Angie Hunt woke from her coma much sooner than the medical staff had expected. Weak and barely able to speak from the trauma to her throat and body, she signaled for a pen and paper. I want Cruz, she wrote, and fell back on the pillow, exhausted from that small effort.
Cruz and Slater came immediately. Detective Andrew Flood, still in charge of the investigation, was already in the hospital lobby, looking ominously disgruntled.
“You know you can’t rely on the word of a recovering addict, supposedly recovering hooker, right?” He snapped at them as they stepped out of the elevator. “An unreliable eye witness.”
“You pissed she asked for me and not you, Flood?” Cruz raised his voice, stepped closer to the shorter man.
Slater stepped between them. “We’ve got another witness, Flood. If he corroborates what Angie says, that’s good enough for a warrant.”
“Let’s just hope she’s well enough to communicate with us,” Cruz said. He worried that the feisty, but slight, woman had been seriously damaged.
The on-call nurse allowed them five minutes with Angie. “No more,” she insisted. “She’s not out of the woods yet.”
In her hospital bed, Angie was hooked up to a wild thatch of tubes and machines. She looked weak and ashy, but her dark eyes lighted up when she saw Cruz enter in front of Slater and Flood.
“Get him outta here,” she muttered in a barely audible voice, nodding toward Flood. “I don’t like Detective Flood and he knows why.”
Flood sputtered indignantly. “It’s my case, Slater. You’ve got no right – ”
Slater put his arms around Flood and corralled him toward the door, speaking quietly but firmly. “We won’t get any information if she’s disturbed by your presence, Andy.”
“She can’t – you can’t – ”
“You know how this works, Flood. It’s your case, but my call.”
Finally, Flood spun around and stomped angrily down the corridor toward the elevators. Slater gazed after him. Police, Sergei Petrovich had insisted, but could he have meant a detective?
Cruz sat on the edge of Angie’s bed and took one thin hand into both his large, brown ones. An IV catheter ran from her other hand to a unit of blood. Another to a unit of saline, and a final one in her neck probably led to a feeding tube.
She looked terrible.
“You look great, Angie.”
“Quit scammin’ me, Cruz.” She tried a weak smile. “I’m no beauty at the best of times, but now – ” Her fingers fluttered uselessly on the blanket while huge tears pooled in her round, dark eyes.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Cruz soothed. “You’re a fighter, Angie. You’re going to be all right. They’re taking good care of you here.”
“I worry about my boys,” she ventured.
“Sharon’s got everything under control.”
Angie tried to snort, but failed, ending in a spate of coughing. “Shit, Sharon’s got nothin’ under control.” She sighed deeply. “Don’t matter. She’ll do.”
Cruz smiled at her spirit. “Yep, she’ll do. In a pinch,” he added after a moment.
This time she managed a croaking laugh.
“What can you tell us about your kidnapping, Angie? Who did this to you?”
Slater took the visitor chair in the room and scooted it close to the other side of the bed while Angie told them what’d happened to her from the time she left Jesus Saves until she woke up in the hospital. She shuddered as she described each blow and punch delivered to her, the terror of being choked to death. How she’d been absolutely certain she would die.
When she finished, she fell back, exhausted.
Slater explained how the elderly man had found her and managed to get her to safety. “He’s your hero, Angie.”
“Guess I owe that man a big thank you,” she said softly.
“Can you identify the person who did this to you?” Cruz asked.
“I sure can,” she whispered, her throat parched and scratchy with all the talking. “I always knew he hated me and my boys, despised all the street people, always rousting them, makin’ their life harder than it need be.”
“Who?”
Even though Slater and Cruz were sure that the person involved in the deaths of two homeless people in Rosedale and Angie’s kidnapping was law enforcement, they were still shocked by her next words.
“It was Officer Rawley,” she declared. “Jeff Rawley, that mean son of a bitch.”
Angie’s identification was enough confirmation for Slater to get an arrest warrant. He wasn’t going to violate procedure and risk losing the case on a technicality. Since the suspect was a cop, he wanted the arrest to go smoothly and without push-back.
Luckily, Sergei had looked through dozens of six-packs, finally pointing to the person he’d seen kidnap Angie Hunt. With both testimonies, Slater could take it straight to a judge.
He wisely chose one who wouldn’t mind being awakened in the middle of the night to sign an arrest warrant for Officer Jeff Rawley.