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Lari returned with the wheelchair, saw him installed in it, put his crutch between his legs, and then insisted on pushing it herself.

“Hospital rules,” she said when McFadden stepped behind it.

“I like it,” Matt said. “In China, they make the females walk three paces behind their men. This is even better.”

“You’re not my man,” Lari said.

“We could talk about that.”

What the hell am I doing? Making a pass at her when two minutes ago I was wondering how I could get Helene back in the sack?

Both Highway cops on duty at the nurse’s station by the elevator greeted Matt by name, and then got on the elevator with them.

Lieutenant Malone was waiting in the main lobby when the door opened.

“There’s a couple of press guys,” he said to the Highway cops, nodding toward the door. “Don’t let them get in the way.”

Matt saw two men, one of them wearing earmuffs and both holding cameras, just outside the hospital door.

Lari rolled him up the side of the circular door.

“End of the line,” she said.

Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin came through the revolving door, trailed by a very large, neatly dressed young man whom Matt correctly guessed was Coughlin’s new driver.

“Morning, Matt,” he said.

“Good morning.”

“You two make a hand seat,” Coughlin ordered. “Put him in back of my car. There’s more room.”

Coughlin’s official car was an Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight.

“I can walk.”

“It’s icy out there, and you’re no crutch expert,” Coughlin said.

“Thanks for everything,” Matt said to Lari. “I’ll see you around.”

She crossed her arms under her breasts and nodded.

Charley and Coughlin’s driver made a seat with their crossed hands. Matt lowered himself into it, Coughlin pushed open a glass door and they carried him out of the lobby.

“How do you feel, Payne?” one of the reporters called to him, in the act of taking his picture.

“I’m feeling fine.”

“Any regrets about shooting Charles Stevens?”

“What kind of a question is that? What the hell is the matter with you people?” Denny Coughlin flared.

The interruption served to give Matt time to reconsider the answer—“Not a one”—that had come to his lips.

“I’m sorry it was necessary,” he said.

Matt saw that he was indeed being transported in a convoy. There was a Highway Patrol RPC, an unmarked car (probably Malone’s, he thought), Coughlin’s Oldsmobile, and behind that another unmarked car with Jesus Martinez behind the wheel.

They set him on his feet beside the Oldsmobile. Coughlin’s drive