E is for Evidence (Kinsey Millhone 5)

I told him what I could, omitting the gruesome details of Olive's injuries. Even talking about it made me shake. I clamped my teeth shut, trying to relax. "Sorry," I said.

"It's my fault. I shouldn't have brought it up," he said. "I didn't mean to put you through it all again."

I shook my head. "That's fine. I'm okay. Nobody's told me much either. Honestly, I think it helps. The blanks are frustrating." I was looking for a narrative thread to hang fragments on. I'd lost the night. Everything from 4:30 on had been deleted from my memory bank.

He hesitated for a moment and then filled me in on events from his end. Ash had left. She was on her way to Olive's to help set up for the party. As soon as he heard about the explosion, he pulled some clothes on and he and Ebony jumped in the car. They arrived to find Terry being loaded into the ambulance. I was being bundled onto a stretcher, semiconscious. Olive was still lying near the shrubs, covered by a blanket.

Bass's recital of events was flat, like a news report. He was calm, his tone impersonal. He made no eye contact. I stared down the hall where a doctor with a somber expres-sion was talking to an older couple sitting on a bench. The news must have been bad because the woman clutched and unclutched the purse in her lap.

I remembered then that I had seen, Bass… one of the faces scrutinizing mine, bobbing above me like a balloon on a string. By then, shock had set in and I was shiver-ing uncontrollably, in spite of the blankets they'd wrapped me in. I didn't remember Ebony. Maybe they had kept her out by the road, refusing to let her any closer to the car-nage. The bomb had made tatters of Olive's flesh. Hunks of her body had been blown against the hedges, like clots of snow.

I put a hand against my face, feeling flushed with tears. Bass patted me awkwardly, murmuring nonsense, upset that he'd upset me, probably wondering how to get out of it. The emotion passed and I collected myself, taking a deep breath. "What about Terry's injuries?"

"Not bad. A cut on his forehead. Couple of cracked ribs where the blast knocked him into the garage. They wanted him in for observation, but he seems okay."

There was activity behind us and the door to Terry's room opened. A nurse came out bearing a stainless steel bowl full of soiled bandages. She seemed enveloped in aromas of denatured alcohol, tincture of iodine, and the distinctive smell of adhesive tape.

"You can go in now. Doctor said he can leave any time. We'll get a wheelchair for him when he's ready to go down."

Bass went in first. I wheeled myself in behind. A nurse's aide was straightening the bed table where the nurse had been working. Terry was sitting on the edge of the bed, buttoning up his shirt. I caught sight of his taped ribs through the loose flaps of his shirt and I looked away. His torso was stark white and hairless, his chest narrow and without musculature. Illness and injury seem so personal. I didn't want to know the details of his frailty.

He looked battered, with a dark track sketched along his forehead where the stitches had been put in. One wrist was bandaged, from cuts perhaps, or burns. His face was pale, his moustache stark, his dark hair disheveled. He seemed shrunken, as if Olive's death had diminished him.

Ebony appeared in the doorway, taking in the scene with a cursory glance. She hesitated, waiting for the aide to finish. The room seemed unbearably crowded. I needed fresh air.

"I'll come back in a minute," I murmured. I wheeled myself out. Ebony followed me as far as the visitors' lounge, a small alcove with a green tweed couch, two matching chairs, an artificial palm, and an ashtray. She took a seat, searching through her handbag for her ciga-rettes. She lit one, sucking in smoke as if it were oxygen. She looked totally composed, but it was clear that the hospital atmosphere unsettled her. She picked a piece of lint from the lap of her skirt.

"I don't understand any of this," she said harshly. "Who'd want to kill Olive? She never did anything."

"Olive wasn't the target. It was Terry. The package with the bomb in it was addressed to him."

Ebony's gaze shot up to mine and hung there. A pale wash of pink appeared in the dead white of her face. The hand with the cigarette gave a lurch, almost of its own accord, and cigarette ash tumbled into her lap. She rose abruptly, brushing at it.

"That's ridiculous," she snapped. "The police said there was nothing left of the package once the bomb went off." She stubbed the cigarette out.

"Well, there was," I said. "Besides which, I saw it. Terry's name was printed on the front, not hers."

"I don't believe it." A wisp of smoke drifted up from the crushed cigarette stub. She snatched it up again, work-ing the live ember out with her fingertips. She was shred-ding the remains of the cigarette. The strands of raw to-bacco seemed obscene.