was lying near the TV. The orderly laid him on his back, very gently straightening all those old limbs.
“All right, I understand from Velvet that you’re FBI agents,” Nurse Carla said, not looking at either of them. “Would you mind telling me what’s going on? What do you want with Captain DeLoach?”
Dane said, “We came to the door, heard moans, and I immediately opened the door and came into the room. Captain DeLoach was lying on the floor, just as you saw.”
“He’s always falling out of the chair, knocking it over,” she said. “But this is the first time he’s hurt himself. Nasty cut on his head, but it won’t need stitches. I hope he doesn’t have a concussion. That could really take his brain right out of commission.”
Dane and Nick watched her wash out the cut, then apply an antibiotic and a bandage. Nick patted her own Band-Aid that covered the graze made by the bullet and flopped her hair back over it.
Carla said, “Captain DeLoach? Can you hear me? Open your eyes.”
The old man didn’t answer her, just lay there, occasionally moaning.
“He spoke to me,” Dane said. “He was quite lucid. He said that someone hit him. Is it possible that that cut isn’t from his fall?”
Carla snorted. “Not likely. His only visitor is his son, and Weldon was here last week. Weldon’s like clockwork, never more than two weeks go by before he comes to visit.” She frowned up at Dane. “You say he was lucid? How could that be? He hasn’t been lucid in days now.”
“He was. Excuse me a moment, I’m going to have a look around.”
“Suit yourself,” Carla said. She looked over at Nick. “Did you hear him speak lucidly?”
“No. When I saw him on the floor, bleeding, I came to get you.”
“Well, this is all very interesting. Captain DeLoach? Come on now, open your eyes.” She lightly slapped the old man’s cheeks, once, twice, yet again.
He opened his eyes, blinked.
“Do you hurt?”
He moaned again, closed his eyes.
Carla sighed. “It’s really hard when their minds go. Hey, what are you doing?”
Nick said, “I was just checking the chair; it’s really sturdy. How does the captain manage to turn it over? It’s quite heavy.”
“Good question, but he’s done it before. No one’s seen him actually topple over, just the aftermath. Okay, I’ve got this wound bandaged. When the doctor comes around I’ll have him look at it. Let me give the captain a sedative to help him rest.”
“He looks pretty quiet to me right now,” Nick said, inching a bit closer to look at the old man’s pale face.
Carla said, arms crossed over her chest, eyes suspicious, “You don’t know anything about it, do you, so your opinion doesn’t count. Now, tell me why two Federal agents are here to see Captain DeLoach.”
“Sorry,” Nick said, “it’s on a need-to-know basis and you’re not in the loop.”
Nurse Carla harrumphed and laid the palm of her hand on Captain DeLoach’s forehead, nodded, pulled a small notebook out of her pocket, and scribbled something down. She didn’t say anything else.
Nick wished Dane would come back. She knew he was looking to see if there was any sign of an intruder, any sign that Weldon DeLoach had been there.
Ten minutes later, they were in Mr. Latterley’s office with its long glass windows looking onto Bear Lake. He’d just returned, and was still breathing hard.
“Have you seen Weldon DeLoach recently, Mr. Latterley?”
“No. I understand he visited a week or so ago, but I didn’t personally see him. He’s very dependable, as I’m sure everyone’s told you. Once every couple of weeks, he’s here to see his father, make sure he’s got everything he needs. Sometimes Weldon comes more often.”
Dane sat forward. “Have you seen anyone, any stranger, around lately? Today, to be specific?”
Mr. Latterley shook his head. “Well, I was in town for a couple of hours, so you’ll have to ask the staff. But I’ll tell you, Agent Carver, there’s no reason for someone to come here. Oh, we get an occasional hiker in the summer or a tourist who takes a wrong turn, but today? Not that I know of.”
Nick said, “The glass doors in Captain DeLoach’s room weren’t locked, Mr. Latterley. Someone could have simply opened them and walked in.”
“Well, yes, they could, but why? You don’t think that someone actually came in and struck Captain DeLoach, do you? He’s a very old man, agents. Why would anyone seek to hurt him?”
“I asked him who hit him and he told me it was his son.”
Mr. Latterley blinked. “You must have misunderstood him,” he said. “Or the old man was just weaving in and out and that was what came out of his mouth. No, not Weldon. That’s ridiculous.”
He was shaking his head, an interesting head, Nick thought, staring. Shiny, bald, and pointed. She’d never seen a bald head quite so pointed before.
“No,” he said again, more forcefully this time. “Impossible. You didn’t see any sign of anyone, did you, Agent Carver?”
“I can’t be certain. We would like to speak to all the staff who work near Captain DeLoach’s room.”
Dane spent the next hour doing just that. To a person, they shook their heads and looked bewildered by his questions.
Nick sat beside Captain DeLoach’s bed, holding his hand, speaking quietly to him, hoping for a sensible response, but he didn’t speak. She said to Dane when he came in, “He did open his eyes a couple of times, but he looked right through me, didn’t respond at all. I’ve been speaking to him, about lots of silly things, but he hasn’t answered me.”
Just before they left, the doctor came out to say, “I examined Captain DeLoach’s head wound. He seems to be all right. To be perfectly honest, I can’t tell if it happened because he hit his head when he fell or if someone indeed struck him. But on the face of it, it seems strange to even consider that some miscreant from the outside would come into the old man’s room and smack him around.”
Dane said as he walked beside Nick toward their car, “Captain DeLoach said that he told his son he wouldn’t keep quiet anymore and his son hit him. I wonder what he meant by that?”
“I’m beginning to think we should try the Oracle at Delphi.”
He laughed. “Not a bad idea.”
“I just realized, I’m really hungry. Do you think we could stop at a Mexican place on the way back to LA?”
“Sure can.”
Dane walked into Nick’s connecting room at the nicely updated Holiday Inn, not far from Premier Studios on Pico.
She was on the phone. She hadn’t heard him, she was so intent on the call.
He stopped cold. Who was she speaking to?
“Listen,” he heard her say, “I’m calling from the
She sensed him, there was no other word for it, and whipped around. She met his eyes, and quietly eased the phone back into the cradle.
“I can get the number from the hotel clerk, but it would be easier if you just broke down and told me what’s going on.”
Nick felt a corrosive fear leap to life. She wanted to cover up with a dozen blankets or run as fast as she could.
“Go away.”
He sat down beside her on the queen-size bed, picked up her hands, and held them between his. She had nice hands, short nails, no rings. The skin was smooth again. Her hair was half-dry and she was wearing a bit of lip gloss. Nice mouth, too. No, he wouldn’t go there. He said, looking at her straight in the face, “Listen to me, there’s a lot going on here, and on top of it all, here you are scared out of your mind about-whatever. Why won’t you let me help you? My brain can handle more than one thing at a time. I can multitask as well as a woman. Come on, trust
