Just Intuition (18 page)

"I don
't know," she yelled. At first, she hadn't thought he was breathing at all. She leaned closer and recoiled at the scent on his breath, like he'd polished off a pound of Ukrainian sausage. "Quick and shallow, like a baby bird. Do they want me to actually count?" There were no remnants of any meals down here, aside from a few beer cans and candy wrappers. She wondered where the garlicky food had come from.

"That
's okay," he called down. "Ambulance is on the way!"

Heavy boots stomped above her and Striker
's raised voice. "I found a police radio down by the river. Stuffed under the planks on the dock."

So that
's why they had so narrowly missed Derek. He had known they were coming. How had they overlooked the radio? Aside from Zimmerman's foray into the boot sucking mud, she hadn't been thinking much beyond the abducted girl and the canoe disappearing down the river, had she?

"Nicht schieß
en." Gunther's lips moved ever so slightly to let the words pass. Erin leaned closer but he did not repeat it.

"He
's saying something in German!" she yelled to the men upstairs. "Do you know German?"

"A little," Striker
's face appeared at the open hatch. "What did he say?"

"Something
like nick sheesen."

"Are you saying Nicht schie
ßen? I think that means 'Don't shoot'."

Erin stared at the old man. Was he having flashbacks to his time in the Vietnam
war? Had Allie been tapping into his hallucinations? Her texts made a lot more sense.

"Mr. Schmidt," Erin urged tersely, taking him by the shoulder. She knelt beside the cot, careful to avoid a soggy puddle of what smelled like vomit. "Can you hear me? An ambulance is on the way. Help is coming."

Gunther's bloodshot eyes flickered open for a second and focused on Erin. "Helfen meine Enkelin," he mumbled faintly, "Achten." Then the old man's eyes clamped shut once more. Above her, Striker squeezed his head and shoulders through the hatch, much as Zimmerman had before, and watched the interaction.

"He said to help his granddaughter. And then he said to be careful," Striker translated. "Peew, it stinks down there," he added, as if Erin hadn
't noticed.

She shook Gunther
's shoulder firmly again. "Do you know where Derek Peterson took Lily?" Gunther Schmidt lay motionless, but his eyes moved erratically under their heavy lids. Was he once again dreaming of hiding from enemy soldiers in the jungles of Vietnam? Erin tucked the blanket closer around his shoulders and waited the twelve minutes until the medics arrived.

"Hi Andy. Michelle." She nodded at each medic when they
descended the ladder after handing their equipment bags down to her.

"Long time no see, Erin," Andy, the first medic down the ladder greeted her with a sarcastic smile. It had certainly not been a long time. Andy was one of the medics who had taken Erin to the hospital after the fire but she didn
't want to have to rehash that all over again. Not today. She left his comment alone and the two of them got down to business, squeezing into the nauseatingly cramped hidey hole beside Erin.

"Sir, Sir!" Andy firmly squeezed the sensitive trapezius muscle between Gunther
's shoulder and the base of his neck. There was no response.

"Gunther Schmidt," Erin prompted. "His name."

"Mr. Schmidt," Andy amended. "Can you hear me?" As he spoke, he motioned to his partner and Michelle handed him an oxygen mask which he snapped over Gunther's mouth and nose. She adjusted the flow on the tank's dial until she was satisfied.

"It could sure use an air freshener down here, couldn
't it?" Michelle wrinkled her nose then easily flipped the empty cot onto its side and shoved it against the cinderblock wall so she could arrange equipment bags. Kicking two beer cans aside, she clucked her tongue sanctimoniously and began extracting required equipment. "You think he had enough to drink? Seriously."

Michelle, a tall slender brunette, curved herself as gracefully as a dancer around her partner to take vital signs, verbalizing each in turn. "BP sixty over forty-two. Heart rate thirty-eight BPM, Respirations thirty-six, O2 Sats seventy-eight, patient is cyanotic," she said into her radio. She quickly affixed electrodes for the heart monitor, watching the output. It appeared as a series of tiny blips on the screen, a foreign language. She noticed Erin
's perplexed expression and explained what this meant in layman's terms. "His blood pressure is low, his heart rate is slow, but respirations are quick, indicating distress, and he is cyanotic so he is not getting enough oxygen in his system."

That much made sense to Erin. She shone her flashlight onto Gunther
's face and noted that behind the transparent oxygen mask, his lips were a definite bluish color. Giving the medics more room to work, she wormed her way back to the ladder. Andy squatted beside Gunther and started an intravenous line, his dark features a study in concentration. Skilled fingers finessed the needle to insert a catheter into the vein like the conductor of a tiny orchestra.

Andy noticed Erin
's poised notebook and pen. "You should write down that he has wicked garlic breath, which can be fatal—" he paused and Erin narrowed her eyes in disbelief, "—to relationships! Yuk. Yuk."

