by Paula Boyd
A flash of light bounced off the windows inside the car. I sucked in my breath as fear shot through me yet again. So much for my bold statement about having panic under control.
“Jolene!”
“Jerry!” I peeked up from between the seats so I could see out the window to my left. There, in the glow of the mercury vapor light was the sheriff, walking toward the car. He held a rifle in one hand and a small statured person with the other. Leroy followed behind, carrying his own shotgun. I jumped out of the car, realizing that the unfriendly firefighter had already vacated his spot.
As Jerry came closer, his captive’s face became clear. It was Damon Saide. The weasel held a bloody hand close to his chest and hopped on one foot, howling and crying.
So Saide was our shooter. On the one hand, I wasn’t surprised at all. On the other, I couldn’t see how it made any sense. Why had he shot Gilbert? He’d only barely missed me… I’d been marching up to confront Gilbert as the shots were fired. Same thing had happened at the ambulance. I’d just stepped back when the bullet whizzed past. “Oh, my God,” I muttered. “He was after me.” I ran toward Jerry and Saide to demand an answer.
As it turned out, I didn’t have to demand anything. The second I cleared the back of the car, Saide started screaming. “I should have killed you when I had the chance. If I’d known you were going to get everything I would have. It was perfect. And you ruined it, ruined everything!”
Jerry jerked him up the driveway and kept walking, Saide hobbling and hopping along beside him.
“What are you talking about?” I said, following along.
“It’s not right!” he howled. “This deal was going to work. I’d done everything exactly right. There was no way anybody could screw me over this time. I had a contract! And then you ruined it, you… you… greedy… bitch.”
Okay, the bitch part I get, but greedy? How? Once again, I was talking to a crazy person who made no sense, so I quit. Damon Saide, however, did not. He just kept repeating that it was his deal and he deserved and things along that line. Maybe at some point it would make sense, but it sure didn’t at the moment. And, I really didn’t care. I just wanted this all to be over with.
Walking up the hill behind Jerry and his wailing captive, I realized that another ambulance had arrived at some point. Several other vehicles had as well since there were more cars with flashing lights and armed people in all kinds of different uniforms positioned along the road, and those were the ones I could see. I glanced around behind me and saw several more uniformed types with weapons still drawn coming out of the trees behind us.
The back of the ambulance was open and Jerry shoved Saide toward it. He told Leroy to keep an eye on things as the EMTs worked with the still-howling weasel.
Jerry turned around toward me just as a woman stepped out from behind a black vehicle. “Why thank you, Sheriff,” Iris said. She flashed him a badge and ID with what looked like the letters F, B and I prominently displayed. “I believe we can take it from here.”
“You’ll have to do better than that and you know it,” Jerry said, not acting at all surprised.
The woman I knew as Iris was dressed in black, something between a cat suit and a business suit. She nodded to his phone on his belt. “Call Perez.”
Jerry did and confirmation was swift and not to his liking. He snapped his phone closed. “I want answers. I have several open cases that I want closed, and obviously I need Saide to do that.”
“You’ll get your information, Sheriff, but we get him first. The ATF boys will get a go as well.”
“All right then. You get Saide and you get everything that goes with him. The entire situation is yours. Bob Little is down in the crappie house. Take a body bag and a winch.”
Iris crossed her arms but kept her face just as flat and blank as ever. “Are you telling me that Bob Little is dead?”
“No, Bob was just fishing and caught a big one,” I said. “Needs help getting it up the hill.”
“I don’t like you,” Iris said, cutting her eyes toward me.
“Take a number,” I said, not caring who she was or what she could do to me if she wanted to. “I don’t like you either.”
“Jolene, honey, it’s okay.”
Oh, it was anything but okay. I’d said that phrase no less than a hundred times tonight and I could no longer convince myself of the lie. If you find yourself in the same vicinity as any three-letter government-sanctioned mafia group, you can be assured that nothing is okay. You may think you live in the home of the free and the brave, but you do not. These people can and will do whatever they want and there is nothing you can do about it. Unfortunately, I didn’t care about any of that at the moment. I knew they would insist on interrogating me tonight, but I was just not in the mood. “Here’s the deal, Iris, I know very little, if anything, about the reasons for anything that happened tonight. The squealing weasel did admit to kidnapping me and expressed regret at not killing me when he had the chance, which he apparently intended to rectify tonight but missed. Twice. I have no idea why he wanted me dead or why he wasn’t a better shot. I have nothing else to say and I am not going anywhere but the hospital to check on my mother.” That said, I turned and walked back down the hill toward the Expedition.
I had been near exhaustion hours ago, and the adrenaline I’d been running on had long run out. I was very close to the crash and burn point, and I needed far, far away from any temptation to tell anyone anything. They could make me stay, of course, but I was going to make them work for it.
I did not hear Jerry following along behind me and figured he’d stayed behind, making promises about what I would do tomorrow and how it would be better for the FBI if I were rested when they talked to me. It would be better if I never ever had to talk to them at all, but even Jerry couldn’t pull that off.
