cardiologist. Won’t you tell me what happened? We must call the police.” The words tumbled out. Anger made my ears buzz.
She groaned. “I was going to call the police in a little bit, anyway, if I couldn’t reach Tony. I don’t know if he got out, too. I don’t think he saw me … I’ve tried to reach him, but he’s not answering his machine. He’ll be so ticked off if we call the cops. More bad publicity for Prospect. Just give it half an hour,” she begged. She stifled a sob and reached for a tissue.
“Marla, please tell me what happened.”
“Somebody… I … I … think it might have been Albert… .” A sob shuddered through her. I put my hand on her forearm and waited for her to continue. She went on: “Actually, it started Friday night. Tony and I had a terrible fight.”
“Oh, no.” She groaned again, peered uncertainly around the room, then fastened her gaze on the coffee and pills at her bedside. She groped for the brown pill bottle. I leaned close to see what it was. The label read: Royce, Tony. Take one tablet orally every 4 hours as needed for pain. Acetaminophen with codeine.
“Oh, Marla, don’t take his prescription. What have you got it for, anyway?”
“He leaves his stuff here all the time. And he gets headaches. Actually, sometimes I think that guy is a ? headache.”
“Marla ? “
“Let me take some meds,” she insisted, “and then I’ll tell you what happened.” To my horror, she shook out not one but three pills, popped them into her mouth, then washed them down with cold coffee. She grimaced. Then she groaned and sank back onto the pillow.
“Wait,” I told her. “Let me get a washcloth for that eye.” When I came back, she had pressed her face into the pillows and refused to look at me. “Marla,” I implored, “don’t talk. You have to let me call Dr. Gordon. He’s going to want to see you right away. This is for your health, Marla. This is for your life.”
She moaned. Then she reached out and to my relief, took the cold washcloth I offered. When she had eased back upright, I found the bedroom phone, a gilt rotary contraption that was supposed to go with the French Provincial theme. My heart ached for her. She always tried to make everything beautiful. Miraculously, I remembered Dr. Gordon’s number. The phone rang once, twice. It was an emergency, I told the answering service. Did I need an ambulance, the woman wanted to know. In the mountain area, I knew emergency medical services were handled by a private company called Front Range Ambulance. With only two vehicles available, and almost twenty-four hours without phone service in the mountains, ambulance service would be slow, misdirected, or worse, unavailable. I could get Marla to the hospital faster myself. No, I replied to the operator, I needed the doctor to call me. Dr. Gordon was in surgery, and a Dr. Yang would call me back, she informed me calmly. Within two minutes Dr. Yang phoned. I told him a cardiac patient of Dr. Gordon’s had been badly beaten. He said to bring her to Southwest Hospital immediately.
“You’re going to have to go in,” I told Marla gently. “As soon as we get there, I’ll call Tom to tell him you’re all right and to ask him to put out an APB on Albert Lipscomb. Listen,” I blurted out, “Macguire Perkins followed you because he wants to be a cop… .” No matter what Tom said, it still sounded dumb. “Anyway, Macguire’s at Lutheran Hospital. Out at that campsite, somebody hit him, too. You, Macguire, probably Tony, too ? all attacked. Marla, we must call the police as soon as we get you some medical attention.”
“Oh, Tony, Tony.” Marla groaned his name as she inched her way out of bed. Her legs were so bruised and badly cut that I bit back a cry of dismay. Without further protest, she let me help her into a large navy blue dress that buttoned up the front. I found her a pair of red sandals. She put them on, then slumped back on the bed, exhausted by the effort of dressing.
“Do you suppose Tony’s at home, but not answering? she asked. “What should we do, Goldy? I don’t know if he’d like my pressing the panic button before we can at least connect ? “
“Do you think you could tell me what happened?”
