“No, but it might get him kicked off the force and prevent him from doing it to someone else.”
“But not to his ex-wife or his daughter,” I said.
Mickie sat again.
“As much as I’d like to hurt that asshole, this isn’t about me,” I said. “It would be the selfish thing to do. You know how this goes. She’s too afraid to do anything, so she’ll deny it. If she did, by some miracle, agree to back a complaint, Bateman would deny it. I need to outsmart him. I need to find a way to end the abuse for them, not for me.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt, Sam.”
“You mean more hurt, I presume? First thing we need to do is correct that little girl’s eyesight. Then we need to figure out a way to get them away from that psychopath for good.”
“Any idea how to do that?”
“Not yet.”
Mickie left me to dress. I found a pair of shorts baggy enough that the material didn’t grip my thighs but long enough to cover the gauze. I slipped my feet into sandals and pulled a gray Stanford T-shirt over my head. As I dressed I smelled spices wafting up from the kitchen—the pungent odor of garlic and the sweet smell of pepper and onions sautéing made my mouth water.
When I made my way downstairs, Mickie stood at the counter, adding ingredients to what looked to be scrambled eggs and everything else edible in my fridge. I saw bits of potatoes, tomatoes, zucchini, onions, and hamburger patty. Bandit sat beside her, licking his chops.
“I can’t eat anything,” I said. In response, she handed me a bright-red concoction in a sixteen-ounce glass. “What’s this?”
“The best hangover medication you will find anywhere. Drink it.”
“What’s in it?”
“I’m a freaking doctor. Trust me.”
“Where have I heard that before?”
“Drink.”
The first sip tasted awful. I groaned and put the glass down.
“You really are a baby. It’s supposed to taste terrible. It’s punishment for abusing your body.” Mickie had become a health freak. She didn’t drink, smoke, or do drugs. “Now finish it before I hit you across the backs of your thighs with this spatula.”
I downed the rest of the concoction, though not without further complaint. At first I thought I would throw it all right back up, but to my surprise, my stomach started to feel better. My head still hurt, but I hoped the Tylenol would kick in and at least dull the beating drums. “You should bottle that stuff,” I said. “We’d make a killing.”
“Old family recipe,” she said without humor.
She put a huge plate of food on the counter in front of me and found a fork. It dawned on me that Mickie had probably cooked more meals in my kitchen than Eva. As I sat at the counter eating, Mickie cleaned the pots and pans. “This is good,” I said. “Better than good.”
She poured herself a tall glass of water, grabbed a fork, and joined me, systematically swallowing a handful of pills and eating eggs. “So, you want to tell me the rest of what happened?”
“I told you what happened.”
“You told me about Bateman. You didn’t tell me why you tried to drink yourself into a coma.”
I proceeded to give Mickie the blow-by-blow of my evening. Bandit sat at our feet, his head alternately swiveling back and forth, watching us like he was watching a tennis match. When I got to the part about calling Eva’s hotel room in Boston, Mickie asked, “Could they have connected you to the wrong room?”
“I heard her. She was there.”