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Once the coast was clear, Nolan inched left again, parking behind one of the police cars. He had a view of the accident now. The vehicle—some kind of SUV—had gone off the road and crashed into a rock outcrop.
He’d have to get a photo.
About to uncap his Nikon, Nolan froze. He could see the rear license plate of the mangled vehicle, illuminated by the headlights from one of the police cars. The numbers taunted him. He’d seen that particular pattern before.
And then it hit him.
This was his sister’s vehicle.
His stomach heaved. He dashed from his Explorer and ran for the cover of some scraggly pines. Next thing, he was bringing up that slice of pizza. It was a loud and nasty process and finally drew someone’s attention. One of the officers left the others gathering evidence and headed toward him.
A dusting of snow covered Miguel Eiden’s dark hair and the shoulders of his uniform. He shook his head unhappily. “I was hoping you wouldn’t hear that call, Nolan. I was going to phone you first chance I got.”
Nolan dug into the pockets of his jeans and found nothing. So he pulled out the tail of his shirt and used that to wipe his mouth, his chin, his hands.
“That’s my sister’s SUV.” He took a few steps toward the accident scene, but Miguel stopped him.
“I know, Nolan. I’m sorry. She wasn’t in the car, though. Just Steve. He’s on his way to the hospital now. You must have seen the ambulance.”
“What about Sammy? Are you sure she wasn’t in the back seat?”
“Yes. Both kiddie seats were empty, thank God for small mercies.”
Two car seats? Mary and Steve had just one kid. Nolan closed his eyes, opened them. He couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t believe this wasn’t a crazy dream. Mary and Steve had lived for years in their cozy A-frame about fifteen minutes from here. Steve must have driven this route thousands of times.
“What the hell happened?”
“Don’t know for sure. The road is a little icy from the snow, but the skid marks suggest Steve was driving too fast, as well. He went off the road at the beginning of that S-curve. Probably would have dived right down the mountain, except for that hunk of rock at the side of the road.”
“And you’re sure no one else was in the vehicle?”
“Yeah.” Miguel shook his head, scuffed the dirt with his boots. He looked like he wanted to say something, but in the end only shook his head again.
Nolan swallowed but couldn’t rid his mouth of the sour taste of bile. Was his brother-in-law going to be all right? The brief conversation he’d overheard on his scanner hadn’t sounded promising. “Was he hurt bad?”
When Miguel didn’t answer right away, Nolan compressed his lips and stared at the license plate still visible in the headlights’ beam. He felt his good friend pat his arm.
“You better phone your sister, man.”
Deliver this awful news? No. He wasn’t the right person for that job. He couldn’t… Nolan bowed his head, fighting his gut reaction to refuse. Miguel was right. Even though he and Mary hadn’t spoken for almost three years, it would be better for her to hear about this from him rather than the cops.
He nodded, then wiped his mouth again. “Maybe I should drive over rather than phone.” But what about Steve? “Or should I go straight to the hospital?” God, his brain wasn’t functioning.
“Go to the hospital,” his friend decided for him. “I’ll take you in the Explorer and you can call Mary on your cell phone. Hang on a second.”
Miguel jogged back to the accident scene to confer with his fellow officers. Meanwhile, Nolan opened the driver-side door. His mind went blank for a moment. He remembered the last time he’d seen Mary, at their mother’s funeral. She’d come close to hating him then, he knew. He didn’t want to talk to her now. Not with news like this.
But he had no choice. And he had to hurry. Pulling himself back to the present, he fished the keys from his jeans.
Miguel came up from behind and scooped them from his hands. “I’m driving, buddy.”
Nolan nodded in the direction of the wreck. “You’ve got work to do.”
“Officially I’m off duty as of fifteen minutes ago. Hank’s going to bring the squad car back to town when they’re finished here.”
“I’m fine,” Nolan protested, but Miguel slid behind the wheel.
“You don’t need to do this,” Nolan tried to argue again.
Miguel ignored him. He started the engine and waited. Nolan slapped a hand against the closed driver door and gave in. The second he’d slammed his door shut, Miguel had the vehicle in gear. Another cop waved them safely onto the road, and Miguel eased the speed up to the posted limit.
“Do you have your phone?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Nolan pulled it out of his jacket.
“Okay. You call Mary. Tell her after I drop you off at the hospital I’m picking up my own car and coming back to get her.”
AT THE ARROYO COUNTY HOSPITAL, a nurse ushered Nolan into a special little room and told him the doctor would talk to him shortly. Nolan glanced at a stack of magazines on a table in the corner. The glossy paper gleamed. They’d never been touched. He put a hand to his head and it came away damp. The snow, he remembered.
