The Violence Beat

by JoAnna Carl

  “Wait! Wait!” Mike said. “How did you find Lee? Merrilee?”

  Coy poked me again. “Little Miss Smart Ass here. She was a little careless with her keys. Bugging her phone was the easiest thing in the world. Even if she did nearly walk in on me.” He laughed. “I just did it because I wanted to know if Bo Jenkins had told her anything. Finding out about Lee was an extra added attraction. And so was knowing about the two of you. And now! Hit the deck! Lie flat. And you’d better stay there.”

  Mike frowned. He didn’t move.

  Andy began to kick and struggle again. “Down! Down!” he said.

  “Shut that kid up!” Coy snarled the words in my ear.

  “I don’t know how!”

  “Try the keys! They worked with the Jenkins kid.”

  My key ring. I’d handed it to Bo Jenkins’s son to keep him amused while we got him out of a hostage situation and to safety. Then Coy had taken the keys and apparently had used them to break into my house and bug my telephone. He’d given them back, and I’d been using them.

  And that morning—that very morning in the hospital—Rocky had given me a new key chain, with a special gadget attached.

  Pepper spray.

  “Let me reach in my purse and find them,” I said. Andy was still kicking, and I was struggling to keep from dropping him. The strap of my purse fell off my shoulder and the purse dangled from my elbow, hanging by its knotted strap. “You’ll have to let me move around.”

  Coy moved his arm from around my neck and grabbed a handful of my hair. I could still feel the gun in my side. I managed to reach into the side pocket of my purse, to get my hand on the keys. I felt around. Did I have the pepper spray? Was I holding it right? Would it spray? How could I point it in the right direction?

  What was the right direction?

  God. I didn’t have the nerve. If I used the spray, I might miss Coy. Even if I hit him, he might fire the pistol. If he fired the pistol, the bullet might hit Andy. It might hit Mike. It might hit me. Hitting Coy with pepper spray might be the dumbest thing I could do. Maybe I should play along, go with Coy.

  Mike made some movement, and Coy swung the pistol toward him.

  “I told you to get down!” he said.

  “Coy, you don’t stand a chance in hell of getting out of here, even with hostages,” Mike said.

  “Maybe not! But if I get it, I won’t get it alone. Lie down!”

  Suddenly I saw the whole scenario. The Central HQ and its parking lot were full of cops. Even if Coy got to the side door, he wouldn’t dare go out. There would be a sharpshooter out there. Guys with nets. Stun guns.

  Suppose he got to his car and drove away. He’d be followed by patrol cars, unmarked cars, helicopters. Hammond had had plenty of time to stick a remote bug on his vehicle. They could follow him anywhere.

  There was no chance Coy was going to get away.

  And Coy knew all about police procedure. He knew he couldn’t get away.

  So he was planning to take some of us with him. I could picture Mike down flat on the terrazzo floor. And as Coy passed him, he’d shoot him in the back of the head.

  He’d already said he hated the baby—the child his wife had conceived with Irish Svenson. He was ready to kill the little boy.

  And he was certainly ready to kill me.

  I twisted my head around and tried to look at him. Coy’s face was turned toward Mike, and he gestured with his pistol. His face was contorted with hate. “Get down!”

  I yanked that key chain out of my purse, aimed it over my shoulder, and punched the spray button.

  I hit Coy, but I got Andy and me, too. So I’m not too clear about what happened next.

  I remember dropping down on my rear, trying to hold on to Andy, moving away from the edge of the stairway, feeling my way toward the wall. I remember a lot of choking and coughing from all three of us.

  I remember a rush of air I later realized was Mike jumping over Andy and me.

  I remember a shot and the sound of breaking glass. A high-pitched scream I realized was coming from Coy. Mike’s shout of “Drop it!” The grunting sounds of two men struggling.

  I managed to open my eyes just in time to see Coy and Mike, a flight above me—on the balcony under the rotunda—two stories above the foyer floor—wrestling.

  As I watched Coy broke away and ran to the railing.

  He dived over. Headfirst.

  Chapter 25

  I huddled against the wall, holding the screaming child, coughing and weeping. I was conscious of a form kneeling beside me, and I felt Mike’s arms around me.

  I clung to him and to the kid, and I tried to hang on to what sanity I had left.

