Trapped! (11 page)

When he got to the line that asked why he needed treatment, he put “gunshot wound in leg.” Under explanation he added “My gun went off accidentally.” Then he handed the papers back to the clerk.

In a few minutes a nurse called, “Brock Thorsen,” and Bick followed her into an examining room. Her name badge said Rosemary. Handing him a hospital gown, she said, “Ties go in the back. Pull the curtain open when you’ve changed.” She pulled the curtain closed and walked away.

Bick dropped his blood stained pants and looked at the hole in his thigh. It still hurt like crazy, but it didn’t look as deep as he had feared. The bleeding had slowed to an ooze. Maybe he wouldn’t need surgery, after all. A few stitches and he’d be good as new.

He slipped his arms into the hospital gown and tied the strings behind his neck. It was a good thing he’d left his
underpants on; this skimpy gown wouldn’t cover a small boy, much less a grown man.

Bick pulled the curtain open and sat on the bed with his legs dangling over the side.

“Those are some wicked-looking scratches,” Nurse Rosemary said when she returned. She reached for Bick’s face as if she were going to touch them. “What happened?”

“Oh, those are from the blackberry bushes,” Bick said as he leaned away from her. “I was pruning them. I ain’t here for the scratches; I’m here because I got shot in the leg.” What good was it, Bick thought, to write down exactly what had happened and what treatment you needed if they weren’t gong to read what you wrote?

The nurse bent over, and peered at Bick’s thigh. “Who shot you?” she asked.

“I did. It was an accident. I was putting my gun away and I thought it was empty.”

Rosemary nodded. “Put your feet up on the bed,” she said. “It will help slow the bleeding.”

As he did that, she lifted Bick’s wrist and looked at the bite marks on his arm. “What happened here?” she asked.

“What?”

“Looks like you got bit.”

“Oh, that. You don’t have to do anything about that. All I want is for you to take care of my leg where I got shot.”

“Right,” the nurse said. She let go of Bick’s arm, but she looked again at his face. “They must have been huge blackberry bushes,” she said.

He was getting seriously annoyed with this woman. Why was she fussing about a few scratches on his face and arm when he had taken a bullet in his leg? A person could bleed to death in this place while the nurse yammered on about blackberry bushes.

“Forget the scratches,” Bick said. “I just want my leg fixed.”

“The doctor will be here in a couple of minutes,” Rosemary said.

She left, pulling the curtain closed behind her. For most patients, Rosemary would write her assessment of the patient’s condition on the chart and leave it for the doctor while she went on to the next patient. But something about this case bothered her. Those scratches on the man’s face were too deep to be caused by a wayward blackberry bush. There were several of them on both cheeks, and more on his arms, as if someone with long fingernails had been fighting for her life.

The bite marks were deep, too. They weren’t made by human teeth, but it’s possible that a person’s small dog had tried to defend her from attack. It seemed likely to Rosemary that this man had tangled with a person, not a blackberry bush. Maybe he was lying about the gunshot, as well. Perhaps it had not been accidental.

Still, if someone had shot him, why would he try to protect that person’s identity? Unless he had been the shooter and had somehow injured himself along with the other person. Clearly, he had struggled with someone.

Rosemary explained her concerns to the doctor on duty and then, following hospital protocol for any suspected crime, she called the police.

Sgt. Donald Skyler was on telephone duty at the police station when Rosemary called. She identified herself and explained why she was calling. “I’m pretty sure he’s lying about how his face got scratched,” she said, “and there are bite marks on his arm.”

“I haven’t had any reports of an assault,” Sgt. Skyler said.

“The bite marks aren’t from a person. They look as if it might have been a small dog, or even a cat.”

“Can you get him to stay at the hospital for a while?” he asked.

“He isn’t going anywhere,” Rosemary replied. “He’s waiting for one of the emergency-room doctors to look at his leg wound.”

“Keep him waiting,” Sgt. Skyler said. “I’ll send an officer over to question him.”

B
ick shifted on
the bed in the emergency-room cubicle, trying to get comfortable. His leg hurt, and no matter which way he positioned it, he couldn’t ease the pain. The scratches hurt, too, and his arm ached where the cat had bit him.

