The doctor was a man about Diane’s age. He spoke to the nurse at the information station, and she pointed to Diane. She, Neva, Andie, Korey and Kendel all rose in one motion, as if connected, and walked over to him.
“We’re friends of Mike Seger. I’m Diane Fallon, his employer. We were with him when this happened. Can you tell us his condition?” asked Diane.
“I’m Dr. Nolan. The knife nicked a vessel and his colon, but he’s going to be all right. He lost a lot of blood, but I didn’t have to transfuse, and that’s good. He should be able to go home in a few days if he progresses as well as he is now. I understand this happened at a funeral?” The doctor looked at them as if expecting them to tell him he had been misinformed.
“Yes. We don’t know who or why. First thing we saw was Mike falling to his knees.”
Chief Garnett came through the waiting room doors and joined them, introducing himself to the doctor.
Diane had expected a detective to show up soon. She wasn’t surprised that the chief himself was taking the lead. It had become a high-profile case, not because of the victim, but because of where the crime had taken place. At least Mike would get their undivided attention.
“Can you tell us anything about the weapon?” he asked the doctor.
“It cut clean like a scalpel-very sharp. Given the depth of the wound, however, whatever kind of weapon did this, it was longer than a regular scalpel.”
“Has he said anything?” asked Garnett.
“No. He’s in recovery now, just coming out of the anesthesia.”
Chief Garnett took hold of Diane’s upper arm, and she yelped at the sudden pain. Garnett quickly withdrew his hand and looked down at his palm. He frowned at her.
Damn, that hurt, she thought. She must have torn the muscle.
“You’re bleeding.”
Diane shook her head. “It’s Mike’s. My arm is just sore because I pulled a muscle at the gym this morning.”
The doctor walked around her and looked at the back of her arm. “I don’t think so. That blood looks too fresh. Let’s get your jacket off and take a look.”
The doctor and Garnett slid the jacket off her shoulder. She heard Andie and Kendel gasp.
Diane felt his fingers on her upper arm just beneath the short sleeve of her blouse.
“You have a deep laceration in your arm.” He turned to the nurses’ station. “Nurse. We need to get Ms. Fallon into an examination room.”
Diane looked at the expressions of surprise on all their faces. She imagined it matched her own. She handed Andie her purse and asked her to give her insurance information to the receptionist. She tried to look at her arm.
“Let’s not move too much. You’re starting to bleed again,” said Dr. Nolan. “Chief Garnett, this looks like a scalpel wound. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was done by the same weapon.”
The nurse led her to the examination room, then helped her change into one of those embarrassing backless hospital gowns. She had Diane lie down on the examination table on her good side.
A few minutes later, the doctor came in, washed his hands, then slipped on a pair of latex gloves. He examined the wound. She flinched several times as he palpated the area on the back of her arm.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m trying to be as gentle as I can.”
What the shit is this about? she wondered. Since hearing that Mike was out of danger, her fear had been replaced by anger. Dammit, who in the hell goes to a funeral and stabs people? She wondered if anyone else was stabbed.
The doctor stepped around the table and stood where she could see him.
“We need to irrigate the wound before I can sew it up. It’s going to be uncomfortable, but nothing you shouldn’t be able to handle.”
“I’m fine. I just want to get this over with and go home.” Diane suddenly remembered the pills she’d taken. “I just took a couple of aspirin.”
“That’s probably why it started bleeding again.”
“Why didn’t I feel anything?”
“You felt nothing?”
“A twinge when it happened. I just thought I had injured a tricep when I was rock climbing at the gym this morning. I often pull muscles when I’m climbing. But I didn’t feel like I had been stabbed.” Diane felt incredulous that this had happened to her. She could imagine how Mike must feel.
“Probably all the adrenaline in your system’s been giving you some pain protection. When did you first feel the twinge?”
“Just after I saw Mike fall to his knees at the cemetery. I was pushing through the crowd to get to him. I remember someone stepped on my foot, and right after that I felt a sharp pain in my arm. As I said, I thought it was a pulled muscle.”
Dr. Nolan moved to the end of the table and examined her feet.
“There’s no bruising. Flex your toes. Does that hurt?”
“Just minor soreness. It wasn’t that hard. It was just pinned to the ground for a moment.”
“Any other pains or sore spots anywhere that you didn’t have before?”
“No, nothing else. Just the arm and the foot.”
