by J. Fritschi
EVEN THOUGH THE room was grey and shadowed with dim fluorescent lights, it was bright to Mike’s dormant retinas as he lazily opened his eyes. He had been stuck in pitch black darkness for three days and his eyes struggled to adjust. His vision was a white fuzzy haze and he couldn’t distinguish shapes. He could feel the ventilator tube lodged in his mouth and stuffed down his throat making it virtually impossible to swallow.
As he blinked his eyelids like iron curtains, his head rotated from side to side trying to find something to focus on. He didn’t know who he was or where he was. It was if his mind had been erased and was a clean slate, much like a new born child. There was no thought process or comprehension. It was like he was experiencing life for the first time.
His mother was sleeping uncomfortably crammed on the folding armchair and was clutching at the all too small blanket that covered her torso for warmth when she thought she heard a whisper telling her to get up.
She opened her eyes and blinked with a confused furrow of her thin, silver brow as she concentrated and listened for the whisper. The ventilator hissed and shushed intermittently in the background as she weakly pushed herself up and gazed around the room. She could sense something in the cool air of the room; a divine presence. It was peaceful and she felt an inner sense of calmness she had not experienced since before her husband’s suicide. Could it be that God came while she was sleeping and took her only son away from his suffering to a better place? She glanced over at Mike’s bed and thought she saw his head move. Did she imagine it?
With her heart pounding with anticipation, she got up from the chair and curiously approached the hospital bed. Much to her delight, she saw that his eyes were open half mast and blinking. The ventilator breathed darkly like a dying animal in the forest.
“Mike?” She said softly. “Can you hear me? Are you awake?”
A distant muffled voice rang hollow in Mike’s head. They were words he didn’t understand, but the voice sounded familiar. He closed his eyelids and rolled his eyeballs involuntarily trying to soothe them.
“Oh baby, please don’t leave me,” his mother pleaded earnestly. “Let me get a doctor to check on you. Hold on sweetheart.”
There were more voices talking in the dark recesses of his head and he felt the doctor raise his eyelids one at a time as he shined a light whitewashing his pupils. More voices and commotion ensued as Mike lay in his bed unaware of the excitement around him. Doctors and nurses worked feverishly as his mother kept begging him not to fall asleep.
Mike felt the tape holding the ventilator tube to the outside of his neck tear from his skin and when they pulled it from his throat it felt like his tonsils were being removed. All the while he didn’t have any concept of what was happening to him.
Almost an hour later, as Mike sat wearily in his bed being examined by a couple of nurses and a doctor, his vision slowly began to return like an out of focus movie being brought in and out of clarity. It was apparent from the doctor and nurses who were checking his eyes, blood pressure and other vital signs that he was in a hospital and he knew that a hospital was for sick or injured people, but he couldn’t make the connection that there was something wrong with him.
Instead he sat motionless in his bed with a blank look on his face, listening, detached from all the commotion that was going on around him as the nurses and doctor lifted his arms, pulled and probed his ears, throat and nose and generally poked and prodded him. None of it bothered him. It was like it wasn’t happening to him. Like the body he was occupying wasn’t his own.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the young doctor with thinning sandy hair and round John Lennon style glasses remarked bewildered. “All of his vital signs are normal. It really is quite extraordinary.”
The pretty Asian nurse smiled at Mike as she adjusted something behind him.
“It is a miracle!” His mother exclaimed joyously. “I wouldn’t believe it myself if I didn’t see it with my own two eyes.”
Mike heard all of this, but he wasn’t listening. He was still trying to figure out what was going on around him. Something bad must have happened to someone, but he didn’t know who or what. He didn’t have any power of recollection. It was all too confusing. His head felt like someone threw it into a dryer on tumble. He was experiencing vertigo and he would close his eyes tight hoping to squeeze the feeling away, but when he would open his eyes, he felt like he was corkscrewing to his left. It was as though the building was collapsing and spiraling down uncontrollably.
