I was trying to remember Kara's joke involving hospital visitor's lounges--something about happy hour, cocktails for all non-hospital staff, and desperate orderlies trying to score--when the overhead light switched on, and I raised my head to see Detective Vecchio at the door. His brow was knotted up like string tied on a package, and it seemed he had run most of the way back down the hall to me. My eyes wouldn't focus in the sudden bath of brightness. My pupils refused to contract.
"Is something wrong?" I asked, though I should have been asking that of myself.
"Huey," he swore, slapping his leather gloves up against the doorjamb. "He left to get something to eat." And here the sarcasm cut in. "He asked the nurses at the desk to watch. As if they don't have enough on their hands, without waiting for Victoria Metcalf to show up and finish what she started."
"Is your partner okay?" My eyes snapped back to attention and clarity.
"Yeah. He's asleep." He paused a moment and crossed the room to where I was sitting. "He does that a lot."
"Maybe she didn't come in after all," I offered. "Or maybe he was asleep."
"Yeah, sure," Vecchio snidely replied. "And maybe this is all part of some sick game she's playing to up the ante. I mean, look, she's got all of us here together now." He nodded his head to the side. He often did this when making a point. "Less work to ruin our lives if we're in a cluster."
"But he's okay?" Hadn't I just asked this? I must have been more tired than I thought.
"Well, he's at least safe from her for right now."
Vecchio seemed itching to be doing something else, and he wouldn't have had to convince me too greatly to get me to leave and go in search of my car, and the interstate home. "So what now?" I prompted him.
"I've got to go find Huey, and your car," he said. He leaned over and reached down into his sock.
I thought he was just straightening it, but then he pulled out a tiny pistol. The kind saloon girls in westerns wear in their garters.
"You know how to shoot a gun, Maggie?"
It was not much larger than his hand.
"I trust you're not going to ask me to shoot that one any time soon," I replied.
"No," he said. "I'd rather you didn't. But if you see her--if you see her, don't be--" and he stressed this, "afraid to use it."
"So you're leaving me here to watch his room?"
"I trust you Maggie," he said. His brow had straightened out. "I AM trusting you. With his life."
He pressed the pistol into my palm, his large hand covering mine, and the weapon it now held. Both felt warm to me--his grip and even what should have been the cold steel of the pistol's barrel. In contrast to the temperature of my own hands, my nerve endings sent faulty reports of heat through me, as though the gun had just been fired. I shivered in response.
"You see anything," Vecchio instructed. "Even a shadow, you yell for help. If she shows up-you make her regret that decision." He brought his eyes away from the gun and back to mine. "I won't be gone long." In a flurry of his long coat, he left, turning down the hall on his way back to the elevators.
I checked the chamber quickly, habitually, making sure to empty it of the first round. I slipped the now-extra bullet into my jeans pocket. I did not want to risk shooting the wrong person, nor did I wish to have the gun used against me. In truth, I didn't want the gun at all. I had never shot anyone. 0 for 0. It seemed like a good record. One to try and keep. Not that I believed I could've plugged Victoria if she were to show up. And not only on account of the fact my vision was still a little swimmy.
