Before I Wake

  “Or something.”

  “Well, I’ve got some living to make up for. We never had a new car, your grandmother and me. Always used. Always well broke in. I’ve been thinking red Porsche since before you were born. I’m going to enjoy spinning its wheels a bit in my last years of driving.

  “Besides—the car is leverage. Bankers haven’t changed. We’ll invest cash with this old guy since he’s got more cash than he needs to begin with. He just bought himself a Porsche for cash. We’ll give him a loan to make some fishing lures.”

  “You bought that car because you love to drive fast.”

  “Mainly that. But seriously, the fishing lures and a few of the other ideas—they did make quite a bit of money. There just wasn’t any way I was telling that to your grandmother while she was talking up a storm about going to see Alaska on a cruise. Her health wouldn’t have made it, and the only reason she was carrying on so much about it was the fact she knew we couldn’t afford to go. It gave her something to safely hassle me about and I quietly let the money accumulate in the bank. When she passed away—well, I should have taken her to see Alaska. So I spent the money on a car instead and I hear her hassling me about it every time I turn on the ignition.”

  “Henry—spend the money any way you like and enjoy every penny of it. But know that when your health gets so bad you can only talk about cruising around in that car, I’m taking your license away and you can just safely hassle me.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” He opened the car door and reached in for two of the soda bottles in the case. “Icy cold, the absolute best soda there could be.”

  Nathan popped the top on his and sampled with a bit of caution. “Nice.”

  “This batch turned out particularly well.”

  They drank the sodas, watching the snow fall. Nathan thought it nice they weren’t arguing for a change. And the soda was pretty good.

  Nathan handed back his empty bottle. “Drive more carefully, Henry. There’s no need to smack up a particularly nice expensive car.” He looked at the car. “Your grandson wants to inherit that car one day.”

  Henry laughed. “Absolutely right you do. Now that’s more what I expect from you.” He stored the empty bottles back in the case.

  Nathan picked up the keys his grandfather had dropped. His flashlight reflected off the medallion on it that Henry’s wife had given him. H.SR. Henry Senior. Nathan wondered if he was so tired he didn’t connect even obvious facts together anymore. “Were you the one who called Peggy Worth and confirmed a notebook was found?” he asked, handing back the keys. “A week ago Wednesday?”

  Henry looked puzzled. “I called and left a message; that was Peggy Worth? It never registered that I heard a name.” He frowned. “I got handed a slip of paper by one of my old cop buddies with a question and a phone number and asked if I could answer it. Not that the answer was material to anything. Still, I would have mentioned it to you if I’d realized that was the reporter who died in town.”

  “I need details, Henry. It might be important.”

  Henry shrugged. “Not much to tell. Some reporter called one of the investigators on the Prescott case a couple weeks ago looking for confirmation there had been a school notebook found among Joe’s grandson’s things and what had it said. He had no idea what she was talking about, and the note got bounced around and eventually the question got passed to me.

  “Prescott found the notebook among his grandson’s things when he was getting ready for the boy’s funeral. Nothing suspicious in it. Kids that were going to the party, the time they were going to meet up, a couple scrawled names Joe didn’t recognize. The investigators back then looked into the details on it and returned the notebook to Joe. There wasn’t anything particularly useful about the information. I couldn’t figure out why the reporter even cared about it.”

  “Where’s the notebook now?”

  “I’ve no idea. Joe kept a lot of his grandson’s stuff, but he wasn’t the kind of guy to neatly file items. About the only thing we cleaned up was stuff related to the will and the land. The rest is still sitting out there.”

  “Thank you. It answers a puzzle for me.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t know to mention it earlier. I don’t mind annoying you, Nathan, but making the job harder—that I never intended.”

  “That distinction is appreciated. Drive carefully, Henry. You want those sodas drinkable when you arrive out at the lakehouse.”

  Nathan watched his grandfather leave and then he let himself rub his eyes. He’d send an officer out to Joe’s place tomorrow to try and find the school notebook. But from the sound of it, Peggy really was a wrapped-up case now with not much left to even pursue.

