He laughed at the absurdity of her misjudgment.
“No, that’s not it. The FBI guys never brought me my cell phone. Maybe it’s evidence now or something. But I really need to talk to my mama. She’s got to be frantic by now.”
“I don’t know, Henry. The FBI doesn’t want anybody knowing anything about your status.”
“I know. But you know how this town is. The news is bound to be all over the place by now. Mama could hear it any minute. She might even hear I’m dead.” He shook his head, then regretted it as his skull pounded in response. “Sherry and Mama weren’t best friends or anything, but when word gets out … Lord, I hate to think what Mama might do.”
Irma patted his upper arm. “I know, Henry. You’re right.” The nurse reached into her scrubs pocket. “If you promise not to tell, you can use my phone. Will that help?”
“You’re a blessing, Irma.” He gratefully accepted the phone. “Um … is there any way you could give me a little privacy? I don’t want to—get emotional in front of you.”
“Oh, Henry. We see men cry all the time in this place.”
He closed his eyes and gently shook his head.
“All right. I’ll go in the boss’s private bathroom while you call.”
Henry thanked her, then waited for Irma to fulfill her promise. As soon as she pulled the bathroom door shut, he looked down at the phone and carefully dialed his mother’s number.
CHAPTER 82
“COON’S RIGHT THERE,” says an FBI agent, pointing to a dark hump in the grass beneath the shattered window of Henry’s hospital room.
John Kaiser takes a small but powerful flashlight from his pocket and shines its beam on the gray animal, which appears to have been shot more than once. Then he pushes through the bushes beneath the window. I look right, then left, surprised to see how many volunteer trees and shrubs have obscured the windows that line the hospital wall.
“Hold my light, Penn?” Kaiser says, handing me the black metal tube. “Shine it on this tree trunk.”
I do.
With a penknife, Kaiser digs into a small hole in the bark of a sapling by Henry’s window.
“You got another slug in there?” asks Sheriff Dennis.
“Yep.” Kaiser turns and nudges me out of the bushes. When he steps into the open, his hand held in front of him, I shine the light beam into it. Lying in his palm is a small, deformed slug.
“Twenty-two Magnum?” Sheriff Dennis asks.
“Just like the ones inside.”
A deputy behind me whistles. “I’ll be damned.”
“Is that a sniper rifle?” Caitlin asks.
Kaiser shakes his head. “It’s a varmint gun, basically. People like them because they’re not as loud as a .308, but they have more killing power than a .22 long rifle. You can kill a coyote at seventy yards with a head shot.”
“You can also shoot coons and armadillos without waking up the neighbors,” Sheriff Dennis observes.
Everybody falls silent. Speculation about the bullet’s caliber temporarily blinded everyone to what is right before us. We have a dead raccoon and a dead woman within a few yards of each other.
“You see any other holes in that tree?” Sheriff Dennis asks Kaiser. “Maybe the wall?”
I shine the light at the window, and Kaiser points to the right of it. “Looks like one embedded in the wall there.”
“Shit,” says Dennis. “You think some kid could have been popping off rounds at that coon and accidentally shot through the window?”
“No way in hell,” says Kaiser.
Walker doesn’t look so sure. “Every kid in this parish owns a .22. They get BB guns for Christmas when they’re four years old. If you stand outside around here on any given night, you’re gonna hear shots. What if some kid was chasin’ that coon and run him up that tree you dug the slug out of? That’s just what a coon does. One miss would put a bullet right through Henry’s window.”
“Why would a kid fire with a lighted window right there?” Kaiser asks. “And why multiple shots? No. You’re reaching, Sheriff.”
“Buck fever,” says a new voice from behind us—a voice that sounds almost as amused as it does certain. “There’s prob’ly a ten-year-old kid crappin’ his pants somewhere right now, wondering if he shot a hole in somebody’s bedpan.”
As Kaiser turns to argue, the deputies part for the newcomer. I shine Kaiser’s flashlight on a man with a hard, angular, copper-hued face, gold bars on his shoulders, and a gold badge in the shape of the Pelican State gleaming on the breast of his blue uniform shirt.