"That was beyond bad," she retorted.

"Just kiddin' Puddin' Face." He slapped a beefy thigh like a comedian in a comedy sketch.

"Seriously." She frowned her disapproval, more of the nickname than the initial bad joke. "Will he make it?" She had a lot of questions for this man and she wanted answers as quickly as possible.

Michelle shrugged. "Hard to tell. With these vitals, he is at risk of seizure and cardiac arrest." She removed the pulse oximeter she'd earlier placed on the tip of Gunther's index finger and pressed the bezel of her flashlight firmly against the discolored nail bed.

"Mr. Schmidt," she said in a commanding voice. Can you hear me?

Gunther's fingernails were ringed with light colored lines, almost the same hue as his pale skin and Erin couldn't help but cringe a little. That level of pressure on a tender fingernail woke most people with a cry, but the unconscious man merely emitted a faint moan.

"He
's GCS4. What if he goes down?" Andy asked her. "Should we intubate before we transport?"

"We are close to hospital," Michelle answered confidently. "Let
's see if he'll take an OPA and we can load and go." Andy gave a quick nod and, within seconds, had inserted the oral airway. When he finished, he glanced at Michelle who motioned lifting. The two medics had worked together long enough that the rest did not need to be said aloud.

Michelle called up to the officers above, who leaned over the hatch. "Can you grab the stretcher for us so we can load him up as soon as we haul him out?
" Zimmerman's face stayed put but Striker's disappeared and boots quickly tromped across the floor above. The boots returned a moment later, along with a loud dragging noise, and there were choice expletives uttered by Striker, followed by Zimmerman's rumbling laughter.

"You don
't have to drag it," Zimmerman told him. "Let me show you. Here's the release catch." More expletives from Striker, and then Zimmerman called that they were all ready.

Andy grasped Gunther Schmidt from behind, wrestler style under both shoulders, and lifted him backwards up the ladder like an oversize sack of corn. Michelle pointed a finger at the oxygen tank and IV bag, and nodded once to Erin. Then she hefted the bags and followed Andy up the stairs, working with him as a single unit to transfer the patient and ensure all attached equipment was unencumbered.

Erin grabbed the indicated equipment and scrambled to keep up, feeling like the cockeyed caboose of a long, awkward train. Hands reached down when she ascended and relieved her of the tank and IV bag, so that when she surfaced in the shed, Gunther was already securely loaded on the stretcher and on his way out the door.

The air outside the shed was sweet like springtime after a rain and Erin filled her lungs to replace the foul stench from below. She craved a shower, badly, and she had probably been in the hole not much more than a half hour. She retrieved a bottle of antibacterial hand sanitizer from her car
's glove compartment and liberally applied it to her palms. When it had dried, she repeated the process, this time ensuring she had cleansed front, back and fingernails. She remembered Gunther's nails. She had never seen such discoloration. Was that the result of years of alcoholism and the continual neglect of one's body? How long had Gunther been in the hidey hole? And Lily? Had they been hiding from the police, or from Derek?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

At home, Allie poured boiling water into a mug and dangled an herbal sachet into it, dunking the bag absent-mindedly. She carried her mug to the living room and seated herself on the sofa in front of the oversize flat screen TV. She searched through the online channel menu until she found what she knew she needed to see. There it was on channel 128, a classic favorite of hers since she
'd first seen it in her teens with her foster mom. The two of them had stayed up many nights watching movies together and now Allie found it was still a wonderful stress reliever. She sat back and sipped her tea, feeling relaxation wash over her. The movie reel started in her head when she closed her eyes.

In this version, Erin played the part of Cary Grant as Mortimer Brewster, the recently married newspaperman who must now go home and deliver the news to his sweet old aunts. When Erin gets there, she discovers that they
're both insane and have been murdering men. She runs around in the slapstick comedy trying to keep her new bride while preventing her aunts from murdering anyone else. She snatches away a glass of poisoned wine from Gunther Schmidt, whom the aunts were attempting to murder, and saves his life.

By the time Erin, as Cary Grant, happily exclaimed
'I'm the son of a sea-cook', Allie jolted upright on the sofa. The onscreen credits were rolling. She had missed the entire second half of the movie. She puzzled over the fact that Erin had been a continuous thread in her dream and that Gunther had been saved. That certainly fulfilled the 'tell me everything weird' criteria. She must text her.

Allie: You found him. He
's sick.

Erin: Yes. Any idea where the kid is?

Allie: Need to tell you about this movie.

Erin
: ? random, but I did ask you to tell me everything…

Allie: B&W Cary Grant movie. Two dotty old ladies killing lonely men, crazy guy blowing bugle, weirdo Dr Einstein, and Cary Grant trying to fix it all.

