And the ambulance had arrived, apparently, because medics were swarming into the house with their equipment bags, pushing Forrest away so they could all crouch around the victim.
“I have to get back to Mom.” Quinn sounded stretched pretty tight. “Bernie, Justin killed Stoat in self-defense. The creep was going to knife us. Does Justin have to stay here, or can he go to his parents?”
“Is he a minor?”
“Yes.”
Sounding only a bit shaken up, Justin said, “Quinn, go on, take care of your mom. I’ll be okay.”
“Justin, you’re the best.” Getting up, hasty and awkward on his long legs, Quinn thrust his cell phone at Justin. “Call your folks back and have them talk with Deputy Morales. Bernie, do you think you can work something out here?”
More vehicles had pulled in, and Bernie caught a peripheral glimpse of his chief walking in the door. He knew better than to make any promises, although he badly wanted to. In Florida, the fact that the boy was underage did not mean he couldn’t be questioned. But it did mean he could be released into his parents’ custody if Bernie could keep him off the chief’s radar long enough. “I’ll see what I can do.”
• • •
I had become so accustomed to things being surreal that waking up in a neck restraint under intensely white lights amid medical equipment and people wearing scrubs seemed like just another phenomenon in the Stoat experience. Pain, yes, pain in the head and one arm and various parts of my midriff, definitely Stoat-related pain. Firmly in Stoat-Stoic mode, I accepted that there would be more of the same, and I took in my view of the ceiling and people’s heads without much curiosity until I saw a face, no, two faces almost hidden behind the others that jolted my heart even though I thought I must be mistaken, because it couldn’t be Quinn in a dirty shirt and beard stubble, or Forrest with a pale, strained face instead of a smile.
Yet it was. My entire battered being knew, despite the objections of my brain; I experienced marrow-deep recognition to the extent that I snatched off my oxygen mask and tried to jump off the emergency room bed, screeching, “Forrie! Quinn!”
Many hands restrained me, and many voices told me to lie still, but I paid attention only to the sound of Quinn’s voice telling me, “Chill, Mom,” and Forrest saying, “Relax, Mom, we’re right here,” and then the touch of their hands, awkward and gentle. They stood beside my bed stroking my shoulder, my face. “You’re in a hospital,” Quinn said as if I were senile. “You got hurt.”
“Of course I got hurt! Stoat—”
One of the medical professionals, a short, balding man in a white coat, interrupted. “Mrs. Leppo, do you remember how you were injured?”
“Stoat clobbered me with his shotgun butt, trying to kill me! Where is the bastard?”
Everyone ignored my question. “She remembers. That’s good, isn’t it, Doctor?” Forrest asked the medico.
“It would seem to indicate a lack of concussion.”
“So she has no brain injury after all?”
“It’s too soon to be sure. No two brain injuries manifest in quite the same way.”
I considered that I had acted brain-injured for most of my life, so what difference did it make? “Where,” I demanded more loudly, “is Stoat?”
Quinn iterated, “Chill, Mom.”
And Forrest. “Relax, Mom. You don’t have to worry about that Stoat dude anymore.”
I was becoming almost as irritated at the pair of them as I was glad to see them. “Is Stoat in jail?”
Without replying, my sons looked at each other, consulting.
“He’s dead?” Forget being stoical; I felt suspense in the most literal way, as if I might lift right off the table.
The doctor tried to intervene. “Now, Mrs. Leppo—”
“Yes,” Quinn told me, “Stoat is dead.”
“The cops killed him?”
“No. Justin did.”
“Justin!” Implications hit me one after another, whacking my brain with almost the same dizzying effect as Stoat’s shotgun butt. Justin was alive! Did his parents know? Justin had good reason to kill Stoat, but I knew him; he probably felt awful. Was he in trouble with the law? Or within himself? Who would help him? Would he have the good sense to call his parents? He was such a messed-up kid he might not. I had to do something.
“I have to get out of here.” Again, I tried to sit up. Annoyingly, my sons helped hold me down.
Quinn said, “Mom, you’re not going anywhere except to intensive care.”
The doctor tried again. “Mrs. Leppo—”