Day Shift
Page 68

Chuy gave him a very direct look. “Okay, you. No fooling around. You get back here in time, and don’t overdo it on that ankle.”
“Yes, Mom,” Joe said, and went to change into his running clothes.
In ten minutes, he’d done his stretching and began to run. For the first few minutes, he brooded over the fact that he hadn’t been kind to Chuy, and he promised himself he’d make up for it when he got back. And then the fact that he had no shadow, since he was running in the evening, was a bit spellbinding. He was used to seeing his shadow precede him, and he was constantly tempted to look back to make sure it was following him. He persuaded himself that was foolishness and pounded on with determination. It did feel good to be running again. It had been all too easy to take off days because of his ankle.
Which was beginning to throb again.
At first, Joe tried to ignore the burst of discomfort every time his foot hit the pavement. Then he admitted it but ran through it, because turning back so soon would mean he’d been foolish.
Then he admitted he’d let his anxiety provoke him into unwise behavior.
Then he fell again.
And he was down for several minutes. His ankle hurt far more than it had the first time, and that had been bad. This was terrible. He wondered if he’d broken a bone, for the first time in his long existence.
When he had gathered himself mentally, and the pain had subsided maybe a degree, Joe tried to get up. And failed.
He looked at his watch and began dragging himself back to Midnight.
After ten determined minutes, he had to admit he was not going to make it in time. If fate didn’t intervene, he’d be wounded and disabled out here with nowhere to hide, close to Midnight, when darkness fell.
Chuy might appear at any minute with the Suburban, but he might not. Chuy would wait until the last second, so he wouldn’t look like “Mom,” as Joe had so carelessly called him. Chuy was not overly proud, but he knew Joe very well. Yes, he would wait.
Joe thought about any solution other than the one that had occurred to him, and he came up with nothing. He was going to have to break a promise, and it grieved him. But he felt the surge of excitement even as he felt the grief, and he knew the guilt even as he prepared for the glory.
He sat up straight and let his other nature rush in and fill him. He became more. He became much more. And his wings emerged, white and gleaming, indescribably beautiful. He caught his breath at the wave of joy that filled him, and he willed his wings to move.
He rose in the air, almost screaming with the sensation, and then he was flying. Each powerful flap made muscles in his back flex, muscles he had not used in years. Even on Halloween, when he and Chuy let their wings out for Fiji’s party, they did not fly, because they had promised each other they would not. Now he was breaking that promise, and he would pay for it, but the moment was sublime. He circled high above Midnight, looking down, once, twice, and then he saw his beloved come out on the sidewalk in the gathering gloom to look anxiously to the west. With a sharp reluctance, he knew he must land, and he came down behind the store.
Chuy must have caught a glimpse of him passing overhead, because he was there in a second, his face a mask of distress. But when he saw Joe lying on the ground, groaning, he rushed to help him. With a lot of effort, he got Joe up, and somehow they made their way up the outside stairs to their apartment as darkness fell on Midnight. They paused to rearrange themselves about halfway up. From the darkness nearby, they heart a sort of chuffing noise. It came from some large animal. And without saying a word, they moved up the remaining stairs with a speed they hadn’t thought they could achieve a minute before. They went in the door as fast as they could and locked it behind them.
Then the only light was the light of the full moon.
27
Rachel Goldthorpe was murdered,” Arthur Smith was telling Manfred, at the same time that Joe was putting on his running clothes.
Manfred sat down abruptly. “For sure? How?”
“The tox results show that she had taken six times the dosage of her blood pressure medicine. Almost certainly that wasn’t on purpose. It had been dissolved in the water bottle she carried.”
“She drank out of it while I was watching.”
“Yeah, it was your telling the Bonnet Park police that detail that let them know to look for the bottle. Somehow in the attempt to save her, it got knocked off the table and rolled under the couch. One of the cops there found it just in time. The doctor says he suspected an overdose from the first, but now it’s confirmed.”
“She said she dropped it in the lobby,” Manfred said. “She said people helped her pick up her stuff and put it back in her purse. I guess . . . could it have been put in there then?” He almost held his breath, waiting for the answer.
“It doesn’t seem likely,” Arthur said, and Manfred breathed again. “If someone wanted to poison her, surely they’d put the medicine in an identical water bottle and substitute that one for the one in her purse. And that would take a lot of foreknowledge. The appearance of the bottle, with all the butterfly decals on it. The type of medicine she’d been prescribed, the dosage that would kill her.”
“What kind did she take?”
“The medical examiner says she overdosed on Cardizem.”
“What exactly does that do?”
“That was her blood pressure medication.”
“But she wouldn’t have taken it like that. Crushed up and put in her water. Who would take their pills like that?”