me a break! I treated a fellow not even half an hour ago with a stab wound to his shoulder. Believe me, I know knife wounds when I see them!”
“Is he going to be okay?” asked Danny.
“Who?”
“This other guy, who was stabbed in the back.”
“How did you know that it was the back of his shoulder?”
There was an uncomfortable silence, then she said, “Yes, he’ll be fine. I don’t know what happened between the two of you and I really don’t care. My job is to patch people up. Most of my customers wouldn’t come in for treatment if they thought I would tell anyone.”
“Thank you, doctor,” said Jack.
She nodded curtly and then turned back to Danny. “I smell alcohol on your breath. I suspect you’ve had enough to drink that I won’t need to waste time administering freezing.”
Danny sat upright. “No! I didn’t drink that much!”
The doctor pursed her lips into a slight grin as she walked over to a cabinet.
“Pansy,” whispered Jack.
It was well past midnight when Jack drove Danny away from the clinic.
“How’s your hand?”
“Sore. So’s my tongue. I bit it when he whacked me.”
“What were you prescribed?”
Danny handed him the small bottle of pills.
Jack examined the label. “T-threes.” He tossed the pill bottle into the back seat. “I have better medicine.”
At 5:15 in the morning, Danny found himself sitting cross-legged on a seawall in Stanley Park, overlooking the ocean. Jack’s medicine was a bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold tequila that they passed back and forth between them.
Jack explained the real reason that he was interested in Satans Wrath and admitted that he didn’t have proper authorization or Louie’s approval to buy drugs.
Danny felt tense. Will Wigmore forgive me for stabbing that guy if I come clean with Taggart? He looked at the half-empty bottle of tequila. What the hell, at least my hand doesn’t hurt. Come to think of it, I can’t feel my legs, either. He rolled over on his side and kicked to untangle his legs. He then snickered when he thought of Jack’s awkward pass at the doctor.
“She was pretty, wasn’t she?”
“Who?” Jack asked.
“The doc.”
“Yes, I noticed.”
“You noticed! No shit! I would never have guessed. Too bad she’s married.”
“She’s not married.”
“Yeah, she is. Don’t you remember? She can’t wear her ring ’cause —”
“She lied.” Jack paused, then took his first real swig on the bottle. “Not that it matters. She obviously didn’t want to go out with me.” He passed the bottle back to Danny and added, “I can’t believe I acted that way around her. I was a fool. No wonder she wasn’t interested.”
“What makes ya say she lied?”
“Her demeanour and her eyes.”
“Her eyes?”
“Most people’s eyes look slightly in one direction when they recall something that is true. Her eyes did, when we talked about music and food. The eyes usually look in the opposite direction when they use the more creative side of their brain to formulate a lie. Her eyes were no different. She doesn’t have a husband or children.”
“Son of a bitch! What are ya? A two-legged lie detector?” Danny chortled but abruptly stopped. Hope the son of a bitch doesn’t ever ask me about Wigface … no, Wig…
“Come on,” said Jack. “Time to take you home.”
It was 6:25 when Susan awakened to the sound of the key turning at the front door. She saw Danny’s figure as he entered the darkened room.
“You’re home late. How was your first shift with your new partner?” Susan asked, leaning out of bed and turning on a bedside light.
It took Susan a moment to grasp the situation. Danny was covered in sand and there was blood on his face, shirt, and bandaged hand. He carried his sports jacket over one shoulder. His other arm was half bare with the jagged remains of his shirtsleeve hanging above.
“My God! What happened? Are you all right?”
“Am I all right? Look at me! I bit my tongue. Some son of a bitch tried to rob me! I got whacked on the skull and had my eyeballs jammed into a urinal with a knife at my throat! Meantime Jack comes in and pisses in the urinal beside us…. Yeah, I’m all right.”
“Didn’t he help you?”
“Help me? Help me! Oh yeah, he helped me all right. Told the guy to steal my wedding ring while he was at it! Did I tell ya I bit my tongue? That’s why I sound funny.”
“Didn’t you call the police?”
Danny stood on one leg as he tried to take off his pants. “Christ! I am the police! Besides, if I had called, I’d be arrested for what I did to the guy.”
“What happened? What did you do to the guy?”
Danny hopped sideways three times across the floor on one leg, before losing his balance and falling facedown on the bed.
“I gotta make notes on this,” mumbled Danny. “Think I’ll be in shit tomorrow … or today … or whatever.” Seconds later he started to snore.
Susan looked at the picture on the dresser of the man she had married and then at the man beside her. Is this the same guy?
Danny snorted as the bed collapsed, then continued to snore. The noise did awaken Tiffany, who cried from the other room.
chapter eight
An hour and a half after Danny’s bed collapsed, Jack met Lucy when she arrived in the parking lot of the crime laboratory.
“Another sample?”
Jack handed her the baggie of powder that he had bought from Red.
Lucy looked closely at the powder. “Looks like meth. Good amount this time. We’re pretty busy at the moment. Probably take me a week or ten days to compare.”
Jack’s shoulders slumped. His voice was monotone. “I got it in a bar that backs out onto the same alley as the one that you cross-matched from the beat cop. Tough bar. If this matches, I could be on to something.”
“Buy this yourself?”
“Don’t
