Unseen (12 page)

He held out his hand. “Lonnie.”

“Sara.” She shook his hand, which felt solid and reassuring, just like the man. Lonnie Gray was an old-school cop, the type who could never really leave the job. Even during retirement, he’d taken up consulting, moving around the state to help whip various law enforcement agencies into shape. Sara hadn’t seen Gray since the funeral. Or at least she assumed that was the last time. Sara had been so heavily medicated during the service that the only memories she had were the ones her mother and sister had planted there.

She said, “I didn’t know you were running Macon now.”

“Consulting proved to be even more boring than it sounded. I missed being a benevolent dictator.” Gray smiled at the joke, which they both recognized as the truth. Despite his grandfatherly appearance, Sara couldn’t see Lonnie Gray offering advice that no one had to take.

She said, “Macon is lucky to have you.”

“Well, let’s just say I’m glad it hasn’t been put to a vote.” He glanced down at Sara’s hand, probably to see whether or not she had remarried. “I hear you’re living in Atlanta now?”

“Yes.” Sara decided to acknowledge the obvious. “You and I keep meeting under bad circumstances.”

“We do indeed.” Gray seemed to appreciate her candidness. “Jared’s stabilized for now. The doctors are taking good care of him.”

Sara was relieved to be on more comfortable footing. “Do you
mind if I ask why he wasn’t taken to MCCG?” The Medical Center of Central Georgia was a Level 1 trauma center, much better equipped for a gunshot wound than Macon General.

Chief Gray deflected. “I’m sorry. I called you Mrs. Tolliver. You’re a doctor, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” Sara could only guess why he’d sidestepped the question. The ambulance crew had obviously been thinking in seconds, not minutes. Jared’s injuries had necessitated rushing him to the closest emergency room.

“Rest assured, we’ll find out who did this to your stepson.” Gray gave her a sage nod, as if to remind Sara that they always got their man. It was so maddeningly black and white to some people. They thought vengeance made it easier, when, in fact, all it did was fester the sorrow.

Gray continued, “Jeffrey’s surely been missed these past few years. I could use his skills on this one.”

Sara already knew the answer, but she asked, “You called in the state?”

“Never hurts to have extra hands.”

He wasn’t being diplomatic. Lonnie Gray was the same kind of chief that Jeffrey had been. They weren’t concerned with glory. They just wanted the bad guys caught and the good guys to go home at night.

Sara said, “I’m sure you’ll figure out why this happened.”

“As am I, Dr. Tolliver. That’s a promise.” His voice took on a practiced tone that he probably employed whenever duty called. “Jared’s a good kid. Wish I had fifty more of ’em. And Detective Adams has been a great addition to the team. We’ll have them back up on their feet in no time. You know we take care of our people.”

Sara tried to think of an appropriate response, but Lonnie Gray was obviously not expecting one. He looked as drained as Sara felt. She’d seen Jeffrey in the same circumstance many times.
His shoulders were slumped from the burdens placed on him. His face was drawn. Policing was an occupation, but no one stayed in it long enough to become chief without feeling a true calling.

Sara followed Gray’s gaze as he took in his officers. She tried not to catalogue the similarities from five years ago. The Band-Aids on their arms where they’d all given blood. The way boredom compelled them to chip off the edges of their Styrofoam coffee cups. The expectant looks in their eyes when anyone new appeared.

Lonnie Gray said, “My son passed away just recently.”

Sara didn’t know he’d had a son. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Thank you.” He sounded resigned. “I’m sure you know it never gets easy.”

Sara nodded again. There was a lump in her throat that she could not swallow. “I should go.”

“I’ll walk you up.”

“No,” she said, almost interrupting him. “Thank you, I’m fine. Stay here with your men.”

He seemed relieved. “The mother’s up there. I take it there’s no love lost between her and my detective. Perhaps you could …?”

Despite the circumstances, Sara felt a smile come to her lips. He was talking to her the way he’d talk to any senior officer’s wife. She imagined it was the same in the military, or any other male-dominated profession where the women were expected to keep hearth and home running smoothly while the men went out and conquered the world.

She said, “I’m not sure it’s my place.”

“Adams was your husband’s partner.”

