Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The hospital was filled with cops.
They came in pairs, in groups, and alone—deputies still in uniform with their radios turned low and off-duty officers in jeans and ball caps who’d heard the call on their scanners and hadn’t bothered to change before driving over.
A secretary from the front office showed up with a box of doughnuts she’d grabbed at the gas station on the way.
Nobody called them. Nobody had to. When one of your own went down, you showed up.
You planted yourself in the ugly waiting room with the bad coffee and the muted television, and you stayed until someone told you it was okay to go.
That was the deal. Unwritten. Unbroken. Older than any policy manual.
I’d washed Cole’s blood off my hands in the ER bathroom before the waiting even started.
A nurse had steered me there the moment I climbed out of the ambulance—a calm, no-nonsense woman with reading glasses on a chain who took one look at my hands and my clothes and my face and pointed me toward a sink without a word.
The water ran pink at first, then rust, then finally clear while I scrubbed under my nails and between my fingers and worked the soap into the creases of my knuckles where the blood had dried dark and resistant, like it had decided to stay.
She brought me green scrubs, antibiotic ointment for the heels of my palms where the brick had scraped them raw, and a butterfly bandage for the cut on my cheek.
I changed. I cleaned up. I threw my ruined clothes into a plastic bag and tied it shut.
The whole thing took maybe ten minutes, and I did it with the mechanical efficiency of a woman who’d spent her career covered in other people’s blood and knew that the sooner you dealt with the physical evidence, the sooner you could focus on what mattered.
What mattered right now was the man on the operating table.
Lily sat between me and Emmy Lu on the plastic chairs, Cole’s flannel shirt buttoned to her chin, her hands clasped tight in her lap.
She hadn’t spoken since she’d asked Okafor if she could see him, and I didn’t push.
Some silences needed to be left alone. Emmy Lu kept one hand on Lily’s arm—not gripping, just resting there, a steady point of contact that said I’m here without requiring a response.
Jack stood by the window with his arms crossed and his jaw set and his phone buzzing every thirty seconds in his pocket. He let it ring.
At eleven twenty-two, Okafor came through the double doors.
I read the answer in his body before he spoke.
The easy stride, the loose shoulders, the way his hands hung relaxed at his sides instead of clasped in front of him the way doctors clasped them when they were about to dismantle someone’s world.
I’d delivered enough death notifications to recognize the posture of good news, and relief hit me so hard my vision blurred for a second.
“He came through beautifully,” Okafor said.
“Partial laceration to the subclavian artery—approximately two millimeters. We repaired it with primary suture, blood flow is strong. He received two units of packed red cells. He’s going to be sore, tired, and confined to a bed for a minimum of three days. But he should make a full recovery.”
Lily closed her eyes. Her lips moved, but no sound came out—a prayer, maybe, or just the shape of a word she needed to feel in her mouth before she could believe it. Emmy Lu’s hand tightened on her arm.
There was an audible whoosh of breath in the waiting area.
The loosening of clenched muscles and the release of the grief and worry that compressed the chest. A deputy near the vending machine put his hand over his face for a moment, then dropped it and walked out with his shoulders squared and his eyes bright.
“Give us a few minutes,” Okafor told Lily. “We’ll get him settled into a room, and then you can sit with him as long as you want.”
The deputies began to filter out after that. Shoulder squeezes for Lily. Handshakes for Jack. The purposeful exodus of people who had work waiting and a reason to do it now that the worst hadn’t happened.
“I need to get back to the square,” he said. “Forensics is still processing, and I want every frame of security footage within six blocks pulled before the businesses close for the day.”
I looked at Lily.
“Cole’s fine, and I’m fine,” she said. “Y’all go catch who did this.”
“You can count on that,” Jack said.
He held the elevator door and waited for me to step in.
We rode down in silence, the fluorescent light buzzing overhead, the smell of industrial disinfectant sharp enough to taste.
Jack’s face was the mask he wore when he was thinking three moves ahead—jaw set, eyes fixed on something only he could see.
I knew better than to interrupt the process.
Somewhere behind that expression he was building a plan, laying out the next twelve hours like chess pieces on a board.