I was just about back to the car when one of the firefighters walked up to me and handed me a rumpled piece of paper. “The guy made them stop the ambulance on the road. Told me to give you this.”
I took the paper and opened it up.
“Said he’d been a lucky guy once too, but he was an ass.” The man shrugged. “He said you’d understand.”
The paper had a woman’s name and phone number scrawled across it. I really didn’t understand, but I nodded to the firefighter and smiled, telling him I’d take care of it. Not knowing what else to do, I grabbed my phone and dialed the number.
A sleepy woman answered and I gave her the details on Gilbert Moore and told her that he’d asked me to call her. She seemed a little surprised at first, but then scared once it sunk in what I was saying. I was just finishing the call when Jerry walked up beside me.
“What was that about?” he said, leaning on the passenger door.
I showed him the paper. “Gilbert asked me to call her.”
“Ah, a woman. I suppose nearly getting killed will do that.”
“Now, exactly what do you mean by that?” I said, wondering if his own near death experience had influenced his feelings about me. “Gilbert may really love her and finally realized he’s been a fool and wants another chance.”
“Or, he may just want her when it’s convenient for him, like now, when he’s scared. When he’s feeling good again, she’ll just be something he thinks about when he’s not amusing himself elsewhere.” Jerry saw my questioning look and sighed. “If you must know, he dated a very good friend of mine once, and I saw the fallout from it. There are always two sides to every story, of course, but in this case they both include him being a narcissistic jerk. It’s not likely that’s changed.”
“Oh,” I said, a little disappointed.
“Still, having you as his guardian angel while he thought he was bleeding to death could have put the fear of God in him. Who knows, you may have completely reformed him into a compassionate, considerate and honorable human being.”
When he put it that way, even a hopeless romantic like me couldn’t get behind it. “I think I’ll still hang on to
my delusions of a happy ending.”
“Happy endings are for people who want them, Jolene,” Jerry said, leaning down and giving me a quick kiss on the forehead. “Let’s go to the hospital and check on your mother.”
“We can go?”
“Yes, apparently Agent Bedford doesn’t want to deal with you tonight. I think you scare her.”
“The devil wouldn’t scare her,” I muttered. “I don’t suppose she was really worried about the horny toads either, and her name probably isn’t even Iris.”
“No, Irene Bedford,” he said, buckling the seat belt around me as if I were a three year old.
As he closed the door, I laid the seat back and curled up like one.
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
“Jolene.”
Was someone calling my name? I heard a dinging of some sort.
“Jolene.”
Jerry. It was Jerry calling. He’d just have to call back later. I didn’t even know where I’d put my phone. Something touched my shoulder and I swatted it away.
The next thing I knew I was being scooped up out of the seat. I instinctively knew that Jerry had me so I wasn’t afraid. I managed to open my eyes enough to realize that he was carrying me through automatic glass doors into a brightly lit room. As he lowered me into a chair, I managed to wake up enough to realize we were in the emergency room of the General Hospital. I rubbed my hands over my face and tried to clear the fog from my head. “Oh, God, I don’t think I can wake up.”
“Jolene, I checked on your mother on the way here. She’s in surgery now and will be there for a while. She has a broken hip. It is serious, but she’ll be okay. Did you understand that?”
“She’s okay. Broken hip,” I muttered. “She is not going to be happy about that.”
“I have to go to the police department right now, but I have some people here to stay with you.”
You’re leaving?” I said, hearing that pitiful tone in my voice yet again. Catching myself, I sighed, “I don’t need a keeper, Jerry. I’ll be fine.”
“Fritz is up in the surgery waiting room. You can all go up there in a few minutes.”
“What? You called Rick in for this?” It was not a psychic revelation or even a lucky guess. My eyes had begun to focus again and I could see Detective Rick Rankin, aka Surfer Dude, standing behind Jerry.
Amidst previous murders and investigations, Rick and I had become well acquainted. In fact, I liked him a lot. When we weren’t busy with dead bodies, the three of us had really had a good time together. But he’d moved down near Dallas and it made no sense that he was conveniently in town when I needed a babysitter. “What’s he doing here?”
“Remember me telling you that he’s engaged?” When I nodded he continued. “Well, some of his soon-to-be wife’s family lives around here.”
“Oh, that’s nice. So why are you punishing him by making him stay with me?”
“Actually, Miz Jackson,” Rick said, stepping forward. “My fiancé is here at the hospital visiting a relative anyway.”
Jerry leaned over and whispered “I love you” in my ear then gave me a quick kiss. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Call if you need to,” he said, almost running toward the door.
Rick sat down beside me in the chair. “Long night?”
“You called me Miz Jackson? What’s that about?”
He shrugged. “Do you want to go up to the surgery waiting room?”
“Yes, but give me a minute. I’m still trying to move into semi-consciousness.” I rubbed my hands over my face several times then tried to slap myself awake.
Rick handed me a bottle of water. “Here, you probably need to drink something.”
Now that he’d pointed out my need for intake, I also realized my need for an outflow. “Hang on to that. I need to run to the restroom.”
