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ran her down abducted her baby boy.”
    A dying declaration is the last statement given by a crime victim. Grace knew it could make a case. She had taken one a few months back from an armored-car guard shot during a heist near the airport. Before he died, he described his shooter’s belt buckle. It helped lead to the suspect and an arrest.
    During the drive to Ballard, Perelli made calls for updates and more information on the victim. Some fifteen minutes after receiving Boulder’s first call, Grace wheeled the Malibu off Barnes Avenue and into the ambulance entrance. Inside Emergency, the desk nurse pointed them to the room where they’d taken Maria Colson. Halfway there, Grace and Perelli came upon two nurses rolling her gurney into a large elevator. They stepped into the car with them.
    “Sorry, no visitors,” the older nurse said.
    Grace flashed her badge.
    “We need to talk to her as soon as possible.”
    “You’ve got to be kidding,” the nurse said. “She’s unconscious. She’s suffered a head injury. We’re taking her to OR.”
    The hospital sheet barely covered the woman who lay before them. Grace studied the young mother, dressed in the same clothes she’d slipped into to go tothe corner store with her baby for milk and bread. Her white sneakers, her faded jeans, which were now torn and smeared with dirt. Her Mariners T-shirt, now ripped and soaked with blood. Fingers that earlier had caressed her son, Dylan, were now covered with lacerations. An IV tube ran from her arm, a clear oxygen mask cupped her face, which was darkened with a web of abrasions.
    “How bad?” Perelli asked.
    “It doesn’t look good.”
    “How long will she be in surgery?”
    “Hard to say, at least a few hours.”
    “She say anything at all about what happened?”
    “Not to us, she’s been out.”
    “What about on the way?” Grace asked.
    “Try the paramedics. They’re still here.”
    The elevator stopped. The nurses rolled Maria Colson out. Grace and Perelli caught up to the paramedics in the cafeteria.
    “She was in rough shape when we got to her,” one of them said. “Non-responsive. Sometimes they talk in the ER, but it’s usually incomprehensible because they’re in shock.”
    Grace and Perelli returned to Emergency and corralled some of the staff who’d first stabilized and prepped Maria Colson for surgery. None of them recalled her saying anything, except one trauma nurse.
    “I heard her uttering something.”
    Grace’s pen was poised over her notebook.
    “She was out of it, but it was like, ‘Why are they taking my baby?’”
    “They,” Grace repeated. “Are you certain she said ‘they,’ as in more than one?”
    “Yes, ‘they.’”
    “Not ‘he’ or ‘she’?—but ‘they.’” Grace pressed. She needed the nurse to be absolutely sure.
    “Yes.”
    “Anything else?”
    A commotion coming from the hall interrupted them. The detectives stepped from the office to assess it. They went to the reception desk where two nurses were contending with a distraught man.
    “Maria! Where’s my wife? Maria!” he shouted.
    “Mr. Colson,” a nurse said. “Sir, we’re taking care of her.”
    His navy work pants were stained with grease, his flannel shirt was untucked. Stubble covered the dark worry lines cutting deep into his weathered face. His eyes were rimmed red with intensity.
    “Mr. Colson.” Grace took his arm gently. “I’m Detective Garner, this is Detective Perelli. The doctors are helping Maria right now, they’re doing everything they can.”
    “Let me see Dylan. Is he hurt bad? Where’s my son?”
    “No one told you?” Grace asked.
    “Told me what?” Lee Colson’s nostrils flared with his heavy breathing. “My dispatcher radioed my truck, she said Maria and Dylan were in an accident and they were taken here. Somebody tell me what the hell’s going on!”
    Grace traded glances with the others.
    “You better come with us,” she said.

4
    P ulling out of the Mirror