Crush - Alan Jacobson [155]
Vail and Dixon spoke with couples in four of the eight other rooms. No one was around during the time frame Vail estimated Robby might have left the room. No one saw or heard anything unusual. In short, no one had anything of value to offer.
They left Dixon’s card stuck in the doors of the rooms that did not answer their knock, with a note to call as soon as they returned. With that, they got back in the car and headed for the emergency room.
THEY ARRIVED at the Napa Valley Medical Center and entered the emergency room through the ambulance bay. As they passed the nurses’ station, where a woman was talking quickly into a corded red phone, Vail heard the beeps of heart monitors, medical orders and countertalk between doctors and nurses, and the firing of a portable x-ray unit. The composite sounds reminded her of Jonathan’s recent stay at Fairfax Hospital. They weren’t fond memories.
A gurney wheeled by in front of them, causing them to pull up and wait while the staff descended on the patient.
It didn’t take long to find the area where John Mayfield was being treated. Gray and blue curtains were drawn, but three Napa County deputy sheriffs, dressed in black jackets and pants, stood a few feet back from the foot of the gurney. Vail and Dixon badged the three men, then stepped around the curtain. Another two deputies were inside, beside the doctor and nurse, who were dressed in powder blue scrubs. A portable x-ray tube stood off to the side. A stocky physician, presumably the radiologist, was holding up an x-ray to the fluorescent lighting.
“I’ll give this a better read on the lightbox, but it’s pretty clear.” He pointed with an index finger; his colleague, a slender physician, looked on. “See? Here, and here.”
“Set it and release,” the thin doctor said.
The radiologist lowered the film. “That’ll do it.” He looked down at his patient. “Someone did a number on your elbow and knee, Mr. Mayfield.”
“That someone is me,” Dixon said. She stood there, thumbs hooked through her belt loops. Daring anyone to comment.
Everyone in the room turned to face her. No one spoke.
The doctor turned back to his patient. “We’ll get you stabilized, but you’re going to need an orthopedic consult. My best guess is surgery will be required to reduce that tib-fib fracture and repair the torn ligaments, but that’ll have to wait till the swelling’s down. It’s possible, even with surgery, that you’ll have some reduced mobility.”
“Get the violins,” Vail said.
All heads once again turned in their direction.
“I gotta listen to this bullshit?” Mayfield asked.
“Excuse me,” the radiologist said. “You mind waiting out—”
“No,” Vail said, “excuse us. Your patient is a serial killer who’s brutally murdered several innocent people. Still concerned about the reduced mobility of his left arm?”
The doctor pulled his eyes from Vail, took a noticeable step back from Mayfield, and glanced at his colleague. “Well, as I said, I’m going to give these a closer look on the . . . on the lightbox.” He turned and pushed past the nurse and deputies and left the curtained room.
“Shall I call Dr. Feliciano?” the nurse asked.
The remaining physician took a step back himself. His eyes found the handcuffs that were fastened to the gurney. “Yes . . . Dr. Feliciano. Let’s get Mr. Mayfield casted and on his feet. So to speak.”
TWO HOURS LATER, Dr. Feliciano had finished casting both limbs—without incident, and, at his patient’s insistence, without pain killers. Shortly thereafter, Mayfield received an expedited release and was cleared for transport to the Napa jail.
Earlier, while Mayfield was being attended to by Dr. Feliciano, Dixon fielded calls from the maid for the Heartland bed-and-breakfast. She did not recall anything unusually out of place in Vail’s room, but she couldn’t be sure because she cleans four different B&Bs per day, and they all tended to run together. There was one that was in significant disarray, but she thought it was down the road from Heartland. Dixon tried to get her