Gamma Blade - Tim Stevens Page 0,22

which he guessed made him look more like a shark baring its teeth. “Doc, I appreciate what you’ve done, and your advice, but I’m had my lights punched out before. I know what it’s like. And I feel fine. Really. So there’s no admission needed.”

The intern glanced at Beth, who shrugged ruefully and almost apologetically.

“I’ll sign the release forms, to say I’m discharging myself against medical advice,” Venn said, remembering that doctors were big on that kind of stuff. The intern looked visibly relieved.

Venn sat on the edge of the bed in the examination cubicle, Beth perched in a chair alongside, while they waited for the intern to return with the paperwork.

He said, “You okay?”

Beth swept a hand across her face. “Sure. No harm done.”

“Hell of a way to start your conference weekend,” he said. “And our weekend away together.”

She smiled. “But we can still salvage it. A good night’s sleep, and then tomorrow’s a new day. This is out of our hands now, Venn. My patient’s in safe hands, and the thug you were chasing, as well as the one who hit you, are the business of the Miami Police Department now.”

“Yeah,” said Venn. “I guess.”

But he knew, and he knew Beth knew, that he couldn’t just let it drop. He’d come close to death, and however much Beth herself hadn’t been directly threatened, she and the baby had been in danger.

He was personally involved, and he could no more simply walk away than he could ignore the throbbing of an infected tooth in his mouth.

The curtain twitched aside and Venn and Beth looked up.

A woman stood there. It wasn’t the young intern, back with the release papers.

The woman was Cuban-looking, in her late forties, with a narrow, dour face and gray-streaked straight hair pulled back in an indifferent ponytail. Her eyes were sharp and intense, and small, with the whites barely visible. She wore a pair of cargo pants and a polo shirt under a denim jacket. A leather bag was lung over one shoulder.

In her right hand she held a detective’s shield.

“Lauren Estrada,” she said, in a voice soaked brown with nicotine. “I’m a detective lieutenant with the Miami PD. Need to speak with you both.”

*

She led them to an office down a far-flung corridor of the hospital, away from the ER. It looked like the kind of place a bunch of administrators shared during office hours, with no personal touches on the walls or the desk such as family photos or certificates of qualification. Estrada dropped into the chair behind the desk as if she was used to it, and Venn wondered if this was a place the cops often used when they were conducting interviews in the hospital.

Venn was surprised that Estrada was alone. Cops, whether detectives or uniformed officers, normally worked in pairs. It was standard practice across the United States, and as far as he knew in police departments all over the world. It reduced the risks of one cop getting the wrong information, and also protected them in case of claims of brutality or harassment or whatever. But no partner had joined Estrada as she’d taken them out of the ER - the intern had appeared as they walked, and Venn signed the waiver - and toward the admin wing.

“Sit,” said Estrada, without preamble, indicating two chairs on the opposite side of the desk. Then: “Coffee?” She said it like she hoped they’d say no.

Venn and Beth both declined.

He half-expected her to prop her booted feet up on the desk, but she didn’t. She sat back in the chair and folded her hands in front of her - Venn watched her fingers writhe, as if she was itching to crack her knuckles - and said: “So. Lieutenant Joseph Venn, from New York.”

“That’s right.”

“What you doing here?”

She didn’t mess around, Venn realized.

He said, “I already told your patrolmen. I’m here with my fiancée, Dr Colby, on a weekend break.”

Estrada didn’t so much as glance at Beth when Venn said her name. Her small, black eyes seemed to glitter.

“Never mind the bullshit,” she said crisply. Her accent held only the faintest tinge of Cuban. Venn guessed she’d been born in the US, or emigrated here at a very young age. “Why are you really here?”

He gazed at her levelly. “That honestly is all there is to it, Lieutenant. Yeah, I know what it looks like. I show up in the middle of what looks like some kind of imminent rendezvous on the waterfront, and