"N" Is for Noose (10 page)

I placed my right hand lightly on the knob. I could feel it turn under my fingers. With the chair still in place, I did a quick tiptoe dance across the room to the bath. I could feel heat radiating from the iron as I pulled the plug from the socket. I wrapped my fingers around the handle and returned to the door, taking up my vigil. My night visitor was now in the process of easing the door open, probably fearful of creaks that might alert me to his presence. I stared at the doorframe, willing him to appear. He pushed. The chair began to inch forward. As stealthily as a spider, his fingers crept around the frame. I lunged, iron extended. I thought my timing was good, but he was quicker than I expected. I made contact, but not before he'd kicked the door in. The chair catapulted past me. I could smell the harsh chemical scent of scorched wool. I pressed the iron into him again and sensed burning flesh this time. He uttered a harsh expletive-not a word but a yelp.

At the same time, he swung and his fist caught me in the face. I staggered backward, off balance. The iron flew out of my hand and clattered heavily across the floor. He was fast. Before I knew what was happening, he'd kicked my feet out from under me. I went down. He had my arm racked up behind me, his knee planted squarely in the middle of my back. His weight made breathing problematic and I knew within minutes I'd black out if he didn't ease up. I couldn't fill my lungs with sufficient air to make a sound. Any movement was excruciating. I could smell stress sweat, but I wasn't sure if it was his or mine.

Now you see? This is precisely the kind of moment I was talking about. There I was, face down on Cecilia Boden's bad braided rug, immobilized by a fellow threatening serious bodily harm. Had I foreseen this sorry development the day I left Carson City, I'd have done something else… dumped the rental car and flown home, bypassing the notion of employment in Nota Lake. But how was I to know?

Meanwhile, the thug and I were at a temporary impasse while he decided what kind of punishment to inflict. This guy was going to hurt me, there was no doubt of that. He hadn't expected resistance and he was pissed off that I'd put up even so puny a fight as I had. He was supercharged, juiced up on rage, his breathing labored and hoarse. I tried to relax and, at the same time, steal myself for the inevitable. I waited for a bash on the back of the head. I prayed that a pocketknife or semiautomatic didn't appear on his list of preferred weapons. If he yanked my head back, he could slit my throat with one quick swipe of a blade. Time hung suspended in a manner that was almost liberating.

I'm not a big fan of torture. I've always understood that in situations of extreme duress-offered the choice between, say, a hot poker in the eyeball or betraying a friend-I'd rat out my pal. This is one more reason to keep others at a distance, since I clearly can't be trusted to keep a confidence. Under the current circumstances, I surely would have begged for mercy if I'd been capable of speech.

Hostility energizes. Once unleashed, anger is addicting and the high, while bitter, is irresistible. He half-lifted himself away from me and slammed his knee into my rib cage, knocking the breath out of me. He grabbed the index finger of my right hand and in one swift motion snapped it sideways, dislocating the finger at what I later learned was the proximal interphalangeal joint. The sound was like the hollow pop of a raw carrot being snapped in two. I heard myself emit a note of anguish, high pitched and ragged as he reached for the next finger and popped the knuckle sideways in its socket. I could sense that both fingers protruded now in an unnatural relationship to the rest of my hand. He delivered a kick and then I heard his heavy breathing as he stood staring down at me. I closed my eyes, fearful of provoking further attack.

I kept my face down against the rug, sucking in the odor of damp cotton fiber saturated with soot, feeling absurdly grateful when he didn't kick me again. He crossed the cabin in haste. I heard the door bang shut behind him and then the sound of his muffled footsteps as they faded away. In due course, at a distance, I heard a car engine start. I was alive. I was hurt. Time to move, I thought.

I rolled over on my back, cradling my right arm. I could feel my hands tremble and I was making noises in my throat. I'd broken out in a sweat, so much heat coursing through my body that I thought I'd throw up. At the same time, I began to shake. A stress-induced personality had separated herself from the rest of me and hovered in the air so that she could comment on the situation without having to participate in my pain and humiliation.

You really should get help, she suggested. The injuries won't kill you, but the shock well could. Remember the symptoms? Pulse and breathing become faster. Blood pressure drops. Weakness, lethargy, a little clamminess? Does that ring a bell here?

I was laboring to breathe, struggling to keep my wits about me while my vision brightened and narrowed. It had been a long time since I'd been hurt and I'd nearly forgotten how it felt to be consumed by suffering. I knew he could have killed me, so I should have been happy this was the worst he'd conjured up. What exhilaration he must have felt. I had been brought low and my attempts at self-defense seemed pathetic in retrospect.

