"What was he talking about?"

"Nothing. He was doing some online stuff for me."

He almost started telling her about it and everything else. But before he could put the words together a man in a lab coat came through the door. He had a clipboard. He was in his late fifties with silver hair and a matching beard.

"This is Dr. Hansen," Nicole said.

"How are you feeling?" the doctor asked.

He leaned over the bed and used his hand on Pierce's jaw to turn his face slightly.

"Only hurts when I breathe. Or talk. Or when somebody does that."

Hansen let go of his jaw. He used a penlight to study Pierce's pupils.

"Well, you've got some pretty substantial injuries here. You have a grade-two concussion and six stitches in your scalp."

Pierce hadn't even remembered that injury. It must have come when he hit the outside wall of the building.

"The concussion is the cause of the loginess you may be feeling and any headache discomfort. Let's see, what else? You have a pulmonary contusion, a deep shoulder contusion; you've got two fractured ribs and, of course, the broken nose. The lacerations on your nose and surrounding your eye are going to require plastic surgery to properly close without permanent scarring. I can get somebody in here tonight to do that, depending on the swelling, or if you have a personal surgeon, then you can contact him."

Pierce shook his head. He knew there were many people in this town who kept personal plastic surgeons on call. But he wasn't one of them.

"Whoever you can get…"

"Henry," Nicole said. "This is your face you're talking about. I think you should get the best possible surgeon you can."

"I think I can get you a very good one," Hansen said. "Let me make some calls and see what I come up with."

"Thank you."

He said the words pretty clearly. It seemed as though his speech facility was quickly adapting to the new physical circumstances of his mouth and nasal passages.

"Try to stay as horizontal as possible," Hansen said. "I'll be back."

The doctor nodded and left the room. Pierce looked at Nicole.

"Looks like I'm going to be here awhile. You don't have to stay."

"I don't mind."

He smiled and it hurt, but he smiled anyway. He was very happy with her response.

"Why did you call me in the middle of the night, Henry?"

He'd forgotten and the reminder brought the searing embarrassment again. He carefully composed an answer before speaking.

"I don't know. It's a long story. It's been a strange weekend. I wanted to tell you about it.

And I wanted to tell you what I had been thinking about."

"What was that?"

It hurt to talk but he had to tell her.

"I don't know exactly. Just that the things that happened to me somehow made me see your point of view a lot clearer. I know it's probably too little too late. But for some reason I wanted you to know I finally saw the light."

She shook her head.

"That's good, Henry. But you're lying here with your head and face split open. It appears somebody dangled you off a twelfth-story balcony and the cops say they want to talk to you. It seems like you went to an awful lot of trouble to get my point of view. So excuse me if I don't jump up and embrace the new man you profess yourself to be."

Pierce knew that if he were up to it, they were heading down the road to familiar territory. But he didn't think he had the stamina for another argument with her.

"Can you try Lucy again?"

Nicole angrily punched the redial button on her cell phone again.

"I ought to just put this on speed dial."

He watched her eyes and could read that she had reached the voice mail again.

She snapped the phone closed and looked at him.

"Henry, what's going on with you?"

He tried to shake his head but it hurt to do so.

"I got a wrong number," he said.

Pierce came out of a murky dream about free-falling while blindfolded and not knowing how far it was he was falling. When he finally hit the ground he opened his eyes and Detective Renner was there with a lopsided smile on his face.

"You."

"Yeah, me again. How are you feeling, Mr. Pierce?"

"I'm fine."

"Looked like a bad dream you were having. You were thrashing around there quite a bit."

"Maybe I was dreaming about you."

"Who are the Wickershams?"

"What?"

"You said the name in your sleep. Wickershams."

"They're monkeys. From the jungle. The non-believers."

"I don't get it."

"I know. So never mind. Why are you here? What do you want? It happened -whatever happened -in Santa Monica and I already talked to them. I don't remember what happened. I have a concussion, you know."

Renner nodded.

"Oh, I know all about your injuries. The nurse told me the plastic surgeon put a hundred and sixty microstitches across your nose and around that eye yesterday morning.

Anyway, I'm here on Los Angeles police business. Though it's looking more and more like maybe L.A. and Santa Monica should get together on this one."

Pierce raised his hand and gently touched the bridge of his nose. There was no gauze. He could feel the zipper of stitches and the puffiness. He tried to remember things. The last thing he could clearly recall was the plastic surgeon hovering over him with a bright light. After that he had been in and out, floating through the darkness.

"What time is it?"

"Three-fifteen."

There was bright light coming through the window shades. He knew it wasn't the middle of the night. He also realized he was in a private room.

"It's Monday? No, it's Tuesday?"

"That's what it said in the paper today, if you believe what you read in the paper."

Pierce felt physically strong -he had probably been asleep for more than fifteen straight hours -but was disturbed by the lingering feeling of the dream. And by Renner's presence.

"What do you want?"

"Well, first of all, let me get something out of the way. I'm going to read you your rights real quick here. That way you're protected and so am I."

The detective pulled the mobile food tray over the bed and placed a microrecorder down on it.

"What do you mean, you're protected? What do you need protection from? That's bullshit, Renner."

"Not at all. I need to do it to protect the integrity of my investigation. Now I'm going to record everything from here on out."

He pressed a button on the recorder and a red light came on. He announced his name, the time and date and the location of the interview. He identified Pierce and read him his constitutionally guaranteed rights from a little card he took from his wallet.

"Now, do you understand these rights as I have read them to you?"

"Heard them enough growing up."

Renner raised an eyebrow.

"In the movies and on TV," Pierce added.

"Please answer the question and hold off on being clever if you can."

"Yes, I understand my rights."

"Good. Now is it all right if I ask you a few questions?"

"Am I a suspect?"

"A suspect in what?"

"I don't know. You tell me."

"Well, that's the thing, isn't it? Hard to tell what we've got here."

"But you still think you need to read me my rights. To protect me, of course."

"That's right."

"What are your questions? Have you found Lilly Quinlan?"

"We're working on it. You don't know where she is, do you?"

Pierce shook his head and the movement made his head feel a little sloshy. He waited for it to subside before speaking.

"No. I wish I did."

"Yes, it would kind of clear things up a bit if she just walked through the door, wouldn't it?"

"Yes. Was it her blood on the bed?"

"We're still working on it. Preliminary tests showed that it was human blood. But we have no sample from Lilly Quinlan to compare it with. I think I've got a line on her doctor. We'll see what records and possible samples he has. A woman like that, she probably had her blood checked on a regular basis."