The Deepest Wound

by Rick Reed

  “Welcome to small-town USA,” he said. “Let me show you what I’ve got.”

  He led them behind a row of filing cabinets where he had folding chairs pushed in front of a cheap black-and-white television /VCR combo that played VHS tapes.

  “I think it’s those two guys you’re looking for. The ones who beat Liddell up.”

  Jack’s heart raced, thinking this might be the break he’d been waiting for. He wasn’t surprised that Scotty had put this together so quickly. He had been—still was—a good cop, and when anyone attacked a cop, every lawman in a hundred-mile radius was out for blood.

  “When did this happen?” Jack asked, taking a seat.

  “Bob was just closing,” Scotty said, and punched the rewind button on the old-fashioned television-VCR combo. “Bob Craig is the owner of the pharmacy. This happened at four-thirty today.” He hit the play button and the small screen came to life.

  The place had two cameras, one behind the pharmacy counter and pointing toward the front door, the other camera in a corner over the door and pointing to the back of the store where the pharmacy counter could be seen. Jack watched the split screen.

  “Sorry for the quality of the video,” Scotty said. “Bob must have used the same three tapes over a hundred times.”

  Jack waved the comment off. “At least the video displays a time and date.”

  “I checked and it’s accurate. Bob always goes out for a smoke before he closes,” Scotty said. The tape showed four-twenty-eight p.m. exactly. “He comes back in right here.” The screen switched to the camera looking into the store. A man wearing a white coat was walking down the aisle toward the pharmacy counter.

  “Here’s where they show up,” Scotty said.

  Bob turned around as if someone had come into the store. He began to walk back toward the front door, stopped, and then put his hands up in the air. He was saying something.

  “No audio?” Brooke asked. Scotty shook his head.

  Bob Craig stood with his arms over his head just like in the old movies where someone had yelled “hands up!” A large figure wearing a dark jacket and jeans with a balaclava covering his head and face moved toward him with a handgun pointed at Bob.

  “Beretta nine millimeter,” Brooke observed.

  Jack agreed. It looked like the military issue, model 92S. Jack owned one.

  The view changed to the camera looking toward the front of the store. “Cameras switch every ten seconds,” Scotty explained. On the video the robber was placing the gun against Craig’s head.

  “Can you pause it, Scotty?” Jack said, and Scotty punched a button on the television. The screen froze at the point where the robber was using the barrel of the pistol to push Craig toward the pharmacy.

  In the background, visible in the front doorway, was another figure. He, too, was wearing dark clothing and a balaclava and held something down by his side. The second subject was big, but the guy holding a gun on the pharmacist was bigger.

  Jack noticed these guys didn’t have the jerky hurriedness of junkies out to score some prescription drugs. They moved like a team. One man took control, the other covered him. Even without sound Jack could tell that the robbers said nothing, their actions were practiced. Scotty was right. These were the guys who beat Liddell.

  “Can we get better shots of these guys?” Jack asked. The pictures would be grainy to the point of useless when they tried to print them.

  “Yeah,” Scotty said. “They both go behind the counter near the end. Hold on.” He hit play again.

  “Look at their hands, Scotty. Not wearing gloves. And the bigger guy is black,” Jack said.

  The robber took Bob Craig behind the counter and pushed him against the wall. Then he began scanning the shelves and pocketing certain items. The video wasn’t good enough to see what he was taking, but they could at least see where he was taking them from.

  “Do you know what he took?” Jack asked.

  Scotty paused the video to answer. “He took stuff from the shelf where they keep the painkillers,” he said. “But I don’t think they were after drugs because they took a bunch of antibiotics, too. Or at least that’s what we think. The assistant pharmacist thinks it was Keflex. We’ll know for sure when they check the inventory.” Scotty hit the play button.

  The camera angle changed, and each time the man in the doorway moved closer to the counter, his arm rising, a Beretta 92S at shoulder level. The camera switched back to the counter, and Bob Craig reached for something under the counter. The man searching the shelves didn’t see the move.

  Then Craig’s head exploded. It came apart like a busted melon, and his body fell straight down, beyond the view of the camera.

  The man who was searching the shelves jerked around, his mouth moving, and he pointed the gun downward and fired repeatedly. Jack counted fourteen.

  The other man leaned over the counter with both hands—his right hand still holding the gun—looking down.

  “Stop it there!” Jack said, and Scotty froze the picture. “Now back it up to where that guy comes to the counter and play it forward again.”

  Scotty froze the screen at the spot where the man leaned against the counter with both hands.

  Brooke said. “I’ll get my people out here.”

  “I already called the state police,” Scotty said. He hit the slow forward button.

  The gunman at the counter brought his right hand down and held it to his right rib area. When he finally turned around, his hand remained pressed against his side.

  “Marcie said she shot one of them,” Jack said.

  Brooke mouthed the words, “Not Eric.”

