“White,” he said. “Bandage on his face.”
“Was he the guy from the sketch?” I demanded. But Richie had gone quiet.
A few minutes later, the ambulance driver hit a blast horn, and I placed my hand on Richie’s forehead. “Richie?” I demanded.
“You shouldn’t have seen my face,” Richie said then, opening his eyes. “It wasn’t ready.”
“What?”
“It wasn’t ready,” Richie repeated. “He said that.”
The driver took a hard left and leaned on the horn again, beeping it twice in some sort of signal. A moment later, the back door to the ambulance opened. Through the gap, I saw Cassie’s Tahoe pull in behind us. To our right, under a covered portico, were two containers holding a series of backboards in green and orange and yellow colors.
The tech who had driven us ran over to a sliding door markedEMS ENTRANCE. He hit a button and leaned inside, hollering something to the staff. Two nurses emerged, and the tech from the back pulled Richie’s stretcher out, pausing as an accordion-like structure with wheeled legs popped out from the bottom.
I came alongside the stretcher to help, but the tech from the back waved over two security guards in black pants and fluorescent-yellow vests.
“Watch this guy,” he said. “He was hitting the patient. Trying to hurt him. Step aside, sir,” he said to me.
I glanced around, confused, as hospital security approached Cassie and me. Was he talking about me?
I flashed tin at the two guards and moved inside, ignoring them. “FBI business,” I said. “That’s our man on that stretcher. No one gets seen before he does.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
A half hour had passed. Richie was under observation at the University of Florida hospital in Gainesville, where the ambulance had brought him. Cassie and I stood in the waiting room. She’d gotten a coffee for her and a tea for me, each in paper cups with blue and orange stripes along the side. The waiting room smelled like a mix of mop wax and flowers, and Cassie’s face looked gray.
“I asked Richie if his attacker was the guy in the sketch,” I said, trying to meet her eyes. “But he kept falling asleep.”
“This is hitting hard,” Cassie said.
She informed me that she needed to throw up. Which was a reminder that I’d eaten two pieces of pizza fourteen hours ago in D.C. The only thing I’d put in my system since then were three beers and four tequila shots.
“You shouldn’t have seen my face,” I said. “It wasn’t ready.”
“What?”
“The guy said that to Richie. ‘You shouldn’t have seen my face. It wasn’t ready.’”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe Richie was babbling. He also told me the guy had a rare handgun. Then a minute later, he said it was a Glock 43X.”
I relayed the other details to Cassie, putting together a story from the limited information we had: Richie had come out of the bathroom and found a man going through his case files. He’d described the man as five foot ten. A muscular build.
Cassie stared at me, waiting for more. Or maybe she was waiting to see if I was done, so she could go vomit.
“Covering some part of his face was a bandage,” I continued. “I didn’t get more than that.”
A doctor named Carlson came out into the waiting room then, wearing a pale blue coat. Her wavy brown hair fell to her shoulders, and she wore glasses that hung from a chain around her neck. She told us that Richie was stable but had been sedated.
“For how long?” I asked.
“It’s too early to tell,” Dr. Carlson said. “We stabilized him with IV fluids. Gave him heart medication for his blood pressure. But…I don’t love some of the symptoms I’m seeing. I’ve contacted our toxicology specialist.”
“What kind of symptoms?” I asked.
“Hypotension,” she said, pushing her hair back behind her ears. “Bradycardia. We’ll let him rest. Hopefully by late tonight or early tomorrow, we’ll have better news.”
