Free The Long Sleep by Caroline Crane Page B

could have asked him the same question, but
he had a better reason to be there. I tried to think of something
clever to say.
    “Only sometimes.” That wasn’t very
clever.
    I wondered how old he was. Maybe his early
twenties? I glanced at his hand and remembered that I’d already
done that a few times. He didn’t wear a ring, but that proved
nothing.
    “He’s still out of it,” I told Falco, and
added, “They extubated him.” Was that the right word? It was what
the nurse said.
    “Good. Good. That’s progress.” Apparently
Falco knew what it meant. “He’s doing okay without it?”
    “I guess they’d put it back in if he wasn’t.
Anyway, I could see he was breathing.” I rushed on to explain my
presence there at the ICU. “I was bringing him something. From
school. A tape to let him know we’re carrying on with the
newspaper. The nurse said she’d play it for him. If he can hear it,
it might cheer him up.”
    “That’s very thoughtful.”
    Was he patronizing me?
    “I’m sure he can hear it,” Falco went on.
“They usually can, as I understand it. We talked about that, didn’t
we?” He moved us both aside as the elevator came back and another
gurney waited to get on.
    “Busy place,” Falco observed. “Are you in a
hurry, or how about some lunch?”
    That startled me. “Aren’t you on duty?”
    “They allow me to eat now and then. How about
it?”
    “Um . . . sure.”
    He pressed the elevator button. We went down
to B for basement. The hospital must have been carved into a
hillside because the back wall of the cafeteria was all glass and
looked out on a sloping rock garden.
    “People eat out there in warm weather,” he
said as he picked up two trays and handed one to me.
    “Do you spend a lot of time here?” I
asked.
    “More than enough since that shooting.”
    I took lasagna and a small green salad. Falco
had lasagna and a side of fries. No greenery. He dietary choices
needed work. We took a table next to the glass wall. It was late
enough that the big lunch rush was over.
    I thought of Hank upstairs, out cold. Even
colder when I compared him with Falco, who was so competent and
full of life.
    “Have you found any—” I almost said clues,
“—any leads yet?”
    “As a matter of fact, after the fiftieth time
we looked . . .” A smile quirked his mouth. “Maybe it was only the
fifth or sixth, and the first time, you’ll remember, it was dark.
They looked again and found a small piece of fuzz stuck on one of
the middle branches. Dark red. Maroon? Wine?”
    “Burgundy?” I tried.
    “Isn’t that wine, more or less?”
    “Yes, but there are different shades of
wine.” He should know that. Unlike me, he was of legal drinking
age. But I probably knew more about fashion colors.
    “Okay, we’ll call it maroon,” he said. “Dark
red with a hint of purple. Do you know anybody who wears something
like that? I did say fuzzy, didn’t I?”
    I tried to think. Maybe Evan bought new
clothes when he went to Garson Academy.
    “I’ll look around,” I said. “On Monday. It
might not be anybody from Southbridge High.”
    “I’m aware of that. It seems the most likely.
Have you had any more phone calls? Other nuisances?”
    I looked out at the rock garden. It must have
been really nice in summer.
    “I don’t know if it’s a nuisance or a
threat.” Nuisance seemed too mild. “He sent some pictures. Of him
and me. Six different pictures, all taken last summer with him. In
every one of them my face is marked up. There’s an X or a beard or
blacked out teeth. Anything to make me look ugly. It’s as if he
wants to obliterate me. That time at the police station, I thought
he was going to throw acid in my face.”
    “You wouldn’t happen to have them with
you?”
    “I should have thought of that. I tossed
them, but I can fish them out. It makes me feel so stupid. Why
didn’t I know what he was like before all this happened? By the
time I did, I was in too deep and he wouldn’t