Second excerpt from Lisa Scottoline

Lucinda was saying, “Do you think they’ll tell us something soon?”

“Yes, as soon as they can. They know what they’re doing.”

“Right, they do. It’s a good hospital.”

“It is.” I squeezed her hand. We had often discussed the relative merits of Paoli Hospital, routinely rated among the top in the Philadelphia area. Lucinda had researched the hospitals before we moved here, and she became an expert on them and schools, comparing what the districts spent on instructional costs versus the state and national medians. My wife did the homework; we had that in common. Her mother had been the same way and her father had been a CEO of PennValue, a big insurance brokerage in Allentown. My father used to say she came from money, as if it were an actual place. Moneytown.

“Dad, do you think Moonie’s okay?” Ethan looked over, his eyes pained. They were blue, a shade lighter than Allison’s. I was the only brown-eyed one in the family. Well, me and Moonie.

“Yes,” I told him. We had left the dog in the police cruiser, since the Mercedes was being impounded by the police.

“Don’t be mad at him.” Ethan hung his head, showing a gelled whorl of light brown hair, combed from a low side part. I supposed the style started with Justin Bieber, but Lucinda and I both hoped it would end soon.

“I’m not. Why would I be?”

“I thought you would say it was his fault, but it wasn’t.”

“No, it wasn’t.” I managed a smile to reassure him, but Ethan didn’t smile back. His face was rounder than Allison’s, his eyes were narrower set and his build skinnier. I tended to define him in relationship to his sister, which I knew wasn’t a good thing, but as an only child, I found their differences fascinating. His skin tone was lighter, too. He had a sprinkling of small freckles on his upturned nose, since he got my thin Irish skin.

Ethan’s face fell. “It was my fault.”

Lucinda reached for his hand. “Ethan, no, it wasn’t. Why would you say such a thing?”

“I should’ve held him tighter. If I had, Allison would be fine. I shouldn’t have let him jump out.”

Lucinda’s gaze met mine, her expression agonized. We both knew our son could not bear this burden. He was the more sensitive of the two, carrying his hurts around like a backpack. Meanwhile he began looking down at his hands, where blood had dried within the lines in his palm.

“Ethan, listen.” I squeezed his shoulder. “It’s not your fault.”

“Why not?” Ethan’s troubled gaze lifted to me, and his lip caught on his braces, like it did when his mouth went dry. I knew he wanted an answer, since he was the kind of kid who needed to be reasoned with, not just told.

Because I said so, my father would have said, but that didn’t work with my son.

“Ethan, you’re saying Allison would be fine, but for your letting go of Moonie, right? But that’s bad reasoning. Your letting go of Moonie is just the but-for cause.” I was dredging up first-year torts class, from before I dropped out. “There’s a bunch of other but-fors, and none of them is the real cause.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, think about it. How about, ‘Allison would be fine, but for the fact that we won the game’? Or ‘Allison would be fine, but for the fact we stayed late to celebrate’? Or ‘Allison would be fine, but for the fact we have a new Mercedes’?” I spotted Lucinda wince, so I moved on. “But-for is the same trap as what-if. You drive yourself crazy with possibilities. There’s only one cause, and it’s the carjackers. They did it. It’s their fault.”

“But Moonie—”

“Not Moonie, not you. Them.” My face went hot. I suddenly felt like I was raging inside, my emotions all over the lot. “The two of them, they’re scum. Violent, stupid, evil men. They aren’t worth one hair on your sister’s head. They’re the ones at fault, and I want them to rot in jail. I want them to suffer every damn day of their miserable lives and—”

“The one’s already dead, Dad.”

Lucinda’s eyes flared. “Honey, we were talking about Ethan.”

“I am talking about Ethan. I don’t want Ethan to blame himself for what that scum did to Allison.”

Ethan looked down. “I get it, Dad.”

Lucinda looked shaky. “Your dad’s just upset, is all.”

I turned away, trying to calm down. I wished I knew how Allison was doing in surgery. I loved that child to the marrow. She was everything I could’ve asked for in a daughter. Strong, smart, funny, bold. More blunt than tactful. More sensitive than she looked. My father always said she was like a draft horse, that way. Big and strong, but not always rough and tumble. Growing up, we had a great brown draft, named Chocolate Soldier.

He’s a gentle giant, that one. Don’t use the shank on him.