I held my hand against my chest protectively while I eased onto my side and from there to my knees. I pushed upward with left elbow, supporting myself clumsily as I struggled to my feet. I was mewing like a kitten. Tears stung my eyes. I felt abased by the ease with which I'd been felled. I was nothing, a worm he could have crushed underfoot. My cockiness had left me and now belonged to him. I pictured him grinning, even laughing aloud as he sped down the highway. He would shake his fist in the air with joy, reliving my subjugation in much the same way I would in the days to come.

I turned on the overhead light and looked down at my hand. Both my index finger and my insult finger jutted out at thirty-degree angles. I really couldn't feel much, but the sight of it was sickening. I found my bag near the bed. I picked up my jacket and laid it across my shoulders like a shawl. Oddly, the cabin wasn't that disordered. The iron had been flung into the far corner of the room. The wooden chair had been knocked over and the braided rug was askew. Tidy little bun that I am, I righted the chair and flopped the rug back into place, picked the iron up and returned it to the top closet shelf, cord dangling. Now I had only myself to accommodate.

I locked the cabin with effort, using the unaccustomed left hand. I headed toward the motel office. The night was cold and a soft whirl of snow whispered against my face. I drank deeply of the cold, refreshed by the dampness in the air. Out near the road, I could see the glow of the motel vacancy sign, a red neon beacon issuing its invitation to passing motorists. There was no traffic on the highway. None of the other cabins showed any signs of life. Through the office window, I could see a table lamp aglow. I went in. I leaned against the doorframe while I knocked on Cecilia's door. Long minutes passed. Finally, the door opened a crack and Cecilia peered out.

I could hear the mounting roar of a fainting spell rising around my ears. I longed to sit down and put my head down between my knees. I took a deep breath, shaking my head in hopes of clearing it.

Still squinting, she tied the sash of her pink chenille robe as she emerged. "What's this about?" she said, crossly. "What's the matter with you?"

I held up my hand. "I need help."

Cecilia dialed 9-1-1 and reported the break-in and the subsequent attack. The dispatcher said he'd send an ambulance, but Cecilia assured him she could get me to the hospital in the time it would take the paramedics to arrive. She threw on her sweats, a coat, and running shoes, and put me in her ancient Oldsmobile. To give her credit, she seemed properly concerned about my injury, patting me occasionally and saying things like, "You hang on now. You'll be fine. We're almost there. It's just down the road." She drove with exaggerated care, both hands on the steering wheel, chin lifted so she could see over the rim. Her speed never exceeded forty miles an hour and she solved the problem of which lane to drive in by keeping half the car in each.

I no longer felt pain. Some natural anesthesia had flooded through my system and I was woozy with its effect. I leaned my head back against the seat. She studied me anxiously, no doubt worried I'd barf on the hard-to-clean upholstery fabric.

"You're dead white," she said. She depressed the window control, opening the window halfway so that a wide stream of icy air whipped against my face. The highway was glossy with moisture, snow blowing across the road in diagonal lines. At this hour of the night, there was a comforting silence across the landscape. So far, the snow wasn't sticking, but I could see a powdering of white on tree trunks, an airy accumulation in the dead and weedy fields.

The hospital was long and low, a one-story structure that stretched in a straight line like some endless medical motel. The exterior was a mix of brick and stucco, with a roof of three-tab asphalt shingle. The parking area near the ambulance entrance was virtually deserted. The emergency room was empty, though the few brave souls on duty roused themselves and appeared in due course, one of them a clerk whose name tag read L. LIPPINCOTT. I was guessing Lucille, Louise, Lillian, Lula.

Ms. Lippincott's gaze flicked away from the bristling bouquet of digits. "How did you fall?"

"I didn't. I was assaulted," I said and then proceeded to give her an abbreviated account of the attack.

Her facial expression shifted from distaste to skepticism, as though there must be portions of the story I'd neglected to tell. Perhaps she fantasized some bizarre form of self-abuse or S M practices too nasty to relate.

I sat in a small upholstered chair, reciting my personal data-name, home address, insurance carrier-while she entered the information into her computer. She was in her sixties, a heavy-boned woman with graying hair arranged in perfect wavelets. Her face looked like half the air had leaked out, leaving soft pouches and seams. She wore a nursy-looking pantsuit of waffle-patterned white polyester with large shoulder pads and big white buttons down the front. "Where'd Cecilia disappear to? Wasn't she the one brought you in?"

"I think she's gone off to find a restroom. She was sitting right out there," I said, indicating the waiting area. A new-found talent allowed me to point in two directions simultaneously-index and insult fingers going north-west, ring finger and pinkie steering eastnorth-east. I tried to avoid the sight, but it was hard to resist.

