Chosen for Death (15 page)

He was on his feet now, too. "No, you can't go. I want to talk about this some more." Kevin wandered off into the other room. The chinless wonders giggled. "Shut up, you nitwits, you're distracting me," Charlie said.

"Sorry, man," one of them muttered. He was missing several teeth and the remaining ones were rotten.

Charlie turned his attention back to me. "You aren't kidding, are you? This isn't some trick your family thought up. She's really dead?" I nodded. "Was she raped?"

"Why do you want to know?" I asked, unwilling to answer, knowing it would annoy him. I hoped he wouldn't hit me again, but it was a faint hope. "It doesn't matter anymore if there's been another man, Charlie. She's dead."

He grabbed me by the hair and pulled my head back so that I had to look up at him. His face was twisted with anger. "It matters to me," he said. "Was she?" He waved his fist. "You've only got two choices, Thea. Answer my questions, or I'll knock your teeth out. You know it won't bother me to hurt you. For years I've wanted to knock that smug look off your mother's face, but I'll settle for you."

Two could play at this macho game. I didn't answer. It didn't matter. Whatever I did now, or said, Charlie was going to hurt me. It had been naive of me not to realize how much he hated me, hated all of us. I'd forgotten how badly we treated him. While he was in prison, he wrote to Carrie. Mom destroyed all the letters she could intercept, and discouraged Carrie from answering the others. By the time Charlie was out, she was back with Todd and had gone off to college.

I managed to duck my head so that the fist missed my mouth, but not my nose. Charlie released me and let me fall. Stunned by the intensity of the pain, I sat on the floor, futilely trying to contain the gush of blood. It ran between my fingers. Across my mouth. In a disgusting stream that rushed down my throat, gagging me. Dizzily, I tried to get up and face him again, blinded by my watering eyes. All I saw was a blur as he kicked me. His foot connected with my ribs and knocked me onto my back, driving the air out of my lungs. My side felt like it had exploded. I tried to locate Charlie to see if he was going to hit me again. My eyes refused to focus. My body refused to move. I gave up the struggle and lay where I was, letting my faculties regroup.

He knelt and brought his face down close to mine. "There," he said. "Now we both hurt." His feet scrunched away across the floor. "Kev," he called, "come here." There was a conversation my disabled brain couldn't follow, and the door opened and shut with a bang. I stayed on the floor, defiance abandoned, fighting nausea, feeling the blood pool under my cheek. More footsteps. I could see feet near my nose. Two pairs of worn, dirty boots. Fuzzy voices, heavy with the down-east drawl. "Can't we fuck 'er before she goes, Charlie? It won't hurt her none."

And Charlie's voice, amused. "I can't believe you're interested. She's a bloody mess."

"Just her face. Wasn't her face we was thinkin' of," one of them said.

I waited tensely for his response. "I don't think so," was all he said. I heard the door open and shut again, and Kevin's voice. "Bring her outside," Charlie said. Two sets of hands picked me up, taking indecent liberties with my body. I couldn't do anything to stop them. One of them bumped my side and it felt like I'd been kicked all over again. It hurt too much. I gave up fighting for consciousness and control and took refuge in oblivion.

Chapter 11

No one should ever paint walls pale blue. It's a cold, unfriendly, depressing color. I'm sure industrial psychologists advise against it, recommending instead something like fresh mint, lemon mist, honey almond, or even peach. I opened my eyes to pale blue and it screamed institution so loudly I didn't have to look further to know where I was. I didn't want to look around anyway. What woke me up was a persistent pounding in my head made by Lilliputians with jackhammers. When I moved to find a more comfortable place for my aching head, a vicious mule kicked me in the ribs. I was a hurting cowgirl.

I rested quietly until the worst of the pain subsided, moving my hand inch by careful inch toward the edge of the pillow, where, if I really was in a hospital, the call button ought to be. I didn't know where I was, what time it was, or how I'd gotten there, but the ugly blue paint said hospital, and my body felt like that was where I belonged. I could have crossed the Mojave Desert in the time it took me to reach the button and call for help.

Help arrived in the form of a sturdy, freckled redhead with a practical bedside manner. The red hair helped. My eyes were practically swollen shut and it gave me something to focus on. I was viewing the world through narrow slits. She strode in, surveyed me calmly, and announced, "Well, you look like hell. How do you feel?"

"Guess," I croaked. She poured me a glass of water and helped me drink it. "My head hurts," I said.

She consulted my chart, found that painkillers were authorized, and dispensed relief most efficiently. Quick relief, delivered by injection. No waiting for pills to take effect. Soon I was floating somewhere just beyond the pain, aware of it but not quite feeling it. It was a better place to be and I wanted to stay there as long as possible. Eventually I fell asleep. I woke up because I hurt again, but this time it wasn't unbearable, only terrible. Andre Lemieux was sitting beside my bed.

"Please go away," I said. "I can't talk to anyone now." That one sentence took all my energy, and he showed no signs of departing. I knew how stubborn he could be. The Lilliputians, made bold by my failure, were cranking up for another go at my head. Ignoring them and their friend the mule, I rang for the nurse. A different person this time. This one was so starched and prim she rustled when she walked. "Nurse, can you make this man go away, please," I asked.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Kozak," she said. "The police have been waiting very patiently to ask you about the accident. I'm sure he won't be long. I'll just go and get your medication." Her tone implied that it was very rude of me to have taken refuge in sleep when very important people wished me to be awake. She reminded me of my mother, ever mindful of the proprieties. She rustled out, leaving me alone with Andre.

"What accident?" I said.

"You don't remember what happened?" he asked.

I thought about that. My head hurt too much to think very clearly, but I tried. The last thing I remembered was lying on the floor of Charlie's camp, with the chinless wonders begging for a chance to assault me and Charlie saying no. Or saying something. I remembered the unpleasant sensation of lying in my own blood, unable to move.

