Afterward, I joined Rod and Annette inside the waiting room. We sat in silence until a doctor entered through the double doors marked SURGERY. She wore clean scrubs, but her face was damp with perspiration.
We all stood and introduced ourselves.
“The surgery went well.” Despite the positive meaning of the words, her face and tone looked grim. “It was very long, but that’s not unusual for this kind of extensive damage to the abdomen. We had to remove his spleen and left kidney, but we thought he’d made it through as well as could be expected for a man his age.”
Her expression further darkened. “We excavated him in the recovery room. Things were going well, but then suddenly he went into respiratory failure and cardiac arrest. Basically, he had a massive heart attack.”
I couldn’t speak, but Annette said, “But he was in the hospital when it happened, so you were able to help him, right?”
“Mr. Hawkins had no Do Not Resuscitate order, so we spent fifteen minutes trying to restart his heart. We succeeded, but he’s intubated now and breathing off a respirator. I’m sorry, Mr. Hawkins is showing signs of severe brain damage.”
“Is he conscious?” I managed to say.
The doctor’s face gave nothing away, but her silence told me how ridiculous my question had been. Finally she said, “I’m sorry, but when a brain is deprived of oxygen for that long, it’s almost impossible to recover. We’ll watch him overnight for signs of brain activity, but it’s very unlikely there’ll be a change.”
Annette started crying. She was quiet, so as not to wake her daughter, but it created a chain reaction of emotion. Rod and I each tried to hold it together, but it was almost impossible.
“I know this is painful,” the doctor said. “But I suggest you all go home tonight and think about what Mr. Hawkins’s wishes might be. If there’s no improvement, we can discuss taking him off the ventilator tomorrow. In that scenario, he’d probably die very quickly. With no brain function, Mr. Hawkins won’t have the ability to pump air in and out of his lungs.”
“Can we see him?” Rod said.
“Yes. He’s in the ICU now.”
I took Rod aside.
When I told him I wanted to go to the pharmacy, he was understandably upset. “Come with me to the ICU. Bud would want you there, and on a night like this you and I need to stay together. We need to support each other.”
“Please don’t make me go in there. You heard what they said. There’s no brain function. Bud isn’t in that room anymore. It’s just an empty body.” I finally lost control and started crying. “I’ll fall apart if I go in there and then I won’t be any use to Bud.”
Rod put his arms around me and I hugged him. I found that it was easier to be honest with Rod if I wasn’t looking at him. “I have to know that I did everything possible to find out who hurt him. I can’t let this be like my father’s accident. I can’t still be wondering about it in fifteen years.”
I pulled back and wiped tears from my eyes. “I’ll meet you at your house later, I promise.”
FOURTEEN
Christmas Eve, 7:21 p.m.
I had to take a few minutes in the van to pull myself together. Kincaid’s Pharmacy had closed by the time I got there.
The security guard recognized me and unlocked the door. “Sorry, I can’t let you in. Mr. Kincaid is counting out the register and getting the deposit ready.”
“I tried to get here sooner, but I had a personal emergency.”
“Don’t worry.” The guard reached back inside and returned with a bag. “All paid for with a credit card over the phone. Address is on the bag.”
It felt heavy, but I asked anyway. “Is there Pepto—”
He smiled. “It’s in the bag, along with some bath salts and spa stuff.”
Mrs. Pawn Max didn’t live far from the store. The address sounded familiar, but I couldn’t remember what story I’d covered there. It could have been anything from a grisly murder to an interview with a homecoming queen, or both at the same time.
I followed the GPS, but about two blocks before the actual house I had to stop. Cars were backed up in a single line all the way down the street. The one in front of me held a family of five. The children were dressed for the holiday, and everyone was singing a joyous Christmas carol.
I suddenly knew why the address was familiar. I’d done this story two Christmases ago.
