Widow

by Martha Miller

  He was on his back lying near the open doorway. Bertha knelt beside him. With the lantern on Stumpy, she saw the blood. A spot near his heart bled profusely. She found the bullet hole and tried to press her hands over it. She had to let go for a moment to dig her cell phone from her pocket. Before she could dial, she felt him pull her down toward him. He was trying to say something. She leaned in close and heard him say, “I always wanted to die,” he took a deep breath and finished the sentence, “in a shootout.”

  Bertha said, in what she hoped was an authoritative voice, “You are not going to die.”

  But even as she pressed her hand to his chest, she could feel his pulse slowing, until finally it stopped.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Flashing lights bounced off surrounding surfaces. Bertha trembled, her hands and clothes sticky with blood. She heard her name repeated in the distance. Stranded in her own silence, she couldn’t turn away from the scene of Stumpy being lifted onto a stretcher, a paramedic placing a sheet over his face and torso.

  “Bertha.” She heard it again, this time closer. Then a uniform hunkered down in front of her. He reached for her face and a cool, damp cloth blotted her forehead. “Close your eyes,” he said.

  She closed her eyes.

  “You need to go to the hospital and get checked out.”

  Had she taken a bullet? She didn’t think so, but sometimes people didn’t know they were hurt until they looked. The officer’s voice sounded familiar. She opened her eyes. “Randy?”

  “It’s me. Do you think you can stand?”

  “I’ve got to stand up. I’ve got to get my car and find my grandma.”

  “I’m afraid you can’t do that right now. You’re in shock.”

  Bertha pushed him away and crawled toward the antique radio, where she placed a sticky hand on the top and pushed herself up. Nauseated and light-headed, she sat down hard on the concrete floor. She woke briefly in the ambulance, where a beautiful redheaded woman knelt over her. “Toni?”

  The woman said, “Just relax. We’ll be there soon.”

  “Where? Am I dead?”

  “No, my dear. We’re headed for the hospital.”

  Bertha meant to ask why she needed a hospital, but instead she closed her eyes and drifted back to unconsciousness. The gurney jolted as they pulled it from the ambulance, and the next thing she knew someone shook her. She opened her eyes squinting and saw a blurry black man had replaced the redheaded woman. “Come on, Bertha,” he said. “Wake up.”

  She groaned, sleep dragging at her brain like a fishhook.

  “That’s it.” Pop Wilson took her hand and patted it. “You’re all right. You’ve broken your kneecap is all. They gave you a painkiller.”

  That astonished her. With some difficulty, she opened her eyes. “When?”

  “When what? You came back from X-ray about a half hour ago. That’s when you got the pain shot. At least that’s what they told me.”

  “I went to X-ray? My knee is broken? But I can move my toes. I am moving my toes, right?”

  “Well, the blanket is moving above your feet. The way the doc told me was if the break had been a quarter inch lower, you’d need surgery and a cast. As it is, they’re putting a brace on, and you should stay off it a few weeks.”

  “The doctor talked to you?”

  Pop shrugged. “Somehow she got the idea I was your father.”

  “What time is it?”

  Pop Wilson checked his wristwatch. “Four thirty.”

  “Is Grandma…?”

  “Haven’t found her yet. I heard the stir about the shooting on the police-band radio in my truck, so I came here. Mel’s still looking. We checked the second place that hosted illegal card games, but it was empty.”

  Bertha raised her head and saw she was covered by a couple of white hospital blankets. Her clothes were ruined, her good outfit, the one she’d worn to Charlie’s wake; the sapphire blouse had to be cut open. She grabbed the side rails and pulled herself up, and as the blanket fell away, she discovered she wore only a hospital gown. The room started spinning and she fell backward.

  “See here,” Pop said. “You can relax and we’ll find Grandma. I don’t know what’s kept you going as it is.”

  “I am going with you.”

  “Okay. Want some coffee?”

  Bertha nodded. “And bring a straw.”

  As Pop left, a young woman in a lab coat with a clipboard came in. She was all business. “We couldn’t find wounds of any kind. Other than your kneecap, you appear to be in good shape, considering everything.” She pulled the blanket up. “We’ve put a brace on your knee to keep it stable. We’ll send your X-rays to ortho. Make an appointment as soon as possible.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yes. Is there someone we can call for you?”

