Sergei huddled in a corner at the end of the alley by Jesus Saves. He knew he should tell someone what he’d seen, but he also knew his English was not so good. Officer Cruz had been looking for Angie. He would believe Sergei. Maybe.
He’d always been suspicious of the police who hassled the homeless people on the street. He shouted at them, called them dirty names, treated them like dogs, like the soldiers Sergei remembered as a boy in Russia after the fall of Communism.
He took another long gulp from his vodka bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He had an alibi for the night Dickey Hinchey had been murdered. Sergei had been housed in the Methodist Church with all the other homeless people.
But tonight he was on the street because of the drinking. He couldn’t go in the van for a nice dinner and a warm place to sleep if he was drinking.
What if the cop killed Angie and they blamed Sergei, who had no alibi tonight?
No, it was better to keep his mouth shut and stay alive. Who would believe him over the word of a Rosedale policeman? No one.
As the vodka worked its paralysis on his mind and body, Sergei wasn’t sure he himself believed what he’d seen. Maybe it was all a figment of his imagination, the alcohol convinced him. Maybe he was an idiot.
A land owner, surveying his property in preparation for selling it, found Angie Hunt’s body. The figure of a small, dark-skinned woman lay in a culvert – unmoving, battered, bloody, and bruised – dead, the farmer thought at first.
He looked up the long length of the mountain, saw the disturbed brush and dirt.
How could she have fallen that distance and survived? When he put his aged fingers to her throat, he noticed the ugly, bluish-purple ring around her neck, but found no pulse. He shifted his fingers, searching desperately for any thread of a heartbeat.
Nothing.
He dialed emergency services, even though the reception was spotty in this part of the foothills. No luck. The farmer was elderly and his truck was parked a half mile away. It couldn’t negotiate this rocky terrain.
Could he move her that far on his own? She looked sleight, almost weightless, but at sixty-nine he was a weak shadow of his younger self. He sighed heavily, but knew he had to try. Couldn’t just leave the poor little thing here even if she was already dead.
The animals, the carrion birds – no, he couldn’t do that.
He sighed deeply, a religious man, who believed in signs and miracles. If she was dead, moving her wouldn’t matter. If he left her here to get help and she was somehow alive, she’d likely be dead before he got back.
He raised a quick prayer to heaven and made his decision. Bending on creaking knees, he lifted the woman into a sitting position, then hefted her over his shoulder. She was heavier than he’d imagined, or maybe he was weaker than he believed.
God help him, he thought, as he staggered his way back to the truck. It was the longest half mile of his life.
Chapter 57
“We found Angie Hunt,” Slater said as soon as Cruz picked up his cell phone.
In the parole office, Cruz clutched the receiver close to his ear, sucked in a deep breath, afraid to let it out. “She’s alive?”
“Barely. A farmer up Highway 50 found her at the bottom of a culvert, looks like she fell or was pushed down the hill.” He paused. “She’s in bad shape at Sutter Hospital in Rosedale. I’ve got an officer on the door.”
“Someone you trust?”
“Another one of my deputies, not Rosedale PD.” The unspoken suspicions of betrayal within the department filled their minds.
“Deputy Weist contacted me at home,” Slater continued. “I have to leave Cole and Frankie for a few hours, but they’ll be okay. Apparently your prison doctor is familiar with firearms. She got into my locked gun safe.”
“I’ll meet you at the hospital,” Cruz said, nearly choking. “And she’s not my prison doctor.”
Cruz heard the laughter in Slater’s voice. “Whatever you say.”
Slater and Cruz arrived at the Rosedale hospital at the same time, meeting in the parking lot. “Angie’s on the third floor, intensive care,” Slater informed him. “I don’t know if we can talk to her.”
Deputy Waylon Higgins, a large black man taller and wider than Cruz, guarded the door to Angie’s hospital room. He looked alert and ready for any possible confrontation.
Cruz and Slater looked at Angie through the glass windows of ICU. She was hooked up to several monitors. Her face was a mess of bruises and bloody contusions, her ribs and chest thickly bound. An IV tube fed her glucose and blood, and a breathing tube entered her nostrils. She lay as still as if she was dead while Cruz watched intently to catch the shallow rise and fall of her breathing.
Slater flashed his badge at the doctor on call. “How is she?”