I parked and walked. I couldn’t tell you what the actual house looked like because little of the physical structure was visible. The entire property had been turned into a G-rated version of Christmas on the Vegas Strip.
I stopped at the curb and stared at the spectacle of color and light. The display had expanded considerably in the two years since I’d seen it. The reds, greens, and blues overwhelmed me. I shook my head, afraid I might have a seizure.
A man carrying a sleeping child passed on his way to his car. “Can you imagine what their electric bill is like?”
I didn’t answer. The sound of a train whistle had drawn my attention.
“Best Christmas ever,” a child screamed. His fellow passengers on the miniature train agreed as they chugged their way around Santa’s Village—also known as the left half of the front yard.
I elbowed my way through the adults gathered on the sidewalk and set up the tripod. I got some nice footage of kids having a snowball fight courtesy of a shaved-ice machine. They chased each other around a blue, neon menorah, then took up defensive positions behind animatronic reindeer.
When that was done, I packed up my equipment. A big part of me wanted to leave. The entire setup here was weird and off-putting. Who instructs journalists to bring their meds to a utility shed? A crazy person, that’s who.
I made my way to the backyard not because I wanted to, but because the series of events that had led to Bud’s shooting seemed to have been started in motion at the pawnshop. This was my chance to speak directly with the owner. I might not get another.
I turned the corner into the backyard and almost ran into a life-size snow globe. Frosty the Snowman was inside waving. A fan continuously stirred Styrofoam peanuts as though someone had just shaken the globe. That and a North Pole bouncy castle had attracted fifteen to twenty kids and their parents, none of whom noticed me crossing the edge of the yard.
I found the shed, despite its being camouflaged in strings of icicle lights, and knocked. The door opened a crack and an eye peeked out at me.
“It’s Lilly from KJAY.” I didn’t bother whispering. There was so much background noise, I could have screamed and no one would have noticed.
The door, and its lights, swung open and I hurried in.
“I thought you’d stolen my Ativan.” A woman locked the door behind me. She wore a red Mrs. Claus dress and a gray wig that sat slightly askew on her head.
The air in the shed was a mixture of cinnamon, chocolate, and potting soil.
“Sorry. I got delayed with a personal emergency.” I took the pharmacy bag from my gear bag. “Here you go.”
She grabbed it like a drowning woman reaching for a rope. “You have no idea the state I’m in. Between the store getting robbed and all this Christmas insanity, I’m at the end of my rope.” She sat down on a box in the corner and dug into the bag.
There was nowhere for me to sit so I knelt. “I’m not actually here about the robbery. Did a man named Bud Hawkins come into your store yesterday?”
She nodded. “He’s a regular customer. Kind of a southern hippie.”
From within the pharmacy bag, she removed a light green candle with the word SERENITY etched into the wax.
“That’s him.” I waited while she raised the candle to her nose and took two long breaths. “Did something unusual happen yesterday?”
“The police asked me the same thing.” She lowered the candle. “And the answer is a giant yes.”
“When were the police here?”
“Two of them came to the house earlier tonight.” She removed the cup from the top of the Pe
pto-Bismol and poured herself a dose. “But they didn’t say anything about not talking to the press, so I figure it’s okay to tell you the same thing I told them.”
I reached for the camera. “Can I record this?”
She froze with the pink liquid halfway to her mouth. “Absolutely not. You think I want to be on TV looking like this?”
“Then how about giving me the surveillance video of the robbery last night? It’s a different story, but I’d still love to have video of a backhoe driving into your store.”
“The first set of cops took it.” Her face screwed up into a grimace as she drank the thick, pink liquid. When it was all gone, she used the back of her hand to wipe away a pink mustache. “The ones who responded to the robbery last night. They were different from the ones who came this evening and asked about Bud.”
I guessed Handsome had sent the latter officers. I gave him credit for interviewing Annette and following this lead. “What did happen yesterday when Bud came to the store? Was he upset?”
