50
I got to ride in a helicopter, although I don’t remember much of the trip. Just little patches as I gained consciousness before slipping back out again. I remember the throaty roar of the engine, the loud wop-wop-wop of the blades, the faces of the flight crew who worked on me as we banked and swooped through the sky.
It’s funny that even close to death, your stomach can still get butterflies when the flying machine you are in drops five hundred feet in a few seconds.
I remember the sun blinding my eyes as they raced me across a flat landing pad on a roof and into an elevator. The overhead fluorescent lights snapped past as the flight crew spit out my vitals to the doctors. The sharp smell of antiseptic, the pain in my chest; how hard it was to breathe. I remember grabbing a doctor’s shirt and pulling him close and saying, “Did I millstone him?” Another pain, this time in the side of my chest as they cut a rude hole to shove in a tube the size of a garden hose and relieve the pressure of the blood built up around my heart and lungs. Looking over, I saw about a gallon of blood splat onto the floor, spraying the doctors’ and nurses’ booties they wore over their shoes and splashing up onto their blue surgical pants. I remember thinking there was enough blood there to paint my house. And then I could breathe again and it felt so good.
I asked about Max and Pilgrim. No one seemed to know anything about them and I started screaming for them. What if they were dead or hurt or needed me? I arrested all the nurses and doctors and told them they better save my dogs or I would Whack their Pig and shove them into a computer. Things got a little wild for awhile, but then two orderlies big enough to play offensive tackles for the NFL held my arms down and another one flopped over my legs. Someone snuck a needle into my arm just below the bicep, and that’s all I remember until I woke up in the recovery room. I felt sore everywhere.
Tom and Lisa Franklin were there. So was my buddy from Aurora PD, Jared Darling, and Sarah Gallagher from CBI. My secretary Yolanda was wiping her eyes and sniffling.
“My head hurts,” I said. “Come to think of it, so does everything else.”
Jared grinned. “That’s nice. By the way, you’re under arrest.”
“Under arrest, for what?”
“Did you kill guys in three different jurisdictions in three days?”
I thought about it for a second, then did my best Arnold from True Lies, “Yes, but they were all bad.”
Jared nodded. “That’s a terrible impression.” Everyone’s a critic. “Don’t leave the hospital for a few days till we get it all cleared up. A Colorado Springs’ officer will be in later for a statement, but we got most of the story from the Franklins and their son.” He leaned close. “When you’re feeling better I want to know how three of Verick’s henchmen managed to get tied and gagged and locked in the trunk of their car at the bottom of that hill to the cabin.”
I smiled. “It’s good to have friends.”
He nodded. “Amen to that, brother. Get better.” He left.
I looked at Tom and Lisa. Tom’s arm was in a sling and he had a big white patch taped to the back of his head. They were holding hands. “Is Amber okay?”
“Thanks to you,” said Tom. They both came to my bedside.
“Joseph too,” said Lisa. “His jaw and cheek are broken, but they say he’ll make a full recovery. He told us about the flash drive and wanting to kill that man, and trying to kill himself.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry…about…everything.” She looked ashamed.
I reached up and took her hand. “It’s okay.”
She gripped my hand hard. “Thank you. Thank you for Amber and Joseph.” She looked at her husband. “And for Tom.” She let me go and walked out of the room. Two days ago I wouldn’t have given their marriage one chance in ten, but it looked like things were on the mend. I was glad.
I looked up at Tom. I had seen him flinch when Lisa mentioned Joseph’s name. “Tom, I know you may have some difficult feelings for Joseph right now.” I saw his jaw clench.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Joseph made some bad choices, but he didn’t kill Shane. Roger Doors and Arnold Verick, they murdered your son. Joseph is fifteen years old, he’s just a kid. You have to be willing to give him some leeway. He did wrong, so did Shane, but neither of them could have foreseen what it would lead to. Joseph is going to have a hard time healing, and the only way he will be able to get through this is with your help. You helped Shane to come back to God in the end. Help Joseph in the same way.”
Tom breathed heavily and I saw his eyes water. I felt my own start to sting.
“I don’t know,” said Tom. “So much has happened.”
“Listen to me,” I said and my voice may have held a bit of the edge my heart was carrying. “You weren’t there when Joseph turned that shotgun on himself — I was. I’ve seen dozens of phony suicide attempts over the years — this wasn’t one of them. He meant to kill himself. He would have killed himself. So unless you want another dead son, you better man up and be a father to him.”
He nodded, looking solemn. “I’ll try,” he said.
I lay back in the bed, my voice still a little rough. “I hope you do. He’s a good boy. Just a little lost.”
He nodded and left the room. I didn’t like talking to Tom that way but the truth is sometimes unavoidably harsh.
Sarah Gallagher handed me an envelope. “How you feeling?”
I opened the envelope and pulled out the card. The cover showed the members of the cast from the television show CSI standing around a body, with the words, “The first step to getting well…” I opened it and the song Who Are You by The Who started playing. Inside was a cartoon of the body shooting fluids out of numerous holes, and the words, “…is to check your fluids.” I laughed. “Better now. Thanks.”
