The Witness (Badge of Honor 4)

“Uncomfortable, certainly, but far more dignified.”

Finally, he got her to smile. He liked her smile.

“You should start feeling a little drowsy about now,” she said. “That should help the pain.”

“I don’t suppose I could interest you in waltzing around the room with me again?”

“Not right now, thank you,” she said, and smiled again, and left, taking the bedpans with her.

He lowered the head of the bed, and then shut the television off. He was feeling drowsy, but the leg still hurt.

The telephone rang again. He picked it up.

“Dad?”

“No, not Dad,” Helene’s voice said.

“Oh. Hi!”

“That went far more smoothly than one would have thought, didn’t it?”

“I guess.”

“It’s a good thing I didn’t know who he was taking me to see. I just ten minutes ago saw the Bulletin.”

“I’ve seen it,” he said. “It’s not a very good likeness.”

“Oh, I think it is. I thought it rather exciting, as a matter of fact. Not as exciting as being in the room with you like that, but exciting.”

“Jesus!”

“If I thought there was any way in the world to get away with it, I’d come back. Would you like that?”

“Under the circumstances, it might not be the smartest thing to do.”

“‘Faint heart ne’er won fair maiden,’” she quoted.

Matt was trying to find a reply to that when he realized that she had hung up.

“Jesus H. Christ!” he said, and put the phone back in its cradle.

He recalled the pressure of her breast against his arm, and her fingers at the back of his neck. And other things about Helene.

He looked down at his middle.

“Well,” he said aloud. “At least that’s not broken.”

Martha Washington was sitting on the narrow end of the grand piano in the living room looking out the window when she heard the key in the door and knew her husband had come home.

She looked at her watch, saw that it was a few minutes after three, and then turned to look toward the door. She didn’t get off the piano.

“Hi!” she called.

Jason came into the living room pulling off his overcoat. He threw it onto the couch. When it was wet, as it was now, that tended to stain the cream-colored leather, but Martha decided this was not the time to mention that for the five hundredth time.

“How come I get hell when I set a glass on there, and you can sit on it?” he greeted her en route to the whiskey cabinet.

“Because I don’t drip on the wood and make stains,” she said.