Free Novel Read

Dead of Winter Page 16


  I admit I was hoping he would be too intimidated by the dead people in the fridge to follow me, but I quickly see I was wrong and realize how stupid it was of me to hope for it in the first place. The man is dating one of the Johnson twins, after all, the creepiest women in town. And he’s clearly blinded by rage, in the throes of an obsession that has taken over his mind. He’s right behind me, and he looks pissed. It doesn’t take him long to figure out that Kit isn’t in this room.

  I try to think fast, searching both my mind and the nearby parts of the room for something I can use as a weapon. Ernie looks angrier now than he did before, and I fear I’m a goner. My mind races through a few scenarios, trying to plan an escape, but there is nothing I can think of that would be faster than a bullet. Any second now, Ernie is going to shoot me and then head back out to the main part of the office, where everyone else is. I need to stop him, or warn the others, but how?

  I hear a ringing sound then, and realize it’s my cell phone in Ernie’s pocket. It distracts Ernie from me for a second or two, and as he goes to reach into his pocket, I react on blind instinct. My mind registers the slight waver of his aim with the gun, so that it’s pointing to the left side of my head now. My eyes dart to my right and spy the metal Mayo stand next to the autopsy table. In the same second, I bend to my right, grab the top of the metal stand, and fling it with all my might at Ernie.

  His reactions are quick. The gun swings around as the Mayo stand slams into his free arm. I hear a loud explosion by my left ear, hear the reverberating clang of the Mayo stand’s top as it separates from the frame and hits the ceramic floor, and I feel a white-hot burn on my left arm near my shoulder. Next I hear a muffled curse, and I look around frantically, trying to determine where Ernie is and, more important, where’s the gun. I see him standing mere inches away, behind me and to my right. The gun is pointed at the floor, and Ernie is struggling to maintain his balance. I whirl toward him and shove as hard as I can. He falls to the floor, and I make a mad dash past him and run into the fridge. As I make my turn toward the other door, I pause long enough to grab the leg of the body closest to me, that of the large man. Mustering up all my strength, I wrap my right arm around his leg and heave him toward me. The brakes on the stretcher are locked, so I succeed in dragging the man’s body off the stretcher and onto the floor, where it lands with a sickening thud. I spin around and hit the second door on the fly, knowing Ernie is probably right behind me. As soon as I’m past the door, I start to yell for help at the top of my lungs, but can’t because I run straight into a mass of solid flesh.

  “Hurley!” I say, both frightened and relieved. “He has a gun. He’s right behind me.”

  I risk a glance over my shoulder and see Ernie come barreling into the refrigerator like a mad bull. He sees the body on the floor at the last second, but his attempt to leap over it fails. He trips, the gun fires, and the echoing sound of the subsequent ricochet is deafening.

  Hurley pushes me aside and steps through the door I just came out of, his gun aimed and ready. He stops near Ernie’s head and yells, “Don’t make a move, asshole!”

  A hand clamps down on my shoulder from behind me, and I let out a yelp as I whirl around. It’s Kit.

  “Is that Ernie in there?” she asks. Behind her, I see Arnie come around the corner at the end of the hallway, his eyes huge.

  “Arnie, call the police!” I holler. “Get them over here now! Tell them we have an active shooter situation, but it’s contained.”

  Arnie nods and disappears in a flash. Kit tries to push past me to go into the fridge, but I restrain her, triggering a sharp bolt of pain down my left arm.

  Hurley has managed to take Ernie’s gun away, and he handcuffs the man’s hands behind his back, leaving him on the floor next to the Minnesota man’s body. Enough of Ernie’s adrenaline has worn off at this point that he’s starting to realize the naked body next to him is dead. He wriggles away from it, crawling across the fridge floor like the worm he is.

  Hurley exits the fridge and hurries over to me, his face pale. With one hand, he grabs the neck of my scrub top and yanks it down toward my left shoulder. This causes an electric current of pain that makes me yell out. I look down at the area of the pain and see blood, lots of blood. That’s when I realize I’ve been shot.

  “Mattie, are you okay?” Hurley asks, his voice trembling slightly.

