Blind Tiger by Sandra Brown

Bill Amos said, “Can you get over to Doc Perkins’s office?”

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

“Who’s sick?”

“Just come. Don’t say anything to anybody.”

The sheriff disconnected. Thatcher hung up, stared at the telephone in puzzlement for several seconds, then, responding to Bill’s urgency, ducked back into the dining room to take his hat from the rack.

The crabby Mrs. May said, “Are you eatin’ or not?”

“Not.” He was aware of Chester Landry’s interest in his abrupt departure, but he didn’t acknowledge the man as he rushed out. He feared the emergency pertained to Daisy Amos.

Having to walk several blocks, he was winded by the time he reached the professional building on Main Street where he’d been told the elderly doctor had a clinic that took up half the third floor. It was past quitting time for anyone else who had office space there, but the main entrance was unlocked. Thatcher went in and climbed the stairs two at a time.

A door with the doc’s name printed on it opened into a waiting room where a woman was seated near a small table, smoking a cigarette. She was unkempt. There were blood smears on her dress. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her expression harsh. “Who are you?”

He took off his hat. “Thatcher Hutton.”

“What are you doing here?”

Before he could reply, Bill Amos opened a door with “Examination Room” stenciled on it. “I called him,” he said to the woman, then hitched his head, indicating for Thatcher to join him in a small room with glass-fronted supply cabinets on two walls. The center was dominated by the examination table.

“Through here,” Bill said as he led Thatcher through yet another room into an operating room. He drew up short when he saw the table on which a female person lay.

A white sheet covered her from toes to chin. All that showed was a mass of thick, dark hair and her face, which looked like it had had a head-on collision with a locomotive.

Wearing a white lab coat, Doc Perkins was washing his hands at an industrial-size porcelain sink. Thatcher recognized the strong smell of antiseptic from his days in the army hospital.

Bill said, “That’s Norma Blanchard.”

Stunned, Thatcher remembered the pretty, shapely woman with the saucy walk whom he’d seen going into Gabe Driscoll’s house late one night. “She dead?”

“As of when I called you. I wanted you to see her to get an idea of what we’re dealing with here.”

Thatcher wanted to object to the plural pronoun. In his mind, he’d taken a stand against the likes of the violent Johnsons, but he hadn’t been sworn in as a deputy yet, and he wasn’t wearing the badge. However, now wasn’t the time to go into all that.

Thatcher said, “Who’s the woman outside?”

“Miss Blanchard’s sister. Patsy Kemp.”

She was no doubt the woman who’d chauffeured Norma to Gabe Driscoll’s house, but Thatcher hadn’t gotten a good look at her face that night and wouldn’t have recognized her.

Bill said, “I asked her to stay, so we could talk to her about the assault.”

“Assault? This wasn’t an accident?”

“No. Mrs. Kemp brought Norma to Dr. Perkins around four o’clock. She was barely alive. He evaluated her condition and called me right away. She never regained consciousness.” To the doctor, he said, “Give him a run-down. No medical jargon, please. Plain talk.”

The doctor unhooked the wire stems of his eyeglasses from behind his ears, removed them, and began polishing them with the towel he’d used to dry his hands.

“Her nose is broken. Pulverized, actually. Fractured cheekbone, broken jawbone, three loose teeth. A flap of scalp about an inch in diameter had been ripped away. I sewed it back, but that’s the least of it.”

He replaced his glasses and looked down at the draped figure. “The back of her torso appears to have been pummeled repeatedly, I suspect with fists. I also tweezed out several shards of mirror glass that had sliced through her garment.” He pointed to a silky dressing gown wadded up in a chair.

“I detected three broken ribs. Others may have been cracked. She might have survived, in time, and under the care of physicians better trained and skilled at treating the more serious of her injuries.”

“What were they?”

“She has a sizable bruise and swelling above her left kidney. It’s so precisely placed, it appears the organ was targeted. Perhaps by the heel of a shoe. I suspect the blunt force caused internal hemorrhaging. She bled to death.”

The doctor’s eyes looked apologetic behind the round lenses of his glasses. “I did what I could, but I’m a country doctor, unqualified to deal with something like this. Perhaps Gabe Driscoll would have been a better choice.”

Bill glanced at Thatcher, then turned to the doctor. “Tell him the rest.”

The doctor bowed his head and addressed the floor. “She was raped. Barbarically. Considerable damage was done to tissue.”

The men stood silent, looking neither at each other, nor at Norma Blanchard’s still form. After a moment, the doctor covered her face.

In a quiet voice, Bill said, “Her injuries are of such a sensitive nature, I’d like to keep the details between us, doc.”