“She was,” Sara confirmed, though she gathered Gray didn’t know about their complicated history. She paused before adding, “I really should go. Nell’s waiting for me.”

“Thank you.” He grasped her hand between his. “And remember, if there’s anything I can do for you, just ask.”

Sara could only nod again, which was the response Chief Gray
seemed to need. He touched her elbow before walking away. Sara watched him approach one of his detectives. The man’s relaxed posture immediately took on a military stance. He nodded at Sara with a familiar, exaggerated deference she’d come to expect whenever any officer learned that she was a cop’s widow.

Sara nodded back, thinking the sentiment was comforting until it became suffocating. She did not want to be tragic. She had fought the stigma for years at Grady, where a cop was generally posted outside every third room. Oddly, it wasn’t until Sara had started dating Will that people had let her step down from the pedestal.

She didn’t have it in her to climb back up again.

Sara followed the green stripe on the floor, knowing it would lead to the elevators, just as she knew the blue signage would direct her to the ICU. There was a reassuring sameness to private hospitals, with their bright lights and cheerful paintings that announced to the world that the majority of their patients were paying customers.

Sara pressed the button beside the elevator door. It was hard to believe that just a few hours ago, she’d done the same in Atlanta. As with the exterior, Grady’s interior was different compared to Macon General. Everything here was clean and modern, befitting the clientele. Most of the hospital’s money probably came from luxurious birthing suites, routine colonoscopies, and MRIs on baby boomers’ knees. The paint was not chipped from the walls. Buckets were not strategically placed under leaking pipes. There was no permanent police precinct on site or a holding area for prison inmates and the criminally insane.

Frankly, Sara preferred Grady.

The elevator doors slid open with a tiny squeak. Sara got into the car. She was alone. The doors closed. She pressed the button by the blue sign. She watched the numbers flash on, then off, as the car traveled up to the fifth floor. With each burst of light, she suppressed the urge to speak the phrase that was playing over and
over in her head:
I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here
.

Even before Jeffrey died, Sara had never liked Lena Adams. She was dangerous. Arrogant. Sloppy. Jeffrey constantly complained about Lena’s headstrong ways, but Sara knew how her husband’s mind worked. There was no sexual attraction between them—sometimes Sara wished it had been that simple. Lena was simply a challenge that Jeffrey could not walk away from. She was a destructive little sister to his all-forgiving big brother. Jeffrey loved her toughness. He loved her fight. He loved that no matter how hard Lena was hit, she always got back up after being knocked down.

And if Lena couldn’t quite pick herself up, Jeffrey was always there to lend a hand. It was easy to take risks when you knew someone else would bear the consequences, which was exactly what had happened five years ago. Once again, Lena had gone off on her own, recklessly pursuing some very bad people. When they’d proven to be too dangerous for Lena to handle, she’d called Jeffrey to save her, just like she’d done countless times before. Only this time, this last time, the bad people hadn’t backed down. This time, instead of making Lena pay, they had murdered Jeffrey.

Sara had no doubt that this same scenario had played out with Jared. Motorcycle cops didn’t have hit squads break into their houses. Sara would’ve bet her life savings on Lena yet again pissing off some very bad men who’d decided just like the last bad men that the best way to punish Lena was to take away the thing she loved most.

As if Lena Adams was capable of loving anything.

The elevator doors slid open. Same crisp white. Same bright lights. Sara was on autopilot as she followed the arrows to the ICU waiting room. She walked by a tall man wearing a blue and orange baseball hat. He didn’t recognize her, but Sara instantly knew Jerry Long, Darnell’s husband and Jeffrey’s boyhood friend. Everyone called him Possum because of a childhood accident involving
illegal fireworks. He’d worshipped Jeffrey in that strange way that only straight men can. Possum had played wide receiver to Jeffrey’s quarterback. He’d married Jeffrey’s old girlfriend. He’d raised Jeffrey’s child.

Sara kept walking. She kept her head down, passing unnoticed.

As a doctor, her life had been spent anticipating what would happen next, thinking three or four steps ahead, but for some reason, Sara’s day was revealing itself in small slices. She hadn’t let herself think past the mundane tasks in front of her: Leave Grady. Now drive down the interstate. Now take the exit. Now park the car. Now go into the hospital.

