The Perfect Crime Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Sorry. It gets... Listen, if you want to go in and look in on your brother for a little while, you can. He’s at the end of the hall. Intensive care, room 42. He won’t be awake for at least twenty-four hours, however. We’ve got to keep him sedated until he stabilizes. And no, at this point I can’t tell you how his injury will manifest itself. I’d prepare for the worst, however. It doesn’t look good. There’s something else.”
    Two orderlies came along pushing a gurney with a woman on it and the two men stepped back against the wall. Another body. Most of Grady’s life had been spent in places like this, it seemed, watching bodies being pushed or pulled from place to place. White- and green-coated people hauling away broken bodies. He had no doubt that one day it’d be his own smashed or disease-ridden body being transported somewhere. When that time came, if he was semiconscious he’d know where he was. By the smell. When he was a kid he remembered thinking hospital smells were the odor of healing. Probably because somebody had said that to him. At this age, it smelled like death mostly. Death also had a taste. The taste of a copper penny when you held one in your mouth like you did when you were a kid.
    Grady waited for the doctor to go on.
    “Also, this is all going to be rather expensive.” Dr. Lyons hesitated, obviously loath to continue, but he did. “Normally, the business people take care of this, but I assume there’s only yourself in Mr. Fogarty’s family and...well...the thing is, the kinds of treatment your brother is going to need aren’t usually covered by most health plans. It’s not that we’d turn him out of course, but--”
    Grady put up his hand. His eyes became dark slits. “It’ll be taken care of, whatever it is.”
    Dr. Lyons looked at Grady Fogarty and anything else he was going to say, he decided to keep to himself. “Well, I thought you should...well--” His voice trailed off. He glanced at his watch and murmured something about “sorry” and reached over to put his hand on Grady’s arm. Grady turned away and went over and sat down heavily on one of the chairs in the waiting area, directly off the main corridor. The imitation leather squeaked as he slumped forward, his head in his hands. The doctor stood looking at him for the briefest of moments, shrugged and walked away briskly down the corridor.
    Grady leaned his body back in the chair and closed his eye, settling back in the darkness.
    He wished there were someone to call. Someone to share the bad news with. There wasn’t a single person he could think of. No relatives. Maybe some distant cousins somewhere, but nobody close. He and Jack were alike in that both of them were pretty much loners. Friends? Grady might meet a girl or two sometimes at a watering hole, but there was no one he was close to. He was fairly certain his brother didn’t have a romance going either or he would have known about it. No one in Jack’s life since his wife Sharon died five years ago. No children. Jack’s only living relative was one sorry younger brother. Him. Thinking about that made Grady sad and the sadness started turning into more of a feeling of anger.
    This was bullshit. All their lives, he and Jack followed the rules, played by the book, even when it meant a disadvantage. It was something they learned from their father. Sharon used to accuse both her husband and Grady of seeing life in black and white terms. Sometimes it’s gray, you know, she often scolded, but neither of them ever felt comfortable with that concept.
    A rage began to grow. Behind his eyes--good one and bad one--where he could feel it palpably. Grady gripped the sides of the chair and his face contorted, eyes closed. A woman clicked by on high heels and started to go into the waiting area. She saw the man sitting in the chair and the expression on his face. She turned and walked back the way she’d come.
    Grady’s mind was a turmoil of memories and