"Up to a point," I said. My jaw hurt when I talked. So did my head. And my swollen nose felt like a huge turnip stuck onto my face. Everything hurt, and moving made it hurt more. And talking meant moving my face. All of which made me reluctant to talk, but I knew how persistent he could be. The sooner I got this over with, the sooner he would go away and let me suffer in peace. "I went to see Charlie, this guy Carrie was seeing, who turned out to be the same Chuck she used to date in high school. I told you about him."

"We know Charlie," he said.

"He denied that he knew Carrie was dead. I don't know how I got here, but this was no accident," I said. "Charlie knocked me around a little and kicked me a few times to establish male superiority. I told you he liked to hurt people. Where is here, anyway? The last thing I remember is lying on Charlie's floor."

"Bay View Hospital," he said, looking at me like I'd lost my mind. "You were brought here by ambulance after your car ran off the road and hit a tree. The EMT found empty beer bottles in your car and said you smelled strongly of beer."

"I'll bet," I said. "Maybe you should fingerprint the bottles. You won't find my prints. The only beer I've had in the last three weeks was yesterday noon at Leadbetter's, in the company of about thirty strangers. Did they do a blood-alcohol test on me?" I shifted carefully on the pillow, trying to find a position that didn't hurt so much. If that nurse didn't hurry up, the construction crew working on my head would succeed in blasting right through my brain.

"I'll ask," he said.

My mouth was dry. "Could you give me some water, please?" I asked. He poured a glass and helped me drink it. It felt good in my mouth, but the cold hit my stomach like a fist. I closed my eyes, breathing slowly until the nausea passed. I didn't have to work very hard to close them; they were practically swollen shut. My nose was swollen shut, too. I must have looked like hell, and I ached all over. "I suppose you think I got drunk and ran off the road," I said, "but it's not true. If I was behind the wheel of my car, someone put me there. When Charlie and I finished talking—or rather, when he stopped hitting me or I stopped taking it—I couldn't stand up, let alone drive. I couldn't even have crawled that far. Ask Charlie. Or Kevin. Or Lorna." Foolish to suggest it. He'd get nowhere with Charlie, and I didn't even know Kevin's last name. And Lorna didn't know anything about what happened. She'd just hate me forever if I sent the police back to bother her.

Andre's face was a study in confusion and disbelief. He believed I'd gotten drunk and run into a tree, and didn't know what to make of my story. He didn't seem to know what to ask next, so he just patted my hand. A good choice. It was about the only point on my body it was OK to touch. I wrapped my hand around his and held on, torn between wanting him to go away and needing someone there to reassure me that I was OK. "Your car's been towed to the Saab dealer," he said. "Your dad called the insurance company. They're coming up tomorrow. Your parents, I mean. Who are Kevin and Lorna?"

The nurse must have been out in a swamp picking medicinal herbs or something. How could Andre be so businesslike? Didn't he understand how awful I felt? I wanted to scream at him to leave me alone, but it would have hurt me a lot more than it hurt him. If the nurse didn't come soon, I was going to crawl over and throw myself out the window. I'm not stoic when it comes to pain. I can go without food or sleep or work sixteen-hour days without complaint, but I don't handle pain well at all. I watched the door through my sore, slitty eyes, waiting for relief.

"Who is Kevin?" he said again.

Ignoring him wouldn't help. Like a mosquito in the bedroom at night, he'd just keep on buzzing until he got what he wanted. "Kevin is a druggie kid who hangs around with Charlie. Lorna is a waitress at Leadbetter's. Carrie's friend."

The door opened and my friend the freckled nurse came in. She didn't waste any time on chitchat but got right down to the business of pain suspension. Pills this time. No instant relief. Still, I was so grateful I could have hugged and kissed her. I hunkered down and waited passively to be transported to a state of dreamy lassitude, too inert to do anything. Making conversation, with my swollen face and pounding head, had moved me to a place somewhere beyond exhaustion. She checked my vital signs, establishing for the record that I did have a pulse and a temperature, and then asked Andre to leave while I used the bedpan. Except she didn't mention the bedpan, she just told him to leave, and he did. Reluctantly, because he clearly had more questions.

"Was I raped?" I asked.

She didn't bat an eye. A good nurse. She looked quickly through the information on my chart. "No signs of recent sexual activity."

"Thank you," I said.

She straightened my covers very gently, like Mom used to tuck me in when I was little. "Would you like something to drink?" she asked.

"Do you have ginger ale? I always like ginger ale when I'm sick."

"I'm sure I can find some," she said. "Shall I send the detective back, or do you want him to stay away?"

A good nurse and a mind reader. "He can come back," I said. "I don't care. I'm going to sleep soon anyway."

"You sure are," she said. She went out so quietly I didn't hear her leave. Andre came back a few minutes later with my ginger ale.

"My turn to ask some questions," I said. There were things I needed to know before I left for sleepyland.

"Go ahead," he said reluctantly, obviously wanting to ask his own questions first.

"My car. Is it OK?"

"It looks better than you do. It'll need some body work, but it still runs."

"What about me?" I asked. "Am I OK? Do I still run?"

He took my hand again, very gently. "You'll be fine," he said. "They didn't give you a rundown on damages?"

"No. Tell me." The list had better be short. I was already half-asleep.

"You have a mild concussion, a broken nose, black eyes, some cracked ribs, and assorted facial and body bruises. I've had the whole list myself, so I know how rotten you feel." I liked having him hold my hand. "I'm going to see if l can find Charlie, and ask about last night," he said. "And see if they did a blood-alcohol level on you. Your doctor says he'll probably let you go tomorrow."