To Henry’s dismay, neither Sherry nor Caitlin nor Penn Cage had been in to check on him. The FBI agents he’d questioned had been brusque, but as the dazing effect of his head wound began to wear off, Henry recognized his nurse as an old grade school classmate—Irma McKay. When he told Irma he recognized her, she lingered to talk to him, and he’d taken advantage of the opportunity to ask about the shooting. Nurse McKay tried to obey her orders not to reveal Sherry’s death, but Henry quickly read the truth in her eyes. Seconds later she broke down and admitted that Sherry was dead.
Although Henry had feared this from the start, something broke inside him when the nurse told him the truth. Not since the murder of Albert Norris had a death hit him like Sherry’s did. Her loss proved the cliché: you never knew what you had until it was gone. For years he had taken her for granted—the thousand things she did to make his life easier and, more important, the rock-solid support she’d given him when no one else gave a damn about his work. Sherry had always begged him to pursue a different type of story, but she’d finally accepted his need to see his quest through. She’d even helped him when she could. But now she had paid for his stubbornness with her life, while he had survived.
Try as he might, Henry simply couldn’t process the shock. As he lay on his back in a drug-induced haze, a conviction grew in him that soon became an obsession. He had to get out of the hospital. Before an hour passed, his obsession had become a compulsion, irresistible and beyond all logic. The goal of his escape seemed almost secondary. As though in self-defense, his mind had focused on logistical considerations rather than philosophical ones.
The problem was, escape seemed impossible—at least at first. He’d considered and rejected a host of wacky ideas. A diversion was a common component of prison escapes, he knew, but with the FBI on high alert, the slightest disturbance would only tighten the protective cordon around him. Floating in an opium-derived cloud, Henry’s mind began to search for a more original solution. As the medical machines clicked and beeped around him, he recalled an older boy telling his underaged self how to sneak into adult bars. You walk in like you own the damn place, man. Show no fear. No doubt whatsoever. Henry had used this tactic many times as a journalist, and often gained exclusive access to restricted areas and crime scenes.
Might not that same tactic serve him now?
The next time Irma McKay returned to check his vitals, Henry gave her the saddest smile he could muster.
“How are you holding up, Henry?” she asked. “I’m so sorry about Sherry. I should never have told you. That wasn’t my place.”
“Yes, it was. Better to hear it from an old friend than from some grouchy government agent. It’s all right, Irma. I won’t tell anybody that you told me.”
“Really?” she said hopefully, making notations on his chart.
“Not if you’ll you do me one little favor.”
She looked up quickly, anxiety in her eyes. “I can’t get you no cigarettes, Henry.”
He laughed at the absurdity of her misjudgment.
“No, that’s not it. The FBI guys never brought me my cell phone. Maybe it’s evidence now or something. But I really need to talk to my mama. She’s got to be frantic by now.”
“I don’t know, Henry. The FBI doesn’t want anybody knowing anything about your status.”
“I know. But you know how this town is. The news is bound to be all over the place by now. Mama could hear it any minute. She might even hear I’m dead.” He shook his head, then regretted it as his skull pounded in response. “Sherry and Mama weren’t best friends or anything, but when word gets out … Lord, I hate to think what Mama might do.”
Irma patted his upper arm. “I know, Henry. You’re right.” The nurse reached into her scrubs pocket. “If you promise not to tell, you can use my phone. Will that help?”
“You’re a blessing, Irma.” He gratefully accepted the phone. “Um … is there any way you could give me a little privacy? I don’t want to—get emotional in front of you.”
“Oh, Henry. We see men cry all the time in this place.”
He closed his eyes and gently shook his head.
“All right. I’ll go in the boss’s private bathroom while you call.”
Henry thanked her, then waited for Irma to fulfill her promise. As soon as she pulled the bathroom door shut, he looked down at the phone and carefully dialed his mother’s number.
CHAPTER 82
“COON’S RIGHT THERE,” says an FBI agent, pointing to a dark hump in the grass beneath the shattered window of Henry’s hospital room.
John Kaiser takes a small but powerful flashlight from his pocket and shines its beam on the gray animal, which appears to have been shot more than once. Then he pushes through the bushes beneath the window. I look right, then left, surprised to see how many volunteer trees and shrubs have obscured the windows that line the hospital wall.
“Hold my light, Penn?” Kaiser says, handing me the black metal tube. “Shine it on this tree trunk.”
I do.
With a penknife, Kaiser digs into a small hole in the bark of a sapling by Henry’s window.
“You got another slug in there?” asks Sheriff Dennis.
“Yep.” Kaiser turns and nudges me out of the bushes. When he steps into the open, his hand held in front of him, I shine the light beam into it. Lying in his palm is a small, deformed slug.
“Twenty-two Magnum?” Sheriff Dennis asks.
“Just like the ones inside.”
A deputy behind me whistles. “I’ll be damned.”
“Is that a sniper rifle?” Caitlin asks.
Kaiser shakes his head. “It’s a varmint gun, basically. People like them because they’re not as loud as a .308, but they have more killing power than a .22 long rifle. You can kill a coyote at seventy yards with a head shot.”
“You can also shoot coons and armadillos without waking up the neighbors,” Sheriff Dennis observes.
Everybody falls silent. Speculation about the bullet’s caliber temporarily blinded everyone to what is right before us. We have a dead raccoon and a dead woman within a few yards of each other.
“You see any other holes in that tree?” Sheriff Dennis asks Kaiser. “Maybe the wall?”
I shine the light at the window, and Kaiser points to the right of it. “Looks like one embedded in the wall there.”
“Shit,” says Dennis. “You think some kid could have been popping off rounds at that coon and accidentally shot through the window?”