She sighed. But the painkiller must have been taking effect, because she began to talk, very softly. “It was too cold Friday night to camp, and I told Tony I couldn’t sleep outside. I begged for us to drive up the next day. He got mad and we argued. But we came back here, cooked some of that soup you gave us, and then argued more about going up to the campsite that night. We went to bed-Tony in the guest room, mind you. But then he came in and woke me up, said he thought he heard an intruder. You know I sleep like a rock, I didn’t hear a thing. But he was in a terrible state. He insisted on tiptoeing around the house, looking for some nonexistent burglar. Finally he calmed down. When I woke up the next morning, I lay here thinking, we’re going out to share a tent in the wild, and he can’t even get through one night without being a mass of nerves?” She managed a rusty laugh.
“But, why did you go out there at all? On Saturday, I mean? There was that terrible storm… .”
She sighed, touched one of the bruises on her cheek, then winced. “I didn’t want to go, but he insisted. The weather was a little warmer, and the fog had cleared, it was just windy. By the time we got the car loaded up, though, rain threatened again. Tony was in a rotten mood. I was ready to tell him to go by himself. Except that we were going in my car, that Miata of his can’t always do the rough-road stuff.[ I should have told him to rent a Range Rover. I should have told him a lot of things.” She frowned. “Think it’s too soon for me to have another pain pill?”
“Absolutely too soon. Wait and see what Yang says. At the campsite, did you see Macguire or his Subaru?”
Even shaking her head seemed to cause her pain.
“No. We got up there to the site by Grizzly Creek, and Tony started acting jumpy as a rabid squirrel. He kept talking about Albert, saying this was their favorite fishing spot. We pitched the tent and of course it started to pour. We used Sterno and heated up some more of your soup. He kept saying, ‘Did you hear something? Think somebody?s out here with us?? I said no fifty times, and then told him his paranoia was making me nuts and I was going to sleep. I was so tired I could have slept through a hurricane. Or so I thought until somebody grabbed me and pulled me out of the tent.”
“What? Who?”
“I don’t know. Somebody just started hitting me. I screamed and called for Tony. I tried to get my footing but it was muddy, dark, thunder blasting overhead, rain coming down like crazy… . It was like a nightmare. And it all happened so fast. I’d been in a deep sleep and then all of a sudden I was screaming my lungs out. But whoever was hitting me didn’t care. I finally managed to get out of the damn sleeping bag. I tried to hit back, grabbing at anything to use as a weapon. But this guy was strong. I thought it was a bear at first, but he grunted like a human. And what bear uses a piece of firewood to hit you? He hit me and hit me and hit me. Just as I was going down there was a flash of lightning, and I saw the guy moving away from me, and … he had no hair. It all went so fast. I thought, Where am I, where am I going, what am I supposed to do? I was l sure I was going to die.” Tears formed in her bruise-circled eyes.
“You fainted?”
“I was… I was… there was sand in my mouth and in my hair. The noise from the water was incredible… I finally figured I was on that sandy shoreline of the creek. With the rain coming down hard, and warm blood oozing over my face, I thought, Finally, finally, I get to rest. I was sure I was dead, or close to it. Later, in the night, I came to and the storm had become even more fierce, thunder, lightning, rain. I thought I heard someone calling me. ‘Marla! Are you here? Marla!’ “
“That was probably Macguire.” Her shoulders slumped. “I gasped, ‘Here! Here!’ But no one could have heard me over the creek and the storm. Besides, I thought I was hallucinating. My mind was so … mushy. Silly, even. My brain was laughing hysterically, saying, Nobody’s calling you, dummy, it’s Rochester wanting Jane Eyre! So there I was on the creek bank, every part of my body aching, wondering who would scream for me when I was about to kick the bucket. I knew I was dead.”
“Oh, Marla, I’m so sorry ? “
She held up a hand to stop me. “When I woke up it was just past dawn. I think. Anyway, our campsite was a mess. I limped to my car, but it was locked. I must have lost the keys when the guy ? Albert ? attacked me. I finally hobbled out to the main road. A family going to church brought me home. I tried to call Tony but my line was dead.” The tears brimmed over. The painkillers were slurring her speech. “I was dying to call you… or come over… if we just had a taxi service in this hopeless town.
. .”