The doctor noticed the pasty, vacant expression on his face. “How are you feeling Detective?” He asked as he stood next to Mike’s bed with his arms crossed.
Detective? The word seemed strangely familiar. How did he know that word? What did it mean? Was he a detective? And then it dawned on him…he was a homicide detective in Oakland. Mike smiled, pleased with his word association and his lips cracked with a sting.
“Thirsty,” he replied with a weak voice.
Everyone in the room laughed nervously.
“He still has his sense of humor,” his mother remarked happily.
Mike recognized his mom, but he didn’t have any memory of her or his family life, but the words Oakland and detective kept repeating in his head. He kept repeating the words in his head like a computer searching for a match and then it came to him. He was born in Oakland. Mike was proud that he was able to figure these things out for himself. It was like being a contestant on a game show. He reminded himself to take it slow; baby steps.
Baby? He was an only baby. His mother’s little baby and he remembered laughing and being happy as his mom pushed him on a swing when he was a little baby. The word swing kept repeating in his head until he remembered the swing was in his back yard in their home in Berkeley. He remembered his youth in Berkley, climbing trees and running around with his friends and playing catch with his dad in their back yard in Piedmont. That’s right…they moved to Piedmont when he was in the 4th grade. He remembered playing basketball and baseball with the kids in his neighborhood and football with his dad in his back yard. He remembered his dad telling him that he had a “golden arm” and that if he practiced hard enough, he would be the quarterback of his football team one day. And then he remembered that they moved from Piedmont to Orinda before his freshman year of high school because his dad knew the football coach who wanted Mike to play quarterback for him. He recalled his girlfriends, especially Jamie who was his first love and broke his heart. He remembered losing the championship game and getting arrested for driving under the influence afterwards.
The memories came one after the other like falling dominoes and each memory triggered another one in a fascinating game of memory association. It was like solving a puzzle. The more pieces of memory he had, the more he could see the entire picture. But there was a problem. Where was his dad? Why wasn’t he there with his mom? He wanted to see his dad; the man who was his hero and mentor when he was growing up.
“Where’s Dad?” Mike asked with a hoarse voice.
Mrs. McCormick and the doctor stopped in surprised silence and stared at Mike. He could feel the tension in the air. Neither of them knew what to say. His mom’s eyes welled with tears, but he didn’t understand why.
“You should get some sleep,” the doctor told him in an assuring tone.
Mike turned his head and looked out the window at the blue sky as wisps of clouds drifted methodically by. Where was his dad? Why wasn’t he there? He closed his eyes and sank into a tingling, euphoric slumber.
chapter 38
WHEN MIKE AWOKE, his eyes were crusted around the reddened exteriors and his tongue was swollen and brittle like a dried sponge as he licked the flaking skin of his chapped lips. As he blinked his eyes into focus, he rolled his groggy head to the side and looked out the window at the vibrant, rosy yellow hues of the dusk’s sky radiating in the wisps of clouds.
There was a shadowy dimness to the silent room and as Mike rolled his head back so that he was looking
straight up at the patterns in the ceiling, he could sense a presence in the room, like someone was watching him. Slowly, with weary eyes, he rolled his head in the other direction and saw the silhouette of a large, dark figure sitting in the chair a few feet from his bed. He squinted his eyes as he examined the massive figure who sat silently watching him. Who was it? Was it a dream? He lay motionless staring at the figure waiting for him to move.
“Hey Mikey,” a familiar deep voice said. “How are you feeling?”
Mike immediately recognized the voice and gave a painful, cracking smirk. “Hey Big Pete,” he replied with a raspy dry lump in his throat. “What are you doing sitting in the dark?”
“I was in the neighborhood and thought I would drop by.”
“Is that right?” Mike asked amused. “Where’d my mom go?”
“I told her to go home and get some rest while I watch over you. You had us all worried Brother.”
“Aren’t you sweet?”
