I had my gun, but couldn’t use it. She was running away from me. I couldn’t very well shoot her in the back. I had nothing else on me, except for the IV tubing, and I had to actually catch her to use that. Bolting down the porch steps, I stopped, went back, and grabbed one of the decorative geese. I got a good grip on its neck, then Frisbeed it across the lawn at the fleeing woman, the ultimate Hail Mary pass. I was aiming for her back, but the goose in the rain jacket clipped her right behind the kneecaps and she went down. She was halfway up when I tackled her. We went down in a heap and the flailing began again. Angry beyond measure now, I pinned her to the lawn and ground her face into the grass.

“Get off. You bitch.” With every word, she spit out blades of grass, which pleased me immensely.

“Sure thing,” I said, fumbling with the plastic tubing. “You wait right there.” I got her wrists tied off, then pulled hard to tighten the knots. The woman let out a bloodcurdling scream of frustration, almost as loud as the noise from the airplanes.

“I’ll kill you.”

I leaned over, patted her on the head. “Not today, you won’t.” I was still sitting on her when the first squad car pulled up. When the cops rushed over, I rolled off and stretched out on the grass, gulping in air. I slid my PI’s license out of my pocket and placed it on my chest for identification purposes. I was breathing too hard to tell the cops who I was. I lay there, on my back, my head spinning, watching the planes fly by, wondering where everybody was going.

“She tried to kill my wife!” I heard Symonds yell. I hoped he wasn’t pointing at me, but I was too spent to lift up to check.

“The nurse,” he said. At that moment, I figured I wasn’t going to jail, at least not for this, so I closed my eyes and let out a sigh of relief, fighting back the urge to throw up all over the Symondses’ lawn. And it wasn’t even noon yet.

Chapter 38

Chapter 38

There were twenty-six messages on my phone, and when I scrolled through the log, I was not surprised to see who they were from. I sent back a group text, letting Barb, Whip, Ben, and Mrs. Vincent know that I was alive, and, though not technically well, still moving under my own steam. Then I turned the phone off to head off any angry replies.

Sitting at the Symondses’ kitchen table, out of the way, while the paramedics checked Stella, Marta’s face slowly came into focus. “You look like you need the paramedics.”

I pressed a Ziploc bag of ice cubes to my head, courtesy of Ron Symonds. “Who called you?”