What Stella Wants

It was a small, three-stall room with two sinks and a window above the heating unit at the far end of the room. As I watched, a green ass and a pair of legs vanished through the open window.

“Hey!” I cried and went into autopilot. I ran, scaled the metal heater and scrambled up the side of the wall and through the open window.

There was a six-foot drop to the ground below. I looked up and saw a figure in green scrubs running across the back parking lot, headed for the woods and thought, why me? Where’s Jake? Damn!

I jumped, dropping hard to my knees before straightening and pursuing my quarry into the woods. She had a good head start on me but I was in shape, and with effort, I began to slowly close the gap between us. And then she disappeared. She simply vanished into the thick stand of pine trees in front of me.

I stopped, stuck my hand into my jacket pocket and brought out the gun.

“Aida,” I called. “I just want to talk to you.”

I stood still, listening. The air was thick with the humidity that signaled an oncoming snowstorm and all the small ordinary sounds. Where was she? I tried to remember the area around the nursing home, searching for a mental map in my mind that would let me guess how she might try to escape so I could anticipate her next move.

Where the hell was Jake when I needed backup?

I crept slowly forward, still listening, barely breathing as I scanned the fir trees ahead of me. I slipped the safety off the Lady Smith and slid my forefinger along the smooth barrel of the gun.

I never saw her coming.

She landed the first blow to the side of my head, a swift, strong punch that I’m certain left knuckle indentations in my skull and sent my gun flying out of my hand. She had a good jump on me, but I landed the next punch. I whirled around, caught sight of cold, green eyes and faked right before upper-cutting her with a solid left.

Neither of us said a word. We fought in silence, each too intent on landing the finishing blow. I felt the air sail out of her lungs as I landed a kick to her solar plexus. Her answering move threw me off my feet and onto the hard ground. I saw my gun lying a short distance away and rolled to grab it. My fingers had just closed around the firm metal grip when lights exploded somewhere behind my left ear and the world around me swirled into an inky darkness.

When I came to, Aida had vanished. I thought I heard footsteps running away in the distance, but it could easily have been the anguished pounding of my head. I struggled to my feet, leaned against a nearby pine tree and waited for the world to stop spinning around me. What had that girl hit me with?

“Stella!”

Great. Now he shows up. I could hear Jake getting closer but when I tried to answer the only sound that escaped was a thin, high-pitched squeak. When he finally caught sight of me, he stopped and stared.

“What did you do, hit a tree?”

I just looked at him. Well, actually, I looked at two of him for a moment before my vision cleared. Jake was attempting to play, but his concern was evident in his eyes. I’d scared him.

“I opened a can of whoop ass on this tree here and then I used what I had left over on that little nurse’s aide Marygrace wanted us to interview.”

Jake looked around the clearing. “What’d you do then, bury her?”

I let go of the tree and took a few uncertain steps toward him. “No, idiot, I let her crawl off into the woods to die. It was the only honorable thing to do.”

He nodded. “She cold-cocked you and got away, huh?”

I looked past him and started walking back toward the nursing home. “Yeah, something like that.”

Jake stopped me, studying my face before gently tracing the area around my left eye with his thumb.

“Ouch! Stop that!”

He smiled softly. “You’re gonna have a hell of a shiner.”

“Yeah, well you should see her!”

Jake sighed as I shrugged off his attempt to support me while I walked.

“Where were you, anyway? Here I am, attempting to whoop some scrawny girl’s ass and you’re chatting with Spike on the phone. Where’s your sense of duty? You’re supposed to back up your partner.”

Jake’s expression darkened. “I hope you’re kidding. If somebody hadn’t seen you running and told Marygrace, I’d still be looking for you. I had no idea you’d get into something so fast.”

“Yes, I was kidding. What did Spike want?”

“Among other things, she called to tell me the coroner was about to send Bitsy’s body to the state forensic lab for identification when the feds stepped in and claimed it.”

“How’d they explain that?”

“They told the coroner she was married to a member of the diplomatic corps and that he’d requested it.”

“Which was bullshit, right?”

Jake nodded. “Yep. Guess there’s no doubt about it. She was still on the payroll.”

We’d reached the front entrance to the building, and Marygrace was waiting for us. When she caught sight of me, her expression ran the gamut from surprised to horrified to professionally neutral. I figured I had to look pretty scary to make her pull out her job face.

“Looks like you need a little doctoring,” she said. “Our physician’s assistant, Stephanie, can take a look at you.”

“I’m fine. I just got a little scraped up, that’s all.”

Marygrace raised an eyebrow. “Well, I just thought you might not want to scare the residents. Come on. Let her patch you up. Besides, I figured you’d want to talk to her anyway. She’s the one who usually looks after the residents in place of the doctor.”

I nodded, wishing my head didn’t hurt so much. “You don’t have a doctor on staff?”

Marygrace was scuttling down the hallway but the mention of expense and doctors made her pause momentarily. “With Medicaid paying? Hell, places like this don’t get real doctors. We get their P.A. and if it’s really bad, we might see them at the end of the day, when they’re already too tired and could care less about whether one old person lives or dies.” She apparently thought better of this because she quickly tacked on a disclaimer. “Not all of them are sharks. I’m just saying most of them are.”

“The doc here, is he a shark?”

“No comment,” she answered grimly. “But I like Stephanie.”

“Was she the one who initially treated Baby today?”

Marygrace shook her head. “Nope. She was seeing patients in Dr. Alonzo’s office when Baby got hurt. The charge nurse sent her on to the hospital and she’s still there. But Stephanie saw her after she reported someone had been in her room two days ago.”

Jake was walking along with us, the frown on his face deepening with every step. When Marygrace stopped to speak to a resident, I took him aside. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m just trying to put this all together. I mean, why go out a bathroom window and not a door?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Marygrace said, rejoining us and shamelessly eavesdropping. “All the doors are locked. You can only get out by punching in the code on the keypad that’s located next to each door.”

“And don’t all the employees have the code?”

“Sure,” Marygrace said, grinning. “Unless you change it and don’t tell them. That’s what I did as soon as I got back here. I wanted to control who was coming and going until the police got here. The front door was the only door with open access and I had the front desk clerk writing down the names of everyone who arrived or departed.”