Break No Bones (09) by Kathy Reichs

Author:Kathy Reichs [Reichs, Kathy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ePub Bud (www.epubbud.com)
Published: 2010-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

When I'd finished the articles, I checked the table of contents in the crime book. There it was. Fingers cold with dread, I turned to the chapter. A yellow Post-it marked the page, suggesting that particular case had been the focus of Cruikshank's interest.

Every neuron in my mind screamed no! The explanation was just too macabre. But it all fit. The clinic. The disappearances. The cut marks on Helms and Montague.

Had Helene Flynn been murdered because she'd learned about this? Had she stumbled on the truth while searching for evidence of financial wrongdoing? Had Cruikshank also found out?

I opened my lips to share the horrific idea with Ryan. I never spoke.

The next few moments exploded so quickly that in my memory there was no sequence. My later attempts to reconstruct the chronology yielded only jumbled images.

Pete moving toward the kitchen. Boyd rocketing from the den. Boyd barking. The kitchen light shooting arrows onto the corridor wall. A gunshot ringing out. Me on the floor, Ryan pressing my head to the carpet. Ryan's weight leaving my back. Me scrambling toward the kitchen, crouching, terrified. The barking more frenzied.

My blood freezing in my veins. Pete facedown on the floor, red mushrooming from some unseeable wound.

30

AN AMBULANCE ARRIVED. RYAN HELD ME IN HIS ARMS AS TWO paramedics worked on Pete. Boyd whined and scratched on the far side of the pantry door. I shared his fear. The kitchen seemed awash in blood. Could anyone survive the loss of so much?

Though I asked question after question, I was repeatedly ignored. After furious manipulation involving tubes and wound packing, Pete was strapped to a backboard, placed on a stretcher, and whisked away.

Two Isle of Palms uniforms arrived and asked a lot of questions. Their name tags read CAPER and JOHNSON. At one point Caper asked about the bruise on my arm. I described the previous Thursday's bottle-throwing incident. Caper put it in his notes.

Ryan told the cops he was on the job, showed his badge, and tried to deflect the interrogation. Caper and Johnson said they understood, but needed to file an incident report.

Tersely, I outlined what Pete was doing in Charleston. Caper wanted my thoughts on who might have shot him. I suggested he interrogate Herron and the GMC clinic staff. Caper's expression suggested that was unlikely to happen.

"Probably a beach prank," Johnson said. "Damn kids sneak Daddy's gun, get wasted, start firing bullets into the air. Happens every long weekend."

"Someone get drilled every long weekend?" Ryan asked.

I too knew that explanation was stupid, but I wasn't in the mood to argue. I was anxious to follow the ambulance.

An hour after the shooting Ryan and I were in the emergency room waiting area at the MUSC hospital. This time we'd entered on the Ashley Street side. The life side. I prayed Pete would be exiting through the same door.

An hour crept by. Another. Pete was in surgery. That's all they would tell me. He was in surgery.

The ER was chaos, the staff pushed to its limits by the full onslaught of an American holiday.

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