  “I don’t know,” I say, focused on nothing but the source of my pain and the hole in my left shoulder. My adrenaline is starting to wear off, too, and my body begins to shake. “I think I’ve been shot.”

  I look at Hurley, then back at my shoulder. So much blood. And then the world goes black.

  CHAPTER 16

  My mind registers the sounds first: lots of people talking, the stomp of running feet, shouts, doors banging. I open my eyes and see Arnie staring down at me. Above him, and me, is the ceiling, and I realize I’m lying on the floor.

  “Are you okay, Mattie?” Arnie says.

  “I think so,” I say, doing a quick bodily inventory. I can feel everything, some things too much so. “What happened?”

  “You fainted.”

  The memories rush in then, and I make a frantic effort to get up from the floor, crab-walking backward away from the morgue fridge.

  “Whoa,” Arnie says, pushing down on my injured shoulder. “It’s okay. They got the guy. They’re taking him over to the police station now.”

  I squeeze my eyes closed with relief. “Thank goodness. Did anyone get hurt?”

  “Just you, unless you count the bullet that hit the body in the fridge in the head. I imagine we’re going to have a challenge explaining that one to his family.”

  My left shoulder is throbbing painfully, and I realize then that Arnie is pushing on it. “That hurts,” I tell him, wincing and putting a hand up next to his on my shoulder. I realize my top has been torn to provide better access to my wound and some nonsensical part of my mind bemoans the fact that there will now me one less 2XL scrub top in the inventory.

  “Sorry, but I have to,” Arnie says. “You were hit in the shoulder. Izzy looked at the wound and it appears the bullet tunneled into your skin, but didn’t hit any bones. There was a tiny artery that was nicked, but with a little pressure, we have it contained. It looks and probably feels worse than it is because of all the blood.”

  Izzy comes around the corner, carrying a bag. He squats next to me. “Let me see,” he says, prying Arnie’s hand away. “Ah, yes. Looks good. The bleeding is under control for now. I’ll put a dressing on it.”

  He removes supplies from the bag he is carrying and goes about placing gauze pads over the wound and then wrapping it with rolled gauze under and around my arm.

  “Where’s Kit?” I ask, wincing as Izzy’s ministrations trigger tiny shocks of pain.

  “She’s in the library with some police officers,” Izzy says, taping the last bit of dressing in place. “There’s an ambulance on the way to take you to the hospital.”

  “I don’t need an ambulance,” I say irritably. “Help me up.”

  Both Izzy and Arnie start to object, so I use my good arm to get to my knees, and from there, onto my feet. I feel a little woozy at first and lean against the wall as the two men eye me warily, but after a few seconds, my head clears.

  “You need to go to the ER and get that wound cleaned properly,” Izzy says.

  “I’ll drive over there.”

  “The hell you will,” Izzy says. “First of all, you fainted not that long ago, so there’s no way you belong behind the wheel of a car. And secondly, I don’t think your car is a good way to get there.” He raises his eyebrows at me and I belatedly remember the mess in my front seat.

  Arnie looks at Izzy curiously, but, fortunately, all Izzy says is “Let the ambulance take you.”

  “I don’t want or need an ambulance,” I say irritably. “Can’t someone drive me?”

  “I can,” says a voice behind me. It’s Hurley. He walks over, wraps a strong a
rm around my waist, and pulls me close. “You scared the hell out of me, Squatch. When I saw all that blood on your chest and arm, I thought . . .” His voice trails off and I see him swallow hard.

  “It’s just a flesh wound,” I tell him. “Hurts like hell, but it’s not fatal.”

  Hurley nudges me forward, his arm rock solid around my waist. “Let’s get it looked at.”

  We walk together to the main hallway and after a quick detour to fetch my coat, we take the elevator down to the underground garage. “Your car or mine?” Hurley says as the elevator door opens.

  “Yours,” I say quickly, realizing Brenda and Devo must not have shared the information about my earlier accident. As if my gut is having a simpatico reaction to the memory of the morning’s earlier events, it rumbles and shifts. I squeeze my eyes closed, praying that it’s nothing more than a lingering bit of borborygmus, aka bowel sounds.

