CHAPTER 24
Malcolm
The ambulance ceiling has a brown stain shaped like a door.
Not a good door. Not a clean rectangle with a handle and hinges and reasonable purpose. A warped thing near the fluorescent strip, edges blurred from years of heat and bad maintenance, staring down at me while the paramedic tapes another pad to my hand.
I hate it immediately.
The mind, injured and overworked, can still be petty.
“Stop looking at the ceiling like it offended you,” the paramedic says.
“It did.”
“Possible concussion.”
“Possible taste.”
The officer riding in the ambulance with us snorts once, then pretends he didn’t. Young. Uniform too neat. His name tag says Soto. He has the alert posture of someone told to guard a man who may be witness, suspect, victim, or headache, depending on which adult gets the last word.
I am all four.
My shoulder is strapped. My burned palm is wrapped. Gauze is stuck to my hairline. Every bump in the road enters my skull and checks the furniture.
Outside, Los Angeles moves by in sirenless fragments through the back window: utility poles, stucco walls, a man jogging with a knee brace, sunlight catching on a billboard for a superhero movie nobody in that picture had to insure for actual danger.
Clara is not in the ambulance.
That is good.
Clara is at Marla’s.
That is not good.
Both facts sit in my chest and argue without raising their voices.
Soto’s radio crackles.
“Unit at Marla’s confirms suspect Gavin Rook in custody. Possible evidence located on premises. Awaiting crime scene.”
My body tries to sit up before my brain signs off.
The paramedic puts one gloved hand against my chest. “No.”
“I heard Gavin.”
“You also heard me.”
“Soto,” I say.
The officer looks at me, then at the paramedic, then at the radio like one of them may give him a career path.
“Is Clara hurt?” I ask.
Radio static. Road noise. The antiseptic smell of the ambulance, rubber gloves, old plastic, and my own blood drying somewhere near my ear.
Soto lifts the radio. “Status on Ms. Vane?”
The answer comes clipped through static. “Vane is on scene. Uninjured. Cooperating. Media presence increasing. Evidence team en route.”
Uninjured.
The word is not enough.
It is also everything available.
I lie back because my body gives me no alternative and because climbing out of a moving ambulance would help exactly no one except the people waiting to photograph another bad choice.
The paramedic watches me. “That was almost sensible.”
“I’m experimenting.”
“Try making it a lifestyle.”
“Seems demanding.”
Soto’s radio crackles again.
“Be advised, Entertainment Wire updated again. Claim now states Clara Vane fled studio custody and took hostage-related evidence from the Blood House lot.”
The ambulance changes temperature.
Not physically. The air stays cold from the vents. But my skin gets too tight under the blanket, and the straps across my chest begin to feel less medical and more like restraint.
“No,” I say.
The paramedic presses something near my wrist. “Don’t spike your blood pressure over gossip.”
“That isn’t gossip. That’s strategy.”
Soto looks at me.
Good. He should.
“Victor is splitting the evidence,” I say.
The paramedic says, “I am going to start charging extra for conspiracy talk in my ambulance.”
“You work in Los Angeles.”
“Fair.”
I look at Soto. “Clara did not flee custody.”
“I heard.”
“You heard a radio. I need that in a report.”
“It’ll be in a report.”
“Reports can get cleaned.”
Soto’s face changes.
Not offended. Older all at once. A man hearing the wrong word in the wrong mouth.
“Mr. Reed,” he says carefully, “are you alleging reports have been altered?”
“Yes.”
The paramedic makes an aggravated sound. “Hospital first, corruption later.”
I turn my head toward him too fast.
The ceiling stain slides.
My stomach makes a poor suggestion.
I close my eyes.
The paramedic’s hand is on my shoulder before I can decide whether the motion hurts more than the nausea.
“See?” he says. “Medical timing has fans.”
I breathe through my nose.
The oxygen smells like plastic and dust.
Clara told me not to give a statement without a lawyer.
She was right.
She is almost always right in the least convenient way.
“I need a phone,” I say.
“No,” the paramedic says.
“Officer Soto has one.”
Officer Soto makes the face of a man who would like to become furniture.
The paramedic says, “No calls until triage.”
“Then I give a statement here.”
“No.”
“That’s not your decision.”
“It is if you pass out mid-sentence and make me fill out more forms.”
“I need counsel on the line.”
Soto studies me. “You have a lawyer?”
“No.”
“That seems like a personal planning failure.”
“I’ve been busy being hit.”
Soto’s mouth twitches. “I can request one at the hospital.”
“I need Gideon Park.”
“Ms. Vane’s attorney?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a conflict.”
