She stared at the ceiling, the lips pursed again. “Nearly thirty years ago, I expect.”

“Or maybe twenty-seven or twenty-eight?”

“Could be, yes.”

Horatio sat back, deep in thought. Finally he rose and took out his wallet. Hazel immediately held up her hand.

“Give the money to Lindy. She’ll make your life miserable until you do.”

But Horatio wasn’t taking money out of his wallet. He wrote something down on the back of a card and handed it to her. “This is the name and number of a woman I know down here who can get you into a facility that’s a lot better. Give me a day to make the arrangements and then give her a call.”

“I don’t have money for a better facility.”

“It’s not how much money you have; it’s who you know, Hazel. And the place I’m thinking of has ongoing classes in different subjects, including medicine, if you’re still interested.”

The old woman took the card. “I thank you,” she said quietly.As Horatio turned to leave, she said, “If you see Michelle, would you tell her Hazel Rose said hello? And that I’m real proud of her?”

“Consider it done.”

Horatio walked down the hall, found Lindy flirting with a burly attendant in the visitor’s lounge, paid the sullen woman off and fled the state-supported hellhole.

As he climbed into his car he started wondering how vanishing rose hedges might have ended up destroying Michelle Maxwell’s life nearly three decades later.

THE NEXT MORNING MICHELLE WORKED OUT HARD, bitched at one of the nurses about the AWOL Horatio Barnes, went back to her room and ripped the straw out of Cheryl’s mouth after the woman emitted six excruciatingly long slurps in a row.

Then she heard the running feet heading her way and knew the moment of truth had arrived. She grabbed Cheryl, who was protesting loudly, and threw her in the bathroom. “Don’t come out until you hear one body hit the floor,” she yelled in the woman’s face. This remark actually made Cheryl stop screeching for her straw.

Michelle slammed the bathroom door, turned and braced herself.

The door to her room was kicked open and there was Barry, holding a metal pipe.

“You bitch!” he screamed.

“You drug dealer!” she screamed back in mock fury and then laughed. “So let me guess, they busted your partner this morning and he ratted on you.”

“You bitch!” he roared again.

She motioned with her hands. “Come and get me, Barry, baby. You know you want to. And after you kick my ass you can have yourself a real good time with me.”

He sprang forward, the pipe held high for the killing blow.

He flew backward just as fast when her foot collided with his face. She didn’t wait for him to recover. Her fist crashed into his gut and then she whirled around and delivered a crushing kick to his jaw driving him backward and over Cheryl’s bed. He struggled up, stunned by the strength of her blows. He threw the pipe at her, missing her head by an inch as she ducked. Then he picked up a chair and hurled that too, but Michelle was too nimble. He bounded over the bed and lunged for her, and caught nothing except air and a massive side kick to his kidneys that seemed to drive all the fight out of him.

He dropped to his knees groaning as she stood over him and for good measure drove an elbow into the back of his head. That sent him flat to the floor.

“I’m waiting, Barry. If you want to finish this, you better hurry; the cops will be here soon.”

“You bitch!”he moaned weakly.

“Yeah, you said that already. Can’t you think of something new?”

He tried to get up and she tensed to deliver a knockout blow when two Fairfax cops peered through the doorway, guns drawn.

She pointed at Barry. “He’s the one you want. I’m Michelle Maxwell, the one who tipped off Detective Richards yesterday.”

One of the cops, eyeing the destroyed room, said, “You okay, ma’am?”

Barry groaned from the floor, “You idiot! I’m the one who’s hurt. I need a doctor. She attacked me.”

“This is my room. He came in with the lead pipe over there, his prints are all over it,” Michelle said. “He tried to pay me back for crashing the little drug op he had going with the pharmacist here. My guess is they were fudging the computer records on the drug inventories so the theft wouldn’t show up and old Barry here was shipping them out to his street team under the cover of patients in the locked ward here sending out packages.” She glanced down at the beaten man. “As you can see, things didn’t work out exactly as he’d planned.”

The cops hauled Barry up, despite his protests of devastating injury, cuffed him and read him his rights.

“We’ll need your statement, ma’am,” one of the cops said.

“Oh, and I’m just dying to give it.”

They’d holstered their weapons and were leading Barry out when everyone froze. In the doorway was Sandy in her wheelchair. However, everyone was fixated not on the woman but on the gun she was holding.

ONE COP’S HAND FLEW to his sidearm, but Sandy yelled, “Don’t!” She gripped the gun with both hands. “Don’t,” she said again. “I don’t want to hurt you, just him,” she added, motioning with the pistol to Barry.

She settled her gaze back on him and said, “Don’t recognize me, do you? No reason you should. You didn’t come there that day to kill me; you came to murder the best man. But you missed and got the groom instead. My husband!”

Barry sucked in a breath and Sandy smiled even more broadly. “Oh, now it’s coming back to you.” She shook her head. “What a bad shot you were. Killed my husband, left me a cripple and missed your target. Your mob bosses must’ve been real pissed off at you for that.”

Now Michelle stepped forward and the pistol moved around to point at her.

Sandy said, “Michelle, don’t act the hero here. I really don’t want to hurt you. But I will if you try and stop me from giving this piece of trash what he should’ve gotten a long time ago.”

“Sandy, you don’t have to do this. Barry’s being arrested for drug-dealing. He’s going to go away for a long time.”

“No, he won’t, Michelle.”

“Sandy, we have the evidence, he’s busted.”

“He’s in Witness Protection. They’re going to cover it up just like they’ve done in the past.”

Michelle turned to look at Barry and then back at Sandy. “Witness Protection?”

“He ratted on his mob bosses and did no time in jail for killing the man I loved; the feds looked the other way because he helped bring down a major crime family. And they’re going to look the other way on this. Isn’t that right, Barry, or should I call you by your real name, Anthony Bender?”

Barry smiled and said, “Don’t know what you’re talking about. And if you try and shoot me you’re going down too.”

“You think I care? You took the only thing from me I ever cared about. Ever!”

“I’m crying inside for you, little miss cripple.”

“Shut up! Shut up!” Sandy screamed, her finger edging to the trigger. The cops were looking steadily at Sandy’s weapon. Michelle sensed this, turned and mouthed something to each of them. Then she slid between Barry and Sandy.

“Sandy, give me the gun. He’s going to jail this time, I’ll make sure of it.”

“Right.” Barry laughed.

Michelle whirled around. “Shut up, you idiot.” She turned back to Sandy.

“He will go to prison, I swear it. Now give me the gun.”

“Michelle, get out of the way. I’ve spent years tracking this bastard down and now I’m going to finish it.”

“He took your husband and your legs from you. Don’t let him take the life you have left.”

“What life? You call this a life?”

“You can help other people, Sandy. That’s worth a lot.”

“I can’t even help myself, so how can I help anybody else?”