  “I have a friend who just came in.”

  Lab Coat checked something on her clipboard and said, “The police are here. They want to talk to you. Do you feel up to it?”

  “Not yet. My friend is getting some coffee. Maybe after that.”

  “Okay. But since this involves a shooting, you do need to see them before you’re released.”

  Bertha sighed. “Yes, ma’am.”

  The woman smiled. “Sorry, Judge Brannon. I’m sure you know the policy. Involving the police, I mean.” She hesitated, as if she wanted to say more, but Pop came in with the coffee and the opportunity was gone. As she turned to leave, Pop asked her, “You got a straw? Bertha here needs one.”

  The woman went to a rolling cabinet and opened a top drawer. She rummaged around, came up with a straw, and passed it to Pop. “Are you cold, Judge?”

  Groggy, Bertha didn’t answer. She’d closed her eyes again.

  Pop leaned down close to her. “Wake up. Albert Cioni’s in the waiting room. Here, let me help you with this.” He guided the straw to her lips.

  She sipped and groaned. “Jesus Christ. How long has that coffee been made?”

  “You want some cream or sugar?”

  “I want some damn chocolate, but I need strong coffee. The bitter taste is waking me up.”

  “What you want to do about Albert?”

  Lab Coat reentered the room. Her shoes were quiet, and Bertha was startled when another warm blanket was spread over her, but the warmth felt heavenly.

  Bertha turned to Pop and mouthed, “She gone?”

  He held a finger to his lips and very slightly shook his head no. He pushed the straw toward her and encouraged her to drink.

  Then, seemingly from nowhere, Lab Coat said, “You’ll need someone to drive you home when you’ve finished with the police. I’m sure they’ll be glad to take you.”

  Pop said, “I’ll take her, miss.”

  When they were alone again, Bertha scolded him. “You don’t have to cozy up to her just because she’s white and has a clipboard.”

  “That child needs to feel like she’s in charge. I just give her that. Else we’d never have a minute alone. Now do you want to talk to Albert?”

  “Unless he has my grandma out there, I’d just as soon avoid him.”

  “Then we need to sneak out of here.”

  Bertha scooted herself to a sitting position. “Get this railing down.”

  Pop lowered the rail and helped Bertha put her legs over the side of the gurney. Her right leg was braced and stuck out at an angle in front of her. As resourceful as ever, Pop handed her a couple of long hospital gowns. “Where’s your coat and shoes?”

  Bertha shrugged. “They put my shoes in a paper bag. The coat could have gone that way too. I’m not sure.”

  Pop disappeared and returned with a wheelchair. When Bertha had the gowns on, he covered her with the hospital blankets. “Now keep your head down in case we meet them in the hall.”

  As they closed in on the Emergency Room automated door, Bertha felt the cold air that came in with every swish open and closed. She kept her head down and braced herself to go out, but they stopped. Bertha raise
d her head and there was Albert in uniform, standing with his hands on his hips, blocking the door.

  “Y’all going out for a cigarette?”

  Pop rolled her backward to the corridor, where the air was warmer, and said, “What you need?”

  “I need to take a report from Ms. Brannon.” Albert found a molded plastic chair and pulled it closer to the wheelchair, turned it backward, and straddled it.

  Pop said, “That’s Judge Brannon to you.”

  Another ambulance backed up to the sliding glass door, and while one guy held an IV bag, the other pushed a gurney inside. Bertha shivered. “Where’s my grandma, you son of a bitch?”

  Albert opened his jacket so both could see he was armed. “Whoa, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I need some things from you.”

  Bertha frowned and shook her head like a stubborn child.

  Albert squared his shoulders. “Want to move somewhere warmer?”

  Bertha sighed. To Pop she said, “Take me back to my ER room.”

  At four in the morning, the hospital corridor was busy. A burst of cold air reached them as a couple of cackling women came through the swishing door. Bertha remembered rushing through those doors the night Toni died. Her throat felt tight.

  “Bertha?” one of the women called to her.