“He saw a piece of old Russian jewelry and went nuts. He wanted to know where I got it.” Mrs. Claus straightened and her overall tone became more dignified. No easy feat considering how she was dressed. “But if someone pawns something, they have an expectation of privacy. We only give that kind of information to the cops. It’s part of the ethics of the business.”
I leaned forward. “Was it a brooch? Maybe part of a set that was awarded as a military medal?”
“How did you know that?”
What would Bud have done if after all these years he’d seen one of the pieces Carter King had stolen? Of course he’d demand to know where it had come from. “Don’t worry how I knew. What happened when you refused to tell Bud who’d pawned it?”
“He got real insistent. Offered me money to tell him. Finally crossed the line into making threats, and I told him he’d have to leave.”
“Did he?”
“Not before buying the brooch. Paid full price on a credit card.”
My mind quickly sifted through possibilities of where the brooch was now. Had Bud left it at Annette’s house, or maybe his attacker had stolen it?
That’s when I realized I had no idea which of the two medals it was. “Can you describe it for me? Did it have diamonds?”
She shook her head. “No diamonds, but it was real gold in the shape of a two-headed eagle. It was part of a set that used to be worn on a ribbon back in the time of the czars.”
“How do you know?”
“I researched it before I bought. The owner had no idea how valuable it was.” She shrugged. “I paid five thousand, which was a fair price for our kind of business, but it was worth twice that on the collector’s market. A set of both brooches could have gone as high as fifty thousand at auction.”
“A set with diamonds?”
She whistled. “Those would be worth a small fortune. The market for that kind of historical jewelry has gone through the roof.”
There was a knock on the door. Mrs. Claus’s hand shot out and covered my mouth.
“Sweetheart? Sweetheart, are you in there?” The voice belonged to a man—a man I was pretty sure had a long, white beard. “People are asking for you. The kids want to meet Mrs. Claus.”
She didn’t answer.
The handle jiggled and then we both heard a key.
“Don’t come in.” She jumped up and grabbed the handle.
“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”
“You know exactly what’s wrong. I can’t do this anymore. All year long. It never stops. You’re either planning, doing, or cleaning up after.”
“Sweetheart, you’re overwrought.”
Some boiling point was reached, and instead of holding the door shut, she tore it open. “You’re an addict. You have no control over yourself. Every year it gets bigger. You’re going to bankrupt us just like a crack addict chasing his fix.”
Santa looked over his shoulder to see if anyone had heard and then entered. If it had been cramped before, the space was now claustrophobic. I held my camera close to my chest and tried to stand, but ran into Santa’s round belly.
The man himself had to stoop because of the low roof. “Sweetheart, where’s your Christmas spirit?”
“I’m Jewish.”
I sucked in an accusatory breath. It was one thing to love Christmas, but another thing to shove your religion down your wife’s throat.
He responded to my scorn with overwhelming good cheer. “She’s not Jewish.” A jolly laugh. “Her father married us in his Lutheran church.”
“I converted.” Her voice was defiant. “Last year I studied the Torah, met with Rabbi Shulman every week, and had a bat mitzvah. You can’t prove I’m not Jewish.”
“Maybe I’d better go.” I tried to get up, but his stomach still blocked me.
“Sweetheart, I love you whether you’re Christian or Jewish or Muslim, or whatever you want.” His good humor refused to be diminished. “Didn’t I put the menorah in so you could give out chocolate coins to the children? But you don’t want to do that either.”
“That’s how sick you are. I converted to another religion so I wouldn’t have to celebrate Christmas, and it hardly even fazed you.” She reached for the candle and inhaled. “I married you in sickness and health, but I thought that vow was referring to cancer or alcoholism. I should be so lucky.”
Meeting Mida King had made me wonder if I had what it took to stand by Rod if he got sick. Now that looked like a relatively mundane worry. What if he started dressing like Batman? What if he decided to only eat orange-colored food? If I married him, I’d have to trust that over a lifetime his personality wouldn’t go off the rails in some unexpected way.