  We make it to both the car and the ER without further incident. Hurley talks the entire time, filling me in on some of the details of Ernie’s arrest. “I don’t think we’ll have to worry about him for a long time to come,” he concludes. “Good thing, I think, because Kit is all concerned about him, upset that he’s been arrested. She keeps saying it’s her fault. I think if she had the chance, she’d go back to him in a heartbeat.”

  “Stockholm syndrome, or something like it,” I say. “Sadly, not that unusual in victims of domestic abuse.”

  We arrive at the ER, and we’re ushered into the back with great haste when Hurley announces that I’ve been shot. It’s an overreaction, but I’m in enough pain that I don’t care and don’t bother to clarify things. I’m placed in a bed, promptly stripped of all my clothing, and within minutes of my arrival, there are two nurses and a doctor standing at my bedside. I have a full set of vital signs taken and am put on a cardiac monitor. This initial flurry of activity dies quickly, once they remove Izzy’s dressing and realize my wound isn’t life threatening, and Doc Leonard checks me over from head to foot.

  “Looks like you were lucky,” he says when he’s done. “I’ll have a nurse clean and bandage that wound on your shoulder. I’m going to put you on an antibiotic as a precaution, and I’ll give you a script for a few pain pills.”

  “Sounds great,” I say. “Can I get some ibuprofen for now?”

  “Sure. Want something stronger?” Leonard asks.

  I shake my head. “Not now. I still have work to do today.”

  Hurley huffs out a breath of annoyance. “You need to go home, Squatch. You weren’t feeling well this morning as it was. And now you’ve got this to add to the mix.”

  “I’m fine,” I insist. “Or I will be, once I get some ibuprofen.”

  “On it,” says Dr. Leonard, and he disappears from my room.

  Hurley sits down in a chair beside my stretcher and leans forward. I know from both his posture and his expression that he is ramping up for an argument on whether or not I’m going home for the rest of the day.

  “Save it,” I say before he can speak a word. “I’m going back to the office. Chris will be in at noon and I can head home then. Okay?”

  He narrows his eyes at me, studying my face. Something in my expression convinces him that further argument would be a waste of time, effort, and breath. He sighs heavily.

  A nurse named Becky comes into the room then, armed with a medication cup, some water, some cleaning solution, and dressing supplies. She administers the ibuprofen to me, and then prepares to clean my wound. I brace myself, knowing it isn’t going to be fun.

  * * *

  Ten minutes, and a slew of colorful cusswords later, my wound is cleaned and redressed. Before Becky leaves, I thank her and ask if Hildy, the social worker, is on duty.

  “She is.”

  “Would you mind calling her and asking her if she can come talk to me for a minute?”

  Becky’s brow furrows with curiosity, but then she shrugs and says, “Sure.”

  “What do you want with the social worker?” Hurley asks.

  “I want to talk to her about Kit. That girl is going to need some counseling.”

  Hurley opens his mouth to say something, but his phone rings. “It’s Arnie,” he says. He answers with, “What’s up, Arnie?” He listens for a few seconds, looks at me, smiles, and says, “She’s fine. She’ll be back in the office within the hour.” He listens some more, and I can see from his expression that whatever Arnie is telling him has him excited. Finally he says, “Sounds promising enough. I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”

  Even before he disconnects the call, I’m leaning toward him, eager and curious. “What’s he got?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me specifics, but he said he’s made a computer connection that might give us a strong lead in the Paulsen case. Apparently, some of his cronies—”

  He’s interrupted when the door to my room slides open and Hildy Schneider walks in. “Hello, Hildy,” I say. “Good to see you again . . . well, sort of.”

  “Oh, my, what happened to you?” Hildy says with a frown.

  “I got shot,” I tell her. “It isn’t serious, just a flesh wound. Remember that young woman you talked to with the abusive boyfriend?”

  “Yes, Kit Johnson.” Hildy’s eyes grow big. “This was him?” When I nod, she says, “Wow! That escalated faster than I thought it might.”