  The death was natural causes. It didn’t sit well, but it was what the evidence said. At least Rae had pulled a first case that looked like it was going to close itself for lack of questions to answer. He just hoped they were seeing everything they should.

  Jesus, I need a quiet day tomorrow, a settled strike, and for this town to slide back to normal. I’m looking forward to church in the morning and a chance to leave aside the job for a few hours. I need that break so badly. I’m tired, God. Deeply tired inside where hope tries to live. If You wouldn’t mind, please send some energy to get me through the next week.

  He started his car and clicked on the interior light. He stored his clipboard. He wondered what was going to interrupt that hope for quiet. The dispatcher had at least been quiet tonight. It was past time to go see his dogs and find some real sleep. He glanced at his watch. Tomorrow was already here.

  30

  The Sunburst Hotel had few guests coming and going Sunday morning. The parking lot was half empty. Bruce wondered at that and what it meant for this town as he walked with Nathan toward the front entrance. “This hasn’t been good for business.”

  “It will blow over.”

  Bruce glanced over, the near dead sound in Nathan’s voice telling him the man was struggling this morning to even be interested in how much business the hotel was doing, something he would normally care an enormous amount about. “You should have stayed in bed another hour and met up with Larry after services. You’re beat.”

  “The alarm about got thrown across the room. Let’s do breakfast somewhere they’ll leave the pitcher of coffee on the table.”

  “I like that idea.” Bruce held the door for them to step inside the lobby. “Seriously, Nathan. Take a few hours off. You can’t work every day of the month and still care about what happens to lost dogs and upset grandmothers.”

  The words got his friend to at least smile. Bruce figured something had to give today or his friend was going to end up with his friendly sheriff reputation getting tarnished when he snapped at the next problem that came across his pager. The town needed a sheriff who at least got some sleep occasionally.

  Nathan punched the elevator button for the third floor. “I’m planning to hibernate for a long weekend out at my country place when this strike is over.”

  “You should make it at least a full week,” Bruce suggested. “Thanks for making it possible for Rae to keep working on this case, rather than shift it all to Sillman. I know we’ve been stepping on his toes a bit this last week.”

  Nathan shrugged. “I don’t have enough evidence to override the coroner and formally reopen the matter, but you’re welcome anyway. I’ve appreciated the way Rae has tackled it. Peggy’s parents were right to hire her to get their questions answered. She does a solid job. And Sillman kind of likes her, you know. They’ll work out an understanding.”

  “Rae’s going to have the notebook transcribed and have a list of questions for us to answer over breakfast,” Bruce guessed.

  Nathan laughed. “I’m betting she does too.”

  They walked the hallway toward Rae’s room.

  “We need to find her somewhere other than a hotel to live once this settles down,” Bruce noted, thinking again about his conversation with Rae the other night. Rae would be the kind to move into a
rougher neighborhood if he or Nathan couldn’t talk her out of it. “I don’t want her having an excuse to move farther north into the city. Her family’s crime-scene cleanup business will suck her in if it gets the chance. Having her walk into scenes like Nella’s to be the one cleaning it up just doesn’t sit well with me.”

  “You won’t get a disagreement on that from me.”

  Bruce knocked on her hotel-room door. “Rae, it’s Bruce and Nathan. Ready for breakfast?”

  There wasn’t an answer.

  Bruce knocked again and checked the doorknob out of habit. “The door’s hot.”

  “What?”

  “The door is hot. Look the other way.”

  “She’s here?”

  Bruce felt a desperate fear in his gut as the heat reminded him of past cases. “If she’s not I’ll have some explaining to do. Look the other way.” He put his foot into the door lock and popped it. The door crashed back against the wall.

  Heat met them, heavy in the room with the room heater still running, pouring it out. Rae was stretched out on the far bed, sprawled facedown across open folders and notepads of paper, a stack of drying pages from the notebook half slid to the floor beside her. She didn’t move. Bruce felt his heart stop.