Erin: Are you drinking or something? LOL

Allie: Not funny.

Erin: Sorry.

Allie: Don
't know what it means. Hope you can figure it out. Now go find the girl.

Allie put down her phone and knitted her brows together. It did not seem at all odd that the knowledge of Gunther being sick had come to her while she typed the words. Relaxing during the movie had made it easier for the thoughts to flow, and there was no headache or nausea with the dream. It seemed that the more she allowed herself to consider the possibility that they were only bits of information, the easier it became. Still, it was confusing, with seemingly random thoughts coming in fits and spurts. She was uncomfortable about omitting the part where Erin had played Cary Grant, with Allie as her new bride in the strange dream movie. That was too outlandish.

* * *

Striker rode back to police headquarters with Erin. In the trunk, gently cradled in a cardboard box, were a few items from Lily
's room, most of the trash from the hidey hole, and the bottle she'd seized from the shed. Zimmerman carried an envelope containing the damning bank statements and other papers he'd seized. Of all the items they'd taken into evidence today, she was most interested in the mysterious bottle, but then she'd sometimes been accused of having an overactive imagination. It was probably nothing. Old cleaning supplies finally disposed of or something? She would turn it all over to Forensics as soon as she could.

"Do you like old movies?" Erin feigned innocuous conversation.

"Not enough shooting and killing," Striker grunted. Like her, he was tired and in need of a shower. "I like action films." He watched the road for a moment and then reciprocated by attempting to continue the conversation. "But my aunt has seen every movie ever made since the beginning of time."

Erin perked up and eyed him with more interest.

"You like old movies too." He sighed as if this was somehow a character flaw, and she was disappointing him on some level.

"Yeah, I really do," she lied. "I can
't remember the name of one of my favorites. It's about two crazy old ladies who murder guys and there is a crazy guy who blows a bugle and a nephew—"

"Aw, that one
's easy," he interrupted. "I watched it with my aunt when I stayed with her on summer holidays as a kid. She absolutely loved that movie, but it made me nervous. I was afraid to drink any juice for the rest of my visit!"

"Why?"

"I didn't want to die! The movie was called
Arsenic and Old Lace
." He laughed at the memory. "The crazy old ladies kept killing men with poisoned wine!"

A lightning bolt connected with Erin
's brain. Arsenic! Allie's cryptic texts unraveled themselves into one coherent message. Gunther Schmidt had been poisoned.

At the station, she hastily scribbled a note for Kathy Banks and stuffed it into the evidence locker beside the items she
'd seized from Gunther's shed. She'd been careful to seal the top of the bottle to preserve whatever droplets might be left. She had barely finished when Zimmerman thundered down the hall toward her, his size 14 boots bearing down like army tanks.

"Those bastards won
't authorize overtime for this, but I'm going to search for the girl on my own," he said breathlessly. "Striker is coming too. He's changing into his civvies and calling around to borrow a boat right now. No luck so far, but someone will lend us one."

"Does a missing kid not matter to the brass?" Indignation, like fire in her gut, burned toward the stubbornly tightfisted police administration.

"That's the thing," Zimmerman said. "Old man Gunther, the prime suspect in Gina's arson and attempted murder is in the hospital, under police watch. They say the kid is safe and sound with one of our fine officers and she can't possibly be in danger! They want us to wait until they can speak to Derek and clear it up, or at least until tomorrow."

"Are you serious?" Erin
's indignation ratcheted up another notch. "They can't trust Derek! He poisoned Gunther! The girl is at risk every moment she is with him!"

"Poison?
I thought he drank himself into a coma. Did the paramedics say he was poisoned?"

"Well, it
's pretty obvious." Erin back pedaled, stalling for time to think. She recovered and began to count points off on her fingers. "First, Gunther is unconscious, pretty much in a coma. Second, he had been hiding out for days but there were not enough beer cans down there to drink anyone but a six-year-old into a coma. He hadn't been into town to buy more because his truck hadn't moved." Puzzle pieces whizzed into place in Erin's mind, pieces unconnected before this moment.

"Third, we saw the beer cans in the fridge the last time we were there, but the bottle was different. Where did that come from? What was in it? Fourth, there are plenty of chemicals around, and taxidermy chemicals, especially the old ones like the empty bottle I seized, often had toxic substances in it. E
ven poisons like arsenic." She had Zimmerman's rapt attention and he leaned forward, waiting for her to finish. She raised the pinky finger on her right hand. "Fifth is that Gunther had garlic breath."

"Are you yanking my chain?" Zimmerman had been nodding during this tirade but his expression turned to utter disbelief. Like a child who has begun to suspect that the Easter Bunny might be a fabrication, Zimmerman drew back. "You think he had, what, poison pizza?"

