AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It’ll be okay,” the woman said, in a way that made Cooper understand that it wouldn’t be okay.
Outside the library, Heath had gone slack, and when released, looked around, clutched his chest and staggered to a couch and fell on it. He cried out, “Not this, not this... Oh, my Lord...”
Inside the library, a groggy Cooper was half sitting, hand on her bleeding cheek, and she said, “Purse, give me my bag...”
“You need to lie back down...”
“Give me my bag...”
One of the women handed her the shoulder bag, and she dug out her purse, took out a compact, opened it and looked at her cheek and said, “Oh, Jesus...” She had two bloody slashes below her eye on her right cheek. One of the cuts was a full three inches long, and deep, the blood flowing freely. The other was shorter, at an angle to the first, and also bleeding heavily.
She said, “Phone, where’s my phone...”
The woman found Cooper’s phone in the shoulder bag and she thumbed through her contact list and found Lucas’s number and called it. Lucas picked up and she said, her voice now as calm as she could manage: “I was attacked by Noah Heath. My face was cut bad, and Ann said your wife is the best plastic surgeon in the Twin Cities... I need her...”
Lucas: “Where are you? Can you drive?”
“University Club in St. Paul. I have people here... they’ve called an ambulance.”
“I’ll call Weather. I’ll call you back in one minute.”
The women around her said, “Maggie, lie down... lie down.”
She did, clutching her phone. A headache was clawing at her temples from the impact with the floor. A minute later, Lucas called back: “Go to Regions. Weather will meet you at the emergency room.”
“I’ll go...” she said.
Police arrived.
They took a look at Cooper, listened to the men, and to Heath, who was apologizing, the words tumbling out in an unending cascade, good as a confession. They arrested him, and when the ambulance arrived, led the paramedics into the library past a gathering audience. The paramedics put a brace on Cooper’s neck when she told them about the head pain, loaded her on a gurney, and took her out to the ambulance.
Ten minutes later, she said, “Hello,” to Weather, who looked at her and said, “Yeah. We can fix that. We’re going to take some pictures of your neck and head, first, to make sure we don’t have anything else to deal with.”
“That sounds... okay,” Cooper said.
—
Virgil and Lucaswere standing in Heath’s front hallway when Cooper called. Virgil had listened to Lucas talking to Cooper and Weather, and when Lucas had finished, he asked, “What the hell happened?”
“Heath attacked her during the board meeting. She couldn’t give me details, except that she got cut bad. We’re five minutes from the University Club...”
—
The cops werestill talking to witnesses when Lucas and Virgil got to the club, but Cooper was gone. There were three patrol cars in the driveway, and as they parked in the street, they saw Heathbeing escorted to one of the cars by a cop, his hands cuffed behind him. He was talking rapidly to the cop, who seemed to be paying no attention.
Lucas and Virgil showed their IDs to the sergeant who was managing the scene and warned him that the attack was part of a much larger and complicated situation.
“I already got that from these board members,” the sergeant said. “They think this Heath guy killed a couple people.”
“So do we,” Virgil said. “You know about that body dug up this morning... that’s the victim.”
“Hoo, boy.” The sergeant looked back at the crowd of board members. “I guess we nail down everything.”
Virgil and Lucas talked to the board members about the fight, got Technicolor descriptions, then Virgil called Durey and Lucas called Russo, to fill them in. Russo said he’d come to the club. Virgil called Ann Melton. Melton was in Minneapolis, said that she’d immediately go to Regions Hospital, and that Chelsea was with Fatima, the child-care helper.
Lucas and Virgil went to Regions. They were both familiar with the hospital, and a nurse told them that Cooper had been through imaging and was being taken to surgery.
“Weather Karkinnen is my wife,” Lucas told the nurse. “If she’s not scrubbed up yet...”
