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Detective Roth let out a low sigh but gave me a tired smile. “I appreciate your talking to us, Miss Crawford,” he said. “I hope you get to feeling better.” Then he too was out the door, and I was alone in the room once again.
Wrung out and depressed, I dropped the card into the wastebasket. This day couldn’t get much worse.
The blonde nurse entered again, this time carrying a cooler and a large paper grocery bag which she set on the bed beside me. “This was left at the nurse’s station for you,” she said, smiling brightly. “Looks like you won’t have to go home in a hospital gown after all! I’ll go get your paperwork ready, and as soon as you’re dressed you should be able to get out of here.”
She was out of the room with the door closing behind her before I had a chance to respond.
I stared at the closed door in confusion then looked over at the stuff on the bed. The cooler was one of those mini plastic things, big enough to hold a six-pack of beer. I opened it to find six bottles of Frappuccino. At least that’s what I thought it was at first. It was the same type of bottle as those kind of coffee drinks, and the contents were brown and opaque, but there were no labels on the bottles, and there was also some sort of pinkish lumpy sediment at the bottom.
What the hell?
I checked the bag with the clothes next. A pair of exercise-type pants, a sports bra, underwear, a plain blue T-shirt and some flip-flops—all stuff that could be bought if you weren’t sure of someone’s size. I was skinny with no tits and no muscle tone. As long as the pants had a drawstring at the waist, I was probably good to go. At the bottom of the bag was an envelope and a twenty dollar bill with a little sticky note that had “cab fare” neatly printed on it.
Again, what the hell? My first reaction was to get pissed. I didn’t need anyone else’s help. I took care of myself because, frankly, depending on someone else meant standing outside an empty, locked elementary school at six P.M. and telling Mrs. Robichaux that no, really, my mom would be here any minute and I didn’t need a ride while a) Kerrie Robichaux, who gets 100s on her spelling tests is looking out the car window at me in a way that I’m pretty sure says, Don’t you even think about getting your trashy ass in the back seat of this nice car, and b) Mom is again conveniently forgetting I exist because her life was so much fucking better before she got saddled with a kid and had to do boring things like pick me up from school and make sure I had clean clothes and socks that matched. I took care of myself because I figured out that it was better when she didn’t remember I was around. And even after she was gone I took care of myself, because Dad couldn’t handle being a dad, and instead sat on a bar stool at Kaster’s remembering when his life was simple and his wife was fun and he had his job on the oil rig.
Except right now I was naked—well, not counting the hospital gown. And I couldn’t take care of that without help, though I was damned if I could figure out who’d bother getting clothes and cab fare for me. The only person who came to mind was my sort of boyfriend, Randy, but I couldn’t see him giving me money for a cab when he could come and get me. Plus, he knew my size.
I ripped open the envelope and read the letter. Then I read it again, because it didn’t make any sense the first time through.
Angel— Take good care of the contents of the cooler because it should get you through the next couple of weeks. It’s very important that you drink one bottle every other day, starting tomorrow, or you’ll start to feel very sick. Be sure to shake it up well before you drink it.
There’s a job waiting for you at the Coroner’s Office. They have an opening for a van driver, and the arrangements have already been made. Go to the office at 9 A.M. tomorrow to fill out the paperwork and start work.
Now, here’s the deal: You will take this job, and you will hold it for at least one month. If you quit, or are fired before one month is out, your probation officer will be informed that there were drugs in your system when you were brought to the ER, and you’ll go to jail for violating your probation. And if you go to jail, you’ll probably die there within a few weeks. This isn’t a threat. It’s a warning. I’d explain, but there’s no way you’d believe me. You’ll understand eventually.
Good luck.
Hey, look, I thought with a miserable laugh, this day just got worse.
I stared down at the letter in confusion and disbelief. My mom had gone to prison when I was twelve and died while still incarcerated, on the day I turned sixteen. That was a little over five years ago. Then last year I’d been more of a moron than usual and had bought a nearly new Toyota Prius for five hundred dollars from some guy Randy knew. A week later I was pulled over and arrested for possession of stolen property. Yeah, my “bargain” of a car had been jacked a couple of weeks earlier in New Orleans. But the seriously sucky part was that I’d kinda suspected that it hadn’t been legit but went ahead and gave the guy the money for it anyway, too excited about what a great deal I was getting, and convinced that I wouldn’t get caught. Moron. I’d spent two days scared shitless in a holding cell before I could find someone to bail me out, and had been lucky as hell to get a three-year suspended sentence and probation.
I read the letter again, hand shaking. I thought I’d dodged a bullet with that visit from the two detectives, but here was another one right behind it, ready to flatten me. I didn’t want to go back to jail, and I didn’t want to end up like my mom and die there. But why would I die within weeks? What was that all about? Maybe someone who had a grudge against me was in jail already? I’d pissed off plenty of people in my life, but as far as I knew there wasn’t anyone who hated me enough to want to kill me.
I turned the letter over, searching for any clue as to who had sent it. It was printed on plain white paper and the envelope was an ordinary white envelope. No signature. No postmark. None of this made any sense. I couldn’t think of a single person who’d bother finding me a job, much less threaten me with jail to make sure I kept it.
Why jail? Why not rehab?
Because jail’s a bigger threat, I realized. Rehab would suck, but jail. . . . Whoever sent this stuff had to know that jail scared the shit out of me.
I read the letter one more time, then took a deep breath and started getting dressed while my thoughts continued to tumble. It wasn’t as if I’d set out to be a loser. I didn’t wake up every morning and say, “Hey, how can I screw my life up today?” But the universe sure seemed to be rigged against me, and most of the time it didn’t seem to matter how hard I tried since I was obviously never going to catch a break.
Except. Except this letter wasn’t a couple of hardass cops questioning me about something I didn’t know shit about. This was someone holding a big whopping threat over my head, who also seemed to be crazy enough to give the slightest crap about me—and give me that break I kept saying I wanted. Me. Loser girl. If this job was for real and I didn’t at least give it a shot I’d be right back at being a Grade A Screwup. But who the hell would do this for me?
I had a feeling the only way I was going to find out would be to take the stupid job.
Drive a van for a month. How hard could that be?
Chapter 2
I made it home from the hospital and obediently set my alarm for 7:30 A.M. This was my chance to turn things around, to not be a complete screwup.
My alarm went off at 7:30. I slapped the snooze and rolled over.
I woke up again at 9:15.
Crap!
I took the fastest shower of my life, yanked on jeans that I hoped were clean, grabbed the first T-shirt I could find that didn’t show my navel or have something obnoxious printed on it. Great. I had a job handed to me, and I screwed it up the first day. That I didn’t understand why I supposedly had this job was beside the point. If it paid real money and didn’t involve me getting naked, I was willing to give it a shot. Besides, I’d been doing some thinking. I was a huge fan of all those crime scene shows on TV, so I knew that coroners did forensics and that kind of stuff, and carried all their equipment around in big vans or Hummers—which most likely needed drivers, right? In other words, there was a really good chance that this job could be exceedingly cool.