Allison worried more than she should have, about everything. Hair, body, GPA, extracurriculars, PSAT practice courses, and blackheads in the T- zone, whatever that was. She looked like Lucinda, but her blue eyes were narrower, and she had a long, straight nose and a big smile, now that her braces were off. She had brown hair that she wanted to highlight and lowlight. To her, nothing was as good as it should have been. I never understood. I wouldn’t have changed a thing about her. Good enough for government work, my father said all the time.

I shifted in the chair. My mouth had gone dry. It was impossible that Allison was lying on an operating table, down the hall behind double doors. Every instinct told me to be at her side. Then I remembered I had been at her side on Coldstream Road. She had bled in the street with me right there.

The thought made me furious, and inside I boiled over with rage at the carjackers, at the world, and most of all, at myself.

Daddy?

I spotted two men in suits entering the waiting room, looking around in an official way. They had to be the county detectives, who were supposed to meet us here.

I jumped to my feet.

The detectives headed in our direction. The older one looked to be in his late fifties with a thick bristle of gray hair, hooded brown eyes, and a sunglasses-tan. His sunburnt cheeks were jowly, and his lips a somber line. He was tallish and lean, holding a folder with a gold emblem on its brown plastic cover. The other man was younger, and his dark sport coat looked boxy on his frame. His hair was slicked back and his nose had a pronounced bump.

I extended a hand to the older one. “I’m Jason Bennett, I assume you’re the detectives.”

“Yes. Bill Willoughby, Sergeant Detective of the Chester County District Attorney’s Office. This is my partner, Jim—”

“Did you get him?” I interrupted, unable to hold back.

“No, not yet. My partner is Jim Balleu. We’re sorry about your daughter. We know this is a difficult—”

“I gave the cops descriptions of the driver, the pickup, the license plate, everything. I don’t know if they told you—”

“Yes, they did. Now, if we could speak with you.”

“Sure, of course. Please.” I gestured to the chairs, then realized I hadn’t introduced Lucinda and Ethan, so I did.

Detective Willoughby sat down. “Mrs. Bennett, we’re sorry to disturb you now.”

“I understand.” Lucinda nodded.

“We won’t keep you long.” Detective Willoughby opened his folder, which held a fresh legal pad and a silver Cross pen. Detective Balleu sat down next to him and tugged a reporter’s notebook from his jacket pocket while I started talking.

“You shouldn’t have a problem catching the guy. He drove a black pickup, a Chevy. Maybe five or six years old.”

“We got that message.” Detective Willoughby made a note in his pad.

“Plus you have the other guy, dead at the scene. You must be able to find out who he is. His wallet or phone are probably on him. His fingerprints must be on the gun.”

“We will, rest assured—”

“I mean, you have to find the driver. He’s the guy who shot my daughter. He shot my daughter.” I spat out the words. I couldn’t help it. All that rage exiting my body, blowing through the doors. “I want you to catch him and prosecute him to the fullest extent. I want him in jail for the rest of his life.”

Lucinda dabbed her eyes. Ethan slumped, his hands in his lap.

“Okay.” Detective Willoughby nodded. “Now, if you could tell us what happened.”

“Like I told the cops, they pulled in front of us, then said they were going to take the car.”

“And you resisted?”

“No. Why would I? I care about my family, not a car.”

Detective Willoughby furrowed his short brow. “But one of the perpetrators was killed—”

“I didn’t kill him, I didn’t kill anybody.” I realized they thought I had done it. I wished I had. I should have. “The other carjacker killed him. Didn’t the cops tell you? I told them.”

Lucinda recoiled. “My husband didn’t kill anybody. He would never.”

Detective Willoughby looked from Lucinda to me. “So you’re telling me perpetrator one killed perpetrator two?”

“Yes.” It bothered me the cops at the scene hadn’t told them. I wondered what else the cops hadn’t said. I needed to have faith in these guys.

Lucinda cleared her throat. “We were trying to help our daughter. We were bent over her, and Jason was trying to stop her bleeding. I heard another shot, and then, um, well—”

“I’ll tell it,” I interrupted, to save her from having to continue. “We heard the shot, turned around, and saw that the driver had shot the passenger.”

Detective Willoughby glanced skeptically at the other detective, which made me mad.

“Don’t tell me you don’t believe me.”

“We didn’t say—”

“You didn’t have to. Don’t start with me, not tonight. My daughter’s in there fighting for her life.”