We headed over to the hospital and asked for Hess' room number. He's in stable condition, they've removed the bullets from his abdomen and he seems to be recovering well so far. Tap tap.
    "Come on in," a somewhat weak voice responded. "Oh, hi, what can I do for you?"
    "How you feeling?" I asked gently.
    Hess smiled a little. "I'm feeling pretty good right now, but I'm riding a wave of painkillers, so it's kind of hard to tell."
    I settled into the chair beside the bed; Scott's silver form arranged itself like a severely out of place work of modern sculpture. "We just wanted your version of what happened the other day."
    He nodded as if this was not unexpected and spent a moment composing his thoughts; it looked for a moment as if he was going to try to sit up, but he thought better of it and started his story. From the way he spoke, it was clear that he'd been through it all a couple of times already.
    "I got a call from Winters, saying that Mr. Washington might be in danger and that I was to stay with him. So I headed over, radioed in, arranged for someone to cover for me. He seemed nervous. Really nervous. I explained that there was a potential threat to his life, and a police officer should be here for him, he thanked me, and seemed... like I said, he seemed nervous, but of course, I mean he now has an armed cop standing next to him, going 'Someone might be coming to killing you,' which I suppose would be cause for nervousness." He coughed. "So he, uh, wrote a bunch of stuff up, he was working on his computer. One of those little Apple things. I was just there, and paying attention to what was going on. He wasn't ignoring me, just still doing work. I went with him while he went out, he had to mail some stuff. I made sure there was no one outside, checked along the way, we went back in."
    "Did he seem surprised about this?" I asked. "Did he seem to understand what might be going on?" Maybe the whole string of killings was no more than what it looked like—vengeance on those who had committed a man to psychiatric care for life. But how? And the timing still seemed far too suspicious to me.
    "Hard to say. I think he was nervous from the minute I opened up the door. Almost like he was expecting something like this. And I didn't have an awful lot of information to give him, other than I had been told to come here and help. So we got back to his place, and I opened up the door, and looked inside, and quickly checked the rooms, and there was someone in his computer room. And she had a gun, so of course I went for my gun, and the first bullet hit somewhere in here," he touched his stomach lightly, "and I crumpled up." He spoke with a professional matter-of-factness, as if referring to a stranger's injury. "And I think that's what saved me, because she kept firing over my head. By the time I had straightened myself up and fired, I think... I don't know if I remember hearing—I don't know how many shots she fired. I don't. I know this is going to look bad on a review, but I had already been hit, I didn't know whether her gun was empty or not."
    "I'm sure the ballistics people can figure that out."
    "I pulled the trigger twice, and I know I hit her both times... I think she must have hit me twice in the stomach. The first one hit, and it's so hard to—I rolled over, and Washington was dead."
    "He'd been standing behind you?" I tried to picture the scene.
    "He was at the door. I went in and was checking, and she fired—if you saw the apartment you'd know, there's a front hall space, and then the computer room was here, and the front door was here, and I was looking in from the front hall, and he was following me in, when he was shot."
    "So she was doing something to the computer?" Maybe Washington was the primary target after all. Maybe this was all about Lucky. Murder covering murder, making it look like something it was not.
    "No, she was just waiting there. I don't know, I had checked the door, to see if it had been picked. Whoever opened it was really good, and they relocked it behind them. It was thorough." He fell silent for a moment while we all contemplated the crime, and then continued. "So... I got in, and hit an emergency code, and I don't remember much after that. I feel guilty, like there's something else I could have done. Why was this woman trying to shoot him?"
    "It may have had something to do with a case a few years back. Three of the people who've been killed so far, all of them were involved in it. That's why we suspected Washington may be next." I wasn't going to be the one to tell him that the woman he had killed had almost certainly had no idea what she was doing.
    "The worst part about it," he said reflectively, "is, it was like—you know what your mother looks like? You know, you have this image of 'Mom?' This woman looked like Mom, but her eyes were so hard. Her face was doing everything it could to not be Mom. I don't know if I'm making any sense, but she was in her mid-forties and she was dressed very home-casual, and her face was just twisted and contorted, I know this is crazy, but like it was trying to look like a guy."
    "That's not all that surprising," I murmured.
    "Was there someone else there with you?" Scott asked.
    "I lost consciousness after a few minutes, but there was no one else in the apartment, no one else shot me. It's possible that someone could have snuck in or out."
    I covered a sigh by looking over my notes. "OK. Thank you."
    "I hope this helps. I hope you can find out why she did this."
    "I think I know. Get some rest."
    "Thank you very much," Scott added. "I hope you're feeling better."
    "I'm told I'll pull through, and then physical therapy, get myself back into shape."
    "Good. Take it easy," I told him.
    "Thanks for coming by." It didn't look as if he'd had many visitors.
    "What a sick idea," Scott stated wonderingly as we landed at base.
    "Tell me about it," I muttered. I felt ill.
    "We really have to tell Winters about this."
    "Scott, I don't trust her," I told him bluntly.
    "Then, we can tell the entire police force if you don't trust her. Why don't you trust her?" he added curiously.
    "I don't trust anyone."
    "Doesn't that make it hard to shop?"
    Something about his innocent tone stuck a raw place. I stopped dead and glared at him. "Yes. Yes, it does. It makes it very hard to go out of my fucking bedroom, thank you," I snarled and stalked away, leaving him there startled.

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