I was sitting there feeling very dirty, not to mention sorry for myself, when Danny Clayton walked by. Without recognizing me, I might add.

“Danny,” I said. She kept on walking. “Assistant District Attorney Clayton,” I said, getting her attention.

“Do I…” she started. “Micky!” she exclaimed when she recognized me. “My Lord, woman, what happened to you?”

“Oh, I ran into a doorway,” I answered. The expression on Danny’s face told me better than any mirror how bad I looked.

“It must have been one hell of a door,” she replied.

Ranson walked up, casually said hello to Danny, noticed me, and did a double take. I did get some satisfaction out of having thrown her.

“Shit, Micky, what did they do to you?” Ranson asked in a tight voice.

“They?” Danny asked, looking first at Ranson, then at me.

“Come into my office. No, wait, let’s go to the women’s room and get you cleaned up,” she said and led the way.

Since there weren’t too many women in this area, we had it all to ourselves. Ranson went to get me some sweatpants and a T-shirt from her locker.

I started trying to wash the blood and coal dust off. I had a big bruise on my cheek and jaw where Turner had hit me. My clean arms were a welter of bruises and cuts. Both wrists were torn and scraped from the ropes. My left foot had a nasty cut on the arch and both feet had a number of minor cuts from the oyster shells. The more dirt that came off, the more concerned Danny looked. I almost wished she wasn’t here. I had treated her too badly recently for me to feel I deserved the concern she was showing.

Ranson returned with her gym clothes. I took off the dirty rags.

“Who did this to you?” Danny asked in an angry voice.

“A coal chute, oyster shells, a swamp,” I answered as I dressed. Danny took my chin in one hand and turned my face to her, then started to trace the bruise on my face. I flinched as she hit a sore spot.

“No oyster shell did that. Or that,” she said, pointing to my wrists. “There are laws against people hitting other people,” she finished.

“Yeah, but you should see the other guy,” I said, trying to make a joke. Then I remembered the other guy was in a body bag.

“Can you identify him?” Ranson asked.

“Yes,” I answered. “I can even tell you where he is.” Ranson cocked an eyebrow. “In a morgue somewhere in St. John the Baptist Parish,” I answered. The jokes were over.

“Did you…” asked Danny, leaving the “kill him” hanging.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Let’s go back to my office,” Ranson said, leading us out.

The first thing Ranson did was call out and order us some po-boys for supper. It was past six o’clock already. She seemed willing to let Danny stay, and I didn’t mind.

I told them my story with only a slight interruption for dinner. It took me over two hours, between my fatigue and Ranson’s questions.

When I finished, she stood up and said, “Okay, now it’s time for you to go home and go to bed.”

“She’s coming home with me,” Danny added.

“Good idea,” Ranson said.

But there was still some unfinished business.

“Barbara Selby,” I said. “I have to know how she is.”

Ranson told me that the last she had heard, which was several hours ago, was that Barbara was still in surgery.

“Go get some sleep, Micky. I’ll let you know as soon as anything happens,” she added.

“You had better. I have to know. Call me as soon as you find out,” I answered. Then Danny and I left.

Chapter 12

Danny had stopped and called Elly, so she was not surprised when we showed up. She had even made up the sleeper couch for me. It looked very inviting, but common courtesy compelled me to take a quick shower first. The bathroom in the police station had only gotten off the first layer. Besides, I was hoping that Ranson would call and tell me that Barbara was all right.

The quick shower was actually a quick bath, since my feet felt they had held up my weight enough for the last few days. Danny came in as I was drying myself off and handed me a bath robe. I realized I was embarrassed at her seeing me naked. That had never happened before. The embarrassment, not the nakedness. Maybe because I had finally realized how crappily I had been treating her. Maybe embarrassment is natural when you’re naked in front of an ex-lover with her current lover in the next room. I suspected it was a bit of both.

She looked me over, shaking her head the whole time. I was pretty thoroughly bruised up, all of them painful.

“Lucky for you, Elly is a nurse and she is waiting in the living room with our in-case-of-alligator-attack camping first aid kit.”

“I can’t wait,” I said. “Danny, uh, I…”

She waved me off and said, “Come on out, I want you to meet Elly.”

We left the bathroom for the living room. Elly was there, complete with a large, bright orange first aid kit.

Elly Harrison was not very tall, but she still looked willowy. If she wanted to, she could probably look fragile, but she didn’t now and I doubted I would ever see her that way. She had black, shoulder-length, wavy hair and penetrating hazel eyes.

She sat me down and started working on my cuts with the professional cheerfulness common to all good nurses. We talked while she worked, her side of the conversation being more intelligible than mine, since I did a fair amount of groaning and bitching. Elly didn’t work in a hospital, but was a visiting nurse. She traveled around to homebound patients, checking up on them and evaluating their conditions. She said that most of her patients were terminal, cancer and AIDS, but they didn’t need to be in the hospital. The more we talked, the more impressed I was with Elly. I couldn’t dismiss her even if I had wanted to.

“Come on, Danno, bedtime,” Elly said, catching sight of me starting to nod my head. I was tired, but I didn’t want to lie down yet.

“Yeah,” Danny agreed. “Get some sleep, Micky.”