TEN
The paramedics moved with practiced efficiency that somehow made everything feel both more and less real—hands checking pulse points, voices calling out vitals in medical shorthand, the snap of a gurney being deployed from the ambulance that had arrived with sirens that still echoed in my ears like tinnitus.
I stood frozen three feet from the Buick’s open door, my phone still clutched in my hand though I couldn’t remember who I’d called or what I’d said. The afternoon sun painted everything in shades too bright, too cheerful for what was happening—Hank’s limp form being transferred from driver’s seat to backboard with movements that looked choreographed, rehearsed, the kind of thing you did so often it became muscle memory instead of emergency.
“Ma’am, we need you to step back.” The paramedic—young, efficient, kind eyed—was already working on Hank, checking his airway, his pupils, the wound at the back of his head that had bled through his thinning hair and soaked into his collar.
Dottie hadn’t moved. She stood at the driver’s side door with both hands pressed to her mouth, and I’d never seen her look like this—shaken, terrified, stripped of every ounce of the clinical detachment she wore like armor. Her cat-eye glasses sat crooked on her face, and mascara had started tracking down her cheeks in dark rivulets she didn’t seem to notice or care about.
“Dottie,” I said, touching her arm. “Dottie, they need space.”
She flinched like I’d struck her, then seemed to come back to herself. “I’m a doctor. Retired medical examiner. I need to know his condition.”
The paramedic glanced up, recognition flickering across his face. “Dr. Simmons? I heard you speak at a conference in Charleston about ten years ago. Forensic pathology and decomposition patterns.” He returned his attention to Hank, fingers on his neck checking pulse. “Pulse is steady at seventy-two. Responsive to pain stimuli but not conscious. Significant trauma to the occipital region—looks like blunt force, probably something heavy. We’re taking him to Charleston Medical Center—closest trauma facility with neurosurgery on call.”
“I’m coming with him.” Dottie’s voice brooked no argument.
“Are you family?”
“I’m whatever I need to be to stay with him.” The medical professional was emerging from beneath the terrified woman. “And I know what questions you need to ask that he can’t answer right now. When did the attack occur, any history of anticoagulant use, allergies to medication, pre-existing conditions that might complicate treatment. I can give you all of that.”
The paramedic made a decision. “Get in.”
The doors closed with mechanical finality, and then they were pulling away, lights flashing but sirens mercifully silent now that the emergency had been stabilized into something manageable.
“Mabel.” A hand on my shoulder, gentle but insistent. “Mrs. McCoy, breathe.”
I turned to find Frank Holloway standing beside me, his earnest face creased with concern and something that looked like guilt had someone taken a chisel to it and carved the emotion into permanent lines. He must have heard the sirens, must have come out to see what chaos had erupted in the parking lot on an otherwise ordinary Tuesday afternoon.
“The man in the blue Buick. He’s your friend? Is he?—”
“Alive.” The word came out thin, reedy, like it had traveled a long distance to reach my mouth. “They’re taking him to Charleston Medical Center. Someone hit him.” My voice sounded like it was coming from somewhere outside myself. “While we were inside talking to you, someone attacked him in broad daylight in a public parking lot.”
Frank’s face went through a series of transformations—pale to flushed, shock to anger, all of it settling finally into something that looked like shame wearing an overcoat of fury. “This is my fault. I should have known—should have warned you that asking questions about this case after all these years might—” He stopped, unable or unwilling to finish the sentence.
Might get someone hurt. Might get someone killed. Might wake something that had been sleeping peacefully in the dark for four decades and preferred to stay there, undisturbed, anonymous, safe.
A Beaufort police officer was approaching the Buick now—young, professional, already pulling latex gloves from his belt. His partner stood near the rear bumper, photographing the broken taillight with the methodical attention of someone documenting evidence that might matter or might mean nothing, but procedure demanded it be recorded either way.
“You need to get to the hospital,” Frank said, and the decisiveness in his voice surprised me. This was the man who’d quit law enforcement rather than be complicit in Roy Milton’s corruption, who’d spent forty years running a hardware store in quiet anonymity. But underneath that mild exterior lived someone who’d once believed in justice enough to walk away from a career when justice became impossible.
“I can’t.” I gestured at the Buick, at the police who were now dusting the door handle for fingerprints, their movements careful and practiced. “That’s our only vehicle, and I can’t exactly drive it away while they’re processing it. I’ll have to call someone to?—”
“I’ll drive you.” Not an offer. A statement of fact. “It’s forty-five minutes to Charleston. And I can swing by my house on the way—grab Tommy’s files. You’ll need them sooner rather than later, and waiting on the mail seems like giving whoever did this time to regroup.”
“Frank, you don’t have to?—”
“Yes, I do.” His jaw set with unexpected stubbornness, transforming his earnest face into something harder, more determined. “Tommy died thinking this case would never be solved. Your friend is in the hospital because someone wants to keep it that way. I’ve kept quiet for forty years, and I’m done with quiet. The least I can do now is drive you to Charleston.”
An officer approached us, notepad in hand, his young face carrying that particular earnest concern of someone new enough to the job that every incident still felt like a personal failing rather than just another Tuesday afternoon going wrong.
“Officer Turk,” Frank said, the greeting carrying the easy recognition of small-town familiarity—the way everyone knew everyone else’s business without needing formal introductions, the way a hardware store owner and a cop would have crossed paths a hundred times at the grocery store or the gas station or anywhere else people went about the business of living.
“How’s it going, Frank?” he asked.
“Going okay. How’s your mom doing? She any better?”
“Still sore, but she’s going to be all right. Can’t say the same about her car. Guy plowed right into the back of her. On his cell phone and never looked up.”