We were on the Kings Highway, halfway between the hospital and the Towne Square, when Jack’s phone rang through the Tahoe’s speakers. Emmy Lu’s name flashed on the dash screen.
“Emmy Lu, you’re on speaker,” Jack said.
“Jack, oh thank goodness.” Her voice was wrong.
Emmy Lu had a voice that made you think of sweet tea and front porches, and right now it sounded like glass about to shatter.
“I just got back to the funeral home, and I know you’ve got your hands full with everything that happened this morning, and I’m sorry to bother you, but I wanted to make sure the Brennan flowers got delivered because Carol Anne went in to have her baby early and they said they might not have a delivery person to bring the flowers by, and I thought I might have to go pick them up because the visitation is tomorrow. ”
“Take a breath, Emmy Lu,” Jack told her. “Just tell me what happened.”
“Jack—” Her voice broke. “There’s a dead man on the front porch. Someone just left him there. Like a package.”
The Tahoe’s air-conditioning hummed. A truck passed us going the other direction, rocking the cab with its wake.
“Are you inside?” Jack asked.
“I’m in the kitchen. I didn’t touch anything. My hands are shaking so bad I could barely dial the phone. I think I should make some coffee.”
“Good idea,” Jack said. “Keep your mind occupied and stay inside. Stay away from the windows. I’m calling dispatch right now to get units rolling, and we’re about ten minutes out. Don’t open the door for anyone until you see a badge. Understand?”
“I understand.”
He killed the call and hit the lights, and the Tahoe surged forward with the engine dropping into a growl. The trees along the Kings Highway blurred into a green wall on either side, and the white center line came at us in rapid-fire dashes.
I stared at the road stretching ahead of us and felt something cold settle behind my ribs. A body dumped on the porch of the funeral home. On my porch. While every cop in the county was sitting in a hospital waiting room.
“They knew the building was empty,” I said. “Everyone was at the hospital. Every cop, every deputy, Emmy Lu, Lily, Sheldon. The place sat wide open for hours, and they knew exactly when to move.”
“Yes.”
“How did they know, Jack?”
He didn’t answer. The silence in the cab was heavy with everything we didn’t know yet.
Stavros had known where to find us at breakfast. Now someone had known the funeral home was empty.
He was either watching us, or he had someone close enough to us that the difference didn’t matter.
Either way, the message was the same—he could reach us whenever he wanted.
Jack turned onto Catherine of Aragon doing sixty and brought it down fast, the brakes biting as the funeral home came into view at the end of the block.
Dark red brick and white columns, the two massive elm trees throwing shade across the wide front yard.
It looked the way it always looked—stately and quiet, a place that held grief with dignity.
Except for the patrol cars at the curb with their lights spinning, and the yellow crime-scene tape already going up across the front walk.
Jack pulled to the curb behind the patrol units and killed the engine. I was out before he was, reaching into the back seat for my medical bag. I guess it was the kind of day where the dead didn’t wait for you to come to them, but showed up at your door instead.
* * *
The side door was unlocked—the one that led through the mudroom into the kitchen—the door I used every day.
Emmy Lu was sitting at the kitchen island with her hands wrapped around a cup of coffee she hadn’t touched.
Her face was pale and her eyes were too wide.
Her lips were pressed into a thin line that meant she was holding herself together by sheer force of will and southern manners.
“Officers cleared the property,” she said. “Nobody inside. Whoever left him was long gone.”
“You did good, Emmy Lu.”
“I keep thinking about the Brennan visitation tomorrow.” She shook her head, and something between a laugh and a sob caught in her throat. “Isn’t that the silliest thing? A dead boy on my porch, and I’m worried about the Brennan flowers.”
“It’s not silly. It’s your brain looking for something it can fix.” I squeezed her arm. “Stay inside. I’ll be a while.”
I went back out through the mudroom and around the side of the building.
Jack was at the perimeter with the patrol officers, radio in one hand, phone in the other.
I could hear him requesting a canvass of Catherine of Aragon—every house, every neighbor, anyone who’d seen a vehicle pull up in the last three hours.
He moved the way he always moved at a crime scene, deliberate and focused, like a man drawing a circle around something he intended to own.
I walked around to the front.