Suddenly her face crumples, as if the supporting structures beneath have simply melted away. “Erin’s dead,” she whispers.
I blink. “No. I just left her at….” The words die in my throat as one of the men beside her nods.
“S-somebody,” she stutters. “Horrible… I was too late … couldn’t do anything.”
An image of Patrick Graham flashes in my brain.
“Mr. Cole,” says one of the uniforms, whom I finally recognize as Sheriff Buckner from Yazoo City. “We need to get your wife calmed down. She gave a statement already, but she can’t seem to stop shaking and she won’t let the paramedics near her.”
“Where have you been?” Drewe asks suddenly. “Harper, did you go see her like I asked you?”
“Yes! She was fine when I left her. The police arrested me afterward! They took me back to Jackson!”
As Drewe shakes her head, new panic seizes my heart. “Where’s Holly? Nothing happened to Holly!”
“Mama’s,” she murmurs. “Erin dropped her off at Mama’s.”
“Dropped her off? How do you know?”
“First thing I thought of… called. I didn’t tell her about Erin, though. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t!”
I pull her to my chest and wrap my arms around her.
“What exactly went down here?” asks an authoritative voice from behind me. “Detective Mike Mayeux, New Orleans homicide.”
“We’re not sure, mister,” growls Sheriff Buckner. “Got two dead women in an office room up front.”
“Erin died
“Where did you think she died?” he asks.
“I saw her in Jackson this afternoon. I just assumed-”
He stares at me with unveiled suspicion. Then he turns to Mayeux and says, “One deceased is Mrs. Cole’s sister. The other’s a Jane Doe. Foreigner, by the look of her.”
A wave of unreasoning fear shunts through me. “What kind of foreigner?”
“Who knows? Real dark woman. Asian, maybe. Indian. They all look the same, don’t they?”
The information is coming too fast for me to absorb it. One thought dominates my mind:
“For the moment,” he says slowly.
“I want to take her into our bedroom, get her away from all this.”
“Fine. But I want you to take a look at that foreign woman. You might recognize her.”
“Right now?”
“Next few minutes, anyhow. Before they load her out.”
“Who else knows about this?”
“I put in a call to the Memphis hotel where Dr. Anderson’s staying, but he was out. I left a message for him to call here, or my office if he can’t reach here.”
The mention of Bob Anderson hits me like a belly punch. “Who else?”
“As of now, nobody. Your wife said not to tell anybody. But this is a real small town, son. You know that. You or your wife better call Margaret Anderson before she hears it from somebody else. There’s a husband too, right? In Jackson?”
“I’ll take care of that.”
“They been having any marital problems?”
Drewe suddenly goes stiff, as if the possibility of Patrick being the killer has just occurred to her. I squeeze her reassuringly. “He’s not a killer, Sheriff. Please give me a few minutes with my wife. Then I’ll answer all your questions.”
I push past Mayeux and a couple of strangers and shepherd Drewe into our bedroom. Turning on only the bathroom light, I sit her gently on the bed and kneel before her in the shadows. Her eyes are unfocused. I have never seen anything affect her like this. In our family, Drewe is famous for nerves of steel. Now she’s a rag doll.
“Drewe? Honey?”
No response.
I have a thousand questions, but none can be asked without forcing her to relive whatever horror she just endured. “Can you hear me, Drewe?”
Her face remains impassive. Taking advantage of her near catatonia, I quickly strip off the bloodstained blouse and toss it into a corner. She doesn’t resist. I lay her back on the bed and remove her shoes and khakis, then pull a crocheted comforter off a rocker and drape it carefully over her.
Instantly Buckner is inside the bedroom, gun in hand. I wave him out angrily. “I’m right here,” I tell her, laying my hand on her cold forehead. “It’s Harper. Everything’s okay. I’m going to take care of everything.”
After about a minute, I rise and pad into the bathroom to scan the contents of her medicine cabinet.
Nothing.
Opening the hall door a crack, I catch Mayeux’s eye as he talks with Buckner in the hall. He moves quickly to me.
“There should be a black medical bag somewhere,” I tell him. “My wife uses it to stitch up local kids, stuff like that. Check the hall closet.”
“It’s evidence,” he replies. “She apparently tried to resuscitate her sister.”
His eyes narrow. “What you gonna do? You ain’t no doctor, are you?”
“My father was. Look, I’ve done everything from shooting X rays to stitching people up. Just get me the bag!”
Mayeux speaks quietly to Buckner, who looks at me, then nods. Satisfied, I go back into the bedroom and kneel beside Drewe. She is still shivering beneath the comforter, her eyes wide and glassy.
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “I’m here. It’s okay. Don’t think … don’t think. I’m going to make everything all right. Just get warm… warm.”
A crack of light falls across the bed.
“Here you go,” whispers Mayeux.
I quickly scan the contents of the bag and select a vial of Vistaril and a 2.5-cc syringe. I hate to shoot her, but I doubt I could make Drewe swallow pills, and pills might not even dent the psychological trauma she’s sustained.
Mayeux watches as I load 2 cc’s of Vistaril into the syringe, invert it, thump the barrel, and nudge the plunger to evacuate the air bubbles. If Drewe were fully aware, she would never allow this, but she doesn’t even flinch when I slip the needle into the muscle of her arm and empty the contents of the syringe. The crack of light disappears from the bed.
With Drewe held tight in my arms, I murmur incessantly. Half of what I say makes no sense. It’s the same maternal mantra I’ve heard Erin use when she’s trying to put Holly to sleep. Constant reassurance, the tone more important than the words, an orally generated security blanket that lulls the senses almost as effectively as narcotics.
At last she is under, her breathing deep and sonorous. Tucking the comforter under her bare feet, I move to the door and step quickly outside. Buckner and Mayeux are waiting.
“You ready?” asks the sheriff.
This is my first good look at Buckner. He’s a big, stolid man of fifty, who wears a white shirt and brown tie to set him apart from his deputies. By reputation he is tough and honest, though not necessarily smart.
“I want you to put someone by this door,” I tell him. “In case my wife wakes up.”
He snaps his fingers and a deputy scrambles into the hall. It’s Billy, who manned the stakeout at the highway curve last week. He listens to Buckner, then takes up his post before the bedroom door like a guard at Buckingham Palace.
“Real sorry, Harp,” he says. “I’ll holler if she wakes up.”
“Let’s get this over with,” Buckner says, watching me closely.
