Samaritan Read Online Free PDF Page A

his hand in hers. “You need to tell me what happened.”
    “Doorbell rings,” he finally said. “I open the door, next thing I know some paramedic’s asking me my date of birth.”
    “Doorbell rings,” she nodded, reaching into one of the shopping bags and pulling out a notepad. “You got a doorman?”
    “An intercom,” he said grudgingly, Nerese taking his willful surliness as a good sign, at least biology-wise.
    “An intercom. So, you’ve got to buzz people up, right?”
    “He must’ve rung someone else’s buzzer, got in the building that way.”
    “He?”
    “I’m assuming.”
    “OK.” She shrugged. “‘He’ rings your doorbell. You ask who’s there? Or did you just open up the door?”
    He took a long time answering, Nerese not sure if it was the head injury or Ray just trying to buy some time here.
    “I don’t remember. I must’ve asked who’s there, I guess. I don’t remember.”
    “Look through the peephole?”
    “If I did, I don’t remember.”
    “Don’t remember. OK, so you open the door. Next thing you’re in a rig heading for the hospital. So whoever did this, it’s not like you invited them inside because you’d most definitely remember that, right?”
    “Right.”
    “Ray . . . When you came to the door, were you carrying a big vase with you?”
    “A what?” he said, then, “No.”
    “You got one in the house?”
    “I guess.”
    “Where in the house?”
    “Living room.”
    “Where in the living room?”
    “In a corner, between the couches.”
    “See, Ray, I’m asking, because the medics told me, they come up to get you, you’re laying there, someone had smashed a big vase over your head. Blood and plaster everywhere.”
    “Shit.”
    “They said you were seizing up, flopping around like a fish on a dock, had a sharp chunk of plaster in your fist?” She pointed with her pen to his bandaged pinkie, Ray staring at it as if he had never realized that there was a hand at the end of that particular arm. “Almost severed your own finger there.”
    He closed his eyes, winced as if pricked, opened them.
    “So let me ask you this . . . When you opened the door, was this guy by any chance
carrying
a big vase? You know, like waiting for you, like, ‘Surprise!’”
    He didn’t answer.
    “OK . . . So you must’ve gotten clocked with that vase that was sitting in the corner between the two couches, huh?”
    He started to turn away from her, reaching weakly behind him to close his open-backed smock, then gave up.
    “So this guy had to have entered your apartment, looked around, spotted the vase, walked over to the corner between the two couches, picked up the vase, come back up to you and . . .” Nerese mimed raising that vase over his head, slowly bringing it down in front of his face.
    “Why are you making me feel like I’m the criminal,” he said without heat.
    “Ray. Are you afraid of this guy?”
    “What guy . . .”
    “Ray.” She sighed. “You invited the guy in, or he pushed his way in, or something, but there’s no way you can tell me you have no memory of it.”
    Looking overwhelmingly dejected, he finally successfully rolled on his side away from her, delicately pulling the thin blanket up to his ribs to cover himself.
    “Ray, you know this guy, don’t you . . .”
    He turned back to her.
    “You know, you have used my name in front of everything you’ve said to me. That’s a technique car salesmen use.”
    “Ray, are you afraid of him?”
    “No,” he said calmly, finally, as if not having the stamina for all this.
    “You know him though, right?”
    She was on the verge of repeating the question when he finally responded. “I don’t want to press charges.”
    Nerese nodded, trying to read him, picking up not fear—more like embarrassment, shame; thinking, Maybe something sexual, man-man, hoping it wasn’t man-boy, Ray just wanting it to go away at any price.
    “You want me to press them for you? I can do