Twisted Prey (Lucas Davenport #28)(53)

“He’s dead,” Lucas said. “He shot himself. Had a whole string of DWIs, just got out of prison for the last one.”

“Good,” Letty said. “That keeps me from the inconvenience of killing him.”

Weather said, “Letty, we need to get you some serious therapy.”



* * *



—

AT SEVEN O’CLOCK, Weather drifted off to sleep, and a nurse said she’d be down for a while. “We get lots of concussions here. She’s worn out, and she’ll probably sleep until noon or later. You’d best go get some sleep yourselves.”

They were inclined to stay, but the nurse, and then the incoming doc, shoved them out the door.

They were both back at noon, though Weather didn’t wake until two o’clock, when she asked for her laptop. “I know all about concussions and I don’t want to browse, I just need to notify patients . . .”

“That’s all been taken care of,” Lucas said. “You ain’t getting a laptop until the doc says so.”

“What am I supposed to do? Lay here until I go insane?”

“Exactly,” Letty said. “Besides, they’re planning to kick us out of here and do a lot of tests with you. You’ll be busy until dinnertime.”



* * *



—

LUCAS SPENT the next two days suffering a mix of stress and boredom. Weather’s spine looked good, but she had several pulled muscles in her neck, chest, and rib cage, and she would be stuck with the neck brace for a while . . . “a while” being undefined. She couldn’t cough or laugh without suffering a spasm of pain, her broken arm ached, but she said she could ignore it.

“Not being able to move my neck is driving me crazy. It makes my eyes hurt, looking around without moving my head. Not being able to read is worse . . .”



* * *



—

LETTY BEGAN TO TALK about going back to California—classes were about to start again—and Weather told her to go. Letty said she would . . . in a few days. She wanted to see Weather at home.

Lucas brought Sam and Gabrielle down to see Weather every afternoon; Weather fell into a routine of sleeping late in the morning, taking a nap in the afternoon, and staying up late with Lucas. She’d already determined that she wouldn’t be working again for at least six weeks, and two months was more likely.

On the sixth day after the accident, they sat up talking until two in the morning. Lucas, the night owl, was still restless when he got home and spent another hour reading. At eight o’clock the next morning, he was sleeping soundly when there was a knock on the bedroom door, and Letty called, “Dad?”

He struggled to sit up. “Yeah?”

“There’s a lady here to see you,” Letty said.

“What?”

“There’s a lady here to see you. I’ve got her in the kitchen. You better come down.” Letty’s tone implied significance.

Lucas felt like he’d been hit on the forehead with a five-pound ham. “A lady? What does she want?”

“You better come down,” Letty repeated.

She turned away from the door and went back down the hallway to the stairs. Lucas got up, found his jeans and a T-shirt, pulled them on. He was barefoot but didn’t bother with shoes, followed Letty down the hall and down the stairs.



* * *



—

THE WOMAN waiting in the kitchen looked like a refugee from Ukraine, but not the Ukraine of today, more like a year after World War II. She was short, with gray hair that might once have been blond; she was elderly, probably in her seventies; and she was overweight. She was wearing a cheap raincoat, though the day was bright and warm, and carrying a plastic purse in one hand. To complete the image, she was wearing a babushka. She smelled vaguely of boiled cabbage and sausage, or looked like she should. And she looked exhausted.

Letty was standing next to her, and Lucas asked the woman, “What can I do for you?”

She made a pacifying gesture with her free hand, and said, “I’m Mary Last. My boy is Douglas Last, who the police say was driving when your wife was in the accident. But he didn’t do it.”

Lucas looked at Letty, and said, “I don’t think . . .”

Letty: “Listen to her.”

There was that tone in her voice again, and Lucas turned back to Mary Last, and asked, “Why didn’t he do it?”

“Douglas, he drank too much,” Mary Last said. “I tried to tell him. And he’s smoked since he was in high school. He ate cheeseburgers every day—every day of his life. Eggs and bacon in the morning, cheeseburgers all day, or pepperoni pizza. Even now. He never exercised. He was a fat man, and he had heart failure. The doctors said he would die in one year, maybe two, if he didn’t change. He didn’t. The food was like a drug. He was an addict. My boy, he couldn’t run a hundred feet, but the police say he ran so fast nobody could catch him and he got away. This is impossible for him to do. Impossible. You ask his doctor.”

Letty later told Weather that Lucas could have said any of a thousand things in response, but Lucas was feeling the world shifting around him. What had been simple and awful had suddenly become enormously complex and even worse.

He looked at the old lady, and said, “Sonofabitch.”