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"Male? Feone, too"

"How do you know Rick wasn’t meant to be the victinaled for coffee He was struggling "I knew soured it out I re I was in trouble I was scared I just don’t remember why"

"What about Rick? Was he part of it?"

"I don’t think it had anything to do with him I couldn’t swear to it, but I’ht? Does that tie in so at his elboith a coffeepot He waited until she’d poured coffee for both of us She departed and he smiled uneasily "I don’t knoho my enemies are, you know? I don’t know if people around otten about I don’t want anyone to overhear what I say… just in case I know I’aze followed the waitress as she moved back toward the kitchen She put the coffeepot back on the unit and picked up an order at the , glancing back at hi about her Bobby dabbed at his chin again as an afterthought "We were on our way up to Stage Coach Tavern There’s usually a bluegrass band up there and Rick and I wanted to hear theht have beenon in your life at that point?" "I’d just graduated from UC Santa Teresa I had this part-ti to hear if I was accepted for med school"

Santa Teresa Hospital had been called St Terry’s ever since I could reht ot replies back by spring"

"Well, actually I had applied and didn’t get in, so I was trying again"

"What kind of ere you doing at St Terry’s?" "I was a ’floater,’ really I did all kinds of things For a while, I worked Ad up papers before patients caet prelie, stuff like that Then for a while, I worked in Medical Records filing charts until I got bored Last job I had was clerk-typist in Pathology Worked for Dr Fraker He was neat He let me do lab tests sometimes You know, just simple stuff"

"It doesn’t sound like hazardous work," I said "What about the university? Could the jeopardy you were in be traced back to the school somehow? Faculty? Studies?

Some kind of extracurricular activity you’d been involved in?"

He was shaking his head, apparently drawing a blank "I don’t see how I’d been out since June Accident was Nove is that you were the only one who knew this piece of inforaze traveled around the cafe and then cauess, Me and whoever tried to kill me to shut et a fix on the situation I stirred as probably raws like that "Do you have any sense at all of how long you’d known this thing? Because I’erous… why you didn’t spill the beans right away"

He was looking atlike that?"

"Sure If you stumbled across a theft of some kind, or you found out so off possibilities as they occurred to me "Or you uncovered a plot to assassinate the President…"

"Why wouldn’t 1 have picked up the first telephone I caht"

He was quiet "Maybe I did that Maybe… shit, Kinsey, I don’t know You don’t kno frustrated I get Early on, those first two, three months in the hospital, all I could think about was the pain It took everything I had to stay alive I didn’t think about the accident at all But little by little, as I got better, I started going back to it, trying to remember what happened Especially when they told me Rick was dead I didn’t find out about that for weeks I guess they orried I’d blame myself and it would slow my recovery I did feel sick about it once I heard What if I was drunk and just ran us off the road? I had to find out ent on or I knew I’d go crazy on top of everything else Anyway, that’s when I began to piece together this other stuff"