“Yes, but why?” Rawlins persisted. “This morning she was itching to get back here to him and their patient.”
“That’s what she said, but that’s not what she did. She ran off with Mallett. I’m telling you, this whole thing—” Wilson broke off, walked a few feet forward, then knelt on one knee in the parking space next to Lambert’s and looked more closely at the spots on the concrete floor that had drawn his attention. “Blood.”
Rawlins joined him to take a look. “Relatively fresh.”
Wilson called attention to the name on the wall. “In Dr. O’Neal’s parking space.”
It wasn’t a copious amount of blood, but the quantity didn’t signify as much as its being there at all. The two deputies tracked the intermittent drops as far as the exit, but once beyond the cover of the building, the trail had been washed away by rain.
“Whoever was bleeding walked out of here,” Wilson said.
“Then what?”
“Hell if I know. Maybe somebody just got a nosebleed.”
Rawlins turned to Wilson, looking skeptical. “Is that what you really think?”
“No.”
“Me neither. Based on everything else that has happened, I think we ought to bring in Atlanta PD.” He glanced around, spotting the security cameras mounted at strategic points in the ceiling. “We should have a video of what went down here. I’ll call it in. You get a home address for Brynn O’Neal. We’ll start looking for her there.”
They were walking quickly toward the SUV when Rawlins’s cell phone rang. “Probably the wife demanding a divorce.”
But it was Myra. Rawlins put her on speaker. She cut to the chase. “Two things. Thatcher went off duty, so Braxton took over for him at the hospital. He just called. Brady’s bum heart—”
“He has a bum heart?”
“Everybody knows that,” she said with exasperation. “It’s giving them some concern. Vitals-wise, he’s lost a lot of ground. His cardiologist is on his way to the hospital as we speak. Marlene’s fit to be tied.”
“Hell,” Rawlins said, exchanging a worried frown with Wilson. “What’s the second thing?”
“The license plate number on that black Mercedes.”
“The café’s camera angle was wrong. We didn’t get it.”
“That camera didn’t, but the one at the hardware store did.”
“Across from our department?”
“Slow day, so I drummed up a project. I had all the cameras downtown checked for pictures of a black Mercedes. It was parked around back of the hardware store for over an hour just before dawn.”
“While we were questioning Dr. O’Neal and Mallett.”
“Um-huh. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.” She paused, then, “Is Brynn in trouble?”
“We’re trying to ascertain—”
“Don’t feed me that cop crap, Rawlins. Talk to me like a person. I’ve known that girl since before her mama died. I don’t want anything bad to happen to her, now she’s made something of herself.”
“Neither do I, Myra. But did you ever know her to follow her daddy’s example?”
“You mean steal?”
“That’s what I mean.” When she hesitated to answer, Rawlins said, “Tell us straight.”
“She was a scrawny thing. All knees and elbows. Twelve, thirteen. Thereabouts. She took a coat from the girls’ locker room. Claimed it had been hanging there for several days, nobody missing it. It was cold wintertime.”
“And she needed a coat,” Rawlins said.