Page 24 of Simon Says… Fight (Kate Morgan Thrillers #11)

T here was just something about the smell of a hospital.

As Kate walked through the halls, she could see how that would be rough for people dealing with a loss.

That brought to mind the text message she’d gotten from Simon about Elsie.

Not exactly an easy thought either, but she was happy that Arnie was on his way back to a shelter, or at least to the world that he knew.

She was sorry for Elsie, but the poor dog looked like death would have been a relief for her.

The end-of-life stage was one of those things that was difficult for everybody, but, since Kate didn’t have pets, she’d always sat back and wondered at the emotions the loss of a pet seemed to generate.

But now that she was a little more connected to Simon, and her heart was definitely involved, she could see how a pet could become family very quickly.

And, for Elsie, she had hung on as long as she could, but, once it was her time, she was gone.

It was also typical of Simon to handle things efficiently and to take care of Elsie as well as Arnie.

There was an awful lot to love about that man.

As she walked toward the room number she had gotten for her beating victim, she found a doctor standing outside, looking at his notes and frowning. When she identified herself and asked how the patient was, he shook his head.

“Not good,” he muttered. “He’s in pretty rough shape.”

“Are we talking not good as in not making it or not good because no signs of recovery are seen at the moment?”

“Not at the moment, no,” he replied. “I’m really hoping that we get there, but, so far, it’s not showing up.”

She nodded. “Can you tell me exactly what happened to him?”

“God no,” he said, with a shudder. “All I can tell you is that multiple blows were all over his body, including a major head wound. That’s the biggest concern.”

“Of course,” she murmured. “Any sign of when…” She stopped at his headshake and didn’t even get a chance to finish her question.

“He’s in a coma right now. It’s medically induced. He had surgery last night to repair the crushed rib as it had punctured his lung, plus to reorient the bones in his skull,” he shared. “We’re only doing what we need to in order to keep him stable. All the other surgeries will happen after that.”

He looked at his notes again. “While they were in there, they did fix his leg. It was broken back on itself.” She winced at that, and the doc nodded. “That should tell you something about the level of beating this poor man took,” he stated, staring at her.

“There’s always that one asshole out there who will push it, isn’t there?”

“I don’t even know that I would say asshole in this case but maybe psychopath ,” he murmured. “This beating was severe. If he does come out of it, I can’t see it being without brain damage. Did you find next of kin?”

“No, we haven’t got an identification on him yet,” she replied, “but we’re working on it.”

“Work faster. I hate to see anybody die alone.” And, with that, he turned and walked away.

She stepped into the man’s room, thinking about the doctor’s words and how every conversation seemed to end up with someone telling her to work faster.

Wouldn’t that be nice? The problem was that these killers she was up against were often so hard to deal with, things just didn’t make any sense, no matter how quickly she worked.

These murderers were already off doing something else to some other poor person, while she was chasing her tail on the last victim.

As she walked to the edge of the bed, she looked down and winced.

The poor man’s face was completely swollen and puffy.

He had bandages around his head, and his leg was in a cast and lifted.

His arm appeared to be full of needles. Honestly, there didn’t appear to be anything about his poor body that hadn’t been beaten.

She shook her head and whispered, “I don’t know who did this to you, but I will find him.

” She put a hand on the hospital bed. “What I don’t know is whether I can do that before you pass,” she murmured, “and I know that’s not what anybody wants to hear.

I also need to find out something about who you are. ”

She kept on talking to him. “No ID, nothing was on you. We’ve taken your fingerprints, but, so far, nothing’s come up in the database, which just means that you probably have no record and are some nice clean businessman. So, the question is, has somebody not even reported you missing yet?”

She sighed. “Were you visiting someone here in town?”

“Were you on a holiday?”

“Do you not have a job any longer?” she asked, as she stared down at the poor victim. She shook her head as she looked out at her world.

For this guy, to survive this would be a pretty-rough struggle. To live with these injuries afterward would be even worse. It would also be a rough struggle for whatever family he had, since, at the moment, they didn’t even know what had happened to him. Just then her phone rang. It was Rodney.

“We’ve got a possible hit on your victim in the hospital.”