How was Steve doing? Nolan hung on to hope, despite Miguel’s grim expectations.
There’d been no answer when he’d tried calling Mary. She’d always been a deep sleeper, but he’d let the phone ring until the answering machine picked up, and then he’d called again. Still she hadn’t answered. Miguel was on his way to her house now. So Nolan wouldn’t be the one to tell her about the accident after all.
A deeply-buried regret stirred within him. He never should have let three years pass without making an attempt to reconcile with his sister. His mother had always said he was too damn stubborn for his own good.
The door opened, and Dr. Ochoa came into the room, wearing a clean white lab coat, pen in his hand along with a clipboard. Nolan had consulted with him a few times on various stories for the Bulletin. This was the first time he’d spoken to him on a personal level. Mercifully, Dr. Ochoa came straight to the point.
“I’m so sorry,” he said to Nolan. “Your sister has died.”
Mary? What the hell was he talking about?
“But I spoke to Miguel Eiden at the accident scene. He said there were no passengers. Just the driver. Just Steve.”
Ochoa sighed. Despite his distress and confusion, Nolan couldn’t help but be aware of the older man’s intense weariness. “Mary’s death occurred earlier this evening, Nolan. Before the accident.”
“What?”
“I know it’s a lot to take in. Let me try to explain. This afternoon your sister and her husband went to The Birth Place. Mary was in labor. After about seven hours the midwife in charge of her birth—Lydia Kane, a very proficient, experienced midwife—decided to transport your sister to our hospital.”
Nolan hadn’t even known Mary was pregnant again. He remembered Miguel mentioning two kiddie seats. What the hell was going on?
“On my initial exam, your sister appeared fine and so did her unborn baby. But the situation deteriorated quickly. We lost Mary at nine-oh-three. Her baby was never resuscitated.”
Nolan knew this couldn’t be happening. “Women don’t die in childbirth anymore.”
“In very rare cases they do. In this one…”
The doctor recited terms Nolan had never heard before. Shoulder something and amnio something else.
“We tried everything we could to save her. Lydia Kane is to be commended for bringing her to the hospital so quickly. We had all modern medicine to hand, but it wasn’t enough. Sometimes it isn’t.”
Nolan put both hands to his head. Mary was dead? Gone? No, please. Let there be some mistake…
“Mary Davidson. You’re sure?”
“I’m so sorry.”
Even through his shock, Nolan noticed the slight waver of disbelief in the doctor’s voice. He hadn’t expected to lose this patient.
So why the hell had he?
Nolan forced his teeth together, pressed his lips tight. Don’t lash out at the doctor. Not yet. Need to gather all the facts, first. Make sure what Dr. Ochoa said was true, that everything possible had been done.
“Steve was in the room when this happened,” the doctor added.
Now, suddenly, Nolan saw the whole picture and all the pieces—the tragic events of this awful night—fell into place. Steve, totally distraught, had tried to drive home after the tragedy. Instead he’d driven off the road. On purpose?
Hell, it was possible. What man who’d just seen his wife die on the delivery bed, who knew that his newborn baby was dead, too, wouldn’t have the thought cross his mind?
One quick turn of the steering wheel and it’s all over. No more suffering.
It could easily have been an accident, too. Switchback Road was unforgiving at the best of times, requiring every ounce of a driver’s attention. The snow had been blinding and Steve had been an emotional mess. Probably his vision had been blurred with tears, as well.
“The ambulance brought him here,” Nolan said.
The doctor nodded. “Unfortunately, there was nothing we could do. His head injuries were massive. Again, I’m so sorry.”
Nolan didn’t know what to say. A family had been wiped out tonight. A mother and father and their new baby. Leaving him and— Oh, my God.
“Mary and Steve have a daughter. Six years old…”
Deep sorrow glimmered again in the doctor’s eyes.
“Samantha, Sammy for short.” Nolan remembered her third birthday. That had been the last happy family gathering before his mother’s death and his and Mary’s estrangement.
“Someone has to go talk to Samantha,” the doctor said “Do you think you could?”
Nolan felt numb. He had to call Miguel, as well. Right now his good friend was probably knocking at the Davidsons’ A-frame. Soon he’d realize Mary wasn’t home.
“There’ll be other family members to notify, too, of course,” the doctor continued.
Nolan nodded. He’d have to get in touch with Steve’s mother, Irene, before she heard about the accident on the news. Or read his paper.
Shit. He’d have to get Cooper to write something. There was no way he could. Besides, he’d have other concerns. There’d be obituaries and funerals and… Oh, hell, this just couldn’t be real.
