by Tom Pitts
“Slow down, Mommy, I’m scared.”
She slapped at the radio again, this time hitting the volume, and the crazy meld of static and music blasted upward. They hairpinned around a corner, knocking flat a sign that warned 15 mph, and still she did not slow. Fenders scraped along a rusted guardrail and orange sparks flew into the midday sun. They neared sea level and the long white strip of beach came into view. Jason knew she’d have to stop, the ride was over. Relief goose pimpled him when he felt the harsh push of the brakes. His body shot forward into the seat in front of him, but he knew he was all right. The car was stopping.
But as it slowed, Mommy made a sharp left. There was a tiny booth where a man sat telling people they couldn’t come to this part of the beach and he jumped up, waving at Mommy. But she drove right past him, past the booth to where the pavement ran out, then out onto the beach itself. The sand slowed the tires and the engine wound up as Maureen pushed toward the water, the faint yells of the beachgoers barely audible over the mash of static on the radio. Jason saw it from the back seat, the flat blue horizon of the ocean in front of them. Where is she going?
As they neared the surf, the car found purchase on the hard-packed sand and their speed once again increased. The water, the sand, the sun, all of it becoming one single sensation as the car hit the water. The engine screamed, howled against the punishing water, then died.
The car sank and cold water rose up against the windows. There was something cleansing, pure about the cold water. As soon as the car was engulfed it seemed to cool. Mommy’s madness was quelled, along with Jason’s fear. The cold water had stopped them, saved them.
During the first few weeks, Linda went through her morning routine as she always did. Coffee first, shower, dress, feed Barney after letting him out in the yard, then catch a few minutes of the news before heading out to work. Clockwork, each task landing on the same minute mark each morning. Just like before, only now she moved much slower. She allowed herself an extra half hour each day to complete the things she did before. Before it. Before that night, before everything turned upside down, she didn’t even think about the time. Now it was all she thought about. How long it had been since it happened. How long Gary had been in a coma. How long till he came back to her.
The first month without Gary home had been tough, but she finally settled into a schedule. She promised herself she’d only spend an hour or two a day at the hospital. During the first few weeks, the orderlies and nurses had to ask her to leave. She was camped out, with blankets and pillows and her laptop on her chest. It took a long heart-to-heart with a doctor who finally explained the realities of being in a coma. They told her Gary was a twelve on the Glasgow scale, and that meant his chances were better than most if he came out if it within the next few weeks. But, the doctor told her, she should emotionally prepare for the worst—if he woke, it was likely he’d have to relearn the most basic brain functions. Her presence may be helpful, but it wasn’t necessary twenty-four hours a day. There was no telling how long the coma would last, and she needed to get on with her life, and to make sure there was still a life for Gary to come home to.
Calper Dennings spent less than a week in the hospital. It’s amazing how fast they can patch you up and ship you out. His entire stay was peppered with visits from SFPD detectives and Sacramento and Yolo county sheriffs. The first two days he feigned unconsciousness while they stood at the foot of his bed. It only took minutes before a thoughtful nurse would usher them out. But after that, there was no way to avoid them. He had nothing to hide. It was a clean shoot as the cops like to say. He was a registered gun owner in possession of a conceal-and carry permit. His life was clearly in danger and he most probably saved the lives of three other people.
The cops, though, didn’t see it that way. They wanted to know why. Why he was there in the first place. Why was he chasing Jason DeWildt? What were his ties to the Carsons? Who was he working for? And mostly, who the hell was Martek Mosely? How did he fit into the picture? A man with shadowy roots and a murky background shows up and starts shooting people? It didn’t fit any of the pictures the police were trying to put together. They knew he was the key and Calper had silenced him with a bullet.
They found Derrick Whittier, or more accurately, he finally wandered out of that cornfield a day after the shootings in San Francisco, but he was no help to anyone. His story didn’t shed any light on what possessed Jason DeWildt, causing him to do what he did. Jason didn’t mention Stephan in Whittier’s presence. Poor Derrick only knew he’d been carjacked by desperate drug addicts on the run from something terrible. He was beaten unconscious and left in a cornfield, only to thank God when the warmth of the sun woke him the next day.
Calper knew he’d be under investigation for a long while. The police were going to look at him, look at Gary and Linda, and even Stephan DeWildt. Especially Stephan DeWildt. But Stephan, as far as Calper could tell, had his bases covered. His job in life was to calculate risk and have contingency plans for everything. Which was probably why Calper never heard from him while he convalesced.
Ashton Taber showed up though, appearing ghostlike at the foot of Calper’s bed. He was always careful not to cross paths with any of the police. He assured Calper that Martek could not be tied to the DeWildts, no matter how hard the cops tried. He also let Calper know that, although honesty is the best policy, minor omissions in his statements would be handsomely rewarded.
Calper didn’t need to be told this. The bulk of his fee had not yet been paid out. His job now was to wait. Stay tight-lipped and wait.
While he waited, he did research. He looked more closely at the man who’d hired him, the boy he’d been sent to corral, and the girl whose life was taken that night. What had Juliet been referring to when she said, “After what he did to me?” Had Stephan DeWildt tried to hurt her? Kill her? Is that why they were on the run? And why the hell were they trying to lay blame at his feet? He didn’t have anything to do with hurting Juliet. Jason would have the answers, and although he survived, he wasn’t talking.