I need a Tylenol, Bick thought, or maybe even some codeine. What was taking so long? Once he’d been called in from the waiting room and had donned this foolish shorty nightgown and had seen the nurse, he thought his wait was over. He expected the doctor to come through the opening in the curtain at any minute, but he didn’t come. The nurse didn’t return, either. With the high price of emergency-room care, you’d think the service would be better.

Bick wasn’t used to waiting. For that matter, he wasn’t used to sitting around doing nothing. He drummed his fingers on the edge of the bed. He lay down, then sat up again. Once, he stood and poked his head through the curtain
opening and looked out, but all he saw was the nurses station, void of nurses.

At first Bick was annoyed; then he got angry. Was he being ignored because he didn’t have insurance? Was he some kind of second-class citizen?

His anger turned to anxiety. What if they were checking what he’d written on the admissions paper? What if they had figured out that he’d given false information? What if they were calling the cops?

I shouldn’t have come here, Bick decided. Hospitals were no good; the people asked too many nosy questions that were none of their business. Why did they need his telephone number in order to sew up his leg? What did it matter if his family had a history of cancer? He wasn’t here for chemo; he was here to get the hole in his leg closed up. By the time they got around to helping him, he’d have to change the age he’d put on their paper because he’d be a year older.

He looked closely at the wound in his leg. If he cleaned it out good, put some antiseptic on it, then covered it with gauze and held the sides shut with tape, it would probably heal without leaving too big of a scar. He should have done that in the first place. He should have gone straight home and taken care of his own problem.

Never trust anyone. That had been Bick’s motto all his life, but he’d never had to apply it to a hospital before.

Bick picked up his pants, grimacing as he moved. The wound might be treatable on his own, but it still hurt like crazy. Before he could step into his pants, the curtain parted and a police officer entered followed by Nurse Rosemary.

“Brock Thorsen?” the officer said.

Bick looked around, as if wondering who the officer was talking to.

The officer pointed at Bick. “Are you Brock Thorsen?”

“Oh,” Bick said. “Oh, yeah, that’s me, but I’ve decided not to wait for the doctor. It’s taking too long, and I’m tired. I’m leaving; I’ll take care of the leg myself.”

“You shouldn’t do that,” Rosemary said. “Your leg might need stitches. You can’t treat it yourself.”

“Well, nobody around here is fixing it. I got better things to do than sit here and twiddle my thumbs.”

“The doctor will be here shortly,” Rosemary said. “Please lie down and keep your feet up. You make the bleeding worse when you stand.”

The police officer said, “Officer Dingam, Hilltop Police Department. I have some questions for you before you go.”

“You got the wrong person. You must be looking for the guy in the next bed.”

“I don’t think so.”

“There’s no reason to be questioning me; I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Then you won’t mind answering a few questions.”

Bick sat down, not looking at the officer. “About what?”

“How did you get those scratches on your face?”

“What do you care? It’s illegal to get scratched?”

“Answer the question.”

“I already told the nurse. I was pruning some blackberry vines when one of them scratched me.”

“Right.”

“They were big prickly vines; got me right in the face.”

“More than once,” the officer said. “You’d think after one deep scratch like that, you’d stay away from the blackberries.”

Bick glared at the man but said nothing.

“Who bit you on the arm?”

Bick looked at the teeth marks, still clearly visible on his arm. “I was playing with my dog, wrestling around, you know, but he got a little carried away. No harm done.”

“A dog’s teeth are bigger than that.”

“It’s a little dog,” Bick said.

Officer Dingam nodded. The bite wounds clearly had not been inflicted by a person, but he doubted any dog was that small. Looked more like cat bites to him, which would make sense given the scratches.

He’d never heard of a cat defending its owner against an attacker, although he supposed it was possible. But what about the gunshot? No dog or cat could have done that. This man’s story did not compute. He was lying
about the blackberries and lying about the dog. The question was, why? What was he hiding?

Frustrated by the man’s attitude and the lack of information, Officer Dingam said, “Thanks for your time,” and left the room.

