Chapter 17
Hudson was behind Sarah when they reached Petey’s room.
She slowed and turned to Walter. “Give us five minutes.”
He nodded and positioned himself next to the door. “I’ll be right here.”
Before she went in, she stilled for the smallest fraction of a second. A transition, the visible work of a woman putting something down. The woman from the stables slipping away behind the badge.
Hudson didn’t say anything about it, but he respected the hell out of watching her do it.
He opened the door, sweeping the room before Sarah crossed the threshold. Nurse. Window latched. Bathroom door open. No blind corners.
He stepped aside. “Clear.”
She raised an eyebrow at him but didn’t remark on it as she walked in.
Petey was propped up against a stack of pillows that didn’t suit him at all, one eye swollen dark purple and nearly shut.
His right arm was in a cast from wrist to elbow, the hospital gown doing nothing to disguise how much smaller he looked than he had on the cannery dock.
His feet stuck out from the bottom of the sheet, wearing disposable hospital socks that looked ridiculous on a man who wore steel-toed boots. A nurse was adjusting his IV line.
“There they are.” Petey’s voice came out rough but unmistakably his own. “Took you long enough.”
“Petey.” Sarah crossed to the bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I got hit by a truck that turned out to be a person.” He shifted, winced and tried to sit up further.
The nurse put a hand on his good shoulder without even looking up from the line she was checking. “I told you to stay flat.”
He frowned at her. “I’ve been flat for two hours. I’ve got pipes that need draining before the freeze sets in proper, and I’m lying here like a?—”
“Petey,” Sarah said again, gentler this time, “the pipes can wait.”
“That’s what Seattle said about the sump pump, and look how that turned out.”
The nurse clicked her tongue but smiled at Sarah. “Five minutes only. He needs to rest.” The thin hospital curtain whispered along its track behind her as she left.
Hudson stepped aside to let her past, then remained by the door, giving Sarah space.
“Did anyone check the cannery doors?” Petey said. “East entrance sticks if you don’t lock it right. Anybody could walk through there tonight and I wouldn’t know it from in here.”
Hudson’s stomach tightened. Petey thought he was talking about pipes. But this sounded like a man worrying that he’d left his home undefended.
“Walter’s got someone out there now,” Sarah said. “Tell me what happened.”
Petey’s good hand found the edge of the blanket and gripped it.
“Working the south line,” he said. “Late. Past dark, probably should’ve called it a day, but the freeze doesn’t wait for anybody’s schedule.
” His jaw worked. “Heard something behind me. Figured it was just the building complaining.” He shook his head and cradled his cast against his chest. “Wasn’t the building. ”
“Did you see him?”
“No.” Petey’s voice dropped, frustration bleeding through the pain. “Hit me before I turned around proper. Floor came up at me different than I expected, and that’s the last thing I remember clear.”
“Anything,” Sarah said. “Size, voice, anything at all.”
Petey was quiet for a second. “He smelled funny.”
Sarah looked up from her pad, where she’d been scribbling notes. “Funny how?”
Hudson’s head came up. “Describe it.”
“Like machine oil. Not the stuff I use on the lines.”
“Could’ve been gun oil.”
Both of them looked at Hudson.
“Oil used to clean and lubricate firearms. Some have a distinctive smell if you’ve spent enough time around them.” Hudson kept his voice level, even though something in his chest had gone cold and certain the second the word left Petey’s mouth.
“Hmm.” Petey squinted at him with his one good eye. “Yeah, now that you say that. My friend Dan Tate runs the range out at Spruce Hollow. Same smell.” He looked between Hudson and Sarah, something working behind the bruising. “You two always work each other’s interviews like this?”
“No.” Sarah’s eyes flicked to Hudson’s and then away again.
“No.” Hudson shook his head a little too quickly.
“Mm.” Petey’s mouth did something that might have been the start of a smile if his face had been willing to cooperate with it.
“Did he say anything?” Hudson asked. “Anything at all, before or after?”
“Nothing I caught.” Petey shifted against the pillows, wincing. “Maybe a breath. Maybe nothing.”
“How tall would you guess?” Sarah asked. “Relative to you, even roughly.”
“Taller. Not by much. Hard to say lying on the floor facedown.”
Hudson had more questions. None that belonged in a hospital room.
He crossed to the window. Petey’s room overlooked the parking lot.
Hudson let his gaze drift from the ambulance bay to the fire escape, then across the scattered cars.
Too many places for someone patient to wait. Would they come after Petey again?
Sarah didn’t comment. She stood with one hand tucked into the pocket of her jacket, pen forgotten in the other, waiting Petey out with patience that looked effortless. Hudson wasn’t sure when he’d started finding that distracting.
“Petey,” she said finally. “We’re going to find whoever did this.”
“I know you are.” Petey’s good hand patted the blanket once, decisive. “Now if you two are done interviewing me, somebody needs to check the east platform before the pipes freeze solid. I mean it.”
“Petey—”
“Priorities, Sheriff. Nobody in this place understands drainage.”
She gave him a look that had no real heat behind it, and Petey gave it right back, undiminished by the cast or the black eye. The old man would be fine. He was ornery enough, stubborn and too busy worrying about pipes to spend much time being afraid. That didn’t make any of it easier.
“Get some rest,” Sarah said, softer now. “We’ll come back.”
“Don’t hurry on my account.”
She squeezed his good hand, and then she stepped out into the corridor. Hudson stayed a beat longer, his gaze sweeping the room one last time before he followed her out.
“Walter.”
Her deputy straightened at Sarah’s voice.
“I want a deputy outside this room twenty-four hours a day. Nobody gets in without clearing it through me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Walter pulled out his phone.
Petey’s room door swung shut. The hallway outside felt too bright after the dim of the room, the fluorescent light flat and unforgiving.
“This isn’t on you.” Sarah faced Hudson.
“It is.”
“No, it isn’t, Hudson?—”
“Petey didn’t know Cord existed until I walked into town.” He kept his voice even, because the alternative wasn’t something he could afford right now. “He’s lying in there with a broken arm because I needed information and he was generous enough to give it to me.”
Sarah didn’t argue that one.
She didn’t pretend the logic was wrong, just let it exist between them, ugly and true.
Hudson turned it over again. This had a different shape. A different intent. “This isn’t what they were doing before.”
“How so?” Sarah waited.
Hudson looked back at the closed door.
Two warning shots. Then Petey. Different target. Different objective.
“Before, it was containment. Hide Cord, fire two rounds at a long enough distance that nobody dies, but everybody understands the message.” He stared past her down the corridor. “This is somebody walking up behind an old man in the dark and breaking his bones.”
“You think it’s the same people?”
“They hit Petey after we talked to him. Not before.”
Sarah tucked her pen away.
Hudson kept going. “Which means they weren’t cleaning up witnesses.” He met her eyes. “They were watching us. They’ve stopped trying to keep us from looking. Now they’re trying to make sure nobody talks to us again.”
“Steering us?”
He pressed his lips into a line. “Perhaps.”
Sarah’s jaw tightened. Whatever softness she’d carried into Petey’s room disappeared behind the badge again.
“It’s escalating, Sarah. We should go.”
“Back to the cannery?”
“Yeah.”
She didn’t ask him to explain. She’d already reached the same conclusion, matching his pace down the corridor. Working beside her shouldn’t have felt this easy, but it was.
They were halfway to the truck before Hudson realized they’d left the hospital without saying goodbye to anyone.
Sarah was already reaching for her keys. He was thinking three moves ahead. Neither of them had asked who was taking the lead.