Rizzoli & Isles 8-Book Set

blood at the bottom of the steps.
    As her gaze lifted toward the second floor, she imagined a body tumbling down those steep stairs, could almost hear the crack of a skull as it bounced down the steps and smashed onto the floor near her feet. Someone fell here, she thought.
    Or was pushed.
    B Y THE TIME she walked back into their house, Doug had already returned with their belongings from the Jeep. He unzipped Arlo’s backpack and dumped the contents onto the coffee table. She saw sinus tablets and nose spray, sunscreen and ChapStick, plus a wholedrugstore’s supply of toiletries. Everything a man needed to stay well groomed, but nothing to help him stay alive. Only when Doug unzipped one of the side pockets did he find the pill bottle.
    “Valium, five milligrams. As needed for back spasms,”
he read. “It’ll help him get through this.”
    “Doug,” Maura said softly. “In one of the houses, I found—” She stopped as Grace and Elaine walked in the room.
    “You found what?” Doug asked.
    “I’ll tell you later.”
    Doug spread out all the medications that they’d scavenged. “Tetracycline. Amoxicillin.” He shook his head. “If his leg gets infected, he’s going to need better antibiotics than these.”
    “At least we found some Percocet,” said Maura, uncapping the bottle. “But there’s only a dozen pills left. Do we have anything else?”
    Elaine said, “I always have some codeine in my …” She stopped, frowning at what Doug had brought back from the Jeep. “Where’s my purse?”
    “I only found one purse.” Doug pointed to it.
    “That’s Maura’s. Where’s mine?”
    “Elaine, that’s all I saw in the Jeep.”
    “Then you missed it. There’s codeine in it.”
    “I’ll go back for it later, okay?” He knelt down beside Arlo. “I’m going to give you some pills, buddy.”
    “Knock me out,” whimpered Arlo. “Can’t stand this pain.”
    “This should help.” Doug gently lifted Arlo’s head, slipped two Valiums and two Percocets into his mouth, and gave him a swallow of whiskey. “There you go. We’ll give that medicine some time to work first.”
    “First?” Arlo coughed on the whiskey, and fresh tears leaked from his eyes. “What do you mean?”
    “We need to work on your leg.”
    “No. No, don’t touch it.”
    “Your circulation’s been cut off by the tourniquet. If we don’t loosen it, your leg’s going to die.”
    “What are you going to do?”
    “We’re going to tie off the ruptured artery and control the bleeding that way. I think you’ve damaged either the posterior or anterior tibial artery. If one of them is still intact, it might be enough circulation to supply your leg with blood. And keep it alive.”
    “That means you’re going to have to dig around in there.”
    “We need to isolate which artery is bleeding.”
    Arlo shook his head. “No way.”
    “If it’s the anterior tibial, we only have to slide between a few muscles, just below the knee.”
    “Forget it. Don’t touch me.”
    “I’m thinking of what’s best for you. There’ll be a little pain, but in the end you’ll be glad I—”
    “A little? A
little?
” Arlo croaked out a desperate laugh. “Stay the fuck away from me!”
    “Listen, I know it hurts, but—”
    “You don’t know shit, Doug.”
    “Arlo.”
    “Stay away! Elaine, for God’s sake, make him stay away!”
    Doug rose to his feet. “We’ll let you rest, okay? Grace, you stay here with him.” He looked at Maura and Elaine. “Let’s go in the other room.”
    They met in the kitchen. Elaine had left a pot of water to heat on the woodstove, and it was now simmering, ready to sterilize instruments. Through the steam-fogged window, Maura could see the sun was already dropping toward the horizon.
    “You can’t force him to go through this,” said Maura.
    “It’s for his own good.”
    “Surgery without anesthesia?
Think
about it, Doug.”
    “Give the Valium some time to work. He’ll calm down.”
    “But he won’t be unconscious. He’ll still be able to feel the incision.”
    “He’ll thank us for it later. Trust me.” Doug turned to Elaine. “You agree with me, don’t you? We can’t just give up on his leg.”
    Elaine hesitated, obviously torn between the two terrible options. “I don’t know …”
    “Ligating the artery is the only way we’ll be able to remove that tourniquet. The only way we can restore some blood flow.”
    “Do you really think you can do it?”
    “It’s a