Page 85 of The Family Cross

She pursed her lips. “I’m not the one to make that call, but, wow, did he have a lot of mushrooms in him. I doubt he understood anything.”

“Could he understand now?”

“Possibly.”

“Let’s go, then,” Sampson said, and we entered the room. Hawk was propped up in bed, eyes closed, IV running into his left arm, his right wrist cuffed to the bed rail.

Sampson went to his side, holding his phone in his good hand, the camera on and recording. “Mr. Rodriguez?”

Hawk’s eyes opened lazily; he found me and Sampson, then Detective Hanson.

“What’s up, buttercup?” he said and winked at her.

“Mr. Rodriguez, do you know where you are?” I asked.

He looked around. “I’d say hospital.”

“Where were you before this?”

He thought about that. “Part-time gig at the airport. Trying to make enough to get off the streets, you know.”

I read him his Miranda rights. “Do you understand these rights, Mr. Rodriguez?”

Hawk nodded.

Sampson said, “Do you know why you’re in the hospital?”

He thought about it. “Overdose?”

I said, “You blew up a fuel tanker and a plane and lit another half a dozen aircraft on fire. Most of the people you wounded are in the rooms all around you.”

Hawk blinked, shook his head a little, stared into the middle distance.

“Nah, that… nah, that can’t be real. Just some crazy, twisted shit the shrooms kicked off in my head.”

“No, it’s real,” Sampson said. “We were eyewitnesses.”

I said, “And we know you killed four people, including Corey McGovern. We were coming to arrest you when you went berserk.”

The ex–Special Forces operator blinked and stared into the distance again. He shook his head. “No, I didn’t. Not Corey. She…” Rodriguez refocused on me. “If this is true, I need to speak to a lawyer. I exercise my right to remain silent.”

74

IT WAS A LITTLE past seven that evening when I climbed the stairs to my front porch, feeling more wrung out than I had in years. I went inside and immediately noticed things were quiet. A little too quiet.

Nana.

I quickly put my service weapon away in the lockbox in the closet and went toward the kitchen and the great room. Bree met me before I could enter.

She whispered, “Nana’s sleeping now. Damon took Ali and the aunts out to dinner so things could stay quiet. Today was evidently an up-and-down day. I’ll let the night nurse explain.”

One of the night nurses, Bobby Jain, came into the kitchen with my grandmother’s chart. He said she had done an excellent job with her physical and occupational therapy sessions that morning. My grandmother got out of bed and with the walker had been able to slowly make it to the powder room off the living room.

“That’s great,” Bree whispered.

“It is,” the night nurse whispered back. “And she did well during her speech therapy. That was around one o’clock, and she took a short nap afterward. But when she woke up around three, she was confused, and she panicked. Her heart rate went way up until your aunts calmed her down.”

“And now?”