Jason DeWildt was untouchable. He was under arrest for the murder of Barry Posiltwine, aka Bomber. He recovered from his gunshot wounds under heavy guard in a special ward at San Francisco General Hospital, one reserved for prisoners. When he was able, he was moved to another ward, this time inside San Bruno Jail. Soon he’d be extradited for trial in Yolo County, but they didn’t have the facilities to house an inmate undergoing such serious treatment.
Then a bomb was dropped. From his hospital bed, Jason made bail. In a special agreement with the court, he was going to be housed at his father’s home in Southern California while he awaited trial. He’d be in front of a TV in a mansion with a bowl of Lucky Charms under his chin and a court-ordered responding bracelet on his ankle. This took some doing. It took money. Not only for the bail, but for the influence it took to convince a judge to make these concessions to a supposed drug addict murderer, a man the prosecution called a “verifiable psychopath.”
Calper learned all of this at home. He returned to his apartment near his office on Vine Street in Hollywood and spent his days in front of his laptop, leaving only to go to the supermarket. He was tired, frail. The bullet had aged him, and he wondered if he’d ever be the same.
He got his money. At least part of it. Taber showed up unannounced one afternoon with an envelope stuffed with cash. The implication was there’d be plenty more where that came from if everything worked out all right.
“You mean all right for Stephan, not for Gary Carson. Have you two looked in on him lately?”
Taber rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean. Of course we’re concerned with Mr. Carson too. We’ve already been in talks with Linda Carson regarding a healthy settlement to help her and her husband out.”
Calper wondered if this was true. He doubted it. Any kind of settlement with the Carsons would be not only an admission of involvement, but guilt. The DeWildts wanted as much dist
ance between them and the Carsons as possible.
Calper changed the subject. “What’s up with Jason?”
“He’s doing better. That was a nasty hit he took. He’s still on the rebound. Like you.”
“No, I mean with his case. I heard he made bail. How the hell did that happen?”
“He’s got a family that supports him. One of his problems was he never believed that. The drugs induced paranoia in the boy. He thought the world was out to get him. He knows better now. He’s doing his best to get well and be ready for trial.”
“He’s taking it to trial? I thought for sure he’d plead out. What fucking chance does he have? He killed that kid in cold blood.”
“I’m not handling his case; you know that’s not my area. But I will say his argument is going to be self-defense. I mean, clearly his life was in danger. Look at what happened later that very night. Someone showed up to punch his ticket. Unfortunately, these kinds of things happen when you submerse yourself in a world of criminals and narcotics.”
Calper smirked. He mapped out how this was going to go. Jason as victim. Bomber as part of a larger conspiracy to kill him—sell that big lunkhead as a contract killer. Right. They only need plant the seeds; reasonable doubt would do the rest.
“What about Linda Carson? He kidnapped her.”
Taber’s thin lips crested into a smile and Calper recalculated his previous assumption. Perhaps they had been in contact with Linda Carson. It’d take a hell of a lot of money to blur her memory.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Russell was still on the street. He no longer felt like a kid, he felt like a man. After what he’d been through, he felt like a veteran of some terrible war. He’d spent that first night hiding in the park before slinking back to his old haunts. Places he felt safe and anonymous. Soup kitchens and bus stops, sticky sidewalks and stinking back alleys. He knew someone would be looking for him—should be looking for him—but that someone never showed. It didn’t take long for him to re-assimilate into the environs of the homeless. Begging for change, stealing where he could, and getting high as much and as often as possible. Days crawled by, then weeks. Soon he stopped looking over his shoulder. He only worried about the street.
He’d seen the newspaper articles, and he knew Juliet was dead, knew Jason had been shot, but he still felt their presence near him, felt their pull. Even from where he crouched in the darkness in the park that night, listening to the sirens, the endless sirens, knowing they were for his friends, he felt them.
As he walked the streets he thought about the woman who’d sat next to him in the car. The day after the incident, when he swiped a newspaper off a table in a donut shop, he read that a woman was killed. As yet unnamed, it said. He thought for sure it was the woman who’d sat beside him, looked at him with those soft, curious eyes. She’d tried to speak to him but didn’t get the chance. He felt terrible, sick for being a part of it, for not helping her. When he later learned it was Juliet who’d been killed, not the woman he now knew was Linda Carson, he experienced a wash of relief blended with the sorrow and regret of losing Juliet. Poor Juliet. He thought about her sad short life, and what they took from her.
As the weeks wore on and the stories in the newspapers thinned, he thought more and more about Linda Carson, about her trials, about what she was going through. It was as though she haunted him. Those eyes. Did she know he didn’t want to be there, that he never wanted to be a part of it? It would have been no easier for him to jump out of that car than it was for her. They were both trapped, in a way. They were both victims.
