The Search The Secrets of Crittenden Cou

Chapter 15




“I never understood what Frannie saw in Perry. After all, there is only so much a smile and sense of adventure can do for a person. Ain’t so?”

MICAH OVERHOLT




After spending yet another rough night staring at the blank walls and listening to the soft snores of her roommate, Frannie had been overjoyed to see the sunrise. When the nurses came to take her blood pressure, she hadn’t been able to refrain from chatting with them.

She’d visited with the attendant who’d delivered her breakfast, and had even shared a “good morning” with one of her doctors.

But when she saw Luke Reynolds walk through the beige curtain and toward her side of the room, she couldn’t contain her happiness. She was so happy to have a visitor.

“Luke, you came back!”

He grinned. “I did.”

“Sorry about my exuberance. It’s just that I’m mighty happy to have a visitor.” And, she privately acknowledged, happy to see him in particular.

“I couldn’t stay away,” he teased. “Plus, I thought you might like a ride home. Mose was going to come out here, but he thought maybe you’d be more comfortable in my car instead.”

The reminder of Sheriff Kramer and her conversation with him darkened her mood.

But no matter what, Frannie knew that she would, indeed, be more comfortable with Luke. The last thing she wanted was to be trapped in a vehicle with Sheriff Kramer while being hammered with questions. “Coming here, volunteering to take me home . . . that was kind of you.”

“Kind?” His eyebrows rose. “You must really not be feeling too well. I’ve never known you to speak so meekly.”

“I don’t spar with everyone, Luke. Only you.”

“I guess I should feel privileged, then.”

“Privileged or unfortunate!”

Taking the chair by her bed, he gestured to her arms, where only bandages decorated her hands and arms. “Looks like you got disconnected.”

“I was thankful to have the IV out, for sure. Now I only have to wait for the doctor to give me permission to leave.” Realizing he probably had a lot to do besides wait with her, she warned, “It might be a while. Nothing here seems to happen very quickly.”

“I can wait.” Lowering his voice, he said, “So, how is your neighbor? Anything new with her?”

Frannie had an idea the patient on the other side of the curtain had most likely gotten a real earful during the sheriff’s visit. But though she’d been worried about being overheard last night, she’d forgotten all about her roommate this morning. “Is she still there? The television has been off for hours.”

“I think she was asleep when I walked in.”

“She’s been a tiresome roommate. She doesn’t sleep much and is restless. She also speaks too loudly, has lots of company, and tends to spout off her opinions about most everything.” But even as Frannie mentioned her roommate’s flaws, she also realized she would miss her, too. The woman had been a burst of color in an otherwise dreary room.

“I imagine she has been a trial.” He rubbed his leg. “Being in the hospital gets old quick, that’s for sure. When I was in the hospital with my leg, I thought they’d never let me leave.”

“I’m sorry, Luke. Here I am, acting like I’m the only person to ever have a hospital stay. How long were you in the hospital?”

His eyes darkened. “Five days.”

“That is all? I would have thought longer.”

He sighed, as if even talking about his injury made it ache. “Like you, I wasn’t a very good patient. Because I’d been shot, my buddies took turns standing guard over my room. I felt guilty for making them do that.”

She knew nothing about standing guard, but she did understand loyalty. “I’m sure helping you made them feel gut.”

Surprise flared in his eyes, then dimmed to a wry acknowledgment. “Perhaps it did.” He sighed. “Anyway, I was anxious to get out of the hospital as quickly as possible. But even though I got out relatively quickly, I still had to go to rehab for weeks after that.”

“What did they do there?”

“They helped me walk. I’m afraid that’s when I became a difficult patient.” He’d been frustrated with both his stamina and the pain that had rarely seemed to ebb. “Since then, I’ve had a long recovery at home.” He frowned as he straightened his leg. “It’s still not completely back to normal. That’s why I was able to come out here. Mose needed help, and I wasn’t given permission to get back to work in the field.”

“Will your leg ever be completely healed?” She blurted the question, realizing almost immediately that she was prying too much. “Sorry. It’s none of my business . . .”

Luke reached out and pressed his palm on the back of her hand. His touch, so warm and sure, stilled her worries.

Just for a moment.

“Don’t ever apologize for being concerned, Frannie,” he said softly. Then, as if their contact had never happened, he removed his hand and spoke. “Actually, your question is one hardly anyone ever wants to ask.” He rubbed his head, the short hair sticking up as he did. “They’re afraid of the answer, I guess.”

“Is there an answer?”