She made a photocopy of my insurance card, which she set to one side. She entered a print command and documents were generated, none of which I was able to sign with my bunged-up right hand. She made a note to that effect, indicating my acceptance of financial responsibility. She assembled a plastic bracelet bearing my name and hospital ID number and affixed that to my wrist with a device resembling a hole punch.

Chart in hand, she accompanied me through a doorway and showed me a seat in an examining room about the size of a jail cell. She stuck my chart in a slot mounted on the door before she left. "Someone'll be right with you."

The place looked like every other emergency room I'd ever been exposed to: beige speckled floor glossy with wax, making it easy to remove blood and other body fluids; acoustical tile on the ceiling, the better to dampen all the anguished cries and screams. The prevailing smell of rubbing alcohol made me think about needles and I desperately needed to lie down that instant. I set my jacket aside and crawled up on the examining table, where I lay on the crackling paper and stared at the ceiling. I wasn't doing well. I was shivering.

The lights seemed unnaturally bright and the room oscillated. I laid my left arm across my eyes and tried to think about something nice, like sex.

I could hear a low conversation in the corridor and someone came in, picking up my chart from the door. "Miss Millhone?" I heard the click of a ballpoint pen and I opened my eyes.

The ER nurse was black, her name tag identifying her as V LaMott. She had to be Rafer LaMott's wife, mother to the young woman working as a shortorder cook over at the Rainbow Cafe. Was theirs the only African American family in Nota Lake? Like her daughter, V LaMott was trim, her skin the color of tobacco. Her hair was cropped close, her face devoid of makeup. "I'm Mrs. LaMott. You've met my husband, I believe."

"We spoke briefly."

"Let's see the hand."

I held it up. Something about her mention of Rafer made me think he'd confessed to her fully about his rudeness to me. She looked like the kind of woman who'd have given him a hard time about that. I hoped.

I kept my face averted while she completed her inspection. I could feel myself tense up, but she was careful to make only gingerly contact. There was apparently no nurse's aide on duty so she checked my vital signs herself. She took my temperature with an electronic thermometer that gave nearly instant results and then she held my left arm against her body as she pumped up the blood pressure cuff and took a reading. Her hands were warm while mine felt bloodless. She made notes on my chart.

"What's the V stand for?" I asked.

" Victoria. You can call me Vicky if you like. We're not formal around here. Are you on any medication?"

"Birth control pills."

"Any allergies?"

"Not that I know of."

"Have you had a tetanus shot in the last ten years?" My mind went blank. "I can't remember."

"Let's get that over with," she said.

I could feel the panic mount. "I mean, it's really not necessary. It's not a problem. I have two dislocated fingers, but the skin wasn't broken. See? No cuts, no puncture wounds. I didn't step on a nail."

"I'll be right back."

I felt my heart sink. In my weakened condition, I hadn't thought to lie. I could have told her anything about my medical history. She'd never know the difference and it was my lookout. Lockjaw, big deal. This was all too much. I'm phobic about needles, which is to say I sometimes faint at the very idea of injections and become giddy at the sight of a S-Y R-1-N-G-E. I've been known to pass out when other people get shots. In traveling, I would never go to a country that required immunizations. Who wants to spend time in an area where smallpox and cholera still run rampant among the citizens?

What I hate most in the world are those obscene newscasts where there's sudden minicam coverage of wailing children being stabbed with hypodermics in their sweet, plump little arms. Their expressions of betrayal are enough to make you sick. I could feel the sweat breaking out on my palms. Even lying down I was worried I'd lose consciousness.

She came back in a flash, holding the you-know-what on a little plastic tray like a snack. In my only hope of control, I persuaded her to stick me in the hip instead of my upper arm, though lowering my blue jeans was a trick with one hand.

"I don't like it either," she said. "Shots scare me silly. Here we go."

Stoically, I bore the discomfort, which truly wasn't as bad as I remembered it. Maybe I was maturing. Ha ha ha, she said.

"Shit."

"Sorry. I know it stings."

"It's not that. I just remembered. My last tetanus shot was three years ago. I took a bullet in the arm and they gave me one then."

"Oh, well," she said. She inserted the syringe into a device labeled "sharps" and neatly snapped off the needle, like I might snatch it away and stick myself with it six more times for fun. Ever the professional, I took advantage of the opportunity to quiz her about the Newquists while we waited for the doctor. "I gather Rafer and Tom were good friends," I said, for openers.

"That's right."

"Did the four of you spend much time together?" The answer seemed slow in coming so I offered a prompt. "You might as well be honest. I've heard it all by now. Nobody likes Selma."

Vicky smiled. "We spent time together when we had to. There were occasions when we couldn't avoid her so we made the best of it. Rafer didn't want to make a scene, nor did I for that matter, I swear to god, she once said to me-these are her exact words-'I'd have invited you over, but I thought you'd be more comfortable with your own kind.' I had to bite my tongue. What I wanted to say is 'I sure wouldn't want to hang out with a bunch of white trash like you.' And just to complicate matters, our daughter, Barrett, was going out with her son."

