She took her hand from my arm and unsnapped the liner inside the helmet. Written in permanent marker on the inside of the hard shell was a name: S.C.A. Small. “S.C. stands for Station Chief,” she said. “The A. stands for Andrew. Station Chief Andy Small was my father, Jonesy. He died in that explosion while saving your life.”
She buried her head in my chest, her cries no less painful than the wail of the sirens I longed for on that fateful day so many years ago. I took the helmet from her lap and pulled her close, my arms tight around her shuddering body. There were no words to say in the moment so I just held her amidst the sound of the crackling fire as it threw off a heat unmatched by the shame and responsibility I felt. I had just made love to a woman whose father had given his life to save my own, and while I had lived, it was at the expense of Sandy’s life-long sorrow.
How do you reconcile that?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Sids. Up early. And grumpy. There was a schedule to keep, and now, it was time again.
This one would be coincidence. The Sids knew this. They had talked about it like everything else, tossed it around for a while like a game of Hot Potato. Junior thought it might be a problem, though by her own admission she couldn’t explain why, just that it might. Senior pointed out that wasn’t much of an argument, and even though it pissed her off, she knew he was right. “Besides,” he had said, “One way or another we’re going to do her. Might as well create a little misdirection while we’re at it.” Junior thought about it, and the more she did, the cooler the potato got. “Yeah, I can see that,” she finally said, and so for the Sids, the coincidence of another nurse was just that.
For Elle Richardson, third-shift nurse supervisor on the maternity ward at Methodist Hospital, it was anything but.
Elle Richardson thought she had about the best gosh-danged job in the entire hospital. No one really liked hospitals, she knew, but Elle (Ells to her husband Eugene and her close friends) thought they were about the best place on earth. Sure there were a lot of sick and dying, (nine gosh-danged floors of them if you were counting) but her floor was where life was delivered, where little bundles of hope and happiness slid out of the gate (Ells always giggled to herself when she thought of it that way) and were swaddled up in loving arms, the balance between life and death maintained for another day, or at least her eight hours of the ten-till-six. Like most of her clothing (including her mouse pad and coffee cups) Ells was reminded on a daily basis that Life is Good.
Her shift had been a busy one, that was for sure. Three singles and a double, (Ells sometimes thought her version of hospital speak sounded an awful lot like ordering at the drive-thru… either that or the scorecard of a little-league baseball game) all before her late morning break. But the rest of her shift remained quiet (all gates temporarily closed for business, ha, ha) and when the big hand was on the twelve and the little hand was on the six, Ells scrunched her shoulders at her co-workers, squinted her eyes, and gave them a tootle-do before she scooted down the hall and out to her car.
Gosh almighty, she felt happy. Her life was everything she had always hoped it would be, and more. Her husband, Eugene (Genes to her, Gene to his friends) was a police officer for the city of Indianapolis, and even though he was a cop and she was a nurse, Ells always thought she and Gene worked hand in hand to help bring goodness and life to the city where they lived. They were, Ells thought, a match made in heaven. It even said so on the matchbook covers at their wedding reception.
Gene worked the third shift as well, except his went ninety minutes longer than hers, but the good news was (and there’s always good news if people would just take their gosh-dang time and look for it) today marked the beginning of Gene’s weekend. Plus, now that Elle was a shift supervisor, she could make her own schedule so she and Hubby had the same two days off each week. Could life be any better? Ells thought not.
Problem was, Ells was wrong. She just didn’t know it yet.
The Sids in their van. Junior had the driver’s seat, Senior in the back, on his back and out of sight. They had the fucking thing planned nine ways from Sunday, but it didn’t take long for Senior to realize they’d forgotten at least one thing-something for him to lay on. The floor of the van was like any other, ribbed, or corrugated, or what-the-fuck-ever, and it was pressing into his spine like nobody’s business. “How much longer?” he grumbled.
Junior looked at her watch. “How the hell should I know? Just give it a few more minutes.”
“Few more minutes my ass. If I lay here any longer I’m gonna be paralyzed. I’m sitting up.”
“Better not. Don’t want to be seen.”
“Fuck that. I’m getting up. Besides, the windows are tinted. No one saw me last time, did they? So no one is going to see me now. We need a pad or some pillows or something back here to lay on. What the fuck are you laughing at?”
“I was just thinking that after this, they’ll probably change the name of this place.” Before Senior could say anything, Junior stopped laughing and started the van. “Here she comes. Get ready.”
Elle pulled into the Safeway Grocery and parked her car between a rust colored pickemup (that’s what daddy always called them, pickemup trucks…gosh she missed him, fifteen years gone now if you could believe that) and a cute little lime green VW Beetle-bug, (dang, she wanted one of those sooo bad) one of the newer models that came with a flower holder that stuck out of the column. She forced herself to look away from the Bug when she walked by. She wanted to stop and look, but time was short. Genes would be home soon and she wanted her shopping out of the way so she could sit with her hubby and tell him all about her shift. The prospect of regaling Genes of the fine work she did this day (three singles and a double!) made her feel so good it caused her to put a little extra scoot in her step. She even grabbed a stray cart that had rolled away from the corral and gave it a shove back where it belonged. A good deed for a good day. Jake and Rocket were right. Life is Good. So very, very gosh-danged good.