He pointed me in the right direction but I declined his offer to walk me there. I stumbled my way across the waiting room, but I made it. I was walking and considerably more alert on the way back. I was also covered in water from splashing it on my face. I sat back down, took the bottle and swigged half of it. “I think I’d like to sit here for a few more minutes. While I do, why don’t you tell me about this girl of yours. Is she cute, where’d you meet her, what does she do, when are you getting married, all that stuff.”
Rick Rankin, the former Redwater Detective who’d run me through the ringer on a number of occasions, was shifting in his chair and sweating like he was on the other side of the interrogation table. “Well,” he said, clearing his throat. “Yes, she’s cute.” He cleared his throat again. “Pretty actually, really pretty.” He looked as nervous a high school boy on his first real date. The man could not speak. It was kind of endearing. The tough talking detective seemed at a loss for words. He must really be crazy about the girl.
“Hey, stop being so nervous about it. I’m not jealous.” I reached over and punched him in the arm. You weren’t quite young enough for me anyway.”
My joke did not seem help lighten his mood; in fact, he even looked a little sick. His blond-tipped head tilted to the side and his mouth worked up and down, but no sound came out, kind of like he had a really big hairball caught in his throat. “I…I…”
I pushed myself upright in the chair and leaned toward him. “Rick, what is wrong with you?”
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and said, “I met her here at the hospital. She’s beautiful and smart and I’m crazy in love with her.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. He’d spit it out as if it were a confession. “Now, see, that wasn’t so hard.” I stretched my arms and stood. “You are definitely a smitten man, Detective Rankin, and I am happy to see it.”
He eyed me cautiously, his face still pinched.
“I’m feeling better now. Mother’s going to be in surgery for a long time, so if your sweetie is here, maybe we can go meet her before we go to the waiting room.”
“Yes,” he said, nodding his head. “That could work.”
Rick and I walked down a long hallway to the elevator and he pushed the button for the third floor. As we stepped onto the elevator, he said, “Before you meet her, promise me that we can still be friends.”
What an odd thing to say. I looked at him and frowned. “Of course, why couldn’t we?”
“Just promise.”
I shrugged. “Okay. I promise.”
“Good.”
The elevator door opened and Rick guided me down yet another hallway. The small sign on the wall beside the door said “Orthopedic Surgery Waiting Room.”
“Mom!”
My head snapped around the doorway to look inside the room as Sarah came running toward me. I grabbed her and hugged her. It was so good to see her, but I couldn’t tell her so. I couldn’t say anything. A bubble of emotion I didn’t even know I had suddenly burst, and I couldn’t stop the tears.
“Oh, Mom, I’m so glad you’re okay,” Sarah said, giving me another hug. “They just came out and said Gram was doing fine. And now you’re here and you’re okay, and you’re here with Rick and that must mean everything is okay there too. Oh, this is so good.”
The words she’s just said in rapid-fire succession began to sink in, and from the glossy blur of my vision, I saw Rick Rankin shaking his head and waving his arms at her. I was exhausted and emotionally unstable, but I was not stupid.
I pushed back from Sarah, but kept my arm on her shoulder as I guided her closer to Rick. When the light bulb had come on, my tears turned off, but I was still sniffing so Rick grabbed some tissues from the box on a table and handed them to me. “Why thank you, Richard,” I said, in a tone that said far more than the words.
“Oh, no,” Sarah said, her eyes wide and darting between us. “You hadn’t told her?”
“I was building up to it,” he croaked.
“Children,” I said, condescendingly because that was exactly what the situation called for. I slid my arm off Sarah’s shoulder and motioned for them both to sit.
“You two have a seat. I’ll stand for a while.”
“You were supposed to take care of this,” Sarah hissed at Rick.
“She’s your mother,” he snapped back.
“Now stop that!” I said, hearing a replay of Jerry’s same exact words about Lucille to me. With that little revelation, I wasn’t sure which of us was going to have a meltdown over our mother first, so I grabbed a chair, pulled it up in front of them and plopped myself in it. “I think I will sit down. Now you two start talking.”
Thankfully, the waiting room was small and otherwise unoccupied so we could have an open dialogue, which would be a new experience for us all, apparently.
“Well, actually, Rick and I met in this very hospital a few months when you were recovering after getting shot.” She glanced at Rick and smiled the smile of a girl in love. “We just started talking and well, one thing led to another.”
“The long distance part has been really difficult,” Rick added. “But we’ve made it work.”
Well, I guess they had. And they’d had help with it too. “Your grandmother knew about this, didn’t she?”
Sarah squirmed in her chair. “She’s been very supportive.”
While they chattered about their romance, several things began to make sense, such as Sarah being in Texas and Lucille renting a hotel room that Sarah didn’t actually stay in. Because, I’m guessing, she’d been either at the Hilton with Rick or driving back and forth with him to his home in Dallas. She was at the courthouse rally though, and with Jerry the next morning. But she certainly was never in Tiger’s room. In fact, as best I could tell at the moment, there were only tiny shreds of anything that resembled truth in the stories I’d been told up until now. I looked up from my thoughts at my lying daughter. “It’s my own fault, for letting you spend summers with your grandmother.”