  “I think it happened faster than anyone thought it might,” I say. “And Kit, the girl in question, really needs some counseling. Can you help?”

  “Of course,” Hildy says without hesitation. “I run a domestic abuse group along with some other therapy groups . . . substance abuse, grief and loss, that sort of thing. But given what’s happened here, I’m thinking Ms. Johnson might need some one-on-one time first.”

  “I agree,” I say, feeling something niggle at my brain. For a moment, I chalk it up to the pain pill I took, but then I remember that it was nothing more than ibuprofen.

  Before I can explore it further, Hildy asks, “Where is the man in question?”

  Hurley fields this one. “We have him in custody. He won’t see the other side of the bars for quite some time.”

  Hildy nods approvingly. “That may make things easier,” she says. “Though it will all depend on Ms. Johnson’s frame of mind. Should I call her?”

  “If you have the time, I’d prefer it if you could see her straightaway. She’s over in my office.”

  Hildy frowns. “I’m on duty here at the hospital until three, and can’t really leave the premises. I could see her after three, or if there’s a way to bring her over here right away, I’ll make time for her in my office.”

  “Her parents and sister are here,” Hurley says. “Kit’s boyfriend did a number on them, too. It would be easy to bring her over here to see them, if you think that would be appropriate.”

  I’m caught a little off guard by this news. Only now do I recall Hurley telling me during the earlier phone call that Ernie pistol-whipped Kit’s parents, and beat her sister as well. “Are the Johnsons okay?” I ask.

  “Oh, the Johnsons,” Hildy says with sudden dawning. “I didn’t realize they were related. Seems every other person who comes in here is either a Johnson, a Nelson, or an Anderson. The ER staff said they were victims of a home invasion. That was the boyfriend also?”

  Hurley and I both nod solemnly.

  “Well, now, it seems this Ernie fellow is quite the drittsekk,” Hildy says. I arch my brows at this, unsure what the term means, but gathering the general meaning nonetheless. “I heard the daughter was here, too, but I haven’t spoken to her,” Hildy goes on. “Truth be told, I haven’t spoken to the parents, either, because they weren’t in any condition for it yet. I planned to come back to them. If I remember right, Mrs. Johnson is being admitted to the hospital, but Mr. Johnson is likely to be discharged. The nurses said their daughter would get discharged home, too.”

  “I hope Mrs. Johnson is okay,” I say, worried.

  “I think she’s okay,” Hildy says. “My und
erstanding is that she’s being admitted only as a precautionary thing because she’s on a blood-thinning medication. They want to watch her overnight.”

  “Oh, good,” I say with relief, figuring that any serious, long-term repercussions to the family will only complicate Kit’s emotional well-being and counseling.

  “I’ll have an officer bring Kit over here,” Hurley says. “Will you stick around so we can hook you up with her?”

  “I’m here till three, like I said,” Hildy replies. “I’m a simple phone call away if I’m not here in the emergency department.”

  We thank Hildy, and she leaves. Hurley gets on his phone and drifts from my room to make the necessary arrangements. My nurse returns with my discharge instructions, and I make quick work of this exchange, eager to get back to the office with Hurley to see what Arnie has dug up on the Paulsen case.

  And I’m gifted with a new, intact 2XL scrub top from the hospital’s supply to replace my torn one. That almost makes it worth the trip.

  CHAPTER 17

  Remembering that I need to call a cleanup company to come and take care of my car, I realize that I don’t have my cell phone. Then I remember Ernie taking it from me earlier and putting it in his pocket.

  “Hurley, my cell phone was in Ernie Roberts’s pocket. I don’t suppose you have it?”

  He shakes his head and takes out his own phone. By the time we reach the car, he has made arrangements for someone to bring the phone to my office, though it may take a while because it was tagged as Roberts’s personal property.

  When we get back to my office, I’m glad to see that Kit is gone. Hurley informs me that Brenda Joiner has taken her to the hospital so she can see her family. “Brenda knows to try to hook her up with the social worker,” Hurley tells me. “Let’s hope it does some good.”

  “Let me check in with Izzy before we go up to see Arnie,” I say.