Senior looked out the window. “Aw, we’re gonna have to move. I don’t have an angle.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure, god damn it. Move over a few rows. We’ll get her on the way out.”
Junior backed out of their spot and moved the van a couple of rows over. “Take a quick peek. This should be better.”
Senior did, and it was. Elle caught a break.
A short one, anyway.
Twenty minutes later, now seriously behind schedule, Elle pushed her cart toward her car. The Bug was gone, (thank gosh for small favors-she might have spent a few extra minutes looking it over-minutes she didn’t have) but the rust colored pickemup was still there. Somebody taking their sweet ol’, she thought. That was another thing Daddy always used to say. He had all kinds of words and sayings. They were his isms. Elle sighed. Love you, Daddy.
Senior watched through the scope as the woman loaded the groceries into her trunk. They were parked four rows over and one spot further away from the store, close for the scope’s powerful optics. He clicked off the safety and kept the crosshairs centered on the space between her eyes. From Senior’s perspective it looked like she was about a half an inch away. He could make out every feature, every flaw on her face.
Bitch needed to tweeze.
Elle put the last sack in the trunk and shut the lid. She stood still for a moment-something was bothering her, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what it was. Genes had always told her to listen to her gut. That, and situational awareness. Good gosh he was big on situational awareness. He had practically drilled it into her over the years.
And that was the last thought Elle ever had in her ‘Life is Good’ life. The bullet caught her in the center of her brow, right where she needed to tweeze. It snapped her head backwards and blew out the back of her skull just like it did to JFK on the day she was born. The force of the bullet knocked her backwards, her arms pin-wheeling merrily along after her. When her legs realized they were no longer
receiving signals from her brain they collapsed under her and what was left of the back of her head made contact with the basket section of an empty shopping cart. The cart flipped forward and came down on top of her and wouldn’t you know it, the next person out of the store, the one who found her lying under the cart like a discarded doll and stroller in someone’s back yard was just some guy taking his sweet ol’ back to his pickemup. When he saw Elle’s body he dropped his bags and spun around, twice. A white van turned a corner at the edge of the lot and was lost to the early morning traffic. Mr. Pickemup never saw it.
When my cell phone rang I tried to slide away from Sandy, but when I did she held tight to my arm. I listened to the ringing, four, five, six times, then a little half ring, cut down by the voice mail feature. A minute or so later, I heard the familiar chime that told me I had a message. I stirred a bit, moved my arm just so-it was starting to fall asleep-and then brushed the hair from the side of Sandy’s face. Her breathing was rhythmic, slow, like she was asleep, though she was not. Thirty seconds later, the phone rang again.
“I should probably get that,” I said. “Could be something happening.”
Sandy untangled herself, sat up and then leaned forward, her forearms resting on her thighs. She turned her head and looked back over her shoulder at me. “Could be something happening here, Jonesy.” A little edge in her voice.
I stood, looked toward the kitchen where my cell phone lay, and then back at Sandy. I took a step toward the other room, but when the ringing stopped, so did I. Something was happening. But Sandy was right. It was here. I sat down on the bed next to her. “Whatever it is, it can wait.”
“I’m not talking about the sex, you know,” she said.
“Hey, give a guy a little credit, will you?” I took a deep breath in through my nose and puffed my cheeks as I let it out. Then I said the only thing I knew how to say on the heels of the most complex discovery I have ever made. “I’m sorry.”
We sat there for a few minutes with that, and when Sandy raised her head and looked at me, I opened my mouth to say something else but instead I ended up repeating myself. “I’m sorry, Sandy. I’m so very sorry”
“You don’t have to apologize, Jonesy. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“No. It wasn’t. You were a victim of something that happened a long time ago, just like I was. In a different way, but a victim just the same. I accept your apology, but know this: I don’t ever want to hear you say those words again with regard to the fire. I can’t build the rest of my life on an apology.”
“What did you just say?”
“Tell me you don’t feel it. Tell me we don’t belong together. Tell me you have some logical, even mystical explanation as to how we came together thirty years later as friends, co-workers, and now as lovers.” She reached out and took my hands in her own. “What I’m asking you, Virgil, is to tell me it means something. Tell me I’ve found what I’ve been looking for since I was five years old. Tell me you haven’t been searching for something all these years without really knowing what it is, either. Tell me that what we did last night, what we just had isn’t the reason I lost my childhood, it’s the reward. Tell me that the part of me I thought I lost didn’t die in that fire with my father, but has been waiting for this one single moment where it’s safe to say that this is who I am, that this is where I’m supposed to be, that this is my life, right here, right now, with you. Tell me that my father not only gave you the gift of saving your life, but in some mysterious way that gift belongs to me too. Tell me I’m wrong, Virgil.”
“I can’t.”
“Tell me.”
“I can’t.”
Sandy leaned forward and kissed me lightly on the mouth. “Tell me.”
