in Blog, Lit, Serial Fiction 8:29 am Monday, October 22nd, 2007

“Death On The Breeze”
A Danny Stark Mystery
by James Walling

Thirty miles away in a sparsely appointed hospital room, Danny and Jillian sat by Bean’s bedside, watching apprehensively as the young man drew long, uneven breaths of air.

Silence prevailed as evening advanced, broken only by the periodic passage of nurses, doctors and patients out in the hallway.

A chart on the door cataloging Bean’s many injuries read like a litany of senseless abuse: three broken ribs, a mild concussion, bruising and abrasions around the mouth and eyes, severe dehydration, defensive wounds on the hands and wrists, and four ugly cigarette burns in a neat row across his chest. Bean had yet to regain consciousness in the hours since they’d found him curled in a ball in the gravel parking lot next to the garage.

“I’m going to phone Angie,” Danny said, rising to his feet.

“What are you going to tell her?” Jillian asked.

Danny shrugged.

“That he’s alive…and that she might as well go home. There’s no reason for her to hang out at the garage. I ought to have called hours ago.”

Jillian concurred and Danny made his way to the nurses’ station to find a pay phone.

He plunked two quarters in a phone in the main lobby and dialed his home number. Angie didn’t pick up.

“Christ,” Danny muttered. “Now what?”

Hoping that she must have gone home, Danny took the elevator back to Bean’s floor and rejoined Jillian.

The middle-aged, distinguished looking doctor who had originally tended to Bean’s wounds reappeared, checked the boy’s vitals, and spoke with Danny and Jillian. His prognosis did little to check their anxiety.

“Once the swelling from the concussion recedes,” he droned, “he will most likely regain consciousness.”

“Most likely?” Danny groaned.

“It’s hard to say for certain,” the doctor replied mechanically. “Head injuries are tricky. At this point it’s difficult to say whether there will be any lasting damage, but I wouldn’t worry too much. His concussion was mild, and he’s quite healthy apart from his other injuries.”

A nurse entered and announced that a young woman had left a message for Danny at the front desk. He hurried to the pay phone to return Angie’s call.

“Why didn’t you pick up?” Danny snapped impatiently when she answered.

“I had your headphones on,” she said, “I found a bag of cassette tapes in your desk that Bean made.”

“Nosey girl.”

“I was looking for your scotch.”

Danny sighed and realized how worried he’d been when she hadn’t answered the phone.

“I had him record his notes after he finished his interviews,” he said. “I’m blind, remember?”

“I get it,” she said irritably. “I was listening to them to see if you missed anything.”

“And?” he asked.

“Nothing, but Danny, the recorder is missing.”

Danny considered this.

“It should be in the same drawer.”

“I looked. Did he have it with him?”

“He didn’t have anything with him,” Danny said. “His wallet, his cell phone, his keys, all gone.”

“Was there anything in the truck?” Angie asked.

“I keep the registration and insurance in the glove box, but other than that, and some jumper cables behind the seat, there was nothing inside the cab.”

“Jesus, do you think he tried to question somebody, somebody who decided he knew too much?”

“Could be.”

“Has he said anything yet?”

Danny gave Angie a detailed report on Bean’s condition and told her to take the truck and head on home. After he hung up, he went to the hospital cafeteria and bought a couple of sandwiches, a bottle of water, and two coffees.

Jillian gratefully accepted a pastrami on rye and ate ravenously. Finishing her coffee, she kissed Danny dryly on the lips and gathered her things to go, insisting that Danny call when he was ready to go home.

Two days passed with no change in Bean’s condition. Jillian faded back into the routine of tending to her sister and the girls, appearing briefly to deliver a change of clothes and some home-cooked meatloaf.

On Wednesday morning, Bean emerged from the depths of slumber at last. “His face,” Bean muttered softly, “his face…”

Danny leapt to his feet from a slumped position on the couch that the nurses had moved into the room for him to sleep on.

“Bean!” Danny exclaimed as he knelt down next to the boy, whose eyes opened lazily, and were now darting around the room in confusion.

“Where am I…”

“You’re in the hospital, Bean. You’re okay.”

“His face…” Bean repeated, “I never saw his face, Danny. In all the time he had me…”

His voice broke and he stared blankly out the window, struggling to compose himself.

“It’s alright,” Danny assured him. “There’ll be time for all that. Just take it easy.”

Bean remained silent for a moment and then turned back to Danny, his voice suddenly clearer and more steady.

“He hit me with something when I was trying to get into the truck. By the time I came to, I was blindfolded. He wanted me to tell him everything I know about Herb, and about you. He kept hitting me, and then he—”

Danny stopped him.

“That’s enough, Bean. Take it easy.”

But Bean seemed anxious to continue.

“It was the same guy who attacked you at the garage, Danny,” he said emphatically. “He kept laughing about how he lost a fist fight with a blind guy, kept saying it made a great joke.”

“Yeah,” Danny said, “pretty funny stuff.”

“There was a woman there too,” Bean went on. “She kept begging him to stop hurting me.”

“Did you get a look at her?” Danny asked despondently.

“No.”

“Do you remember anything about him that would help us identify him?”

Bean thought hard.

“His voice,” he said finally. “I’ll never forget that voice as long as I live.”

Danny sat quietly for a moment and placed his hand on Bean’s wrist reassuringly.

“That makes two of us, kid,” he said gravely. “That makes two of us.”