“After we watch the disc from the surveillance camera in the store, we’ll leave you alone. We’re hoping you’ll be able to clarify what’s happening as we watch it,” Detective Knowles said.
The man with the sword moved to the end of the bed. He appeared to be looking at her eyes. Not into them, like someone would if they were trying to communicate. No. He was looking at her eyes, as if he were studying a pinned bug specimen. Elena squirmed like that bug as she managed to pull her eyes away from the death angel.
Detective Knowles punched some keys on the laptop, and the disc began to play. There was no audio. On the screen, she watched herself enter the store. The camera had filmed from the corner where the mirror was mounted. She watched as she walked straight to the candy aisle. Detective Knowles paused the disc.
“It looks like you are familiar with the store. Why were you there?” Knowles asked.
“I was getting a Milky Way bar.”
Gonzalez smiled. “Do you do this often?”
It was obvious he thought she was lying. “Yes. I have hypoglycemia—low blood sugar—I need candy when it gets bad.”
It was Knowles’s turn to lob the ball across the court. “So, you’ve been to this store before?”
“Yes.”
“How many times?” Gonzalez seemed to enjoy the game more than Knowles. Grinning, he leaned against the bedrail, close enough for her to smell cigarette smoke clinging to his clothes.
“Um. Pretty much every day for the last three weeks.”
Knowles’s turn again. “Why for three weeks?”
She groaned. If only she knew. “My blood sugar has been out of whack since I started working at the hospital,” she explained, smoothing the top of the sheet into a neat, straight fold. “The store is the first place to buy chocolate on my way home.”
Gonzalez asked, “What do you do at the hospital?”
“I’m a research biologist in the hematology lab.”
Gonzalez must have forgotten it wasn’t his turn in the keep away game, because he continued the questioning. “What is your job in the lab?”
“I have a Ph.D. in Biology. I’m working as a research scientist on a cancer drug protocol. I study blood anomalies.”
Deep laughter filled the room. Elena had been so distracted by the detectives she’d forgotten the death angel, who had moved to the glass wall when the questioning began. “That’s perfect,” he said in his deep voice. “Absolutely perfect. The fox in the henhouse.”
What was that accent, she wondered. German? No, Russian, maybe. Whatever it was, the effect of his voice on her body was as profound as his smile. Her insides clenched.
Knowles spoke next. “So you’ve been going to this convenience store every day to get a candy bar after work.”
She nodded but continued to watch the death angel, who chuckled as he stared out the window into the ER hallway. Like something out of a really great dream, here stood a huge guy with sexy markings, deep voice, and a sword—and for some reason, she was the only one who could see him. Physically, he was too good to be real. Maybe he was a dream. Don’t wake up, Elena, she urged, trying to memorize every detail of his magnificent body. But she knew it wasn’t a dream. She had died and was stuck in some kind of freaky purgatory.
“Miss Arcos, are you okay?” Detective Knowles waved his hand in front of her face.
“Uh, sorry, yeah,” she mumbled, reluctantly drawing her eyes back to the computer as Knowles restarted the surveillance disc. On the screen, she watched herself pick up a Milky Way bar. The robber walked into the store and spread his hands out on the counter. The clerk behind the cash register dropped the tabloid he was reading and stood up. She watched the small laptop screen as the robber pulled a gun out of the front waist of his pants under the flannel shirt and shot the clerk, who collapsed behind the counter. Everything was exactly as she remembered it. The guy cleared out the cash register and then walked down the aisle beyond her to the back of the store. He turned on her aisle, and she bolted. He leveled the handgun and shot her in the back on the right shoulder. She hit the floor. The guy shoved her with his foot and then kicked her. Calmly, he aimed the gun at the middle of her back and fired. Blood spread out between her shoulder blades. As if he had not just shot two people, the guy strode nonchalantly out of the store.
Detective Gonzalez stopped the disc. “So, Miss Arcos, what happened next?”
Elena held her breath in an attempt to control her panic. No way was she going to talk about her imaginary death angel, who had disappeared from the exam room sometime during the review of the surveillance recording. More unnerving than his presence was his absence. “I don’t remember.”