Chapter Thirty-Three
THIRTY-THREE
IT’S NIGHT, SOMETIME VERY late, and the rain is still tapping against my hospital room window.
Bart Casada turns out to be the first visitor I have once the doctors have decided I’m no longer actively dying and can be left by myself.
I’m still exhausted, in pain, heavily medicated, and hooked up to all manner of machines when the big man edges into my room and says, “Heard you got bit by a timber rattler.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Apparently that’s what happens when you play with snakes.”
“You got the finger?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Hand me my jacket.”
I point to my leather jacket, hung on the back of the nearby chair.
“Here you go,” Bart says.
He’s wearing his farm clothes, his boots still caked with dirt. As he hands me the jacket, I get a whiff of sulfur. Rotten eggs, I think. And then I laugh to myself.
“What’s so funny?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I tell him. “Good luck using that finger. The damn thing’s half rotten.”
“Old man says we gotta try,” he says, taking the baggie and slipping it into his overalls pocket. He starts to go, then turns back, and with a sarcastic grin says, “Useless to you now, though.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I was gonna testify about seeing Chief Dishman coming out of the church.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I won’t have to now. Stupid son of a bitch turned himself in.”
Bart turns and leaves, and I take a long, rattly breath, and look at the IV bag next to me. Among other life-saving fluids, I’m being pumped full of antivenom, likely manufactured in part with venom Ezra took himself. My eyelids drift shut. I’m not sure how long I sleep. All I see is darkness.
When I open my eyes again, it’s because I hear someone whispering. “Honey, you awake in there?” I turn my head and see Thelma slipping silently into the room like she’s on a secret mission.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m surprised they let you in.”
“The doctors were no trouble,” Thelma says. “It was that big tattooed lady outside that gave me the most hassle.”
“Tina…” I say. And I remember that Tina had been on her way to get me. On her way to take me home. She must be sitting outside my room now.
“But you know what,” Thelma says. “I find a Tupperware of cookies can get you in just about anywhere.”
“I’ll remember that,” I say.
“I’ll give you my recipe.”
She leans in closer and gives me an appraising look.
“They say you’ll live,” she says, her voice quavering slightly.
It’s the same thing they told me. I’ll live. Whether or not I’ll regain the use of my right hand remains in question.
“I’m so sorry about what happened,” she says.
“You didn’t have anything to do with this.”
She grimaces. “I’m afraid I did. I hear it was my Ambien that Will used to knock out poor Gavin.”
“Where is Gavin?” I ask. “The last I heard, they were taking him into surgery.”
“Yes, honey. He’s out now. He’s going to make it. They said the shot nicked his lung but he’s going to be all right.”
“Did they find Will?” I ask. “He ran away.”
“Yes,” she says. “He went right back into the parsonage. Officer Jeanine found him. He left a trail of blood.”
“I shot him,” I say. “I thought I did but I wasn’t sure.”
“Yes, honey, you did.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I wish I didn’t have to but—”
She waves me off and says, “Well, he ain’t dead.
Not even close. The shot grazed his hip, that’s all.
Couple stitches and he’s gonna be fine. But, oh Lord, he was bleeding all over the carpet in the parsonage.
We’ll never get the stains out. Anyhow, he ended up confessing everything to Jeanine.
It was him dug up what we thought was Ezra’s grave, him that hid Nathaniel Nickels’s body.
And him that convinced Roman Bradley to help Ezra fake his death. Lord … I wish I’d known.”
She sniffs. Behind her, the door opens again and Hollis squeezes into the room.
“I heard you tangled with a snake and lived,” he says. “So, I figured I’d come and see for myself. Damn, you look rough.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“Hollis, you’ve got no manners at all,” Thelma says, swatting him. “That’s not how you talk to a lady.”
“She ain’t a lady,” he says. “She’s a PI. She can handle it. How you doing, kid? They got you on the strong stuff?”
I laugh and say, “I don’t think they even stock the strong stuff anymore.”
“I could bring you some pizza,” Hollis says.
“Maybe later,” I say. And now he looks more worried than before.
Thelma takes in a deep breath through her nose, then shakes her head gently and says, “You pulled apart a real nest of vipers, Miss Gore.”
And I think back to the start of all this. Everything that’s happened since. Everything that happened before I even arrived.
From Dean Griffon hearing about Ezra making a move on his girlfriend to Joel Shepherd siccing Nathaniel Nickels on both Billy Shepherd and Ezra King, and all of it going so sideways that Ezra felt compelled to use Will’s past relationship with Roman Bradley to blackmail the coroner into helping him fake his death. And that was only the start.
Since I got here, I’d had my brakes cut, dug up an empty coffin, found Ezra King in the church, witnessed a suicide, been hired by a convict to find a severed finger, and I’d topped it off by getting bitten by a snake, shooting a young minister, stanching a wound with a maxi pad, and nearly dying in the car of the cop who killed the man I’d been sent here to investigate.
“All in a day’s work, huh?” Hollis says, patting my shoulder.
Thelma opens her bag and pulls out an old Tupperware container. The scent of citrus fills my nose as she hands me a lemon hand pie wrapped in wax paper.
“Get some sleep, honey,” she says.
They both leave the room and then Tina slips inside.
“You look amazing,” Tina says. “Like a Vogue cover.”
“Thanks,” I tell her. “I always felt like I missed my calling.”
Her huge shoulders slump but she manages a smile.
“As soon as you’re better,” she says, raking a strand of hair from my forehead, “we’ll get you home.”