ninth and tenth messages were both from Ames, looking for me, wondering what was going on, and had I learned anything.
The machine clicked off. I dialed Joanna's number, but there was no answer. I poured myself a tumbler full of MacNaughton's and dialed Peters' number in Kirkland. Ames answered on the second ring.
'It's Beau,' I said.
'It's about time. Did you find him?'
'Yes.'
'It sounds bad. Is it?'
'He's in the hospital, Ralph. The doctors don't know whether or not he'll make it…'
'And…?' Ames prompted.
'Even if he does, he may be paralyzed. His neck's broken.'
There was a stricken silence on the other end of the line.
'Are the girls in bed?' I asked eventually.
'Mrs. Edwards put them down a little while ago. I told them we'd wake them up if we heard any news.'
'Don't get them up yet. Wait until I get there,' I said. 'I'm at home now. I need to shower. I'll come prepared