She shrugged her beautiful shoulders. “It’s Crime Lab humor. Not everyone gets it.”
“I got it. Thanks for coming.”
She looked me up and down. “All this from a wad of chewed up gum?”
“That’s where it all started.” I tapped the card, which got the song playing again. “It’s all in the fluids.”
“You gonna be okay?”
I smiled slyly. “If I know you, you’ve already hounded all the doctors, so you tell me.”
“Well, the bullet broke a rib, cracked your sternum and chipped your shoulder blade. The channel bore through your right lung, filling the chest with blood which is why the lung collapsed. You had splinters of wood in your head, face and neck — I’m guessing from bullets that were close misses. You’re covered with bruises and abrasions, and you have another recent bullet wound along the back of your neck and through a small section of that nicely muscled trapezes and shoulder that had already been treated. In other words, you’re a mess.”
“But am I gonna be okay?”
She smiled, leaned down, kissed my forehead. “Of course. And you still owe me a date.”
What a kidder. “If only,” I said. “Way-way-waaaay out of my league. But thanks for the pity.”
She shook her head. “I’m going to run down to take a look at the crime scene. I’ll snap a few pictures for your scrap book.” She walked to the door with moves that even Jessica Rabbit couldn’t hope to compete with. She stopped in the doorway and looked at me. “Don’t play the game too long, PI, someone might snatch me up.” She winked and was gone.
“That woman is bad,” said Yolanda, who had long since dried her tears.
“No,” I said, closing my eyes as sleep came to claim me. “She’s just drawn that way.”
51
When Joseph woke up, I was sitting next to his bed in a chair. My IV was on rollers, and the tubes had only gotten twisted up about a million times while I fought to keep my hind quarters private in spite of the stupid hospital gown I was forced to wear.
It was two in the morning and Joseph’s roommate, a ninety year-old man awaiting gallbladder surgery, was fast asleep.
Joseph s
lept straight through my two harrumphs and three forehead taps. I think it was the tissue I ran lightly over his cheeks, lips and chin, simulating a creepy, eight-legged insect, that finally did the trick.
“We need to talk,” I said.
He closed his eyes and turned his head to the side. I tickled his ear with the tissue.
He didn’t like it. “What do you want?” His words were only slightly slurred by the wires holding his jaw together.
“You didn’t kill your brother.”
“Yesh I did.” His voice was flat, emotionless. So were his eyes. He turned his head to the side again.
Tickle-tickle
“What?” Still the dead voice of an automaton.
“I’m not saying you didn’t do anything wrong. You did. So did Shane. But that’s not why he’s dead. He’s dead because some greedy, evil men murdered him.”
The dull orbs of his eyes slid in their sockets staring through me. “I wush greedy.”
“Yeah, you were, so was Shane.”
“Leave him out of it.”
“Why? He was in as deep as you and he was older.”
Joseph’s head twitched a fraction to the negative. “He shtopped. I didn’t.”
“He was older than you, Joseph, he had greater responsibility.”
“I killed him.”
“You know that’s a lie. You just want to think that so you can kill yourself and stop the pain.” I leaned in. “I’ve got a secret for you. If you kill yourself, it won’t stop the pain. All it will do is shift it over to your parents and your brothers and your sisters. Is that what you want?”
A flicker, something deep in his eyes, anger — fear? “Shut up. I don’t want to talk to you.” He reached for his buzzer to summon a nurse. I pulled it away from him. Another flash of a spark — deep — deep inside.
“I know what you think Shane thought of you.”
He turned his head to the side. “You don’t know anything.”
“You think he blamed you. That he hated you.”
“You don’t…know…anything.” The spark hadn’t touched his voice.
“Yes I do. I know Shane forgave you.”
He looked back at me. His nose wrinkled in disgust. “Becaush he’s my brother?”
“No. More than that. When I first saw what they did to Shane, I made a faulty deduction. I thought no seventeen-year old could have kept a secret through that kind of torture. But I was wrong. Shane was smart — really smart. You are too. So let me ask you this, once they showed Shane that the flash drive he’d given them was a fake, would he have figured out that it was you who switched the drive?”
I saw him thinking. He blinked several times. Looked into my eyes. “Yesh, he would…know.” And now I was sure I saw it, fear, treading water at the back of his brain, threatening to swim forward. Fear, as the realization of his brother’s knowledge and all the ramifications of Shane still keeping silent, worked through that smart, logical brain of his.
“Yes,” I said. “You’re figuring it out, just like I did. Your brother knew that you tricked him, betrayed him. But he never talked. He never told them. They tortured him in ways that should have been able to break any human, but not him. Because he would rather die — rather be tortured to death, than to have you suffer the same fate. Because he loved you, Joseph. And that’s how I know he forgave you. Greater love hath no man than he who lays down his life for another.”
Tears brimmed, and that dull lifeless glaze melted. “Thish ish shupposhed to make me want to live?”
I nodded. “Yes, because if Shane loved you enough to die for you, the least you can do is love him enough to live. Don’t make his sacrifice worthless.”
He broke down. He cried for a long time. The kind of crying that racks your body and steals your strength, leaving you out of breath and exhausted — empty — helpless.
