Pilate's Ghost

by J Alexander Greenwood

  Story Sudik took in the scene for what she thought was an eternity, though it was really a scant two seconds before she waded in to the pool of blood, jerking a trauma pad from her bag and ripping it from its sterile packaging. Her hands encased in latex gloves she had donned on the ride over, she nudged Lenny’s crimson hands away and applied it directly to the wound.

  Burl checked vitals. “Pulse is thready. He’s lost way too much blood.”

  Lenny rocked back on his heels. “How much is too much?”

  Burl ignored him. “Story, keep that pressure on the wound. I need to check his airway and get an IV in before we transport.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She held it together, keeping pressure on the wound until Burl could get the big picture worked out. Her blonde head was down, focused on the sheriff’s ruined throat until she couldn’t stand another second of Jacey’s screaming.

  “Ma’am?” she said, her teenager’s voice at first hesitant and thin until something switched on inside her. “Ma’am!” Story’s voice gained the authority of someone in command. “Ma’am, you have to calm down right now. You have to be quiet. You caterwauling like an audition for American Idol isn’t going to help the sheriff.”

  Jacey, her face freckled with blood, stopped screaming. She blinked and looked at Story’s calm blue eyes.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Do you watch American Idol?” Story said.

  “Y-yeah,” she said, shaking.

  Story kept her eyes on Jacey’s, her hands maintaining pressure on the wound.

  “Me too. I’d like to audition some day,” she said. “I sing when I’m not helping paramedics like this guy.”

  “I can’t sing too good,” she said.

  “Well, to tell ya the truth, I play flute better than I sing, but still, have you heard some of those guys? I’m way better than the guy who sang “She Bangs.”“

  Jacey laughed a dry, nervous staccato laugh. “Yeah, who isn’t.”

  “Good girl.” Burl said to Story. He looked at Lenny and whispered to him. “Len? You okay?”

  The deputy nodded, his eyes on the sheriff’s pale blood-flecked face.

  “Okay,” he said. “Story’s got Jacey calmed down, but you need to go to the ambulance to advise the hospital we’re coming. And get Jacey a blanket. She’s in shock.”

  Lenny looked from Burl to Story to Jacey, then back to the sheriff.

  “Lenny.” Burl’s voice was urgent, yet calm. “We got this. Now go call ahead to the hospital. Tell them we got a GSW and we’re gonna load and go in one minute.”

  “John?” Simon said. “Wake up, John.”

  “John? Wake up.”

  “Simon, shut up,” he growled.

  “Simon?” Kate said.

  Pilate’s head lifted off his chest. He sat upright in the visitor’s chair next to Kate’s bed, knocking over a small pitcher of water as he sprung to his feet and clasped Kate’s hand in his.

  She smiled, a drained, exhausted expression that seemed to come to her face from miles away. “I feel terrible.”

  “You don’t look it,” Pilate said. “You okay?”

  “I think so,” she said, looking at her belly. “The baby!”

  “He’s fine,” Pilate said. “Hutton said he’s okay. They fixed a little tear in your belly. It was a kinda scary for a couple of hours, but they fixed everything.”

  “Oh thank God,” she said.

  “You are so strong,” he said. “Baby, I’m amazed.”

  She squeezed his hand. “I messed up,” she started to cry. “I got in a wreck. I don’t remember what…”

  “Don’t even worry about it now,” he said. “They think your tire blew out.”

  Kate’s head snapped from looking at her belly to face Pilate. “I don’t know,” she said. “I heard a loud sound, like a gunshot…”

  “Tires sound like that when they blow out,” he said.

  “Those tires are practically brand new,” she said. “Oh my head. Can I get something for my headache?”

  Pilate pressed the nurse call button.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I hate to sound paranoid, but I think it was a gunshot.”

  Pilate shook his head. “No.”

  “Somebody shot at you. What if they shot at me?”

  The nurse entered. “How are we feeling?”

  “I don’t know how you are, but I have a terrible headache,” Kate said.

