by Randy Alcorn
Jake waited for the exact moment, then whipped the flashlight around in his right hand, turning it on and sticking it into what he hoped were Charlie’s eyes. He held it only for a moment, then let go, knowing gunfire would follow. First there was Charlie’s yelp of surprise and pain from the needles of light, then the gunshots.
Jake bolted around the other side of the tree, pulling his dagger out of his belt. Charlie was doing the dance of panic, eyes stinging, shooting at the flashlight on the ground. One shot blacked it out completely, but by this time Charlie had a dull dagger attacking his lower ribs, and Jake’s left arm was around his neck.
The two rolled on the ground. The gun fired off two more times, and then Jake heard the welcome click. Empty. A real knife would have finished the fight. This one only pierced the skin.
Jake held a tight headlock while Charlie flailed and threw himself everywhere. Jake moved to a choke hold. He thought he could make him pass out, but Charlie broke free. He was ten years younger than Jake and very strong. Then Charlie grabbed something from his lower right pantleg and charged like an angry wild bull, knocking Jake on his back. Charlie had something in his hand he was flailing at Jake from above. At first Jake thought it was the empty gun, and he raised his left arm to fend off the blow. But it didn’t have the dull throbbing impact of a gun used as a bludgeon. Instead it pierced his arm, painfully, and warm liquid splashed Jake’s face.
Jake was in agony as Charlie pulled out the knife and raised it to strike a second blow. But Jake managed to let loose with a hard right to Charlie’s face, breaking his nose. Jake was suddenly up and on top of him, striking Charlie repeatedly, telling himself this man was a killer, that he’d probably killed his friends and had threatened to kill Carly and Little Finn. He hit him again and again.
Finally he realized Charlie was unconscious. Jakes hands were wet, soaking wet. They smelled like blood. Had he hit Charlie that hard? No, it was his blood. Jake felt terribly weak. He was losing blood, a lot of it. He pulled the handkerchief from Charlie’s suit pocket, taking out the gun wrapped in it, the gun that smelled of WD-40. The other gun. Charlie had forgotten it, and so had he.
He wrapped the handkerchief around his wound. It wasn’t enough. He tore out lining from Charlie’s suit to apply more pressure, to hold it tight. The task was getting harder. He was getting weaker. He wanted to sleep. Instinctively he knew sleeping now would be like sleeping in the Arctic cold, where you’d never wake up. He bandaged himself with everything he could.
If he died out here, Charlie would recover eventually and get away. Maybe he would still go after Carly. He couldn’t let that happen. Jake held Charlie’s knife in his right arm. He considered plunging it into Charlie’s heart, or maybe severing his jugular, an execution for past crimes and a prevention of future ones. He reached for the other gun. He could finish Charlie off the way he’d finished Sutter, and who knows how many others.
But as he lay in the darkness he realized he wasn’t the judge and executioner of these men, though thirty minutes ago he would have been glad to play the role. He’d come within an inch of eternity for the second time in two months, and before the hour was over would likely be there. Sutter hadn’t been ready for what was on the other side. By human standards, he was made of better stuff than Sutter, but he knew he no more deserved to be in the presence of God than these two.
With startling clarity he considered the irony that he was about to die. What would he do if he had one last day or month or year to live in this world? He thought of the time he’d spent reading Finney’s Bible, and how he’d found himself believing it. And about the Presence he’d felt with him. He thought of Janet and the abortion and the affairs, and Carly, and how he’d failed her. He thought of his mother and how he’d neglected her. As he lay in mud and moss and sweat, he felt the deepest sense of unworthiness he’d ever known. But with it he felt something else—forgiven—and with it came a freeing sense of peace. If he did not make it, if the lonely forest was where the abandoned shell of his body would lie, then he thanked God in the cold darkness that he was ready to face the long tomorrow.
He knew he was in no condition to walk. He might stagger thirty feet, but he would never make it back to the car. He gathered his remaining strength, took off Charlie’s belt, and tied his hands tightly behind his back. He took off his own belt and tied Charlie’s feet. He tore some more strips from the lining of Charlie’s suit and tied them tight to reinforce the bind of the belts. He was determined that if he died here tonight, Charlie would not get far.