“I’m here with him right now,” she said. “Who is he?”

“We have a missing person’s report that just came in.

Some woman reported it. A businessman was heading out, or about to head out, catching a flight back to Toronto in the last couple days.

She mentioned how they didn’t worry when he failed to check in right away, but, when they called his hotel to see when he had checked out, they found out he hadn’t even checked in. And that fact started the search.”

“Of course,” Kate muttered, her heart sinking as she stared down at him. “Did she provide any description? Not that I’ll see much to match, not considering his current condition.”

“Right,” Rodney replied, his voice heavy. “I suspect it’s him, but we’ll have to identify him using scars or DNA or the like.”

“Even if the woman who made the missing person’s report came in, an identification would never fly, as he’s too badly banged up.”

“She’s on the way to the hospital right now,” Rodney told her, his voice heavy. “So, you might want to talk to her.”

“Yeah, I will, as soon as she gets here. Anything else happening?” she muttered, as she stared at the victim.

“No. I got as much from her as I could over the phone, and we’ll just keep working on it,” he told Kate. “But this is really getting ugly.”

“What do you mean, getting ugly?” she asked, with a sigh. “This is way past ugly, if you ask me. If we find out that our other body from the warehouse was also beaten to a pulp, we’ll have to consider that he may have been our first victim.”

“I know, and I was thinking about that.”

“You better go update the board because this one’ll get even bigger.”

Just then came a cry from the hospital room door.

Kate quickly ended the call with Rodney and turned to see a woman standing there, staring at the man in the hospital bed. Kate walked over to her, with her badge out, as the woman’s eyes filled with tears.

“Is this Sonny?” she asked.

Kate winced. “We were hoping you could tell us.”

“Oh my God, how can anybody tell anything?”

“And that is exactly our problem right now,” she murmured. “Are you a relative?”

“I’m his wife.”

Kate led the woman closer to the hospital bed, explaining, “He’s in pretty rough shape. We can get you a conversation with the doctor, but I can tell you that they had him in for surgery last night. Luckily he’s stable for the moment, but he seems to have been very badly beaten.”

“What was he even doing at a warehouse?” she cried out. “He was supposed to be at the airport, flying to Toronto.”

“And he may well have been on his way to the airport. Did he take a cab?”

She frowned at the man in the hospital bed and nodded. “Yes, he always does.”

“Okay, good. Do you know if he got picked up at the office?”

She stared at her. “Yes.” Then she frowned. “Do you think the cabbie did this?”

“I have no idea who did this yet,” Kate admitted. “What I need is every detail that you can tell me about when he was due to leave, when he left the house, and when you last saw him.”

Her name was Anna Hilton, and her husband was Sonny Hilton. By the time Kate got that information from Anna, the woman sat down beside her husband, or at least the man she assumed was her husband. Anna added, “He does have a couple birthmarks.”

“Good. We’ll get a doctor in here to see if we can find those and can determine whether this poor man has them or not.” It took Kate a few minutes to get the doctor back.

When he showed up, his questions were all about whether the man had any allergies and what diseases he’d had. By the time Anna had answered his questions, she was shaking and asked, “Can we please just check for the two birthmarks?”

It didn’t take long for the doctor to check the body over, and they concluded that this was indeed Sonny. Anna was sobbing beside her.

Kate waited until Anna had a chance to breathe, patting her on the back. “I know you don’t want to talk about this, but I do need to learn a lot more about him, and we need to do that now.”

“What do you want to know?” Anna asked.

“When was his flight? I need to get the details of his flight and any other plans because I need to establish a timeline.”

“That was yesterday.” Anna stopped and shook her head. “No, no, no, it’s already been yesterday.” She rubbed her face. “I have an email.” She quickly pulled out her phone, brought up the email, and sent it to Kate.

She quickly opened it. It was his flight reservations and travel plans. “Good, this gives us at least the start of a timeline.”

Anna looked at her. “But a timeline doesn’t help him now.”

Kate took a deep breath and nodded. “No, a timeline may not help him at all. I won’t lie to you. His injuries are pretty serious. All I can tell you right now is that we will do our best to find out who did this to him.”