“Sweet as sugar, you know that.”
Mike grinned with appreciative regret. “What the fuck happened to me?”
“You don’t remember anything?” Big Pete asked as he leaned forward in his chair.
Mike swallowed hard as he turned his head towards the ceiling and searched the recesses of his mind for anything that might trigger a memory. “It’s the strangest thing, I’m aware of the things around me and I recognize people, but I can’t make sense of them and put it all together unless something triggers a memory.”
“What is your last memory?”
“I don’t know,” Mike replied lost as his eyes welled with tears of disappointment. “I don’t know what happened when. I can’t make sense of it.”
Big Pete sat back in his chair with his hands in his lap as he let out a deep sigh. He wanted to ask Mike what he remembered about the night he was attacked by the Sterling Killer, but the doctor told him to give Mike time to regain his memory. “What do you remember about me?” Big Pete asked timidly.
Mike paused in contemplation. What did he remember about Big Pete? He knew he was Big Pete but how did he know him? What was their connection? And then the memories came back to him like a deck of cards being shuffled.
He played high school football against Big Pete and lost the state championship to his team their senior year. Mike was the star quarterback and Big Pete was the All-State left tackle. Mike was pleasantly surprised when Big Pete announced that he too was going to the University of Arizona and even more surprised when they ended up as roommates. Big Pete later admitted that he went to U of A because he wanted to play football with Mike and asked to be his roommate.
“I wanted to protect the blind side of the toughest quarterback I’d ever seen,” Big Pete told him one night after a few too many beers.
Mike recalled how devastated Big Pete was when, on the last game of their sophomore season, he missed his blocking assignment allowing an unencumbered Blitzer a free shot at Mike’s blindside. The defender came in low and blew out Mike’s right knee effectively ending his football career.
That’s why when Mike began to drink and take drugs as a way of coping, Big Pete took it upon himself to confront Mike and take him to rehab.
Mike remembered how worried Big Pete was when he told him that he had enlisted in the Navy because he wouldn’t be there to protect him.
After graduation, Big Pete bought an old convertible Cadillac with some of the money he received as a signing bonus when he was drafted by the Los Angeles Raiders and they road tripped to San Diego to drop Mike off at basic training. They talked about their goals and shared their biggest fears, which was something neither of them had ever done and would never tell anyone else. After that, Mike considered Big Pete the brother he never had.
When Mike returned from his stint in the Navy, Big Pete was out of the NFL and working for the Oakland PD in Homicide. He was the one who convinced Mike to become a homicide detective while they sipped Budweiser’s at The Precinct.
“You are the one who said you wanted to do something that would make a difference and help people,” Big Pete reminded him. “This job is everything you want. It requires discipline, you get to be a part of a team, and you can be a leader. Plus, I’ll be able to watch your back again.”
Now, as Mike lay in his hospital bed recovering from a coma, he realized Big Pete was still watching his back.
“You know what I remember about you Big Pete?” Mike replied to his original question. “I remember that you always have my back.”
“I always will Brother,” Big Pete assured him with a shake of his head and as he stood up and walked over, he stuck his hand out sideways for Mike to grasp and held it like a brother. “There is no one else’s back I’d rather watch.”
There was a moment of silence as the two men shared their respect and admiration until it was interrupted by the faint sound of a knock on the door.
Mike nodded at Big Pete and let go of his hand as he took a deep breath and composed himself, sitting as far upright in his bed as he could.
Mike watched with discerning eyes as Big Pete sauntered over to the door and opened it, peeking his head out to see who it was. Mike could hear the murmur of conversation.
Big Pete turned and gave Mike a crooked look of concern.
“Are you ready for visitors yet Mikey?” He asked in a protective manner.
“Sure,” Mike replied intrigued.
Big Pete flipped the light switch and Mike turned from the soft white glare, squinting and blinking until his eyes were able to adjust. He turned back and saw Big Pete holding the door open as a uniformed officer ambled into the room. At first he wasn’t sure who it was but as his vision came into focus he recognized the young man with short cropped hair as Axelrode, the new recruit he partied with.
