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sad. “Mr. Crow…I’m sorry to tell you this, but Mrs. Guthrie passed away.”
    “What?” He couldn’t process what the doctor just told him.
    “Her wounds were too severe, there was extensive damage to her airway and…” He faltered and shook his head. “We did everything we could. I’m so sorry.” He left very quietly.
    Crow had no memory of walking into the bathroom, but he suddenly found himself sitting on the floor between the toilet and the sink, dizzy and sick. He clamped his hands together, laced his fingers tightly over his knuckles, and bent his head, mumbling prayers to a God he’d long since come to doubt, or at best mistrust. He wanted to pray, tried to put it in words, but there had been too many bad nights and too many broken years since he last believed, and he found that he’d lost the knack of it. So all he did was squeeze his eyes shut and say the only words that he could muster, making the only argument that made any sense to him.
    “Take me if you want,” he pleaded, “but not Val. Not her, too. Not our baby. Do whatever you want to me, but save my family.” When he added, “Please!” it sounded like the word had been pulled out of his mouth with pliers.
    (2)

    Jim Polk was in charge of the police detail at the hospital. He was Sheriff Gus Bernhardt’s right-hand man, the department’s only sergeant, and getting what he wanted was easy. Gus was an idiot and even Gus knew it, just as Gus knew that if it wasn’t for Polk’s efficiency, energy, and attention to detail the whole department would be a total wreck. So, what Polk wanted, Polk got.
    Even Brad Maynard, head of hospital security, deferred to Polk, especially in light of the hospital’s appalling track record lately. First Ruger had broken into the hospital and disabled both main and backup generators so he could try and kill Crow and Val; then the very next day Boyd broke in and stole Ruger’s body from the morgue. It was an open secret that Maynard was going to have to face the hospital’s board and no one was putting hot money on his chances for keeping his job.
    All of this was Polk’s doing. Ordered by Vic, of course, but planned and executed by Polk. I should just request a revolving door for the morgue , he thought as he poured ten sugar packets into the cup of cafeteria coffee he’d sent one of the hospital guards to fetch for him.
    It was coming on 4:00 A.M . when his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. Polk didn’t even have to look at it to know who it was. He jerked his chin for the hospital guard to come over. “Duke, I’m gonna go catch a smoke. You stay here. Remember—no one talks to Val Guthrie unless I personally say it’s okay. No exceptions.”
    “What about Crow?”
    Polk gave him a Clint Eastwood squint. The one Clint uses when he’s trying to figure out how to explain to some total idiot the difference between shit and Shinola. Vic had given him that same look too damn many times. “Just do what you’re told, okay?”
    Polk turned on his heel the way he’d seen Clint, and Vic, do and strolled out of the ER and into the fire tower. He jogged up a flight and then down a flight to make sure no one else was around and then pulled out his cell and hit speed-dial. Vic answered on the first ring. “What the hell took you so long?”
    “I was with people.”
    “Gimme a status report on Mayor Wolfe. He going to make it?”
    The town’s mayor, Terry Wolfe, had attempted suicide by hurling himself out of his second-floor window. The drop was not far enough to kill him, but almost.
    “He’s a mess. Forty broken bones, couple of ’em compound. Shattered skull. Brain’s probably chopped liver. He’s in a coma right now. Guess we’re going to need a new mayor.”
    “So he’s definitely out of the picture for the moment.”
    “What about Val Guthrie? What shape did Boyd leave her in?”
    “Might go blind in one eye. They just ran a bunch of tests, but right now they got an OB-GYN in with her.