  “Let me check with doctor about getting you some pain medication,” she said. “Your head took a bit of a knocking around, so we need to be sure.” The nurse left.

  “That’s an understatement,” she said. She blinked twice. “Where were we…oh, John…”

  “Kate,” he smiled. “You need to get some rest.”

  “Kara. Where’s my girl?” Kate said, moving as if to get up, then wincing in pain.

  “She’s fine. Mrs. Molloy kept her,” he said. “She just thinks the baby’s coming early, I’ll bet.”

  “I hope she won’t be too disappointed,” Kate said.

  “I’ll get her in the morning and bring her by, okay?”

  Kate nodded.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “Just something for my head. What time is it, anyway?”

  Pilate checked his watch. “Ten-fifteen.”

  “You need to go get some sleep,” she said.

  “I’m not leaving you,” he said.

  Doc Hutton appeared, the nurse in tow. “John, you should go home,” he said. “Hi, Kate. How are you feeling?”

  “Terrible. No, I’m okay. Head hurts a little.”

  He checked her pupils with a penlight, then nodded at the nurse. “Well, you’re getting ready to get something for your pain, and it will probably put you out. So, John, unless you want to watch her sleep…”

  “Fine by me,” he said.

  Hutton smiled.

  “John, why not go home, get some rest, and bring me some things from home in the morning. How long will I be in here Dr. Hutton?”

  “I’d say another couple of days, just for observation.”

  “Bring me some comfortable clothes,” she said. She listed a few items she wanted.

  “Okay,” Pilate said. “I will. I’ll get the stuff, get Kara and we’ll be here first thing.”

  “Sounds good, babe,” Kate said.

  “Thank you, doctor.”

  Pilate offered his hand. “You saved my family. I’ll never be able to pay you back.”

  “No need. Just name the kid after me,” he said, walking out. “Kidding.” Hutton nodded. “Speaking of going home, it’s been a long day for me. First my favorite patient gets in a car wreck, then the sheriff gets shot.”

  “What?” Pilate said.

  “They brought him in an hour ago. Sheriff got shot at the store in Cross. He’s going to pull through, though his life just got very complicated.”

  “Who shot him?” Kate said.

  “Perry Mostek,” Hutton said. “Freaky, huh?”

  “Did they get him? Mostek?”

  Hutton shook his head, marking something on Kate’s chart. “Manhunt’s on now. State police are involved. Lenny’s in shock, but he’s out there with them searching.”

  Hutton wandered out of the room.

  Pilate looked at Kate as the nurse injected something into her IV, then left the room.

  “Holy crap,” Kate said.

  “Do you think…”

  She nodded. “I think Perry Mostek shot at you, and me.”

  “That son of a bitch,” Pilate said.

  “John, stay out of it,” she warned. “Let the state patrol handle it. They’ll catch him.”

  Tears welled in his eyes. “Okay. I love you.”

  Kate looked at him, smiled and said “I know.”

  “You married Han Solo,” Simon said.

  Pilate nudged a sleeping Peter Trevathan in the ICU waiting area.

  “Hey,” he said, softly. “You should be home.”

&n
bsp; Trevathan started, looking at Pilate. “How are they?”

  “Fine. Kate and the baby are fine. They’ll be here for a few days, but they made it.”

  Trevathan took Pilate’s hands in his. “Thank the Lord!”

  The pair laughed and embraced a moment. Trevathan became serious again. “John, I don’t think you heard, but they brought in the sheriff.”

  “Hutton told me.”

  “I feel like shit,” Trevathan said. “I told him to go question Mostek. Threatened him with going to the media. Damn fool got shot in the throat.”

  “You can’t blame yourself because he was in over his head. There’s a posse going after Mostek.”

  “Let’s join the posse,” Trevathan said.

  Pilate raised an eyebrow. “Are you up to it?”

  “I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.”

  The Man sped over the bridge on Monahan Creek, noting the guardrail was peeled back and twisted like metallic taffy.

  He had to ditch the stolen Chevy soon, but he wanted to get past Goss City and leave the vehicle somewhere near Cross. He could walk across the fields then, the partial moonlight guiding his way.