"No," Erin clarified patiently. "Arsenic can smell like garlic on a victim's breath. I smelled it and the paramedics smelled it."

"Arsenic," Zimmerman repeated quietly. He gave her a frown that she mistook for suspicion.

"I watch a lot of documentaries," she explained awkwardly, leaving out the part about Allie's text tip. "I like true crime stuff." He didn't look at all mollified. "Think about it. It would explain a lot of things. Like Mr. Schmidt's sudden mental and physical decline. His alarming appearance and personality change. People thought he was destroying his liver with alcohol or he had cancer or something."

"Okay then, arsenic." He reluctantly repeated the name of the
poison again, nodding slightly as if trying to wrap his head around the idea. "Since this is your theory, I want you to be the one to call the hospital and give them a heads up. It will save a lot of diagnostic time and maybe Gunther's life if you're right." He leveled his gaze at her. "But it's your ass if you're wrong. Now, excuse me, but Striker and I have a girl to find." He made as if to move around her but Erin blocked him.

"Count me in too. I don
't give a crap about overtime either. You drive and I'll call the hospital on the way to my parents' place. We'll borrow their boat."

Before Erin called the hospital, she texted her girlfriend and shielded the screen from Striker
's prying eyes in the cramped back seat of Zimmerman's Chevy Crew Cab.

Erin: Ur info was right. Now going to find girl. Don
't wait up. Will text when back in cell range.

Then she phoned the hospital and wheedled a skeptical nurse into connecting her with the physician in charge.

"This is Doctor Holloway." A gravelly male voice came on the line and Erin hoped he would take her seriously. He listened quietly while she carefully explained her theory until she thought she'd lost the signal. Finally he responded, but he was not speaking to her. The background noise changed subtly as if he walked down a hallway, and she understood that he was on a cordless phone.

"Would you wash that patient
's hands for me," he ordered.

"You want me to—?" Erin was confused.

"Sorry, Officer. I was speaking to the nurse." She shut her mouth and listened. The minutes ticked by and there was a great deal of rustling noise, or was that static? She grew anxious that they would be out of cellular range before the doctor spoke to her again. "Mee's lines," he finally said.

Erin shook her head. She had no idea what he was talking about, or even if he was talking to her.

"I said, he has Mee's lines, Officer Ericsson." The doctor's voice boomed through the earpiece.

Erin shrugged.

He answered as if he'd seen the gesture. "Horizontal banding of the fingernails is an indicator of poisoning."

She flashed back to the
hidey hole where she had dismissed Gunther's strangely discolored fingernails as being dirty.

"You might be on to something," Doctor Holloway said. "The preliminary toxicology report noted lactic acidosis but that also appears in a number of other conditions, such as alcohol poisoning, which was the initial diagnosis. Since he
's been cleaned up, I'm noting hyperkeratosis and hyperpigmentosis, specifically on the soles of his hands and feet. Now that we have a specific toxin to look for, I will review the blood cell counts and serum electrolytes. If I see evidence of hemolysis, we'll screen him for possible blood transfusion." Erin rapidly thumped her foot on the floor. Why didn't he give her the short and sweet layman's version like Michelle had earlier?

The doctor
's voice rose and his postulation gathered steam. This was likely the most unique case he would have all year. "I'll have blood and urine samples sent for analysis, but my preliminary hypothesis based on the Mee's Lines and anecdotal reports of breath odor, is strongly indicative of repetitive nonlethal exposure culminating in a final toxic dose. I'll request an EMG but that might have to wait until he can be transported to a larger facility with more advanced neurological investigation technology." Erin, unfamiliar with much of the medical terminology, zoned out when he recited something about micrograms per liter. It sounded like he was referencing a textbook. She said a few apologetically placating words to end the conversation and get the doctor off the phone. Assured that Gunther Schmidt was in expert hands, she hoped he would be in good enough shape to answer a few questions when she returned.

She tucked the phone into her shoulder bag and left it in her father
's garage when they arrived. Electronics were useless in the bush with little to no service. Her off duty pistol would be safe there too, locked away from tiny curious hands.

It took only fifteen minutes for Erin
's mom to pack food for all three of them, and get the fishing boat ready down by the dock. The 15 horsepower Mercury motor that Erin and her dad had repaired was securely bolted to the stern. Erin's dad tossed two lifejackets onboard for her fellow officers already assuming their positions, Zimmerman on lookout up front and the more experienced Striker manning the stern. He followed the lifejackets with a couple of pairs of rain gear, two paddles and a bailing can. Zimmerman looked at the rain gear and then at the sky, which had begun to darken considerably.

"Looks like maybe a little rain this evening," Erin
's dad told him.

"I hope this is not a bad omen, Mr. Ericsson." Zimmerman laughed as he caught the bailing can but his Adam
's apple nervously tightened at his throat.