Jake reapplied pressure to his aching arm. The bandages were wet, very wet. Perhaps an artery had been severed. He would die here then. He was deeply sorry for the legacy he was leaving, successful by human standards, but what he now regarded as a failure by the only standards that mattered. Still, he felt that strange peace, knowing his entrance to the world beyond had been purchased by the flowing blood of another. In his final weeks on earth, at least, he’d done some things pleasing to the One whose opinion really mattered.
And he felt something else. He felt again that he was not alone lying in that darkness. Though he could not see well, and his vision was getting dimmer by the moment, there was someone else nearby whose eyes penetrated the darkness and strove to reach out and touch him. There was the presence of a Savior within, and a God in heaven above, but there was someone else too, someone close and wanting to be closer.
He heard a strange sound, as if someone had pried open a closed door and rushed through it. The mysterious sound was followed by another, a deep and almost other-worldly voice that seemed strangely comforting.
Memories of early childhood began to rush through his mind, as if it were a videotape of his life stuck on fast forward. As his grip on his arm relaxed and the deadly flow of blood resumed, for just a moment before losing consciousness Jake thought he saw and felt a powerful hand grab hold of his wounded arm.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Jake woke up in the hospital for the second time in just over three months. This time he woke peacefully, dry and warm. How did he get here? Sore and weak, he began to remember the skirmish in the dark. He chose not to press the button and call a nurse, but to lie still, reorienting himself until he could perhaps ask an intelligent question and understand the answer. The clock told him it was two-thirty, and the sunshine coming in through the window told him it was afternoon.
A nurse passed by his room, glancing in as a matter of habit. She did a double take when she saw Jake’s eyes were open.
“Hello, Mr. Woods! Someone’s been waiting for you to wake up. I’ll send him in.”
Jake smiled as Ollie walked in the door, finishing off a sandwich from the hospital cafeteria or maybe from a vending machine. His spiral notebook was in tow. This wasn’t just a friendly visit.
“Jake. First, I’m glad you’re not dead. Okay, now that we’ve got the niceties out of the way, I want the whole story, from the beginning. You’ve got a lot of explaining to do. How’d you get mixed up with these guys? And how’d you end up mud wrestling with them in the woods?”
Ollie didn’t like being in the dark, and he wanted Jake’s answers now.
“Wait a minute, Ollie. First I want to know how I got here. Last I knew I was bleeding to death in the woods. I thought next time I woke up maybe I’d be seeing angels. Instead, I’m looking at your ugly mug.”
“You’re just jealous, Woods. Any angel would kill to have a kisser like this.” Ollie ran his hand over his face as if it belonged to a Greek god.
“As for how you got here, forget it. You tell your story first, and if I’m satisfied, I’ll fill you in on the rest. I’m the cop, remember? In addition to everything else, you led me to another homicide. Talk, mister.”
“Your sensitivity to my condition is touching, Ollie. Where’s the doctor who always comes in and says, ’I’m sorry, the patient is in no condition to talk right now. He needs his rest’?”
“I showed that doctor my badge, and when he stil
l objected I kicked his rear into a broom closet. Unless you want to join him I’d start talking now.”
“Okay, Ollie. But you’re not going to like it. I owe you a big apology.”
He backed up and told the whole story, from the Saturday afternoon Sutter and Mayhew paid him their first visit and took him to their phony office at the federal building.
“Okay, the FBI badges I can buy. But an office in the federal building? How’d they pull that off?”
Ollie jotted down a note and circled it prominently for follow up.
“Somebody thought they were doing a favor for the Feds, like this was a sting operation or something. I don’t think it was somebody working for them. Just some sucker who fell for an elaborate ruse.”
