The Sniper's Wife (27 page)

“What’s her name?” he asked, almost as an afterthought.

Klesczewsi again consulted his notes. “Laurie Davis.”

Gunther became very still, catching his younger colleague’s attention. “You okay? You know her?”

“She a blonde?” Gunther asked.

Klesczewski began rummaging around in a box he’d placed on the counter. “Hang on. I think I can do better than that.”

He extracted a plastic evidence envelope with a driver’s license captured within it. Gunther held it at an angle under the bleak lighting to better see the small photo.

“And this was definitely her?” he asked.

Klesczewski nodded. “She’s got more meat on her there. I have crime-scene photos in the digital camera if you don’t mind the small screen.”

Gunther shook his head and returned the envelope to him, feeling tired and mournful. “Doesn’t matter. I know her.”

Two hours later, Joe was staring at the coffee machine in a hallway off the waiting room at Brattleboro’s Memorial Hospital, wondering if more coffee at this time of night would qualify as suicide by insomnia.

“Don’t do it,” came a woman’s voice from behind him, as if his thoughts had been blinking on and off above his head.

He turned to see an equally tired-looking Gail Zigman approaching from the doors of the intensive care unit. She gave him a half-hearted smile and slipped her arm through his. “We both need some sleep,” she finished.

“How’s she doing?” he asked her.

“She’s alive. They did what they could, but the blood loss was huge. Basically, she’s in a coma and they have no idea if she’ll come out of it.” She rested her head against his shoulder and sighed. “At least they’re getting some brain activity—whatever that means.”

In books written a hundred years earlier, Gail was what might have been called Joe’s “particular friend.” She was all of that, certainly—his sounding board, the echo of his conscience, his love of many years—but she was not his wife. Perhaps because they’d met later in life, or were in many ways too independent, or simply were loners drawn together by instinct, they’d formed an eccentric partnership as solid as that found in a good marriage, but in which they sometimes didn’t see each other for weeks at a time. In fact, for half of each year, Gail lived and worked as a lobbyist in the state capital of Montpelier, which under normal conditions was a two-hour drive away.

Not that these conditions applied. Gail had driven down at warp speed following Joe’s phone call to her, and had been monitoring Laurie Davis’s progress from just outside the operating room ever since.

Laurie Davis was ner niece—her sister Rachel’s daughter.

Gunther kissed the top of her head. “She might get lucky. Sometimes, the brain just needs a little nap before waking up, good as new.”

They began walking down the empty, bland hallway toward the elevators at the far end.

“You’re talking about a previously healthy body,” Gail responded. “Not someone already half dead from drugs.”

He thought about saying something comforting, as he would have with anyone else, but that wasn’t their way. Plus, they’d both seen the girl, or what was left of her. There was little point pretending she wasn’t a train wreck before Arnie Weller’s bullet had torn into her skinny chest.

Gail shook her head, her voice hardening as she stared at the floor. “What the hell was she thinking?”

Joe felt uncomfortable. Laurie wasn’t his relation. He’d only met her a couple of times. But she’d lived in Brattleboro, having moved up from suburban Connecticut at Gail’s urging, and he was wondering now if he shouldn’t have known that she’d fallen on hard times. He wasn’t on the PD any longer, but he stayed connected. It would have been easy to keep tabs on her. Cops did that for one another’s families, even extended ones.

“Thinking probably isn’t a huge prerequisite,” he suggested vaguely instead. “Seems like it’s usually more about dulling the pain.”

She looked up at him sharply, and he realized he’d unintentionally turned the tables on her, causing her to question her own responsibilities here.

“Sorry,” he added quickly. “I didn’t mean it to come out that way.”

But Gail wasn’t looking for a way out. “You’re right,” she admitted. “If she had been feeling any pain, I wouldn’t have known about it. I didn’t keep in touch— barely paid attention to her.”

She paused to sigh. “My sister’s going to flip out.”

“You haven’t reached her yet?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Got the answering machine. They’re probably on the town. They do that a lot. It was one of the issues between them and Laurie.” She paused and then added, “Everyone thought coming to Vermont would give them all a break.”

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