The doctor was consulting his chart again. “Any other immediate family?”
Steve shook his head. Some aunts and uncles, most of them out-of-state. He’d have to check with Irene for the other side of the family. He’d go to her house now. Maybe Sammy was with her.
Sammy. He couldn’t even remember what his niece looked like anymore. Chubby cheeks and a lisp, he vaguely recollected. But that had been three years ago.
CHAPTER THREE
KIM SHERMAN KNEW her co-workers at The Birth Place didn’t like her. She knew she had a reputation for being ruthless, impersonal, bottom-line oriented. All of which was perfectly true. And why not? Kim hadn’t moved to Enchantment almost eight months ago to vie for the local Miss Congeniality award.
Seeking personal admiration of any kind wasn’t her style. People either accepted her for what she was—or too bad. For them. She didn’t care. She never had.
She was good at what she did. Extremely good. Numbers spoke to her. Accounting had been her thing, from the first course she’d taken in high school to her last full credit in college. She’d never encountered a set of books she couldn’t balance. A statement of changes she couldn’t reconcile.
She was efficient. Organized. A merciless perfectionist.
Some people had a problem with those qualities. Probably because they themselves were incapable of meeting standards that high. Those people tended to avoid Kim, and she was fine with that.
Which was one reason working at night appealed to her so much. She could concentrate without interruption. As an added bonus, she didn’t have to listen to the annoying chatter of others who obviously socialized with each other outside of work. Kim checked her Timex and was surprised. She hadn’t planned to stay this late.
It was past ten. She’d been lost in her analysis of outstanding payables for—what?—almost four hours. The Birth Place was out of money. Again. It was up to her to decide which suppliers they simply had to pay and which could be put off for a few more months.
It was a job many would hate. But Kim didn’t mind.
She flicked off the radio by her desk. She’d been listening to a classical station, the sound a comfort in the empty complex. Now, through her open office door, traveled a disquieting noise. Someone laughing quietly… No, crying.
Lydia and Gina had been in earlier with a delivery. But she’d heard them leave hours ago. The night janitor had already made his rounds.
Kim shivered and pulled on her gray cardigan, doing up each button, from the bottom to the very top. Grabbing the three-hole punch from her desk and holding it like a baseball bat, she went investigating. The door to the chief administrator’s office was shut tight. Since his marriage to Hope Tanner, Parker Reynolds had been taking work home rather than putting in extra hours at the center.
The sound grew louder as she stepped into the main hall. It seemed to be coming from one of the birthing rooms to her right—definitely someone crying.
No longer concerned about her physical safety, Kim set the three-hole punch on the empty reception desk, next to Trish Linden’s silly snow globe of Venice. The middle-aged receptionist had never ventured out of New Mexico. What was she doing with a souvenir of Italy of all places?
Kim followed the hallway around the curving counter. One of the birthing-room doors stood ajar. A faint light slipped out into the hall.
The sobbing was louder now. Raw and unrestrained.
All Kim’s instincts told her to walk away. She did not want to get involved with this. But what if the person crying was Lydia? Kim would do anything for Lydia.
Lydia Kane had founded The Birth Place when she was a young mother herself, many decades ago. Though she was now in her early seventies she still worked full-time as a midwife. The only sign she gave of easing up was her recent resignation from the board of directors. Kim guessed she’d made the move under pressure, for reasons Kim could only speculate about.
She peeked through the open crack in the door. Sure enough it was Lydia. She’d changed out of the trousers and shirt she’d been wearing for the labor, earlier. Her long gray hair now hung down the back of a forest-green caftan. Kim watched the older woman pull a beautifully patterned quilt over freshly plumped pillows. As she worked efficiently, briskly, her crying continued.
Lydia’s typical self-control and natural dignity made this a most incongruous sight. Again Kim’s instincts warned her to back away. But then she inadvertently pushed on the door and the hinges squeaked. Just a little, but enough.
“Who’s there?” Lydia straightened and turned to face the door. “Kim?” She wiped away tears with the back of her hand. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“Just some late-night accounting.” She didn’t share her worries about the finances. It wouldn’t be news to Lydia, anyway. They were all used to the center being short of funds, though Kim had been working to rectify the situation since she’d been on board. One of her first projects had been the renegotiation of their contracts with the various health-care providers.
“You work too hard.”
Kim stepped into the room. “What about you? Surely this could wait until morning.” She knew some of their contracts required the midwives to file notice of a baby’s birth within twenty-four hours. But that was paperwork. Why was Lydia cleaning the room?