  But it wasn’t a woman. The two were drag queens in full formal dress. “Whisper?” she said. “Dinah Brand?”

  They rushed toward her. Whisper’s nosebleed left blood framing her gums and teeth. Her left eye was swollen. “What in the hell happened to you?” Dinah asked.

  Albert tried to block them. “Step back, ah, ladies. This is police business.”

  Stepping closer, Whisper said, “Scuse me, Officer. This here is my sister. I’m concerned about her.”

  Albert looked back and forth—from Whisper, a tall, thin white guy in women’s clothing, to Bertha, an overweight, gray-headed black woman beneath several blankets. He stood and said, “Keep coming if you want to spend the night in a jail cell.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Bertha saw Pop give the queens a nod. That was all it took. They both started cussing; Whisper burst into tears. Albert pulled the cuffs from his belt and quickly had them around Dinah Brand’s wrists. As he guided her away, he said to Whisper, “You’re still here when I get back, I’ll arrest you too.”

  “Where you taking me?” Dinah Brand screamed.

  Albert tugged on the handcuffs. “You can wait in the squad car.”

  As soon as they were out of sight, Pop wheeled Bertha through the sliding doors, and Whisper called out, “Take care, honey.”

  *

  Bertha stood in Alvin’s shower, letting the hot water beat on her shoulders. Between her feet she could see blood, Stumpy’s blood, swirling around the drain. The sun would be coming up soon, and Grandma had been gone all night. She lathered up again and rinsed the soap from her skin; she would do this until the water around her feet was clear. The hot water was running out by the time she stepped out of the shower and wrapped a good-sized towel around her body. She opened the bathroom door and Norman Bates waited there. She bent and stroked his head, and he followed her into the guest room. There, from the open suitcase on the floor, she retrieved an orange sweat suit that still smelled of smoke from her fire. The past couple of days had been hard on her wardrobe, but she’d have to stand the smell until she had time to do her laundry. She strapped the Velcro-and-metal brace around her knee, and the pain dropped to a dull ache that increased when she stood. The unmade guest bed looked inviting. Between the trauma, the lack of sleep, and the painkiller, she wanted to lie down but made herself keep moving.

  In the kitchen a fresh pot of coffee and a box of doughnuts waited. She filled a mug and set something chocolate on a paper plate. She was surrounded by four men: Pop, Mel, Alvin, and Jerry. They seemed to watch her and wait, for what she couldn’t guess.

  “Stop staring at me. You’re creeping me out,” she said, and they all looked elsewhere. That seemed creepy too. But Bertha noticed Jerry’s laptop in front of him. “Did you get anything on Albert’s address?”

  Jerry said, “We have about four in this area, two in the same house. I really like that one. The second Albert could be his father or his son. Address is in a pretty good neighborhood. Do we know if he’s married?”

  Alvin said, “I still think you should have talked to him at the hospital. If he’s in as deep as Billie Little said, then you have something to bargain with.”

  “He thinks we have the files,” Bertha said. “If he finds out Billie took them, he has no reason to keep Grandma alive.”

  Pop said, “And we have no proof that what Billie told us was true.”

  “Once again,” Jerry said, “do we know if he’s married?”

  “Divorced,” Pop said.

  Bertha shoved the last bite of chocolate doughnut in her mouth and reached for another. She was tired and achy, but the coffee and chocolate helped. “Surely if he’s living with his father or son, he wouldn’t take Grandma to his own home.”

  Alvin, the doubter, said, “We need to call the police. Stumpy’s death proves that it’s too dangerous to proceed alone.”

  Bertha sighed. “Which ones can we trust?”

  “Randy,” Alvin said. “We can trust Randy.”

  “How long’s it been since you saw him?”

  “Nine years.”

  “Then how do you know you can trust him?”

  “I know. He might’ve been hard to live with, but he’s a good man.”

  “Yeah and I thought Billie was a good woman. By the way, when we find that ring-tailed bitch, leave me and a ball bat alone with her for about five minutes.”

  Mel, who had been silent to this point, spoke up. “Stop it.”

  Everyone turned toward him.

