Shallow Graves Read Online Free PDF Page B

chest. The medic told him that if it’d been going straight it would’ve pinned him to the wall. “Lahk a stuck piyag, Pellam. You a lucky somvabitch.”
    “Used to do stunt work,” he now said to the doctor.
    “Oh, you’re the movie man, huh?”
    Pellam focused on him. He really looked like he should be treating fuzzy terriers and poodles and mending tipped cows.
    “I’m the movie man.”
    “Don’t do stunts anymore, I hope.”
    “Life’s exciting enough.”
    “I hear you,” the doctor said.
    “How am I?”
    The doctor said, “Nothing serious. Concussion but no cracks. You fell good—I guess because you’re used to stunts. That scrape on your head is wide, it can get infected pretty easy, so keep an eye on it. I’ll give you some Betadine.”
    “This a hospital?”
    The doctor laughed. “It’s got me, a mini lab, a podiatrist, an OB-GYN. If that’s a hospital, this is Cleary General.”
    “Can I leave?”
    “Nope. You’ll have to stay here the night. You’ll be pretty dizzy for a while. I wouldn’t want you to fall. I’ve got plenty of magazines. Reader’s Digest s. Some National Geographic s. Good things like that. A Bible, if you’re interested.”
    “I’ve got to get a message to somebody.”
    “There’s a phone in the lobby. I can make a call for you. If you—”
    “No, not a phone call. Somebody’ll be waiting for me back at my camper. It’s parked on Main Street.” Pellam told him that Marty would be returning about six.
    The doctor said, “I’ve got a son works at the IHplant. He’s a manager. He can take some time off and leave a note on your camper door.”
    “Be obliged.”
    Pellam watched the doctor take a small chart from beside the bed and write on it.
    “Who was it? Who hit me?”
    The doctor kept writing.
    Pellam wondered if it was a hit-and-run, wondered who the driver was—some hotshot, a kid, probably.
    Wondered too if it really was an accident.
    Thinking of the mural of crosses on the Winnebago.
    Thinking: Goodbye . . .
    Maybe he should call the sheriff. That’d be the smart thing to—
    The doctor looked up. “She’s outside.”
    “What?”
    “She’s here. She’s been waiting to see you.”
    “Who?” Pellam asked. (Did he mean Trudie? Damn, I hope I called her.)
    “The driver. The woman who hit you.”
    “Oh,” Pellam said. “With a lawyer?”
    “Just by herself.”
    He said, “Can I see her?”
    “You want to see her?”
    “I guess.”
    The doctor said, “Then you can see her.”
    PELLAM’S FIRST REACTION was that she was pretty but not sexy. Pert ’n’ perky, he thought, discouraged. Not his type at all. A girl with a mile-wide smile.
    She was maybe thirty-two, thirty-three, but looked older—something about the teased blond hair, theheavy pale makeup, the fleshy panty hose made her seem matronly. Pellam could picture her as a Miss America contestant, with a baton, sending it sailing up into the height of the proscenium. Her face was blank when she entered the room but as soon as she was over the threshold, she grinned shy crevices around her mouth.
    He was expecting: Goshhowy’allfeelin’?
    But she didn’t sound that way at all.
    “Welcome to Cleary,” she said in a low, sexy voice that almost made him ignore the mask of pancake makeup. She walked right up to the bed and stuck her hand out.
    She saw the scar and it threw her. The facade cracked for a minute then the down-home smile returned. “Meg Torrens.”
    “John Pellam.”
    Her mouth went tight. “I don’t know what to say.”
    Pellam knew what to think: Bummer. He’d done a fast inventory. A cocktail ring that wouldn’t quit, a wedding band, a fat rock of an engagement ring.
    Pellam said to her, “Not a problem. These things happen.”
    (Pellam had a lawyer one time, a former flower child who’d done a pretty good job for him on a legal matter—at a time when he needed a lawyer to do a pretty good job. The ponytailed man’d been real concerned about what Pellam