When I looked at her face I felt something inside myself let go in a way I had never experienced in all my years. It was then I said the words that for the first time in my life I knew to be true. “I love you.”
When Sandy crawled into my lap and wrapped her arms around me she sounded childlike, but her words were those of a woman and a lover undivided, freed from something by a gift I knew no one could give her, save me. “Tell me.”
“I love you.”
“Tell me…”
“I was there you know,” I said, the ringing of my phone forgotten. We were back on the couch, her feet on my lap. “At your dad’s funeral. Me and my mom. My dad didn’t go. He said he was sick, but I don’t think he was. It wasn’t a happy time for us. It feels sort of ridiculous to say that now-it was just a fucking house-but I’ll tell you, we lost something that day-as a family-and we never got it back.
“But I remember the funeral. The sea of red trucks that stretched for block after block from the cemetery. All the firemen in their dress uniforms. The flag over your dad’s coffin. The way they folded the damn thing and handed it to your mom like, like-”
“Like it was some sort of substitute,” Sandy said. “Like that flag would somehow put food on the table, or keep my mom safe, or tuck me in bed at night. I wasn’t very old, but I remember thinking it was a joke. I remember thinking it might make everyone else feel good, except for the ones who really mattered.”
“We don’t have to talk about this right now, you know. It’s sort of a lot to process.”
“It’ll always be with us. It’s part of who we are.”
I took her feet in my hands, my thumbs kneading the area just below her toes. “I want to say I remember seeing you there, and I think maybe I do, but it might just be wishful thinking, you know, like when you want to remember something so bad you end up making part of it up and then that becomes the reality. I remember the line of trucks, I remember your mom, and I remember the sadness. I remember thinking for the longest time how I wished it had been me that died that day. I remember thinking about how there wouldn’t be all those fire trucks there at the cemetery, how there wouldn’t be as many people, how there wouldn’t be a flag over my coffin.
“I’ve got to tell you, I didn’t want to go. But my mom made me. She didn’t say it, but she made it clear that your dad had died trying to save me, and it was our duty to go.”
“Oh, Virgil, that’s terrible.”
“You know, it wasn’t really,” I said. “She didn’t put the weight on me. She didn’t have to. She just helped me see that it was the right thing to do. Boy, I can remember her and my dad fighting about it. They fought for weeks after that. Not about me going, but the fact that he didn’t.”
“Why do you think he didn’t go?”
“He never told me. He was drinking pretty bad back then, but I think the real reason was that he felt responsible for your father’s death.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. You have to understand, I might not know what I’m talking about here. It’s not something my dad and I talk about very often, but I think he feels like if he could have gotten me out, then your dad would still be alive.”
“But you know that’s not true. It took two men to get you out.”
“Yeah, try telling that to him.”
“I will.”
“Yeah, well, good luck with that. He’s not exactly the easiest guy in the world to talk to sometimes.”
“So says the son.” I looked at her, a reply forming, when the phone rang again. Sandy dug her feet into my lap for a second, then swung them off and went to the kitchen. She answered my phone like it was the most natural thing in the world, spoke into the receiver for a moment, then handed it to me, a hint of a smile sneaking across the corner of her mouth. “It’s your dad.”
“How do you know that?”
“Caller I.D.,” she said. Then with a playfulness in her voice I was grateful to hear, she added, “ Detective.”
I laughed at myself and took the phone. “Morning, Pops. What’s up?”
“Hey Virg. Your boss is looking for you. She tried here out of desperation. Said she couldn’t get a hold of you. Anyway, sounds like something big might be happening
with your case. She wants you to call her right away. Say, who’s that just answered your phone?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I dialed Cora’s number then put the phone on speaker so Sandy could hear the conversation. When she answered her words were clipped and the frustration in her voice at not being able to reach me was evident. “Know where the Safeway off of Morris Street is at?”
“What’s going on, Cora?”
“Woman named Elle Richardson is dead. Shot in the middle of her forehead. Ron Miles is already there and says the crime scene weenies think it’s the same shooter. If you’re not doing anything you might want to swing by. And by the way, Pate’s lawyer is raising holy hell with the Governor as we speak so you may have touched a nerve somewhere. Things are happening, Slick. You might want to get in the game.”
“We’ll get right over there,” I said, then wished I’d been more careful with my choice of words.
“Is there something you’d like to tell me?” Her voice seemed to relax a little, but as is often the case with Cora, she didn’t wait for an answer. “Your phone sounds sort of funny. Do you have me on speaker or something? Hey, one other thing, I’ve got everyone else’s paperwork from yesterday’s cluster fuck outside the Governor’s place, but I’m still waiting on Small’s. Tell her to get it to me, will you? Or did I just do that?”
Sometimes a conversation with Cora can leave you feeling a little like a bug in a blender.
Fifteen minutes later we were dressed and in my truck, the bubble light flashing on the dashboard. When we pulled up to the crime scene, TV was there, along with a few print people. When we got out of the truck, the cameras turned our way. I looked at Sandy and said, “I hate it when the news beats me to the crime scene.”
“Well, they don’t really have a life,” Sandy said.
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