Jake blushed. Speaking of suckers…
“Thanks for your analysis, Detective Woods, but leave the investigation to us, okay? And don’t quit your day job either. As for the federal building, somebody’s head’s gonna roll over there. It’s just like the Feds, though. Everybody’s got secrets from everybody else, so they can’t double check security the way they ought to.”
“What about Sutter and Mayhew?”
“Who? Oh, your forest friends? Bad dudes. I guess you found that out, didn’t you? Before we go further I have to ask you, who killed Michael Fredericks?”
“You mean Sutter? Mayhew killed him. His real name isn’t Mayhew, it’s Charlie something.”
“Charlie Nambag. Sounds like Scumbag doesn’t it? We ran both their prints and the computer took all of two seconds before it started coughing up their rap lists. Charlie’s couldn’t fit on one screen. He’s a real prince of a guy. Been paroled twice when he should have spent the rest of his life in jail. Don’t I recall a column or two where you told the rest of us we needed to be more understanding of these troubled criminals? Feel any different now that one almost took you out?”
“A lot of things feel different, Ollie.”
Ollie jotted down a few notes and looked Jake right in the eyes.
“Charlie says you killed Fredericks.”
“What?”
“Problem is, we found that old Walther you showed me a few years ago. Guess what? The bullets that killed Sutter came from your gun. I even found the two shells out there. 1943? Cripes, Jake, ever consider buying some new ammo?”
“Charlie shot him. He must have used my gun. He stole it from my car.”
“How come you had a gun in your car?”
“It’s a long story, Ollie. You don’t believe I killed the guy, do you?”
“Well, I know it’s your gun, and your fingerprints are all over it. Just yours. Not Nambag’s, not Fredericks’s.”
“Of course … they both handled it with a handkerchief. They weren’t just trying to keep their prints off, they were trying to keep mine on. Sutter said they had some plans for it.”
“Going to set you up. Maybe kill somebody else with it, somebody they wanted to take out anyway, and make it look like you did it, panicked and disappeared. Two birds with one stone.”
Like maybe Carly or Janet or Little Finn? Jake shuddered.
“Charlie figured he may as well use it to waste Fredericks. Why use his Magnum when the Walther couldn’t be linked to him? I believe you, Jake. And, hey, most juries would probably trust a journalist over a professional hit man.” Ollie paused as if in deep thought. “Now that I think about it, it might be a toss up.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing that guy nailed in court,” Jake said.
“Yeah, well, that remains to be seen. Chances are he had a rough upbringing, dysfunctional family, parents were alcoholics, Sutter was a codependent. Or maybe I didn’t pause long enough on a comma while reading his Mirandas or something, and he walks. In any case, after a few years of pumping iron and watching crime movies in prison, he’ll be back out to blow people away again. With some luck, maybe by the time he gets out he’ll have arthritis of the trigger finger. Heck, by then you might be retired and moved somewhere, and he won’t bother coming after you for revenge. Just send you a letter bomb or something. They learn all kinds of useful skills in the slammer.”
“You’re very comforting, Ollie.”
“Just giving you a teensy bit of the police officer’s perspective. It’s so rare to have the teachable moment with a journalist. Seriously, I’m glad you didn’t pull the trigger on Fredericks. A chest wound or something wouldn’t be a problem in a self-defense argument, but the double head shot at close range is generally frowned upon. Could have been bookoo problems for you. Some journalist would have hung you out to dry. Doesn’t matter if the guy you shot was Stalin’s meaner brother, they’d crucify you anyway.”
Jake heard the bitterness in Ollie’s voice. The wound was still open.
“Okay, Ollie, you’ve heard my story. Now I want yours. How’d I end up here? Who found me out in the middle of nowhere?”
“An ambulance got you here. I found you.”
“You? No. How?”
“I kept you alive till the EMTs took over. In fact, you owe me a shirt. I ripped it to shreds making bandages to stop the bleeding. You’re lucky it was a clean shirt. Last week was wash week. You owe me dinner. You owe me a freezer full of Haagen-Dazs. In fact, you owe me a house in the suburbs with the mortgage paid off.”
“I’ll buy you a burger at Lou’s and we’ll call it even.”