“Maybe I better go,” I said again. This time I forced my way up.
Santa stumbled back against the closed shed door, but kept talking to his wife. “You can’t honestly wish I was a drunk instead of providing all this joy and happiness.”
I reached around him and got the door open. Just as I was escaping, I heard her say, “At least then I could go to a support group or something. There’s no help for a woman whose husband is addicted to Christmas.”
FIFTEEN
Christmas Eve, 8:03 p.m.
I returned to the station. It had been two and a half hours since our final show of the day, but I hoped Callum would still be there. I needed to tell him what I’d learned from Kelvin Hoyt and the pawnshop owner.
Inside the newsroom, Callum and Freddy sat together on the assignment desk fielding ringing phones.
“KJAY, we’re on your side.” Callum paused to listen. “I’m glad you thought it was hilarious, but we’re not putting it on the website.” He hung up and took another call.
I’d forgotten about the pet segment.
I turned and looked through the rows of empty desks all the way to Ted’s, in the back. I didn’t see him at first. He slumped low in his chair. Without moving the rest of his body or changing his facial expression, he raised a hand in greeting.
I walked straight down the aisle between desks. I reached Ted and hugged him. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I booked the animal shelter.”
“No, it’s not. You were great.”
I knelt beside him. “I know it seems bad now, but it’s really not that big of a deal. Hardly anybody watches on Christmas Eve.”
“It’s already on YouTube.” He looked down at the remains of his tie on the desk in front of him. The silk fabric was bloody and shredded.
I was tired and emotionally strung out but seeing Ted moved me. I wanted so badly to help him. “I’m usually the one people are giving heartfelt life-lesson-type pep talks to, so excuse me if I get this wrong.”
He smiled, and I continued, “You’re a fundamentally decent person. You’re loyal and kind, and you’re going to be okay. This is a bump in the road that you’ll be laughing about one day.”
“If only I hadn’t reacted so badly when the cat first jumped at me.”
“It was ripping h
oles in your chest. It’s hard to ignore that.” I looked around. “Where’s your coanchor?”
“I don’t know. Home I guess. She’s not speaking to me.”
Indignation pushed me to stand. “None of this was your fault. Where was the animal-shelter guy? That was the real problem, you having to do the segment without him.”
“I don’t know. He still hasn’t come back. The animals are all locked up in the break room.” Ted thought of something and looked down at the floor around his desk. “Except for that little dog. He’s out again, but nobody wants to find him since he keeps peeing on whoever tries to pick him up.”
“This is outrageous. The shelter may be broke, but they can’t just abandon animals at the TV station.”
Ted pulled himself out of his slouch. “I’m a total jerk for feeling so sorry for myself while your uncle is lying in a hospital bed.” Ted gestured toward the assignment desk. “Do you need Callum? I can relieve him from the phones.”
“Are you sure you’re ready to interact with viewers?”
He didn’t answer, which meant he wasn’t, but that didn’t stop him from walking through the empty newsroom and right up to the assignment desk. When Callum hung up, Ted said, “I’ll take over for a little bit. Lilly needs to talk with you.”
Callum hesitated, but then got up. “Okay, here’s the game plan. They’re going to try and hook you into an extended conversation.” He took his finger and hooked it in his mouth like a fishhook. “Don’t get stuck debating facts or small details. You need to get on to the next call as soon as possible.”
Ted sat down. “I’ll keep it generic and polite.”
Freddy, a few feet down the assignment desk, finished a call. The line immediately began ringing again.
Freddy looked at the device as though it were a snarling dog. “I totally can’t stay much longer. I’m already late to my yuletide merrymaking, and I’m bringing the plates and cups. My bros are going to be eating and drinking with their hands.” Despite his words, Freddy picked up the receiver. “KJAY, we’re on your side.”
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