  He was thirsty and tired. His hands trembled on the steering wheel. His mind careened between a sense of finality and the urge to run again.

  Tired of running. Just want to wipe that smirk off Pilate’s face, then take whatever I get. Maybe kill that bitch Kate, too.

  Memories of better days in Cross met him at every mile marker. This was almost his kingdom. Actually, for a while, he did rule. He successfully finagled his way into a position of authority, power and profit.

  But Derek Krall let him down. The shifty college librarian was a double agent, only in it for himself. Part of the Man’s appraisal of his former toady did appreciate the fact that he was bested by him - though the toady rightfully paid the ultimate price.

  Blue and red lights appeared behind him, seemingly out of nowhere like the UFO in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

  Where the hell did they come from? His fingers gripped the steering wheel so tightly, two of his knuckles popped. He slowed down, rifling with his right hand in his bag for the .38 handgun, secreted in a false pocket.

  He continued to slow, looking for a place to pull over. His heart thumped, sweat beaded on his upper lip. The Man put the pistol under his right thigh, then pulled over onto a bare spot at the side of the road.

  Before the Chevy even rolled to a stop, the state patrol cruiser blew past him, lights flashing, siren off.

  “Huh.”

  “First thing’s first,” Trevathan said. “Let’s go by my house and get some things.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, we can’t go hunting without guns,” he said.

  Okay,” Pilate said. “Actually let me swing by my place. It’s closer. I want to change into something more comfortable.”

  “Sure thing, but if it’s a negligee I’d just as soon you let me off here.”

  Perry Mostek trudged through the reeds and bushes along the riverbank. Mud gushed up his pant legs, mosquitoes and flies feasted on his exposed flesh.

  The deafening roar of the river occluded the sound of his own sobs as he made it up the bank and under the bridge near Patterson Point. He wasn’t far from the deer stand where he had taken a few badly-aimed shots at John Pilate in late spring.

  He carefully lay the rifle down, rubbed his neck and swatted at the insects bedeviling him. In the pitch black under the bridge, he sobbed.

  “Well you did it now,” he said to the river. “You done messed everything up.” Tears exhausted, he blew his nose on his sleeve.

  The flickering glow of a lighter illuminated the kindly face of Hilmer Thurman, squatting a few yards away under a bridge span. He flushed his cheeks as he lit a cigar, then extinguished the lighter. The cigar’s orange coal hovered in the dark, floating toward Mostek.

  “Thurman?” he said. “T-that you?”

  The coal glowed brighter as Thurman inhaled. “Yes, Perry. It’s me.”

  “I done made a mess of it,” Perry said. “I did.”

  “No argument there,” Thurman said, his voice called over the river’s roar. “Glad you kept your wits enough to come to the emergency meeting spot. I wish you coulda just let me handle things. I was gonna fix that stupid stunt you pulled - trying to pull a Lee Harvey Oswald on that ridiculous John Pilate. Why you ever got it in your head that killing him would bring Ollie back…”

  “I didn’t think it would. I just wanted to wipe that smug shit off the face of the earth. Or at least scare him off. Make him leave town, mebbe. He stained my family name. “

  “How’s that workin’ out for ya? All you did was make him curious. Then you come to me, begging me to bail you out. What did I tell you?”

  Only the river responded.

  “I told you to let me handle it. And what’d you do? You grabbed your lousy peckerwood hunting rifle and went and made it worse.”

  “Well, they were closin’ in on me,” Mostek shouted. “I didn’t see you doing nothin’, and then that bitch started nosing around, talking to Morgan Scovill at the prison—”

  “Scovill will get his, soon enough,” Thurman said. “Wasn’t your concern.”

  “Like hell it wasn’t!”

  “Well it’s all academic now, isn’t it?” Thurman’s cigar tip glowed brighter again. “I mean,” his mouth made a puckering sound as he infused oxygen into the cigar to keep it lit. “You shot the sheriff…though you did not kill the deputy,” Thurman laughed.