I slipped the thumb dot, still in its case, from under my gown; I’d been holding it under my armpit. Sarah brought it back from the crime scene along with a flash drive full of pictures. I put it in Joseph’s hands.
“Ten million dollars,” I said. “Maybe a billion if you play it right. It’s yours. Do what’s right.”
He snapped it in two.
It was a good start.
52
A few days later I was back at 20th and Blake. The dogs were still at my house recovering. Pilgrim lost a lot of blood and suffered a collapsed lung (copy cat), but was on the mend. Max took a round through the meaty part of his left haunch and acted like nothing had happened at all. I remember him standing over me, back at Doors’ cabin, as the Colorado Springs Police came onto the scene and how he was ready to rip them apart to protect me. If I hadn’t managed to come around and stay awake long enough to command him to stand down, I probably would have bled to death or they would have had to shoot him. It made me feel all gooshy inside. Maybe I was starting to grow on him.
I’d gotten a phone call that night in the hospital, it was Nick Carlino. He asked me one thing. Was the little girl safe? When I told him yes, he said I owed him one. I had a vision of Marlon Brando with puffed cheeks sitting behind a desk in a dark room, me sitting opposite as he told me what he wanted me to do. Hmm. Right, me, hanging out with mobster gamblers. What are the odds?
I let the workout go for a while, the broken rib and cracked sternum taking their time to heal. At the office, I worked on my schedule. I had three K9 trials to judge in the next week. I finished up writing reports on the Franklin case, closed three others and stared at Gary Cooper’s poster, seeing Arnold Verick’s soulless eyes as he pointed the gun at my face.
Around eleven I got hungry. I went down the street to Dimitri’s for a pita.
“What happened to you?” asked the blonde with the musical laughter.
I rubbed at one of the sore spots on my cheek. “Flag football. It’s a lot rougher than it looks.”
“I guess so.” She handed me my food. “A gyro for a hero.”
I laughed.
She smiled. “Still playing the Maytag repairman?”
I put a five in the tip jar. “It’s so lonely. They never break down.”
“Well you look more rested at least.”
“Thanks, I’ve been sleeping better.” I walked to the table by the window and watched the people walk by. Last night I dreamt of my wife and my daughter. We were having a picnic in the mountains. We ate and played and swam in a little lake that was as calm as glass. It was wonderful.
I hadn’t dreamed of my daughter dying since I saved Amber. Life wasn’t perfect, I still had ghosts to put to rest, but at least there was that. And, hey, I’m a work in progress.
The sandwich tasted great. A gyro for a hero. I smiled, looked out the window at the bright spring day and watched the world go by.
53
Max
The Alpha was not at the house. He’d been gone all day, and now that night had fallen the breeze was turning cool and crisp. Max liked it this way. Sound and scent traveled well in clear air.
A whine sounded from the corner. Pilgrim was still recovering and could only walk with difficulty. Max watched as the older dog struggled to his feet and made his way outside to empty his water. Max followed him and watched from the dark shadows of the garage. Pilgrim couldn’t raise his leg. He had to squat, like a female, his flow weak and broken. Max saw Pilgrim wince and heard him whine as he made water beside the tree.
It was a bad injury, very bad. Max had smelled the death smell on Pilgrim for several days and thought he wouldn’t make it. But Pilgrim had shown a greater strength than Max would have credited him with. Perhaps, as with the Alpha, there was more to Pilgrim than at first seemed evident.
Max was learning there were different kinds of strength, different kinds of power. He was learning that there were still things for him to learn.
Pilgrim finished and tried to stand. His hind legs gave out and he slumped to his belly on the dirt and grass. He lay there for a second, then tried to get up. He failed and
Max heard him whine again as he dropped.
The wind shifted and Max smelled it, just for an instant, but in the crisp air it was enough. He saw the coyote hiding by the tree a few feet behind Pilgrim, its teeth bared, eyes locked on Pilgrim’s throat, about to strike.
Pilgrim was weak, old. The coyote was neither.
Max moved with the sleek, silent power that was his alone. Slipping like a breath of wind, a gale force, his ears riding back along his skull, tail straight, body low, eyes sharp. He flew like an arrow.
The coyote sprung at Pilgrim, shooting his head down at the injured dog’s throat. Max caught him in midair and his ninety pounds of body weight combined with his incredible speed slammed the animal back as though it had been struck by a bolt of lightning.
Max felt the coyote trying to twist even as it fell, and went with the movement, letting his body slip up and over the coyote’s neck, snapping the vertebra and killing his distant canine cousin.
He plodded back to Pilgrim, saw the old dog struggling to stand and nuzzled his nose under Pilgrim’s hindquarters and belly. Gently he lifted until Pilgrim made it to his feet. Pilgrim touched noses with him and slowly waddled back to the pet door and pushed inside.
In some ways Pilgrim was weak. He was old and injured. But he was part of the Alpha’s pack.
Part of Max’s pack.
Max breathed deep of the night air and followed his new brother into the house.
* * *
The End
Sheepdogs: Keeping the Wolves at Bay Page 24