  Nathan moved through the room to shove off the heater unit and push open the window. He threw back the drapes to let in as much light as he could.

  Bruce headed to Rae and shook her still form. “Rae, wake up. Come on, honey. Wake up.” He shook her harder, but she was limp, his hand feeling the heat in her through the shirt she wore. “You’re not doing this, Rae.” She didn’t look blue from lack of oxygen or that sickening red of carbon-monoxide poisoning he’d seen before. But she wasn’t responding at all.

  Nathan placed an urgent call to the dispatcher for an ambulance.

  Bruce held his hand just above her nose and mouth. “She’s barely breathing. Get me ice, cold rags, anything that will cool her down.”

  Nathan was already dumping the little that was left from the melted ice bucket into a towel. “Whatever it is, she likely ingested it.” He passed over the cold bundle, scanning the room fast. “I’m seeing a drinking glass on the end table, a soda can in the trash. Candy-bar wrappers, aspirin packets, a box of wheat crackers, one tube of them open and half gone. We ate the same dinner she did; it’s not the pizza.”

  “We try to get her to toss her stomach, and she’s going to aspirate it and choke to death.” Bruce used the towel to try to wipe down Rae’s face and neck. Her hair was already damp from the heat inside her and her very stillness made him worry at how she was slipping away even as he watched.

  Nathan hurried into the restroom and turned on the sink taps. He drenched three more towels in cold water and brought them back with him. “She’s got to fight whatever is taking her under this hard. Why did she shove on the heat to full?”

  “You’re assuming she did it.” Bruce buried her in the cold towels, draping them behind her neck, across her arms, along her face.

  “The chain was on the door you just kicked open; it’s possible someone went through the connecting door to the next room, but that lock is on this side and it’s closed. She was alone whenever this hit.”

  “The rate she’s sweating, she hasn’t been cold for some time. She’s still dressed in what she wore yesterday. Assume best case based on when we left her, she would have turned in by three at the latest if she were coherent enough to crawl into bed. At a minimum it’s been four hours of this already.”

  Nathan felt for a pulse at her neck under the towel and shook his head. “It’s taking her under like a rock. Get her up, Bruce. We’re walking her, same as a sedative overdose.”

  Bruce surged to his feet and reached down. He lifted her from the bed and to her feet. Nathan got her arm across his shoulder while Bruce took her other side. “Walk, Rae. Move your feet,” Bruce ordered. Between them they walked her, even as Rae’s legs barely stirred.

  “She didn’t know it was coming. Whatever this stuff is, not one of the victims appeared to realize they were in trouble until it was too late.”

  “Something just hits them hard enough to crash them,” Bruce agreed. She had never felt fragile to him before or this close to being lost to him. It was haunting, the fact she simply wasn’t waking up.

  “Walking her isn’t working.” Nathan reached again for one of the cold towels. “Come on, Rae. Fight this thing.” He wiped at the sweat on her face.

  “Get her down. Hurry! Get her down. She stopped breathing.”

  Nathan shoved back the bed to give them more room.

  Bruce struggled to start mouth to mouth. “Come on, Rae. Come on,” he pleaded between breaths.

  Paramedics streamed in through the door.

  “What took you so long?” Nathan demanded, letting them past him to get to Rae.

  “Someone tried to plow a backhoe into a truck; the fire department was cutting people out.”

  The lead paramedic took over for Bruce. “I’ve got a thready pulse.”

  “What did she take?”

  “The same bloody unknown thing that killed the last three ladies,” Bruce replied, wiping his mouth, his hand trembling. “Seizure, heart attack, something abrupt just shuts their system down.”

  “Let’s get a strip running and set up to handle a cardiac crash and then get her out of here. Pushing her onto life support may be the only way to manage it if the toxin is building in her system like it appears to be doing.”

  “What about airlifting her out of here? Should she be heading to a trauma unit?” Nathan asked.

  “Being near the right equipment is going to matter more than the number of doctors around. We get her through the respiratory collapse, then the doctors can caucus.”

