Eleventh Hour

going to have a look around.”
    “Suit yourself,” Carla said. She looked over at Nick. “Did you hear him speak lucidly?”
    “No. When I saw him on the floor, bleeding, I came to get you.”
    “Well, this is all very interesting. Captain DeLoach? Come on now, open your eyes.” She lightly slapped the old man’s cheeks, once, twice, yet again.
    He opened his eyes, blinked.
    “Do you hurt?”
    He moaned again, closed his eyes.
    Carla sighed. “It’s really hard when their minds go. Hey, what are you doing?”
    Nick said, “I was just checking the chair; it’s really sturdy. How does the captain manage to turn it over? It’s quite heavy.”
    “Good question, but he’s done it before. No one’s seen him actually topple over, just the aftermath. Okay, I’ve got this wound bandaged. When the doctor comes around I’ll have him look at it. Let me give the captain a sedative to help him rest.”
    “He looks pretty quiet to me right now,” Nick said, inching a bit closer to look at the old man’s pale face.
    Carla said, arms crossed over her chest, eyes suspicious, “You don’t know anything about it, do you, so your opinion doesn’t count. Now, tell me why two Federal agents are here to see Captain DeLoach.”
    “Sorry,” Nick said, “it’s on a need-to-know basis and you’re not in the loop.”
    Nurse Carla harrumphed and laid the palm of her hand on Captain DeLoach’s forehead, nodded, pulled a small notebook out of her pocket, and scribbled something down. She didn’t say anything else.
    Nick wished Dane would come back. She knew he was looking to see if there was any sign of an intruder, any sign that Weldon DeLoach had been there.

    Ten minutes later, they were in Mr. Latterley’s office with its long glass windows looking onto Bear Lake. He’d just returned, and was still breathing hard.
    “Have you seen Weldon DeLoach recently, Mr. Latterley?”
    “No. I understand he visited a week or so ago, but I didn’t personally see him. He’s very dependable, as I’m sure everyone’s told you. Once every couple of weeks, he’s here to see his father, make sure he’s got everything he needs. Sometimes Weldon comes more often.”
    Dane sat forward. “Have you seen anyone, any stranger, around lately? Today, to be specific?”
    Mr. Latterley shook his head. “Well, I was in town for a couple of hours, so you’ll have to ask the staff. But I’ll tell you, Agent Carver, there’s no reason for someone to come here. Oh, we get an occasional hiker in the summer or a tourist who takes a wrong turn, but today? Not that I know of.”
    Nick said, “The glass doors in Captain DeLoach’s room weren’t locked, Mr. Latterley. Someone could have simply opened them and walked in.”
    “Well, yes, they could, but why? You don’t think that someone actually came in and struck Captain DeLoach, do you? He’s a very old man, agents. Why would anyone seek to hurt him?”
    “I asked him who hit him and he told me it was his son.”
    Mr. Latterley blinked. “You must have misunderstood him,” he said. “Or the old man was just weaving in and out and that was what came out of his mouth. No, not Weldon. That’s ridiculous.”
    He was shaking his head, an interesting head, Nick thought, staring. Shiny, bald, and pointed. She’d never seen a bald head quite so pointed before.
    “No,” he said again, more forcefully this time. “Impossible. You didn’t see any sign of anyone, did you, Agent Carver?”
    “I can’t be certain. We would like to speak to all the staff who work near Captain DeLoach’s room.”
    Dane spent the next hour doing just that. To a person, they shook their heads and looked bewildered by his questions.
    Nick sat beside Captain DeLoach’s bed, holding his hand, speaking quietly to him, hoping for a sensible response, but he didn’t speak. She said to Dane when he came in, “He did open his eyes a couple of times, but he looked right through me, didn’t respond at all. I’ve been speaking to him, about lots of silly things, but he hasn’t answered me.”
    Just before they left, the doctor came out to say, “I examined Captain DeLoach’s head wound. He seems to be all right. To be perfectly honest, I can’t tell if it happened because he hit his head when he fell or if someone indeed struck him. But on the face of it, it seems strange to even consider that some miscreant from the outside would come into the old man’s room and smack him around.”
    Dane said as he