for a ride in a big van.”
“She’s got a pulse, but it’s pitiful,” Jay reported from the bedside, where Maggie joined him. With space at a premium, he stepped aside, deferring to the unofficial top-of-the-pecking-order designation Maggie’s skills had earned her in the two years since she’d been on staff.
“Merilee, can you hear me? We’re here to help you.” Maggie directed Jay toward the bathroom door, which stood open. He knew what to look for. “Where’s your little girl, Merilee? What’s her name?”
“What’s she saying?”
“Sounds like she’s counting. Did you take pills, Merilee?” Maggie leaned close to the woman’s pale lips, fingers on the thready pulse. At her back, Dick was raising the gurney. “Anything, Jay?”
“Not much.” Jay came out of the bathroom brandishing a small plastic bag. “Meds. No kid.”
“Check under the beds.” Maggie tucked a white blanket around the patient while Dick strapped her down. “I’ll ride with her.”
Sam watched Dick Litelle back through door number three, pulling the loaded gurney out after him. The patient came out feetfirst, swaddled like a mummy. Sam endured a few seconds of dry-mouthed suspense before getting his first glimpse of a frowsy head with unopened eyes and uncovered face—not dead, but deathly pallid—as it slid into the sunlight. The translucent frailty of a once hard-edged beauty now stung his eyes. Merilee Brown. The name the Gossets had given him was a surprise, but the face was a shocker. The years were written on it a thousand times over.
“Mommy!”
Sam spun on his heel.
“They’re taking my mom!”
“Wait, honey.”
Sam jerked his head toward the sound of a voice more familiar than his own. Sure enough, his mother was there, wrapping her arms around a child who had suddenly become her honey. The same child claiming Merilee for her mom.
Hilda looked up at him, her chest heaving as she struggled to catch her breath. “Sam, what’s happened? This little girl just showed up at the—”
“Merilee Brown.” A flurry of disconnected images—some sweet, some sordid—swirled behind Sam’s staring eyes. “I used to…” He shook his head hard and got his wits back in line. “Ted says she called the front desk and said she couldn’t get up. Says his wife went to the room right away and found her like this.” He got his feet moving as Maggie hopped into the ambulance as soon as the stretcher was in place. “I’ll clear the way,” he called to the driver.
His mother grabbed his arm. “This is her daughter.”
His glance ping-ponged between the two faces—Ma, kid, Ma—and he jerked open the back door of his patrol car. “Let’s go.”
Sam shut off the lights in the back of his mind. He moved quickly. Siren, radio contact, eyes on the street, head in the moment. His mother knew better than to speak to him on the way to Bear Root Medical. The dizzying whoosh from here to there made for insulated silence within the car, wailing without.
It wasn’t until they were back on foot, following the gurney through the emergency entrance like three spell-bound pilgrims, that Sam’s thoughts got personal again. Merilee had come to Bear Root. He glanced at the top of the little head bobbing along between him and his mother.
She’d brought a kid with her.
What the hell?
He called the office to check in with Phoebe Shooter, his deputy, told her to “woman the fort” and then stationed himself in a chair with a view. Had everything covered—the door to the ICU, the nurse’s station, the outside world through a window in the lobby down the hall…everything except what he was getting paid for. He should have been finishing the paperwork he’d left on his desk so he could take a ride out to the abandoned Osterhaus place and check out Minnie Lampert’s umpteenth sighting of “suspicious activity.” Any change with Merilee, he’d get a call from somebody. His mother was hovering over the girl like they were cuffed to each other, and they’d both been admitted to the room with Merilee.
Was that a bad sign?
“Where was the little girl?”
Sam turned toward the welcome sound of Maggie’s voice. Her question didn’t register, but the just-between-us look in her green eyes did. She handed him a warm foam cup with a plastic lid as she settled into the chair next to his. “We were looking for her in the motel room,” she explained.
“At the store, I guess.” He peeled back the tab on the plastic lid. “Ma has a way with strays.”
“Strays? That’s an odd—”
“Looks like she strayed off to the store and left her mother in a bad way without any…” He trailed off on a sip of black coffee.
“She’s just a little girl, Sam.” She glanced toward the door marked Intensive Care as she took a drink from her own cup. “Where are they from? Do the Gossets know anything about the woman?”
“Merilee Brown,” he said quietly.
“Other than what’s on the registration card.”
“I don’t know what’s on the registration card. She used to work at a truck stop in Wyoming. She moved to California eight, close to nine years ago.”
“You know her?”
She sounded startled. Like she didn’t know he’d ever been outside Bear Root County. Not that they’d ever talked about his travels. Generally, that was where his mother came in, talking up his so-called adventures.
“I didn’t know she was here in town. Can’t imagine what she’d be doing here.” He braced his elbows on his knees, cradled the coffee between his hands and studied the jagged hole in the lid. “Is it drugs?”
“I don’t know,” she said solemnly. “Jay found some meds, but I didn’t see what they were. Does she use?”
“She did when I knew her. I haven’t seen her since I joined the marines. How bad off is she?”
“It doesn’t look good. They took her to X-ray.”
Maggie settled back in her chair. Her white skirt crept a few inches above her knees. The other nurses wore white pants, but not Maggie. He couldn’t figure out whether she was old-fashioned or she just liked dresses better. She looked good in a dress, even if it was a uniform, but she might have blended in a little better if she wore pants.
Or not. Maggie was different, no doubt about that. Blending wasn’t her way. Not that he was an authority on the ways of Maggie Whiteside, but he’d taken considerable notice. Thought a lot about studying up.
“Were you close?” she asked.
He pushed up on his thigh with the heel of his hand and questioned her with a look.
“Well, she’s lying there unconscious, and nobody else around
