Bringing Adam Home - Les Standiford [30]
He’d rather go head-on into a bridge piling than sink to a watery grave, but somehow he had ended up in just that place, and goddamn Napoleon Bonaparte Broward anyway for thinking he had the right to drain the Everglades just so he could line his pockets. . . .
It’s the sort of thinking that passes in a millisecond during a crash. In the next moment, Matthews had already forgotten about bad luck and greed, one hand groping for the door lever, the other flailing about for the precious possession beside him. He snatched his polygraph instrument by its case handle, managed to wrench his door open, then kicked himself free of the sinking car and burst to the surface of the murky water, gasping. Already, there was a highway patrolman clambering down the steep bank to help him out.
The cop took the case and helped Matthews up the rocky, debris-laden slope. At the top he regarded Matthews for a moment, then reached into the trunk of his cruiser and handed him a towel. “You better hold this on your head until the ambulance gets here,” he said.
Matthews stared back at the cop, uncomprehending. “Why would I need to do that?”
“Just hold it right here,” the cop said, pressing the towel to Matthews’s head.
At the hospital, several hundred stitches to his laid-open skull later, Matthews gradually came to realize how badly he’d been hurt. Furthermore, he recalled, he’d been on his way to an important appointment, and managed to convince his doctors that he had to make a phone call. Only after he’d spoken to someone at Hollywood PD, then managed to reach his brother to tell him what had happened, did he give in to the doctors and the sedatives.
When he woke the next day, there was something nagging at Matthews, but he was still groggy from the concussion he’d suffered, and a severely dislocated shoulder was causing him immense pain. He simply couldn’t put his finger on what was gnawing at him.
Not until he was released and on his way home several days later did he remember once again the polygraph exam that he had scheduled with Revé Walsh. The moment he made his way through the door of his house, he called Jack Hoffman at Hollywood PD. “I’m sorry about the exam, but I had a pretty bad accident—,” Matthews began, but Hoffman cut him off.
“Yeah, we heard,” the detective said. “Don’t worry. We got somebody else to do it.”
“Really?” Matthews said, taken aback. Matthews wasn’t even sure how Hoffman knew he’d been hurt, for he had no recollection of making the call to Hollywood PD from the hospital. And while he couldn’t blame Hoffman for going ahead without him, it was still a bit disconcerting—it would have been better for consistency’s sake to have the same person conducting all the polygraph exams. What Hoffman said next, however, took him completely by surprise.
“Fact is, I’m glad you called,” Hoffman continued. “I wanted to let you know we won’t be needing you any longer.”
Matthews felt his jaw sag as Hoffman continued. The investigation was winding down, the detective explained. If the need for any other testing arose, the department could take care of it themselves. Matthews could go on back to Miami Beach.
Matthews stared at the phone, as the connection broke, incensed at Hoffman and dismayed at the prospects for the investigation. From the beginning, he had pegged Hoffman as a turf-protecting blowhard if there ever was one, but he had dealt with those types before. What was truly disheartening was the response he’d received from Lieutenant Hynds when he’d tried to point out how the investigation seemed to be going awry.
From the moment that Hynds had put him off, he’d sensed that he was battling a prevailing current of face-saving at Hollywood PD, but what could he do besides perform the job he’d been called in for and hope that his results would have some effect? And, he supposed, his efforts had achieved something. If not for his work, it was possible that a hapless