Page 14 of The Perfect Hosts
“Not officially,” the nurse says. “She was brought into the morgue DOA with no ID. He—” she points toward the room where the deputy took the distraught man “—is looking for his wife, Johanna Monaghan. I imagine the husband will go down and make a formal identification soon. Who knows? Maybe it isn’t her.”
Jamie hopes she’s right. “How many other victims were brought into the ER tonight?” he asks.
“We had about thirty,” the nurse explains. “That’s about all we could handle. Some were sent to the hospital in Cody.A few went other places. Most were minor injuries except for a heart attack and a young woman who came in with some burns. She’s getting checked out right now. I don’t see her being much help to you at the moment.” She points to the exam room that Jamie saw the pregnant woman go into. “I suggest you start with her.”
“Thanks.” He glances at her name badge. “I appreciate your help, Kendra.”
“Oh, and give her these,” Kendra says, plopping a set of pink hospital scrubs atop the counter. “The sooner she gets out of here, the better.”
Jamie scoops up the scrubs. The nurse is right. It is ridiculous. He had a similar case recently where an expecting couple accidently started a fire that destroyed over twenty thousand acres and killed a firefighter. All for what? To find out the kind of equipment their kid was coming into the world with.
Jamie raps gently on the closed door, and when he hears a soft voice inviting him in, he opens it and steps inside. On first glance, the room looks unoccupied, the narrow hospital bed empty except for a tangle of bed linens. “I’m here,” the woman says.
Jamie peers around the door. The woman is sitting in a chair, her belly resting heavily on her lap. Her face is streaked with soot and tears, and she smells of smoke. She is staring down at her fingers, also dirty, and he can’t help but notice the huge diamond on her left ring finger. She notices him noticing and covers it with her other hand. Wealthy, thinks Jamie, but not entirely comfortable with it.
“Jamie Saldano, ATF,” he says, looking around the room for a place to sit. He lowers himself to the only other seat in the room, a round, squat stool on wheels. “And you are?”
“Madeline Drake, and I’ve already told that deputy everything I know,” she says, helplessly. “Can you help me find my husband? His name is Weston. Wes Drake.”
Jamie feels a little dizzy. Drakes are a dime a dozen in the area, Jamie knows. At least that’s how it was when he lived here. Aunts, uncles, cousins, cousins’ cousins. The Drake family owns a big slab of Wyoming. His fingers find their way to the jagged scar behind his left ear.
“Can you help me find my husband?” the woman repeats, pulling Jamie from his thoughts.
He blinks, looks down at his hands where the pink scrubs are now balled up tightly in his fist. “I’ll see what I can find out,” Jamie says, trying to smooth out the wrinkles before passing them to Madeline. “That really sweet nurse behind the desk asked me to give these to you.”
When Madeline raises her eyebrows at him as if to sayReally?Jamie can’t help the tiny uptick of a smile that creeps onto his face, and he watches Madeline visibly relax. This is what he knows he’s good at—making witnesses, victims, and suspects feel more at ease, more willing to open up to him. Jamie thinks of it as one of his greatest strengths. Tess, on the other hand, thinks it’s duplicitous, manipulative. “Don’t do that thing you do,” she’d say when they went out with her colleagues. He tried to argue with her, explain that he was simply trying to let others know he was interested in what they have to say, learn about who they are. “Well, don’t. It feels like you’re interrogating them.”
The hospital room door suddenly flies open, striking the arm of Madeline’s chair with a loud thud. The figure of a man fills the doorway. His clothes are rumpled and soot-stained and smell of smoke. His eyes are wild, searching. They land on Jamie and then narrow as if trying to place a familiar face. Jamie immediately recognizes him. He could never forget Weston Drake, though Jamie hasn’t seen him since he was twelve years old. Apparently, Jamie hasn’t had the same effect on Wes, because that moment of recognition dissipates like a popped bubble.
“I’m looking for my wife. The nurse said she’d be in here,” Wes croaks. His words come out harshly, as if it is painful to utter them. Which they probably are, Jamie thinks. This is the effect that smoke inhalation has on the throat, the voice box.
“I’m here,” Madeline says, struggling to get to her feet. Wes whirls around and, upon seeing his wife, envelops her in a tight embrace. Madeline cries out in pain, and he steps back, still grasping her hands.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Wes says over and over. “Where are you hurt?”
Jamie’s heart is pounding so hard that he can barely hear their words above the thumping in his ears. He pretends to check his phone but watches as they embrace, more gently this time, and Madeline says that the doctors have had her on a fetal heart monitor for the past six hours. And assures her husband that the baby is fine, that she is fine. Wes insists that he is fine too. Everyone is fine. Except, Jamie thinks, he himself is not fine.
“Where were you?” Wes cries. “I couldn’t find you. I told you to stay in that one spot, and when I came back you weren’t there.”
“I’m sorry,” Madeline says. “I meant to, but I was bleeding, and then the EMTs were there telling me I needed to go with them.”
“You should have told someone,” Wes chides. “I was worried sick.”
“I’m sorry,” she repeats. “It all happened so fast.” Madeline is crying hard now, telling Wes how Johanna is dead. Asking how this could have happened. It was supposed to be safe. Wes murmurs soft words of comfort. “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.”
Wes must feel Jamie’s eyes on them, because he turns, looks at Jamie hopefully. “She’s really okay, right? And the baby?”
Wes must think he’s the doctor. Jamie has been mistaken for worse.
“No, honey,” Madeline says, sniffling. “He’s with the police, right?” She directs this question to Jamie.
“That’s right,” Jamie says. “Agent Saldano. I’m with the ATF.”
Wes stares more intently at him now, and Jamie waits for understanding, recognition, to wash over him. Over the years, Jamie has rarely allowed thoughts of his time in the tiny town of Nightjar, Wyoming, to creep in. He has worked so hard to forget, to put that summer out of his mind. But when his thoughts inch back twenty-seven years, it is always Weston Drake’s face he sees. Younger, less lined, less hardened, but still his.
It’s going to be okay.
The exact same words Wes said to his wife but directed at a twelve-year-old Jamie lying in a roadside ditch, broken arm, broken leg, broken eye socket, broken nose, broken jaw.