"She must have loved that."

"She could hardly object. She was always so busy acting like she wasn't prejudiced. What a joke. If it wasn't so pitiful it'd have cracked me up. The woman has no education and no intelligence to speak of. Rafer and I both graduated from U.C.L.A. He's got a degree in criminology… this was before he applied for the position with the sheriff's department. I've got a B.A. in nursing and an R.N. on top of that."

" Selma knew the kids were dating?"

"Oh, sure. They went steady for years. Tom was crazy about Barrett. I know he felt she was a good influence on Brant."

"Does Brant have a problem?"

"Basically, he's a good person. He was just screwed up back then, like a lot of kids that age. I don't think he ever did drugs, but he drank quite a bit and rebelled every chance he had."

"Why'd they break up?"

"You'd have to ask Barrett. I try not to mess in her business. You want my assessment, I think Brant was too needy and dependent for someone like her. He tended to be all mopey and clinging. This was years ago, of course. He was twenty, at that point. She was just out of high school and didn't seem that interested in getting serious."

Her comments were cut short when the doctor came in. Dr. Price was in his late twenties, thin and boyish, with bright blue eyes, big ears, dark auburn hair, and a pale freckled complexion. I could still see the indentation on his cheek where he'd bunched up his pillow to sleep. I pictured the entire ER staff napping on little cots somewhere. He wore surgical greens and a white lab coat, stethoscope coiled in his pocket like a pet snake. I wondered how he'd ended up at a hospital as small as this. I hoped it wasn't because he was at the bottom of his med school class. He took one look at my fingers and said, "Oh wow! Keen!" I liked his enthusiasm.

We had a chat about my assailant and the job he'd done. He studied my jaw. "He must have clipped you good," he said.

"That's right. I'd forgotten about that. How's it look?"

"Like you put eye shadow in the wrong place. Any other abrasions or contusions? That's doctor talk," he said. "Means little hurt places on your body."

"He kicked me twice in the ribs."

"Let's take a look," he said, pulling up my shirt.

My ribcage on the right side was swiftly turning purple. He listened to my lungs to make sure a rib hadn't been thrust into them on impact. He palpated my right arm, wrist, hand, and fingers, and then proceeded to deliver a quick course on joints, ligaments, tendons, and exactly what happens when someone wrenches them asunder. We trooped into the other room where a rumpled-looking technician took X-rays of both my chest and my hand. I returned to the table and lay down again, feeling thoroughly air-conditioned as the room spun.

When the film had been developed, he invited me into the corridor where he tucked the various views onto the lighted screen. Vicky joined us. We stood there, the three of us, and studied the results. I felt like a colleague called in for consultation on a troublesome case. My ribs were bruised, but not cracked, likely to be sore for days, but requiring no further medical attention. Roentgenographically speaking, the two pesky fingers were completely screwed. I could see that no bones were broken, though Dr. Price did point out two small chips he said my body would reabsorb.

I went back to the table where I reclined again with relief. My butt was still smarting from the sting of the tetanus, so I hardly noticed when the doctor, with a merry whistle, stuck me repeatedly in the joints on both fingers. I'd ceased to care by then. Whatever they did, I was too grossed out to notice. While I stared at the wall, the doctor maneuvered my digits back into their original upright position. He left the room briefly. When I finally dared to look at my hand, I saw that the injured fingers were now fat and reddened. While the fingers would now bend, the knuckles were swollen as though with sudden rheumatoid arthritis. I placed my mouth against the hot, numb flesh like a mother gauging a baby's fever with her lips.

Dr. Price returned with (1) a roll of adhesive tape, (2) a packet of gauze, and (3) a metal splint that looked like a bent Popsicle stick, for which my insurance company would ultimately be charged somewhere in the neighborhood of five hundred dollars. He taped the two fingers together and then affixed them to the ring finger with another wrapping of tape, all supported by the splint. I could sense my premiums going up. Medical insurance is only valid if the benefits are never used. Otherwise, you're rewarded with a cancellation notice or a hefty increase in rates.

I could hear another conference in the hallway and a deputy appeared outside the examining room door. He chatted with Dr. Price and then the doctor departed, leaving me alone with him. This was a fellow I hadn't seen before; a tall skinny kid with a long face, dark hair, dark ragged eyebrows that met in the middle, and shiny metal braces on his teeth. Well, I was filled with confidence.

"Ms. Millhone, I'm Deputy Carey Badger. I understand you had a problem. Can you tell me what happened?"

I said, "Sure," and went through my sad tale of woe again.