  Jack scowled. It wasn’t Eric. “Let’s play it real slow. I want a good look at their faces.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  For most of the Vanderburgh County Prosecutor’s Office employees the workday was over. Moira’s wouldn’t be over until late in the evening. The basement of the Civic Center building was cool, if not downright cold, and smelled of damp paper and small creatures Moira didn’t want to think of. The concrete floors were painted battleship gray, as were the walls, made of heavy gauge steel. Fluorescent light fixtures hung from the open ceiling and butted against long tubes of ventilation ducts, scattering the uneven light. Doors on her left and right were marked for their various purposes, but some were merely designated by a number. She was up to number seven, and she was looking for twenty-four, which, of course, was at the far end of the hallway, past the elevator.

  Finding the door to room twenty-four locked, she used her office key, and was grateful to feel the tumblers give. The door swung inward and she stepped into a pitch-black space. She felt around for a light switch. Her hand closed over a plastic box and lights sputtered into life. Motion sensor.

  The room was mammoth. Steel-wired cages separated the storage space into two rooms, each the size of a small house, and each divided by a dozen rows of metal shelving eight feet tall, each shelf lined with banker’s boxes. An aluminum stepladder leaned against the wall of the nearest cage.

  “Heard you down here,” a voice said from behind her.

  Feeling a slight start, she whipped around to find the night maintenance man, Nova, standing beside a cart loaded with tools. “I’ll be working down here for a few hours,” she said, not knowing why she was justifying herself to the old guy.

  “Well, you won’t be doing much without these,” he said, and used a set of small brass keys to unlock the doors to the steel cages.

  “They didn’t tell me I needed keys,” she admitted, and felt foolish. Of course she would need keys to access sensitive documents.

  “There’s a light switch down the hall,” he said, jerking a thumb in the direction she had come from. “The lights out here go off in about an hour, but you can turn the hall light on if you ain’t left by then. These lights in here are on a motion sensor, so if you find yourself in the dark, just wave and they’ll come back on.” He left without another word.

  She perused th
e list of files Eric had written down and then checked the labels on the shelves. All the files she needed appeared to be on top. Just my luck. She dragged the ladder into the cage and opened it under one of the boxes she needed.

  As she climbed toward the top, she had the feeling of being exposed. She glanced downward, just to make sure no one was there. But of course there wasn’t. It was a trick of heights, knowing it was a long way down. Who in the world would show up late at night in the basement of the Civic Center? No one, she thought gloomily, except me.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  “This isn’t going to work,” Jack said, viewing the picture he’d just taken with his iPhone. He wanted to have a photo to show Marcie, but he kept getting his thumb in the picture. Brooke took his iPhone from him, did something, and handed it back to him.

  “It’s set to take video now. Start the VHS tape where you want,” Brooke said, and Jack rewound the tape to where the pharmacist turned to see who had come in and hit pause.

  Brooke pointed at a red button at the bottom of his cell phone screen. “Start the tape and touch the red button on your phone. It will start recording. When you get what you want, hit the red button again and it stops.”

  Jack hit the play button on the VHS and then touched the red light on his phone. He let the video play through to where the second gunman was approaching the counter and touched the red button again. No need for Marcie to see what happened after that.

  Brooke showed him how to play it back on his telephone and said, “I’ll have several copies of the VHS tape burned onto CDs.”

  “Can you get still photos enhanced? We need to put them out to law enforcement.”

  “Is the Pope Catholic?”

  He looked at her in surprise, thinking that was what Liddell would say.

  “What’s the matter?” Brooke asked.

  “Nothing.” The parallel with Liddell made him realize that she’d been very helpful on this lead. “Hey, thanks for doing this, Brooke,” he said. “Maybe bringing you into this wasn’t such a stupid idea after all,” he wanted to say, but said instead, “I’m glad you’re working with me.”

  “So what do you want to do with the video? Besides show Marcie, I mean?” she asked.

  Jack checked with Scotty, not wanting him to feel that his authority had been usurped, but Scotty raised his hands and said, “This is way above my pay grade. It’s a state police show, not mine.”

  “I’ll show what I’ve got to Marcie,” Jack said. “If she identifies these as the guys, we may want to hold up on showing the pictures to the news media.”

  “On the other hand,” Brooke said, “these guys might be local talent. If we put the video on the news and show it around the tristate area, maybe someone will come forward.”

  “Or maybe the bad guys will see themselves and disappear on us,” Jack countered.

  “Either way, they’re wearing masks. What do you want to do?”

  They had come full circle. It was a call that would ultimately be made by someone higher up the food chain, but for now they agreed to hold back the video until Jack showed it to Marcie.

  “Better to ask forgiveness than permission,” Brooke said.

  This town’s not big enough for both of us, Jack thought.

  When Jack returned to Evansville, he stopped at a K-Land gas station to fill up. The city was getting raped on gas prices, but they had a fuel contract with K-Land. It was like the Army paying four hundred dollars for a hammer. Why should the Army have the patent on wasting tax dollars?

  While at the pump he called Liddell and explained about the video.

  “Do me a favor, pod’na,” Liddell said. “Marcie has been through enough. I don’t want to scare her. Can she be kept out of this for now?”

  Jack thought about the times he’d kept case developments from Katie. At the time he thought he was keeping her safe by not bringing his job home. But after the divorce, she told him how disconnected she had felt.