  “Just stop it. Every minute Grandma is missing, the danger increases. Pop was right. We need to find her before anything else.” Mel turned toward Alvin. “If you’re so sure about this Randy, then you call him and explain the whole thing—enlist his help however you can. The rest of us need to eliminate Albert’s home. If he’s there, all the better. I’d like to get the drop on the son of a whore.”

  A cell phone vibrated, and Bertha realized it was her own. Pulling it from her sweat pants’ pocket, she answered it and found Fred Cook was on the line. “How’d it go last night? Did you find the files and your grandma?”

  Incredulous, Bertha said, “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  Bertha stood and, limping, carried the phone into the living room away from the others. “There was a shootout at the storage locker. Stumpy’s dead. Billie took everything.”

  “My God.”

  “Yeah. Your God.”

  “The bodies are piling up.”

  “An astute observation.” Bertha listened to static on the line, waiting for his response.

  Finally, he said, “What can I do to help?”

  Bertha plopped down in the gold rocker-recliner. “Tell me the truth.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “You were with Toni the night she was killed. There was a witness who was afraid to come forward. She told me that one of the shooters came back and talked to you. Who was it and what did he say?”

  “You got this from the hooker?”

  “Right. Probably the reason she’s dead.”

  “I didn’t recognize him. There wasn’t much light, but I swear I’d seen him before. I just can’t remember where.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “I told you, the light wasn’t good. I was in a lot of pain, in and out of consciousness. One thing I thought I saw was bluish hair. I know it sounds crazy, and I’ve convinced myself since then that I imagined it. What are the chances that someone would go to a shootout with something like blue hair? Anyway, he ripped the two-way radio from my shoulder. He said I probably wasn’t going to die if I lay still and forgot what he and the others looked like. To be honest, he was th
e only one that I got any kind of a look at, and that was because he came back. Kind of stupid, huh?”

  “Was this in your report?”

  “No, it wasn’t. Then a few weeks later, Billie killed the ambulance driver because the woman remembered seeing her drive by the crime scene twice.”

  There it was—the reason Scottie was killed. She remembered something she shouldn’t have, and Billie wouldn’t take a chance on her talking. Scottie must not have been as easy as Fred to manipulate. “Yeah, stupid. This whole thing is stupid. In the box we pulled out of Grandma’s storage, we found some files and money. Albert mentioned money. It looked like a lot of it, in thousand-dollar envelopes. This was more than shakedown money. More in line of drug money.”

  “Maybe Billie was robbing the crooked policemen.”

  Then Bertha asked the questions that had been bothering her since Stumpy’s death. “Why were you searching my house for the files and money? How were you involved?”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Three of them sat in Mel’s SUV, Mel and Pop in front and Bertha in the back. She didn’t have a second coat with her, so she’d borrowed the one Alvin jogged in. When she was putting it on, the little dog had danced around her, ready for her walk. Leaving the dog whining, she’d put coffee in a travel mug and brought it along. The painkiller she’d been given the night before left her groggy and headachy. Buckled in for the ride, she drank black coffee and stared through the window into the middle distance.

  Her conversation with Fred Cook had ended badly. She’d waited on the line listening to static while he concocted his answer about his role. The longer she waited the less faith she had in his answer when it came. Finally he started talking, softly, as if he’d divorced himself from emotion.

  “Several years ago, I made a mistake on a call at a little convenience store. Alarm company sent me. They couldn’t get the night clerk to answer. I got there and rolled in quiet, but from my view, everything looked normal. The clerk was behind the counter and the place seemed empty. I opened the door, all the time making eye contact with the clerk. As soon as I stepped inside, she dropped to the floor. He came around the end of the aisle, a scary-looking black guy with a do-rag and a gun, so I ducked, pulled my weapon, and fired. I thought I’d missed him because he turned and ran back into the aisle. Then I heard him fall, taking a cereal display with him. I couldn’t see a damn thing. The clerk screamed and screamed. I come around the end of the aisle and there he lay, dead beneath boxes of Cheerios. I was kneeling over the body, looking for his gun, when Albert Cioni walked in. We looked everywhere for this guy’s gun but couldn’t find it. What we did find was a tall can of Coors that’d rolled under the shelves.”