Warshawski 09 - Hard Time Read Free Page B

was more frightened than injured. She kept assuring Mary Louise she was fine and finally climbed out of the car to prove it. Mary Louise probed her neck and shoulders while I fished a flashlight out of my glove compartment.
    Assured of Emily’s safety, Mary Louise hurried to the figure in the road. Professional training pushed the four beers she’d drunk during the evening to the back of her brain. Her stumbling gait on her way to the figure was due to the same shock that made my own legs wobble when I finally found the flashlight and joined her—we hadn’t been going fast enough to get hurt.
    “Vic, it’s a woman, and she’s barely breathing.”
    In the light of my flash I could see that the woman was very young. She was dark, with thick black hair tumbled about a drawn face. Her breath came in bubbling, rasping sobs, as if her lungs were filled with fluid. I’d heard that kind of breathing when my father was dying of emphysema, but this woman looked much too young for such an illness.
    I pointed the light at her chest, as if I might be able to detect her lungs, and recoiled in horror. The front of her dress was black with blood. It had oozed through the thin fabric, sticking it to her body like a large bandage. Dirt and blood streaked her arms; her left humerus poked through the skin like a knitting needle out of a skein of wool. Perhaps she had wandered in front of a car, too dazed by heroin or Wild Rose to know where she was.
    “Vic, what’s wrong?” Emily had crept close and was shivering next to me.
    “Sugar, she’s hurt and we need to get her help. There are towels in the trunk, bring those while I call an ambulance.”
    The best antidote for fear is activity. Emily’s feet crunched across broken glass back to the car while I pulled out my mobile phone and called for help.
    “You take the towels; I’ll deal with the emergency crew.” Mary Louise knew what to say to get paramedics to the scene as fast as possible. “It looks like a hit–and–run victim, bad. We’re at Balmoral and—and—”
    I finished covering the woman’s feet and ran to the corner for the street name. Glenwood, just east of Ashland. A car was about to turn into the street; I waved it on. The driver yelled that he lived there, but I took on the aura of my traffic–cop father and barked out that the street was closed. The driver swore at me but moved on. A few minutes later an ambulance careened around the corner. A squad car followed, blue strobes blinding us.
    The paramedics leapt into efficient action. As they attached the woman to oxygen and slid her smoothly into the ambulance, a crowd began to gather, the mixed faces of Uptown: black, Middle Eastern, Appalachian. I scanned them, trying to pinpoint someone who seemed more avid than the rest, but it was hard to make out expressions when the only light came from the reds and blues of the emergency strobes. A couple of girls in head scarves were pointing and chattering; an adult erupted from a nearby walk–up, slapped one of them, and yanked them both inside.
    I took the flashlight and searched the street, hoping to find a wallet or paper or anything that might identify the woman, but was stopped by one of the patrolmen, who led me over to Mary Louise with the comment that searching the accident scene was police business.
    Mary Louise kept a protective arm around Emily while we answered questions. The officers joined me in an inspection of the Trans Am. The fireplug had popped the hood and bent the front axle.
    “You the driver, ma’am?” one of the cops asked. “Can I see your license?”
    I dug it out of my wallet. He slowly copied the information onto his report, then typed in my name and plate numbers to see how many outstanding DUI’s I had. When the report came back negative, he had me walk a line toe–to–toe—much to the amusement of the pointing, snickering crowd.
    “Want to tell me how this happened, ma’am?”
    I glared at Mary Louise but went through my