  “Absolutely. But she’ll find out from somewhere. You should tell her. Or let her choose if she wants to hear it.”

  “Yes, O Wise One,” Liddell said. “Okay, come on over, but let me see it first.”

  Jack hung up and dialed Moira’s cell phone to cancel their dinner plans. Moira’s phone rang for a good while and went to voice mail. He hung up without leaving a message and started to dial Katie’s cell phone, but then hung up. What if Eric’s with her? What if she doesn’t know anything about Moira asking me to dinner?

  Moira would call him when he didn’t show. She’d be mad, but it was her own fault for not answering her phone.

  Katie looked in the refrigerator. She was glad to have her sister’s company, but groceries didn’t last long with Moira around, and she found she was spending a fortune on food that she didn’t even like or eat. She shut the refrigerator door and picked up her car keys. Moira was planning on cooking for Jack tonight, so that meant Katie would be expected to help. She didn’t mind, but they had nothing to cook in the house, unless Jack liked frozen TV dinners or avocado sandwiches.

  If she was honest with herself, she was glad Jack was coming over for dinner. She had become friends with Susan Summers, his last girlfriend. It had been a bit awkward at first, but Susan was good for Jack. Since she was the chief parole officer for the state, she understood Jack’s passion for the job. It was silly, but when Jack started dating Susan exclusively, Katie felt jealous. When they had broken up, she had truly felt sad for both of them, though relieved that he hadn’t married again. But by then she had started dating Eric, and Jack threw himself into his work, just like he always did to avoid facing his emotions.

  She made a mental list of groceries she would need. Absorbed in planning, she opened the door—and staggered back when she found herself inches away from a figure standing there.

  “My, my! You Connelly girls are jumpy!” Eric said. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

  “You should have called, Eric,” she said, immediately regretting her choice of words, but he had scared her. “I mean . . . I didn’t know you were coming. Sorry. Of course you can come in, but I was just on my way to the grocery store. Moira invited Jack for dinner, and of course she didn’t bother to go shopping for something to eat.”

  He waved her words away. “Moira will have to learn how to plan ahead next time. Listen, instead of buying food and cooking, how about I take you out somewhere nice to eat? You see, I want to make amends for the way I’ve been acting lately.” Katie was still hesitant, not able to shift gears right away. “Moira and Jack will just go out to eat,” Eric said. “They’ll be fine.”

  Katie was catching up to the new idea by now. Eric was right. Moira invited Jack without asking me. It would serve her right to have to cook on her own.

  “Sounds wonderful, Eric,” she said.

  “Great! I’ve made reservations at Bone Fish. You love that place.”

  Yet Katie still held back, feeling responsible for her sister—and Jack—even if Moira was being thoughtless as usual.

  “Here,” he said, taking one of his business cards from his suit coat, “use the back of my card. Leave them a note if that makes you feel better. Here’s a pen.”

  That settled the matter. Katie took the items and wrote a note.

  Moira, With Eric at Bone Fish, be home soon.

  Eric took the note and read it before sticking it in the doorjamb, where it would be visible. “Home soon?” he remarked. “Who’s the big sister?”

  She didn’t like him making remarks about them. He had no idea how much they shared. “She won’t be here forever, Eric. She needs me.”

  His expression turned serious. “I need you, too. I love you, Katie. “

  “You’ve told me that,” she replied.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Brooke Wethington prided herself on multitasking, but her uncle had put her in a difficult position by demanding that she drop everything and meet with him. She needed to be monitoring the crime scene in New Harm
ony, staying on top of the lab, keeping in touch with Jack Murphy. But Trent had prevailed over all of her arguments, and now, here they were, in a fancy restaurant on Evansville’s east side. She found herself wishing her cell phone would ring and give her an excuse to leave.

  Her uncle uncharacteristically ordered a double of Maker’s Mark bourbon, neat, and belted it down.

  “So, what do you think of Jack Murphy?” He was dressed immaculately, blue blazer carefully folded over the chair beside him at the bar, wearing a blue shirt with white collar and cuffs.

  Brooke felt uncomfortable as he stared at her. She always had. Trent was her uncle, but, first and foremost, he was a powerful man. He had been the prosecutor for this county for almost as long as she had been alive, and he would likely be the next governor of Indiana.

  “Answer, please,” Trent commanded.

  “He’s very capable, sir,” she said, and her uncle’s expression darkened. He hated it when she called him sir when they were alone. “Uncle Trent.”

  “But is he getting anywhere, Brooke?”

  She wasn’t sure how to answer. She had told him what she was doing in New Harmony and that they now had video of the killers, but he still had insisted on meeting with her.

  “So this is gang- and drug-related,” Trent said. “Should I call DEA for assistance?”

  “It’s definitely not gang-related,” she said quickly. The last thing she needed was Drug Enforcement Agents breathing down her neck. “We’re considering ex-military. These guys are too smooth to be gang members.”

  He took the news calmly, but she had the feeling he was disappointed that it wasn’t gang-related. Why was that?

  Trent ordered another double, but his eyes never left hers. “We’re family, Brooke. This is important to me. That’s why I had you put on this and not someone else.”