“We’ll get you fixed up. I’ll come back when the nurse has cleaned your wound. Is your tetanus up-to-date?” Diane nodded. “Good. I’m going to give you some powerful antibiotics,” he continued. “And we’ll have to take precautionary blood tests for possible infections, but I don’t see any reason you can’t go home right away.”
“I’d like to see Mike before I leave.”
“He should be awake by then. Now this is going to sting. . ” The doctor stuck in the needle to numb her arm.
Damn, she was pissed at whoever did this.
Neva and Korey were waiting for Diane when she walked back into the waiting room after the doctor had stitched her muscle and skin back together. She was surprised anyone was still there. It seemed like it had taken several hours. Neva said she had taken Kendel and Andie to the museum and had come back.
“What did the doctor say?” asked Korey.
“Just a few stitches and minor muscle repairs. They’re letting me go home. How is Mike?”
“Mike’s doing okay,” said Neva. “He had me go to his apartment and bring him some things. I left him asleep, but if you’d like to go see him he may be awake. I’m going to stay the night. . ”
“Don’t worry about coming to work tomorrow morning. We’ll call if we need you.”
Mike was asleep when she, Neva and Korey entered his room. Diane and Korey turned and started to leave.
“Hey, guys.”
Diane turned around. “You awake?”
“More or less,” Mike said, sounding a little groggy. “I think we must have really pissed someone off in an earlier life. Neva said you were getting sewn up.”
Diane shrugged and sat down in the chair Neva had pulled up for her. “The doctor said I’ll live.”
Mike moved and winced in pain. “What the hell happened? Who’s doing this?”
“I don’t know. Do you want me to call your parents?”
He shook his head. “They were so worried when I was shot; I’ll tell them myself when I’m not feeling so out of it.”
“Do you know of anyone who doesn’t like you?”
“Enough to stab me? No. That detective-Garnett-asked the same thing. Graduate school can be cutthroat, but not literally. Besides, that wouldn’t explain why they went after you.”
Diane deeply hoped that this was not somehow her fault, that it had nothing to do with the crime scene lab. She would never forgive herself if it did.
“Hey, Doc. Don’t look so glum. This isn’t your fault.”
It was as if Mike had read her mind, but she guessed he had merely read her face.
“How are you feeling?” she said.
“Actually, pretty good. Got me hooked up to some sweet painkillers. But I don’t think I’ll be able to go caving this weekend.”
Diane gave him a weak smile and lifted her arm. “Me either.”
“They have to test my blood,” he said. “They said the knife might have been contaminated with other blood or something. . ” He let the sentence trail off and looked at Neva. She kissed his forehead.
“I know,” said Diane. “Mine, too.”
“Shit. I hate that son of a bitch,” said Mike.
“We’ll get through this.” She grasped his hand and squeezed it.
Mike looked at her and smiled. “Sure, we will.”
“I’m going home and getting a long night’s sleep. I’ll come by in the morning before I go to the museum,” said Diane.
“Don’t worry about me, Doc. I’ll be fine.”
“You take care, buddy,” said Korey.
“Sure. Nothing can happen to me in the hospital, right?” He laughed weakly as they went out the door.
Korey drove Diane to her car at the museum parking lot. “I’ll take you home and pick you up in the morning,” he said. “It’s not out of my way.”
“Thanks, Korey, but I can drive. Look, I appreciate your staying at the hospital so long. It must have been boring.”
“No problem. Glad I could be there for you guys.”
“See you tomorrow.” Diane got out of his car and into her SUV. It felt good to be going home.
She drove slowly, not quite trusting the use of her right arm, relieved when she pulled into the parking space in front of her apartment building. The building was a huge old Greek Revival house subdivided into apartments.
She wished it had an elevator as she climbed the stairs to her apartment. Just as she got inside the phone rang. She picked it up.
“Hey, it’s me,” said Frank. “How’s Mike doing?”
“Good. They expect a full recovery. I spoke with him before I left.”
“That’s a relief. Look, babe, I’m sorry but I’ve got to stay in Atlanta for the next couple of days. We have a development in a case.” Frank worked in Atlanta, but lived in Rosewood, and he often stayed in Atlanta when he was working on a case instead of making the ninety-minute commute. She couldn’t blame him.
“Sure. I’d like to get to bed early, anyway.” She hoped the depth of her disappointment didn’t sound in her voice.