“He can tell me that himself.”
The ambulance slows. Turns. The hospital ramp appears through the rear window, white walls and glass doors and a cluster of people who have no idea that the man on the stretcher is less worried about his head than about a woman across town standing beside a freezer full of old pie and a dead girl’s truth.
The doors open before anyone agrees to anything.
Bright light. Heat. Voices.
The stretcher rolls out, wheels clicking over metal, then concrete, then tile.
The emergency department smells like disinfectant, coffee, human fear, and vending machine sugar.
A child cries somewhere behind a curtain.
A nurse laughs once at a desk, then goes quiet when she sees the officer, the blood, the camera flashes outside.
Camera flashes.
Outside the ER entrance, two photographers lift their lenses.
“Reed! Did Clara send you to the hospital?”
The question slices through the air.
Soto steps into their line of sight.
The paramedic keeps moving.
A reporter shouts, “Was the obsession room real?”
I turn my face away before I can answer with my fist, which would be difficult from a stretcher but not impossible enough.
Inside, they park me in a curtained bay. More hands. Blood pressure cuff. Pulse ox. Temperature. Pupil check again. Questions I answer badly enough to annoy everyone but accurately enough to avoid immediate panic.
A nurse with gray hair and no visible tolerance for celebrity crime dramas cuts my ruined windbreaker off my good side.
“Hey,” I say.
She pauses. “Were you attached to this?”
“It wasn’t mine.”
“Then grieve efficiently.”
She cuts the other sleeve.
The fabric falls away. The shoulder underneath looks worse than it feels, which is impressive because it feels like someone installed a broken hinge under my skin and keeps testing it.
The nurse’s expression does not change.
That is how I know it’s bad.
“Dislocation?” I ask.
“Doctor will decide.”
“That means maybe.”
“That means I don’t get paid to comfort men who diagnose themselves from action movies.”
I almost like her.
“Name?” she asks.
“Malcolm Reed.”
“Age?”
“Thirty-seven.”
“Allergies?”
“Studio lawyers.”
She writes nothing. “Medical allergies.”
“No.”
“Pain level?”
“Depends who’s asking.”
She looks at me over the clipboard. “I am, and I have medications.”
“Eight.”
“Honesty. Cute.”
“Don’t spread it around.”
Soto appears at the curtain. “Detective Alvarez says Gideon Park is at Ms. Vane’s office, but reachable. He also says you are not to give a full statement until medically cleared.”
“Alvarez said that?”
“He said, and I quote, ‘Tell Reed if he tries to litigate through a head injury, I’ll handcuff him to radiology.’”
The nurse lifts her brows. “I like him.”
I close my eyes for one beat.
Clara would approve of the threat.
That shouldn’t help.
It helps.
“I need Park on the phone,” I say.
Soto hesitates.
The nurse says, “Five minutes. Speaker. If he becomes dramatic, I sedate him emotionally with silence.”
Soto looks at her.
“She runs the room,” I say.
“I gathered.”
He places the call from his phone and holds it near the rail. Gideon answers on the fourth ring.
“Detective?”
“Soto. I’m with Malcolm Reed at the hospital.”
A pause.
Then Gideon’s voice sharpens. “Is he conscious?”
“Regrettably,” I say.
“Mr. Reed.”
“Park.”
“I don’t represent you.”
“I know.”
“I cannot advise you if your interests conflict with Clara’s.”
“I know.”
“You should request independent counsel.”
“I know that too.”
The nurse leans over me to check my bandage. “He knows many things and obeys none.”
Gideon is quiet for half a second. “Who is that?”
“A medical professional with excellent boundaries.”
“I’m relieved one exists.”
I swallow. My throat tastes like copper and dry air. “Clara told me not to give a statement without a lawyer.”
“She was correct.”
“I need to correct a false public claim without damaging her case.”
“That is not a narrow needle. That is a needle taped to a moving bus.”
“Can you listen while I say only what I saw and direct me if I start ruining things?”
“I can tell you to stop talking. I cannot be your lawyer.”
“That may be enough.”
A pause.
Then Gideon says, “Soto, are you recording?”
Soto looks at me.
I nod once.
The motion makes the room tilt. I stop moving my head like it has earned less trust than usual.
Soto starts the recording.
Gideon says, “State this as a limited factual correction. No speculation. No admissions beyond what is necessary. No emotional speeches. Mr. Reed, I assume that last instruction is ambitious.”
“Deeply.”
“Begin.”
I look at the white curtain.
There is a tiny brown dot near the hem, maybe iodine, maybe coffee, maybe one more stain my brain will try to turn into a door if left unsupervised.