Seeing Possum offered a small glimpse of what was to come. They would want to reminisce about Jeffrey. They would want to tell old stories about pranks and practical jokes and loose women and angry husbands and Sara would have to sit there and listen to all of it as if her life had stopped the moment his had.

And it
had
stopped. Everything had come to a standstill. But, eventually, it had to start moving again, and Sara had built a new life for herself—a life that they would not understand.

The guilt felt like a vulture sitting on her shoulder, waiting for the right moment to devour her.

Sara could only put one foot in front of the other as she continued down the hall. She turned into the small waiting room just outside the closed double doors of the ICU. The space was empty but for an older woman whose hair was more gray than brown.

“Sara,” Nell said. She was sitting on a love seat underneath a window. A pile of knitting was in her lap. Several magazines were splayed beside her.

There was only a five-year difference between them, but Nell had aged in that way good country women do—no hair color, no makeup, no laser treatments to remove sunspots or smooth out wrinkles. She looked, in fact, entirely her age, which was not something Sara was used to seeing in Atlanta.

“Don’t get up,” Sara told her, leaning down to pull Nell into a tight hug. Nell had always been stout and strong, but there was something fragile about her now. Helplessness had reduced her.

Still, Sara said, “You haven’t changed a bit.”

Nell barked a laugh. “Hell, honey, don’t lie. We got mirrors in Alabama, too.” She moved the magazines so Sara could sit beside her. She took Sara’s hand, which was unusual. Nell wasn’t affectionate. She was talkative, and sometimes abrupt to the point of rudeness, but she was also incredibly kind—the sort of woman you could call in the middle of the night no matter how many years had passed and she would move heaven and earth to come to your side.

The sort of woman Sara should be.

She tightened her hold on Nell’s hand. “I’m so sorry this happened.”

“I shouldn’t’ve bothered you. I was just …”

“I’m glad you did,” Sara told her, and in that moment, she really meant it. There was no way she could have stayed in Atlanta. This was where she belonged. “Is there anything I can do?”

Nell let out a heavy sigh. “I don’t know what you can do other than wait. They’re not telling me anything. Twenty-four hours, they say they might know more. What does that even mean?”

Sara knew that it meant they had no idea; it was all up to Jared now. Still, she told Nell, “It means he’s young and he’s strong and his body needs time to fight this.”

“I hope you’re right.” Nell let go of Sara’s hand. She tucked her knitting into a denim bag. “You were right about her, Sara. First Jeffrey and now this. That woman is nothin’ but poison.”

Sara felt a familiar tightening in her throat. “We should just concentrate on Jared right now.”

Nell shook her head. “She won’t leave the room. Just sits there in the corner like a damn gargoyle.” Her lips turned into a thin white line. “I can’t even stand to look at her. Takes everything I got not to spit in her face.”

Sara forced back the impulse to agree. It would do no good for them to feed off each other. “Who’s his doctor?”

“Shammers. Shaman. I can’t remember. Something foreign.”

“Is he with this hospital or did they call him over from Central Georgia?”

“No idea. He gave me his card.” Nell picked up her purse to search for it. “I don’t even know if this is a good hospital.”

“It’s good,” Sara told her, though she hoped they’d called in the bigger guns from the trauma center. “How long has he been out of surgery?”

She looked at her watch. “About an hour.”

“Did they give you any details?”

“Hell, Sara, I don’t know that medical stuff. He was shot with a shotgun. The pellets went everywhere. His head, his neck, and back.”

“Did any penetrate the skull?”

“They’re monitoring his brain swelling. I guess that means it went into his brain.” She turned to Sara. “They said they might have to release the pressure. Is that bad?”

Sara explained, “The skull has a fixed volume. If the brain swells, it needs somewhere to go.”

“So they just saw off the top of his head?”

“Not like you’re thinking. It’s a very precise surgical procedure.” She put her hand on Nell’s shoulder. “Don’t think about that until you have to, all right?” Nell reluctantly nodded. “What about his spinal cord?”

“You mean, will he be crippled?” She shrugged, a tight, jerky movement. “They’re keeping him knocked out. Said it’s best he sleeps, but I know my boy. He’d hate being pumped full of pain pills.”