The FBI Thrillers Collection Books 6-10 - Catherine Coulter [290]
Dr. Able talked as he worked. “Nothing vital seems to be cut, just your skin and a bit of muscle. You’re going to hurt a while, not be able to lie on your back for up to a week, but all in all, you’re a very lucky man, Agent Savich. It could have been worse, much worse, and I’m sure you know that. Okay, I’m going to set the stitches in layers now—the deep ones, and then the surface stitches. This will take a few minutes.”
Savich didn’t feel any pain, just the dragging pull of the thread through his flesh, an obscene feeling he hated.
“You married, Agent Savich?”
Savich wasn’t up to even a yes or no answer and Katie saw it. “Yes, he is, Clyde. I have a feeling his wife is going to show up here even though he told her not to come.”
“Women,” said Dr. Able, “if only they were more like trucks—nice and predictable; you floorboard ’em and they go, right where you tell ’em to.”
“Yeah, I can see what you mean, Clyde,” Katie said. “Not only that, you buy a truck, pay for it, and that’s it. But with women, you gotta pay and pay—and don’t forget the interest.”
“Oh yeah? What about the maintenance?”
“Lots more than your truck’ll ever need.”
Dr. Able laughed hard and Savich was very relieved not to hear him say “Oops.”
He heard their voices, but still felt no particular pain, just the slow pulling of the thread through his flesh; his mind, what was left of it, drifted back to the interviews he’d had yesterday with the husbands of the two slain high school math teachers. It was odd, but their faces blurred together, and he had trouble telling them apart. Then his own face blurred over the both of them.
Troy Ward, tears in his voice, said, “My wife has been dead for six days, Agent Savich, the police don’t have a clue who did it, so how do you think I feel? I’ve told them everything I know, including my mother’s social security number.”
Savich nodded. He didn’t particularly like Troy Ward, the overweight sports announcer. “The thing is, Mr. Ward, the FBI is involved now—”
“Yeah, I’ve heard all about you big boobs waltzing in and taking over. And now the TV’s screaming that it’s a serial killer. God, we don’t need another one. That last one still gives me nightmares.”
“No, we don’t need another one. But I really need to know . . .”
Savich’s brain floated away, and when he managed to snag some of it back again, Troy Ward seemed more overweight now than he had been just an instant before. “Mr. Ward, have you spoken to Mr. Fowler?”
“The other murdered woman’s husband? No, I haven’t. Two grown men sitting together sobbing, it wouldn’t play well in the football locker room, now, would it? Can’t you just see the guys laughing their heads off? No, not much point to that.”
What did football have to do with grieving? “Did you play football, Mr. Ward? Is that how you got into announcing?”
“You making a joke, Agent Savich? Let me tell you, I wasn’t always this big, and I tried out, but I never got past high school ball. They were a bunch of macho assholes anyway.” He jumped to his feet, his three chins wobbling, and screamed, “I wanted to get in the locker room!”
Savich said when that scream died away, “I played football.”
“Well, yeah, I can tell by looking at you. I’ll just bet you had girls hanging off your biceps, didn’t you, you brainless jock?”
That wasn’t very nice of him to say, Savich was thinking, but then Troy Ward had a microphone in front of his mouth and he was screaming, “Go, you macho jock jerks! Run!” He yelled in Savich’s face, “It’s a touchdown! You see that, a touchdown!”
Savich said, “You never met Mr. Gifford Fowler or Leslie Fowler, his wife?”
Now Savich wanted to lie down on this big soft sofa and just listen to the soft rain falling against the front windows of Troy Ward’s very nice house in an excellent area of Oxford, Maryland. “Nope, I