Chapter 2
The hallway was too bright. That was the first thing I noticed after I said it.
Fluorescent tubes humming overhead, the reflective floor throwing the light back up, and through the glass doors my daughter was still there in the bed with the neck brace on, her chest rising too fast under the monitors. A nurse's arm had just pushed me back from her. Not rough. Firm. The kind of firm that meant I didn't belong there anymore.
I had the phone to my ear and I had the notebook and the key in my other hand. The key was digging into my palm. Silver, with the blue tape around the head, 214 written in black marker. The notebook was open to the page she'd written, the blood specked along the top edge already drying brown.
"Boss. I need everything."
It came out lower than I wanted it to. My voice was thin.
He picked up on the second ring. He always did. "Where are you?"
"County General. Trauma," I said. I turned my shoulder to the glass so no one inside could see my mouth move. "They brought Emily in. They said car, but it's not. She left me something."
A cart rattled past. A man in scrubs with a surgical mask pulled up watched me from the nurses' station. He wasn't charting. He was just standing there with a clipboard, eyes on me.
"What did she leave?" Boss asked.
"A key. Blue tape, number 214. And a notebook. She wrote they wanted this. Don't trust anyone. And that her mom's accident wasn't an accident." My breath caught. I tried to keep it even. "You worked that call with me. You know what they called it."
Silence on his end for a second too long. I heard him exhale.
"Slow down," he said. "Are you with a doctor? Did you talk to the trooper outside her room?"
"There is no trooper," I said. I looked back at the doors. The nurse who'd pushed me was adjusting Emily's IV. The masked guy was still there. Closer now. Ten feet down the hall, pretending to check the monitor cart outside Room 4. "That's why I'm calling you off-record. The notebook says don't trust anyone. I'm holding evidence and hospital security just asked me to step out. If I hand this over right now it disappears."
"Son," he said, and his voice dropped. That was his tell. When he got formal, things were bad. "Listen to me carefully. You do not log that key. You do not give that notebook to County. Not tonight."
"You think it's dirty."
"I think I've been doing this twenty-eight years and I've seen what happens when the right report gets filed too fast," he said. "Your wife's crash was County and State together. If your girl's right, that paperwork went through the same hands. You hand them the thing that proves it, you give them a chance to fix their filing error. You understand me?"
My hand tightened around the key. The tape was slick with my sweat. I could feel my wedding band cold against my finger.
Behind me the glass door hissed. The nurse came out, pulling it half-closed behind her.
"Sir, I need you to wait in the family area," she said. She wasn't unkind. She was tired. "Doctor will update you as soon as she's stable. You can't be in the hall on your phone."
The masked guy looked up when she said it. Our eyes met for a half-second. He didn't look away.
"I need to stay where I can see her," I said to her.
"It's hospital policy," she said. And then softer, "She's being monitored. She's safe here."
She's being monitored. The notebook page flashed in my head. THEY WANTED THIS.
I nodded to her so she'd go away, and turned deeper into the hallway, toward the bank of elevators where the light didn't reach as well.
"Did you hear that?" I whispered into the phone.
"I heard it," Boss said. "That girl is not safe in an open trauma room with a hallway full of strangers. But you can't move her either. Not yet."
"What do I do?"
"You hide what you have. On you. Not in that room, not at the nurses' desk, not in a locker. You keep it until you know what 214 opens. Then you bring it to me, not to the front desk. I will make calls, but not on the county line. You do not tell anyone else you have it. Not the doctor. Not the chaplain. No one."
I slipped the key into the inside pocket of my olive jacket and zipped it. The notebook I folded shut and pushed against my ribs, under the jacket, holding it there with my forearm the way I'd carried reports in the rain.
"They're watching me," I said.
"I know."
"Emily's unconscious. She can't tell me where she got this."
"No," he said. "But she left it where you'd find it. Small zip pocket, you said? She knew you'd look. So you think like her. Where was she before the call came in? Who was she with? 214 is storage, school locker, motel, evidence cage. It's American. It's close."
The elevator dinged. Two sheriff's deputies got off. Not for me, just walking through. But my stomach dropped anyway. I stared at their radios, their belts, and thought about that county patch that had been on my wife's accident report.
"Boss," I said. My voice broke for real this time. "If they did this to her mom and now to her—"
"Don't go there right now," he said. Not sharp. Steady. "You keep your head. You keep that key dry and that book on your body. You find what 214 is before anyone else knows you have it. Then you call me from outside the hospital. Not inside."
The masked guy had moved again. Now he was by the water fountain, still facing me.
I understood. "Okay."
"Okay what?"
"Off-record. I hide it. I find 214 myself."
"Good boy," he said. I hated when he called me that, but tonight I needed it. "I'm at the house. You need me, you burn my cell, not dispatch."
He hung up.
May you like
I stood there with the phone still to my ear for a second so it looked like I was still talking. The hallway smelled like antiseptic and coffee. Through the glass, Emily's monitor beeped, 90 over 19, steady but too quick. The nurse was writing on a chart with her back to me.
I didn't go to the family waiting area. I walked the other way, toward the stairwell, my left hand pressed over the notebook under my jacket so it wouldn't slip, the key hard against my chest, and I didn't look back at the man in the mask.