Linda hit the gym. The ritual was important, the structure helped frame her day. She was strengthening herself because Gary couldn’t. In his absence, she’d be strong for the both of them. She still saw him every day, but now her visits were whittled down to the promises she whispered in his ear. She promised she’d be waiting for him, promised she’d be there when he woke up. She promised he’d be able to get back the life they took. She’d squeeze his limp and lifeless hand, kiss him gently on the forehead, and back out of the hospital room, not turning around till she reached the hallway. Then she’d hit the gym and push till she ached, till the sweat poured like tears.
She was at home and getting out of the shower when the phone rang. She wrapped a towel around herself and dug her cell from her pants on the floor. She didn’t recognize the number, but the area code—415—was San Francisco.
She said hello and didn’t hear anything back. There was background noise, voices, footsteps echoing off cement. It sounded like a loud and busy public place.
“Hello?” she said again.
Finally a small voice cut through the clatter. “Mrs. Carson?”
No one called her that. She was Linda to everyone she knew.
“Mrs. Carson? Do you know who this is?”
A cord vibrated in her chest. Muscle memory clenched and her flesh was taut as she squeezed the cell in her hand. She knew who it was. Even though she’d barely heard him speak that night, she knew it was him. But she didn’t want to say it. Didn’t want to admit it.
“Who is this?”
“They tried to kill her, you know,” the voice said. “That’s why she hated them. Jason too. They tried to kill her because she was pregnant. It was a few months before. They just didn’t want her or the baby to live.”
“Russell?”
“You can’t call me back. I’m on a pay phone.”
“Where are you, Russell?”
“I just thought you should know. They weren’t evil. They were scared.”
A dry cotton lumped up in Linda’s throat.
“That guy you were with, the one who said he was going to help you. Calper something. He’s the one, I think.”
“He’s the one what?”
“The one that tried to kill her.”
The sentence echoed. The weight of it. The man she’d come to think of as a hero was anything but. She knew it, of course. She knew it from the first time she met Calper. There was something else under the surface. She tried to tell Gary, but he had to march forward. Now look where they were.
Russell repeated himself. “He tried to kill her. He’s the one.”
“Why are you telling me this? How’d you get my number?”
She listened for an answer but got none. The line was quiet. The noise in the background, the lively bustle of the faraway place insulating his voice, all of it gone.
Stephan DeWildt sat alone in the second row of his private screening room. It was dark except for the trail of muted lights that lit the edge of the aisles. The screen too was blank, its empty white flatness holding a ghostly presence even in the dark. Stephan’s knees were folded to his left, pulled up as if wanting to return to the fetal position. He came here to think, but now that he was alone—away from Taber, away from Jason’s defense attorney, away from the prying questions from the endless parade of detectives—he wanted to sleep. The air hummed through the vents, a low, even whir that was the only sound in the room. He liked it in this place, it was like a womb. He felt safe, secure, like the world couldn’t reach him there.
Jason DeWildt was one floor above him, camped out in the main living room. He’d been on the couch for more than a week, getting up only to go to the bathroom. He was in bliss, jacked full of painkillers. With the injuries he’d sustained, he had not only an excuse to take them, but was ordered to by the doctor. And he did. In huge quantities. He gobbled so many pills his trips to the bathroom became so infrequent he had to triple the amount of stool softener he’d already added to his mix of narcotics. He spent his days either in a drooling nod or watching children’s television with glassy red eyes. Stephan didn’t mind. He let him smoke cigarettes and pot, even though the doctor insisted he cease both activities. Anything to keep him quiet, still. Jason thought being his father’s patient bonded them, but Stephan wanted a pliable subject. He needed time to figure out how to deal wi
th the boy.
A buzzing went off in Stephan’s pocket. He drew out his cell and looked at the number. Taber. He returned the phone to his pocket and stood up from the seat. He stretched in the darkness and turned up the illuminated aisle, regretfully returning to his world.
By the time he’d reached the top stair, a loud rhythmic snore purred throughout the house. He looked in on Jason, the boy’s head thrown back on the couch, his mouth gaping, his skin pale and waxen. If it weren’t for the vibration of the snore, he’d swear the boy was dead. At least then some of his problems would be solved.
Gary’s half-brother, Richie, wasn’t surprised when he looked at his cell and saw Linda’s number on the caller ID screen. He didn’t want to answer though. He knew that if Linda was calling him, it was bad news. He looked through the tattered curtain of his apartment on Cole Street in San Francisco and saw the sun was high, fighting to get through the cloud cover. He guessed it was probably mid-afternoon and he’d slept through most of the day. Guilt warmed him as he gave in and answered the phone.
“Linda?”
“Did I wake you?”
“No, I was up,” he lied. He cleared his throat and searched the nightstand for his cigarettes. “What’s going on?”
“I need your help.”
The request didn’t register. There was only one reason Linda would be calling him, to deliver bad news. He knew his half-brother was touch and go, he’d almost been expecting the call.
“Is he…is he all right?”
“No, Richie, he’s in a fucking coma.”
“I mean…”
“No, nothing’s changed, but I need you to do something for me, for us.”
Richie sat up in bed and turned on the small lamp on his nightstand, shifting the dingy light to a yellow hue. “Yeah, of course, anything.”
“Gary said you were helping him find information on someone.”