who was keeping her eye on Teddy as she tried to smother his wife. Grace's legs twitched slightly, and Lena stopped-made herself stop-pulling back the pillow. She fumbled, putting the mask back onto Grace's face, making sure she got the oxygen. What seemed like minutes but could have only been seconds passed before Grace opened her eyes again. She seemed surprised, then angry. Lena knew that killing her would have been a mercy. Grace Patterson only had a few hours at most left in this world. Lena would not hasten them.
Grace was panting angrily as she glared at Lena. Her mouth worked, and she whispered, 'Coward.'
Mark had called Lena this before, and maybe it was true, but not for the reason Grace was thinking.
Lena countered, 'Not as cowardly as raping a child.'
Grace shook her head, either denying that Mark was a child or that what she had done to him was rape.
'He tried to kill himself,' Lena told her. 'Did you know that?'
She could tell from Grace's reaction that she did not.
'Hanged himself in his closet, right after he told me you'd fucked him,' she clarified. 'He didn't want to live anymore, knowing what you'd done to him.'
Grace stared back at the ceiling. The tears still came, but Lena could not tell if they were from grief or pain.
'He's in a coma. Probably won't wake up.'
Grace whispered something, but Lena could not make out what she was saying. Lena leaned down, putting her ear close to the woman's mouth, her hand on the side of the bed. Without warning, Grace reached out, grabbing Lena 's hand. The woman was weak from the labor of dying, and Lena was able to pull her hand away, but not before she felt Grace's thumb brush across the scar on Lena 's hand. The touch was tender, almost sexual, and Lena could see the charge Grace got out of it.
'You sick bitch,' Lena said, rubbing her hand as if she could wipe off the sensation. 'You're going to rot in hell.'
It seemed to take all of her energy, but the mother said in one smooth line, 'I'll see you there.'
Lena backed away until she was standing against the wall, feeling an eerie sense of deja vu. Mark and Jenny had said almost the exact same thing to each other the night Jenny had died.
Lena stood there for a moment, watching Grace Patterson, then checking on Teddy. He was still sound asleep. She checked her watch. There were three more hours until sunrise, when the nurse would be back to check on Grace. Lena clipped the morphine button to the railing, well out of Grace's reach. She sat down in the chair, ignoring her own shaking hands as she waited for Grace Patterson to die.
Chapter Seventeen
Jeffrey was sweating under his bulletproof vest. The August heat combined with the weight of the Teflon vest would have felled an elephant by now. He had lost enough water from sweating to make the back of his throat feel like it had been rubbed with sandpaper.
'Good times,' Nick said, using his handkerchief to wipe the back of his neck.
Jeffrey bit back a cutting remark, asking instead, 'What time is it?'
Nick checked his watch. 'Ten after,' he said. 'Don't sweat it, Chief. Criminals got their own sense of time.'
'Yeah,' Joe Stewart piped up. He was Nick's perp who had flipped, and from the way he was acting, Jeffrey imagined Nick had let the man do a little blow to keep the edge off. He was as wired as a Las Vegas street corner.
Jeffrey said, 'You're sure you don't know anything about a missing girl?'
'How young is she?' Joe licked his lips. 'You gotta picture of her?'
'Sit down,' Nick ordered, kicking at Joe's shins with his pointy cowboy boots. Nick had gone all out for the part of a pedophile, and was wearing a pressed black shirt tucked into the tightest pair of blue jeans Jeffrey had ever seen on a man. Nick had even taken off his gold necklace and trimmed his beard for the occasion. Jeffrey imagined Nick lived for this kind of action. Truthfully, so did every cop Jeffrey knew, including himself.
'I tole you to sit,' Nick reminded Joe.
Joe slumped on the bed, scratching his arms as he mumbled something under his breath. He was a skinny kid, probably in his late twenties. Pimples littered his face like spots on a dog, and he had picked at some of them, bringing blood.
Jeffrey looked at Nick. 'Did you have to get him pumped up like this?'
'You want him pissing in his pants?' Nick asked.
'Wouldn't be much of a difference.' Jeffrey pointed out. Joe smelled almost as bad as the musty thirty-dollar-a-night hotel room they were standing in.
Jeffrey asked, 'Are you sure the air conditioner isn't working?'
'We turn it on, we won't be able to pick up the audio,' Nick reminded him. 'Settle down, Chief. It'll be over soon.'
'What about Atlanta?' Jeffrey asked.
Nick's eyes darted to Joe. The post office box in Grant that Dottie had used for the credit card was a dummy drop. A forwarding address had been given so that all mail sent to Grant would automatically be forwarded on to a different post office box in Atlanta. Jeffrey had asked Nick to set up a surveillance, hoping Dottie would show up.
'It's in place,' Nick told him. 'As soon as I know something, you'll know something.'
Jeffrey's phone vibrated at his side, and he clipped it off his belt. 'Yeah?'
'Hey,' Frank said. 'Patterson's been in his trailer since his wife died this morning.'
Jeffrey felt the tension drain from his body. Maybe Patterson had canceled the meeting. 'Are you sure?'
'Of course I'm sure,' Frank bristled. 'He didn't even go to the hospital to see his kid.'
'All right,' Jeffrey said. He snapped the phone shut and reported the news to Nick.
'Maybe we'll be seeing Dottie?' Nick suggested. 'Patterson's no fool. He knows he's being watched.'
As if on cue, two knocks came at the door, followed by a pause, then another knock.
Jeffrey slipped into the bathroom, leaving the door slightly open so as not to draw attention to it. He grimaced at the smell in the tiny room, which probably had not been ventilated since the Nixon administration.
Joe said, 'Hey, man,' and the door squeaked open.
'Who's this?' a man asked. Jeffrey strained to place the voice. The only thing he was certain of was that it did not belong to Dottie Weaver.