“Hey Axe,” Mike greeted him with a warm smile.
“Hey Mike,” he replied solemnly with a distraught expression pasted to his face. “How are you feeling?”
“Better,” Mike assured him. “It’s good to see you. I met a friend of yours the other night…” Mike stopped suddenly with a sickening feeling of despair as he remembered the look of terror on Denise’s face and realized what happened. “Is she dead?” He asked with fear in his voice, already knowing the answer to the question.
Big Pete and Axe looked at each other without saying a word. Mike’s heart sank like a deflated balloon in his chest. He turned his head away from the two men in ashamed anguish as he gazed out the window and fought back the tears that were welling in his eyes. He really fucked up this time. His careless bravado had cost the life of a beautiful young woman. A mother no less. Her son was going to grow up without a father or a mother.
Mike turned his head back towards the men. “Did they catch the son of a bitch?”
Big Pete shook his head and looked at his feet.
Mike scowled at Axe as he grit his teeth. “I’m sorry Axe,” he said with a raspy voice.
Axe didn’t say anything and Mike could see the pain and torment on his strained face.
“Do you remember anything from that night that might be of help?” Big Pete asked.
Mike stared at the ceiling as he replayed the events of that night, but all he could think about was Denise’s beautiful, wholesome face and how enchanted he had been with her.
“What were you doing there?” Axe asked in an interrogating manner.
Mike let out a deep breath. “I stopped in for a drink and we got to talking,” he explained. “When she told me her daughter’s name was April Rose, I made the connection that she is your friend’s widow. I wanted to protect her so I stayed to walk her to her car.”
“Yeah, well nice job,” Axe said indignantly.
“Easy…” Big Pete warned him with stern eyes and then looked back at Mike. “Did you get a look at him Mikey?”
Mike’s eyes were narrow slits as he recalled walking Denise across the street to her car and remembered the look of terror in her widened eyes as the Sterling Killer approached
him from behind. How could he allow someone to sneak up behind him like that?
He wanted to remember being hit or knocked down, but no matter how hard he tried, he just kept going back to Denise’s face. His gut began to burn with anger.
“That mother fucker must have been watching me,” he growled with the cold realization of it all. “I led him right to her.”
“You think?” Axe quipped angrily.
Big Pete looked at Axe with sharp piercing eyes. “I told you to keep your cool. Don’t make me remind you again.”
“It’s alright,” Mike assured him. “He’s got the right to be pissed. I would be too.”
“We don’t know for sure that he was following you,” Big Pete pointed out. “He may have been stalking Denise when you happened upon the scene, but he knows who you are now.”
Mike could tell by Big Pete’s certain tone that there was something he wasn’t telling him. “What do you mean?” Mike asked nervously.
Big Pete gave Mike a worried glare as he reached back and rubbed the back of his neck.
“What the fuck is it?” Mike demanded.
“It’s a shit storm out there,” Big Pete cautioned him. “It’s all over the news.”
“What do you mean?” Mike asked perplexed. “What’s all over the news?”
“What do you think Mike?” Axe asked irritated. “Oakland homicide detective attacked by Sterling Killer, another victim abducted right from under the Oakland police departments’ nose, another pretty young bartender found disemboweled and stabbed in the heart. Is that enough of a shit storm for you?”
“The FBI has been brought in to help Mikey.”
Mike couldn’t believe it. How did this all go wrong so quickly? Did he lead the Sterling Killer right to Denise? How had he been so careless? Was he to blame for all of the murders? He had been to all of the bars the ladies were abducted from. Was the Sterling Killer following Mike and targeting his victims from the bars he went to? Holy shit! If that was true, who else could be in danger and why would the Sterling Killer be targeting the bartenders from the bars he visited? What was his connection to all of this?