While Officer Dingam had been questioning Bick, Sgt. Skyler received a call from Mr. Kendrill. An experienced officer, Sgt. Skyler had heard his share of wacky reports from the public, but he didn’t remember ever getting a call regarding a kidnapped cat. He was about to suggest that the caller contact the humane society when Mr. Kendrill got to the part about hearing a gunshot.

“Within a minute or two of the gunshot, we saw the man we were looking for go past us in his truck,” Mr. Kendrill said. “He was headed back toward town, driving erratically, and there was blood on his face. We yelled at him to stop, but he kept going. We went farther up the road and found blood splattered on the shoulder. We looked for our cat there, but we didn’t find him.”

Sgt. Skyler sighed. He detested animal cruelty cases almost as much as he hated to hear about abused children. What was wrong with people who took out their anger on little kids or helpless animals? They were sickos, that’s what they were. Sickos.

It made his ulcer flare to think of somebody snatching a family’s pet cat, driving off with it, and then shooting the
cat in cold blood. He wrote down the truck’s license number, the location where the man had been seen, and the cat owner’s name, address, and phone number. He also took a description of the truck’s driver.

“I’ll get back to you as soon as I have anything to report,” he said, but realistically he didn’t think it was likely to be anytime soon, if ever. There were so many crimes committed every day and the police force was stretched so thin that he knew no one would have time to devote to a kidnapped cat.

Sometimes Sgt. Skyler thought he was in the wrong business. Maybe he should quit and find work that didn’t get him emotionally churned up.

He was still fretting over the missing cat when Officer Dingam checked in. “I’m leaving the hospital,” Dingam said. “The man in emergency is lying about how he got hurt, but I don’t know why. I can’t pin anything on him. He gave his name as Brock Thorsen; see if you can find any record on him. I don’t know how he got shot. He has scratches and bite marks that look as if he tangled with a cat, but he won’t admit that. There’s something fishy about the whole scene.”

When he heard the word “cat,” Sgt. Skyler stiffened. “What’s this guy look like?” he asked.

As Officer Dingam described the hospital patient, Sgt. Skyler looked at the notes he had jotted down from Mr.
Kendrill’s phone call. Medium height, fiftyish, in need of a shave and a haircut. Looks as if he rarely showers.

It was him, all right. No doubt about it. Sgt. Skyler would bet last month’s salary that the man at the hospital had been scratched and bitten by the kidnapped cat. Quickly he told Officer Dingam about Pete and about the gunshot that the Kendrills had heard.

“I ran the truck’s license number through the computer,” he said. “It’s registered to a Bick Badgerton.”

“I’m returning to the emergency room,” Officer Dingam said.

Rosemary saw him approach the entrance to the cubicle, and waved him in.

“Not you again,” Bick said.

“I want another look at those bites,” Officer Dingam said.

“Haven’t you got any criminals to track down? You got nothing to do but harass law-abiding citizens?”

“What kind of dog did you say you have?”

“A little one.”

“Those look like cat bites to me,” the officer said.

“I don’t have a cat.”

“Maybe it wasn’t your own cat.”

Rosemary saw a flicker of fear in her patient’s eyes, and she knew the police officer was on the right track. This man had been scratched and bitten by a cat, but he didn’t want them to know it.

“Did you know that cat scratches can be dangerous?” Rosemary asked.

“Huh?”

“Cat scratches are full of bacteria, and a bite is even worse. There have been several cases where people got bit by a cat, and the bite became badly infected. I know of one patient who died.”

“Someone died from a cat bite?” Bick looked closely at his wrist.

“It would surely be too bad if a person walked out of a hospital without getting treatment for something that’s potentially lethal,” Officer Dingam said, “just because that person didn’t want to admit he’d been bitten by a cat.”

Bick was silent, thinking it over. “What makes you think I got scratched and bit by a cat?” he asked.

“Cats scratch their adversaries, but dogs don’t usually defend themselves with their toenails,” Officer Dingam said. “Also, those marks on your arm look more like cat bites than dog bites,” he said. “You want to tell me about that cat?”

“Look, I came in to get help for a leg wound,” Bick said, “not to get questioned by the cops.” He glared at Rosemary. “You must be the one who called the cops. Why’d you do that? Where’s the doctor?”