“Throw in onion rings and a shake and you got a deal.”
“Since you apparently have no intention of ever answering my question, Ollie, I may as well just say thanks. I owe you.”
“Hey, when other reporters were lynching me, you helped save my career and you saved my family from hell on earth, or at least you cut the hell short. Saving your life was probably the highlight of mine. Don’t mention it. As for your question, how I found you, there’s a simple answer.”
“You want me to guess, is that it?”
“Okay, okay, keep your pants on … uh, keep your cute little smock on. The truth is, a week ago I put a bird dog on your car.”
“A bird dog?”
“An electronic gadget that emits a silent pulse. It’s on a set frequency. I’ve got the mother device. It gives a direction and an approximate distance based on the strength of the pulse. When I checked and found you were way out in the boondocks, I thought something was wrong. You’ve been Mr. Investigator, and I figured you weren’t out fishing. Not for fish anyway. It was a hunch. I called and told Rebecca I wouldn’t be home for dinner, then I took off after the trace.”
“You missed dinner for me, Ollie?”
“Yeah. The further we go, the more of a hero I come out, huh?”
“But how’d you find me in the woods?”
“Well, the bird dog got me to your car, and then I saw the Volvo. Of course, I didn’t know whose it was. So, I pulled my peacemaker and went in the cabin. I saw some odds and ends, then came back out and studied the broken porch light. I poked around with a flashlight. Saw ground that looked like it had taken some bullets, several Magnum shells. Major bad omen. Tracks went some different directions, but I followed the only sets of tracks with three different footprints, which I assumed were you being followed by a couple of goons.”
“You got that right.”
“It wasn’t easy tracking, especially in the underbrush, but between the three of you it was doable. I kept listening, but there was nothing. The bread crumbs led me to Fredericks, and I thought, this guy looks like a meteorite hit him. His back and neck weren’t at the right angles. Man, you wasted him. I assume the beating was your work, right? Everything that preceded the bullets?”
Jake nodded.
“Not bad for a pantywaist reporter. Remind me not to get you aggravated. The man was probably relieved when the bullets came. Mercy killing, isn’t that what we call it now? Anyway, the crime scene was a detective’s paradise. The footprints, the gunshots, the flashlight, this crushed and executed guy in a business suit, carrying federal ID. I formed about a half dozen hypotheses, but I kn
ew even if he got you, the other goon must still be out there somewhere. He wouldn’t have left his car behind.
“I turn off my flashlight so I can’t be used for target practice, and I just listen. After thirty seconds, I hear this sound. Like nothing I’ve ever heard before. It was eerie, like a deep voice whispering in the darkness, beckoning me over. Gives me the shivers just thinking about it. Everybody tells me it must have been you or Charlie moaning, but when I got to you twenty seconds later, you were both unconscious. And it wasn’t like any moan I ever heard. Anyway, whatever it was, it saved your life. Charlie could have lasted the night, bless his heart, but you wouldn’t have lasted another five minutes. That’s what the doctors tell me. Did you hear how much blood they pumped into you?”
“No.”
“Lots. I think it was four units, at least. Did you know you were in ICU till just a few hours ago? Yeah. They said you couldn’t afford to lose any more blood. But I still don’t know why you didn’t. The blood had soaked through your bandages and it was seeping out like crazy. The doctor said if that cut hadn’t had a lot of pressure applied against it, and some fresh bandages, it would have been your last hurrah. Even then, the ambulance wasn’t a minute too soon. I had a portable phone on me so I didn’t even have to get to the car radio. I called as soon as I slowed down the bleeding. I’m hoping a cellular phone company will feature me in a commercial or something.”
Jake tried to recall what had happened in the darkness. All he could remember was the strange combination of regret for a life of missed opportunities, and peace and anticipation about a better life beyond. For a moment, he thought he could recall something else, someone else out there in the darkness. He must just be remembering Ollie hovering over him in his semiconscious state. Ollie grabbing hold of his arm and talking in a strange voice.