  Mostek, clearly not in on that reggae music reference, clambered to his feet. “Shut up! Stop laughing!”

  “Okay, okay, Perry. Sorry.” Thurman said. “Here’s the deal. I figure you have three choices. One, you can let me get you outta town. Course, that means you can never come back. You’ll live out your days on the run. Two, you can surrender to the proper authorities, or three, you can just kill yourself.”

  “Oh no,” Mostek said.

  “Well, the way I see it, you’ll last about two days out there on the run. So that’s out. And if you surrender, well,” he puffed on the cigar again, the coal glowing a demonic red. “You’ll either get killed by the cops for shooting a brother officer or you’ll tell them everything. Including some delicate stuff about me.”

  “No, I’d never…”

  “Yes, you would. Damn it, cigar is going out.” Thurman lit his lighter, again illuminating his face. His eyes weren’t on his cigar, instead they locked on Mostek.

  Tom hauled his heavy frame out of the shadows behind Mostek, grabbed the man by the head and slammed it into the concrete.

  “Good, Tom,” Thurman said. “Make it look right.”

  Thurman took his time walking back to the truck parked in a stand of trees a half-mile away. Just as he reached the open tailgate of the truck, he heard the crack of a rifle shot.

  He dropped the stub of his cigar in the dirt and ground it out with his boot, sparks escaping like fireflies.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Man pulled into the long driveway of the Nathaniel Mortuary. Closed since former owner Grif “Grief” Nathaniel was locked up in Lincoln Correctional, the only signs of life on this steamy summer night were the frenzy of bugs orbiting a porch light.

  He killed the lights on the Chevy and drove to a desolate cornfield behind the mortuary. He turned off the car, grabbed his gun and bag and sprinted toward the dim lights of Cross Township.

  Trevathan noticed the scabs on Pilate’s knuckles. “Jeez, John, what happened to your hands?”

  Haltingly, Pilate told Trevathan the basics.

  “So you beat the crap out of the guy at a rest stop?”

  “Yes,” Pilate said, eyes on the road to Cross. “Well, I mean, I defended myself.”

  “He tried to rob you?”

  “Yes. Well, not exactly,” Pilate said.

  “You call the cops?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “You didn’t kill
him, right?”

  “No, of course not. I just got very lucky. I…incapacitated him.”

  Trevathan looked straight ahead. “What a world. Sometimes I think it’s no damn good,” he sighed wheezily. “Well, he had it coming, if you ask me.”

  “Thanks. I agree. It all happened so fast, yet I had time to consider a way out. I made up a plan to survive right there on the spot and carried it out. Got out of there with scraped knuckles and the considered opinion that the world is out to get me.”

  “Just remember this phrase anytime you feel that way - whether it be because some asshole steals from you or you leave the toilet seat up and catch hell or you lose your job or get cancer or something: It’s not just you. You aren’t that special. Shit happens to everybody.”

  “The man’s a genius,” Simon said.

  “Speaking of shit happening,” Pilate said as the Suzuki started to jerk and sputter.

  “Are you kidding?” Trevathan said, more surprised than irritated.

  “Well, I drove it all the way from Chicago,” he said. “Things happened so fast I didn’t think to check the gas.”

  “Well, I’m not walking,” Trevathan said, folding his arms and looking out his window.

  “No, of course not,” Pilate climbed out of the car, groaning as his legs straightened out. “We’re only about a mile out of town. I’ll get some gas and be right back, unless you want me to call for help on my cell?”

  “John, how you ever outsmarted a decades-old conspiracy is beyond me.”

  “Forget calling. It will take too long waiting for somebody, I’ll hoof it. Just don’t let 60 Minutes hear about this,” he said. “It will ruin my superhero image.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Here,” Pilate handed his cell to Trevathan. “Just in case. It might even work out here.”

  Trevathan dozed, chin on his chest, until the electronic ringing of Pilate’s cell phone woke him. He fumbled with it as it continued to ring, struggling in the dim light of the car to find the answer button.