White Tiger by Stephen Knight

Author:Stephen Knight [Paterson, Derek]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-07-26T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

An intern shone his flashlight into Raymond’s eyes, asked her a bunch of questions and seemed pleased with her answers, which pleased Ryker too. He decided to wait outside when they unbuttoned her blouse and exposed the livid purple bruise that had spread across her upper chest and over her shoulder. Thankfully a curtain cut off his view of further discolored flesh, and Raymond’s unblinking stare.

He sat in the waiting area, thinking about what had happened, and about his jangling feelings as he’d sped down Battery with Raymond beside him in the passenger seat, clutching her shoulder and grimacing in pain. He’d ignored the evening rush-hour lunacy of California Street and taken Pine instead, the one-way flow leading in timely fashion to Saint Francis Memorial Hospital. Now he tried to remember where he’d left Morales’s Ford. Somewhere close to the emergency room entrance, maybe. He took heart from the fact the public address system wasn’t demanding that the drunk driver who’d abandoned his vehicle move it so ambulances could get in and out. Nor could he hear a wailing siren or see flashing lights through the glass entrance doors, which suggested he must have turned them off before crashing inside with Raymond in his arms, a regular hero, only he was the chump who’d gotten her into this in the first place.

A sympathetic nurse recognized him and suggested he might want to get something to eat in the hospital cafeteria while they wheeled Raymond through to X-Ray, which sounded like a damn fine idea. He went outside first and called Morales, who told him a forensics team was still on its way to “Amy Wong’s” apartment. Morales offered to lie down and play dead to elicit a quicker response, only half-jokingly. Ryker considered calling Spider to exert pressure on the crime scenes unit, but what would that gain? He had a feeling that fingerprints and DNA weren’t going to be enough for this one. Amy Wong, if that was her name, didn’t play in the jealous ex-lovers league, he was sure of it. She was in another class entirely. When Ryker considered what that class might be, he got a sinking sensation in his gut. He offered Morales commiserations and told him to sit tight.

He called Debbie Price at her desk and asked her to obtain James Lin’s telephone number, and to transfer him to Spider’s office.

“How’s Raymond?” Spider asked, reminding Ryker why he liked him. He’d had previous bosses whose first question would have been, “Haven’t you made an arrest yet?”

“Doc thinks she’s okay but we’re making sure,” Ryker told him. “The suspect put her down with one punch. If me and Morales hadn’t been there, no telling what might have happened.”

“What are you saying, Hal?”

“I think about what she did to Danny Lin, how she got in and out of the hotel, and the way she got past us—Lou, I had her in my sights. She jumped the rail and vanished into thin air. Uniforms didn’t even see her.

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