“I know this has been a rotten day. I really wanted to be with you tonight.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I’ll see you day after tomorrow for sure and take you out to dinner. We’ll do a movie.”
Maybe we’ll bring dinner and a movie home, she thought. Somehow she couldn’t imagine feeling any better in a couple of days than she did now. “I’ll look forward to it,” she said, trying to force some enthusiasm into her tone.
“Take care,” he said, and was gone.
She didn’t tell him that she had also been stabbed. It would only make him feel worse about not being there. She decided to take a Percocet and go to bed early.
Diane awoke feeling just as angry as she had when she went to sleep. Her arm hurt, and it pissed her off that she was going to have to get a series of blood tests to make sure she didn’t catch anything nasty from the knife. Damn that guy.
She wanted to call Garnett and see if he was making progress, but it was only six and he was most likely still at home. On top of all the other worries about herself and Mike, Diane also felt guilty, and she wasn’t sure why. But a free-floating sick feeling had come on her like a constant pain in her stomach. “Get a hold of yourself,” she said out loud to her empty bedroom.
She took a bath, taking care not to get the bandage wet, got dressed and drove to the hospital, eating a nutrition bar on the way. She wanted to see how Mike was doing, and she also wanted to ask him a question that had been nagging at the back of her mind since her near fall in the cave.
A nurse was just carrying out his breakfast tray when she entered Mike’s room. He was alone and sitting up with several pillows behind him.
“Hey, Doc.” He grinned at her.
“You look good,” she said, pulling up a chair. He actually looked better than she felt. The sight lifted some of her depression.
“I’m doing okay. How’s your arm?”
“Sore, but mending. Where’s Neva?”
“She went home to get a shower. She’ll probably be back any minute. She stayed here all night sleeping in that chair.”
Diane was silent for several moments, feeling a little foolish for her concerns about the cave, trying to come up with some small talk.
“Got something else on your mind, Doc?”
“Mike. .”
“Uh-oh, that either sounds like we’re breaking up or I’m getting fired. Since we aren’t going together and technically I work for the university. .”
Diane smiled. “It’s something that’s been nagging at me since I nearly fell in the cave, and I need your opinion. Was I reckless? As I was crawling through that tunnel, my mind was on the new opening. . I lost track of the moment. You can’t do that in a cave.”
“No, but we all have. Reckless? No. You’re like me. Safety is automatic. You just didn’t recognize the danger. While you were off on vacation enjoying yourself, I did some experiments on a piece of wood with a hole drilled in it. I poured gravel on the board to see if the rocks that got caught in the hole made any recognizable pattern.”
Diane raised her eyebrows. “How scientific of you.”
Mike smiled, showing his dimples. He tried to stretch and winced from the pain. “Son of a bitch.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah, just a little pain. If I get my hands on the guy who did this. . Shit. Anyway, the experiment-I thought maybe we could recognize the formation if we ever ran across one again.”
“Can we?”
“Maybe-if all we saw was the plug. The rocks shift toward each other when they get stuck. You can sort of recognize it. But with other breakdown on top of the plug, the pattern was hard to see.” He shook his head. “You weren’t reckless. What brought this on?”
“It was just something I was thinking about.”
Mike squinted his eyes at her. “There’s something else that’s bothering you.”
“Just trying to make sense out of things. Why us?”
“I’ve been thinking. You know, there is one person who would like to do us both in.”
Diane lowered her eyes, then brought her gaze back up to Mike’s intent look. His light brown eyes still looked sleepy, but he had a strength in his voice just now when he talked about a killer that got away, almost taking their lives with him-the one who left Neva to die.
“I’ve thought of him too. But he’s dead. He has to be.”
“Does he?”
“Yes. There’s no way he could have survived. I believe that.”
“Is that why you scan the parking lot every time you leave the museum? I’ve seen you. I do it too.”
“It’s a good habit to get into.”
“It’s just a thought I had, trying to figure out who could be so damn mad at both of us. You’re right, though-he’s probably dead. I can’t imagine how he could have possibly escaped the cave, wounded like he was and with no light.”
“I’ll mention it to Garnett.” Diane stood. “I need to let you get some rest.”
“Wait. There’s something else I’d like to talk to you about while I’m laid up here looking pitiful and after having saved your life two weeks ago.”
Diane laughed out loud. “This sounds like you’re going to ask a really big favor.”
“It’s a proposal.”