He nodded. “The short answer is that it will probably never be completely back to how it was.”

“And the long answer?”

“The long one? It’s that I’ll be able to go back to work. Eventually, I’ll learn to adjust. I won’t be the same, but maybe I don’t need it to be, you know?”

He was right. Life was all about learning to adjust, to make do with less or more.

He continued. “Being injured like this taught me to be more accepting of my faults. Going through rehab, when I could only do five or seven reps of an exercise at a time, it was easy to pretend that I used to be strong.”

“I’m sure you were.”

He grinned. “I might have been able to do twenty repetitions of a weight. Not fifty. Sometimes, I would kid myself.” Looking sheepish again, he said, “For a while there, you would have thought that I could run a three-minute mile. The fact was, I never was a great runner, but I did take my leg for granted. Being in a wheelchair and on crutches for weeks and weeks made me realize that my leg is a great tool to get me from one place to the next. And if it’s scarred and sore and not quite what it was, it’s okay.”

“Sounds like life,” she murmured.

“Like life?” His brow quirked.

“You know,” she explained. “How we’re all born perfect but then things happen. You get cut in the kitchen . . .”

“Or shot in the leg,” he finished. “I never thought about it like that, but yeah, maybe you’re right. Things do happen.”

“Even when we don’t want them to.”

“It’s tempting to paint the past as perfect. But I don’t think it ever was.”

Frannie was struck by his words, more than he probably could ever imagine. Because what he’d said was how she’d felt about Perry and his death.

Somehow, she’d started pretending that things before he’d gone missing were wonderful.

They hadn’t been.

She’d been scared. In fact, once he was gone, she’d thought he’d made good on his promise to move away. She’d been relieved he was out of her life.

“Is every investigation like this, Luke?”

“Is every investigation like what?”

“Painful and scary? Raw? Sometimes, it feels as if you’ve taken my skin and peeled it back.”

“To an extent, I think pain occurs every time peoples’ lives are studied with a fine-tooth comb. However, in my experience, no two investigations are ever the same. There are motives behind every crime—and usually all motivations are personal.”

“I know revealing secrets is painful.”

His eyes flashed, and right then and there, she saw everything he was thinking—well, what he’d let her see.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. “Some murders didn’t take much detective work. Pretty much everyone had seen it coming. Or we had an eyewitness.”

“Ah.”

“But what I’m trying to say is that most times, I’ve found the killer, cuffed him, and sent him to jail. I did the paperwork, and let the prosecutors take over. The only time they needed me was on the witness stand. And then I’d give my testimony, feeling like I was doing something good—putting someone dangerous off the streets. But I never really thought about what the murder had done to the community.”

“Why not?”

“I had too much to do. There’s a lot of violence in Cincinnati. If I spent as long on every case as I have on this one, nothing would get done.”

“Ah.”

“But there’s more to it than that.” He leaned forward, looking at Frannie intently, like he was practically begging for her to understand. “I also didn’t want to feel. Feeling everyone’s pain hurts.”

She saw the guilt in his eyes. And though she knew little about the things he was speaking of, she ached to reassure him. “Perhaps that’s what police officers need to do, jah? If you dwell too much on the hurt, you can’t do your job.”

“But is that doing my job?” His expression was doubtful.

“Someone has to. And it seems like you are the right man to do it. Otherwise you wouldn’t be a detective, right?”

“I guess you have a point. Hey, how did you get so smart?”

“I’m not smart.”

“I’d beg to differ.”

Beg to differ. It was an unusual phrase, but it had a certain ring to it, she thought. “Luke,” she asked. “Do you know who killed Perry yet?”

“You know I can’t answer that.”

“Ah,” she murmured, just as the curtain moved and a nurse walked through.

“Frannie Eicher, I’ve heard you want to leave us,” the woman who was her father’s age said with a mock look of hurt. “Is that true?”

“I am afraid it is.” She, too, pretended to feel something different than she was, but unlike the nurse, Frannie knew she wasn’t fooling anyone, not even for a second. She was more than ready to say goodbye to her beige room.

The nurse smiled broadly. “If you’re ready, then it is time for us to take care of things. We’ve got a couple of paperwork issues to deal with.” She turned to Luke. “And you’re going to take her home, sir?” When Luke nodded, the nurse showed them both forms and discussed pain relievers and follow-up appointments.

And Frannie felt her mind drift. She thought of all the information she’d shared. And about what she hadn’t shared.

Did Luke know who killed Perry? Would the questioning ever end so the town could finally get back to normal?