  The paramedic set aside the air bag. “I’m getting some shallow breaths on her own. The way she’s laboring even for the shallow breaths makes me suspect it’s got a paralyzing agent in the mix.”

  Bruce looked at Nathan. “Find the coroner. He’s got the most experience with whatever this is as any doctor at the hospital. Something has got to transfer for how to treat it in the living.” It was the only hope Bruce could find, the fact this wasn’t the first case the man would have seen. Nathan nodded.

  “Let’s get moving. I don’t want to be treating a seizure while we’re on the elevator.” They shifted her to the stretcher.

  Nathan pulled out his keys. “I’m giving you an escort.”

  The paramedics got the gurney through the door.

  “I need to call her next of kin,” Bruce said grimly.

  “It’s not going to go that far. We found her in time.”

  “Four hours, Nathan. At a minimum we were four hours too late.”

  * * *

  Bruce felt a rush of warm air as they crossed the threshold of the ER. The paramedics were moving fast. The coroner and the hospital’s top two doctors were waiting for her. “Take her to area four.”

  The lead paramedic called out vital signs even as she was moved and lifted into a new bed. Leads clipped on and monitors flipped on around the bed, reading out oxygen and heartbeats and blood pressure.

  “Let’s get this stuff out of her system as best we can. Lungs, blood, bowels. Tell toxicology I want blood panels run against every poison, chemical, and prescription they’ve got on file; keep those blood vials flowing until they say they’ve got enough. I also want a white-blood-cell count as fast as they can give it.” The chief looked at the coroner. “If we transfuse two pints?”

  “Make it three.” He was studying her pupils. “We keep the lungs and heart from crashing, it has time to become a stage-two poison and no one has lived long enough to show those symptoms. I’m guessing kidney and liver get a huge poison-load factor.”

  “Transfuse and then straight on dialysis overnight?”

  “Yes. And get me a good eye doctor down here. I don’t like the look of this.”

  The head nurse blocked their view. “She’s in good hands, Nathan. Let
them work.”

  “We’re staying, Crystal.”

  “Not here, the waiting room is twenty feet away.”

  Bruce lifted her hand from Nathan’s arm. “We’re staying within sight, so point out where we will be the least in the way. It’s not negotiable, Crystal. And while he may have the badge and gun, I’ve got the emotion. So where do you want us?”

  She took a half step back, lips pursed, then nodded and pointed. “Station three, until we need it. You can leave the curtain pushed back.”

  “Thank you.”

  Bruce watched the doctors work and the sickness inside him turned into a tight fist. “Someone got to her. Somehow, someone got to her.”

  “We’ll find out who,” Nathan said quietly.

  Bruce glanced over at him. He wasn’t sure what to make of Nathan’s expression, but he got enough of the gist to understand the impact this was having on his friend. He’d never seen Nathan look this way before.

  “I’m going to go find the hospital chapel. It’s that, or put my fist into a wall,” Bruce muttered, not able to watch another tube get stuck into Rae. She was alive, and God was likely the only one who could keep her alive right now. The doctors could do their best, but they were working in the dark for what to treat.

  “Pray for Rae. Pray for yourself. And pray for me. Right now I’d murder the guy who did this if I had a name.”

  “I know the feeling. I’ll get Rae’s family on the way here.”

  “Thanks.”

  Bruce squeezed Nathan’s shoulder and left the sheriff there.

  Bruce knew Nathan would find him if there was a change—good or bad. And he knew Rae would understand why he had to step away right now. Nothing hit harder on a cop than standing in the emergency room waiting to find out if a friend lived or died. He wasn’t having this be his last memory of his friend. He wasn’t going to do that to the two of them.

  31

  Nathan watched Rae through the ICU glass Sunday afternoon. She was holding her own, had been for the three hours since they had moved her here. He watched her breathe and would be content to watch that steady rise and fall of her chest for a long time to come. He forced himself to turn his attention to the coroner. “Why is she alive and the others dead?”