  “I’m going to lock you up,” Mike said. “If I have to watch some creep put a gun to the head of the woman I love one more time, I’m going to—God! I don’t know what I’ll do. But I can’t take it. Not ever again.”

  “I don’t mean to keep getting in trouble,” I said. “Can we get this baby off these stairs? I’m afraid to let go of him. If he tumbles down and hurts himself at this point, I’ll be most unhappy.”

  Mike took the squirming, squalling, redheaded kid from me. He held him at arm’s length and took a long look.

  “I used to nag because I wanted a baby brother,” he said.

  He put the kid over his shoulder and carried him down the stairs.

  Lots of cops were coming in by then, and Jim Hammond was ordering some of them out and calling for a doctor and setting up his crime scene. Mike walked Andy and me into the hall leading to the detective office, tactfully keeping his shoulders between us and the sight of what had been Coy, spread-eagled on the city seal.

  Jim Hammond followed us and put his arm around me.

  I groaned. “Watch the ribs!” Then I hugged him back. “Jim, I was sure glad to see you and Mike charging down that hall. How did the two of you know just when to show up?”

  “Police artist,” Jim said. “Merri Blakely’s body was found around ten this morning. The detectives who went out there didn’t take a close look at the body, because the guy from the medical examiner’s office beat them to the scene. So they didn’t recognize her.”

  “They might not have recognized her anyway,” I said. “Lee had left Grantham before I moved here, but I just saw a picture of her, taken when she worked at the A.P.B. Her hair was a new color and style, her makeup was changed, and she dressed completely differently.”

  Jim nodded. “Yeah. Well, you’d think nearly any cop would have recognized her, but nobody did until the sketch artist got there. The artist knew her right away. She told the detectives, and they called me. They didn’t want to be the ones who had to tell Coy his wife was dead. Not knowing that he knew all about it already.

  “Mike had come back out to the airport to try to convince me that Guy wasn’t the only bad guy in this deal. As soon as we knew who the girl in the ditch was, it became pretty obvious that Coy was involved.”

  I nodded. “And I saw an old picture of Lee—identified as ‘Merri Blakely’ and I figured it out. Unfortunately, I was with Coy when I saw the picture.” I sighed and grabbed my ribs.

  Jim patted my shoulder. “Mike, take this young woman out of here, okay? I can get statements tomorrow.” He shook his head. “There’s no hurry, since we’ve got the whole thing on videotape. Again.”

  He patted the little boy on the head. “But where did this kid come from?”

  I realized that our standoff in the rotunda might have been televised on the police department’s security cameras, but the sound hadn’t been recorded. Jim Hammond had no way of knowing what Coy had told us about Andy’s birth. Or his conception.

  “Merrilee Blakely was this little boy’s mother,” I said. I glanced at Mike, leaving any further explanations to him. He didn’t offer any.

  “I guess when she found out she
was pregant,” I said, “well, Coy didn’t want her to have the baby. That must have been one reason she left him.”

  Hammond looked bland. “Colorful hair. One of the cars outside can take him to the children’s shelter until we sort out where he belongs.”

  “Lee—his mother was one of my news sources,” I said. “I’d like to look after him.”

  Hammond looked dubious.

  Andy was still wiggling. “Down!” he said. “I want down.”

  Mike stood him on the floor, and he took a few steps, but the bustling scene seemed to intimidate him, and he didn’t go far. His nose was a mess. I dug in my purse for a tissue and knelt beside him. He fought me, but I got his nose wiped.

  “How did Coy get hold of him?” I asked. “He didn’t want him.”

  “When we looked in Coy’s car, out here in the lot,” Hammond said, “we found a note on the front seat. A sort of a receipt. From a place called ‘Big Mama’s.’ It may sound like a bar, but one of the women officers said it’s a child-care place. One of these places some woman runs in her home.”

  “Oh, I guess Lee left him there when she came to meet me yesterday,” I said.

  Hammond nodded. “Apparently. Of course, when his mother didn’t show up to pick him up last night, I’m willing to bet this ‘Big Mama’ was afraid she was stuck with an abandoned kid. Coy must have found the receipt in Merrilee’s purse after he and Guy snatched her at the Campus Corner. There was nothing on the receipt to indicate it was for child care.”

  “So Coy didn’t know about the kid until he picked him up?” Mike said.

  Hammond nodded. “Probably not, though we won’t ever know what Merrilee told him and Guy before they killed her. She obviously told them about the offshore account, because Guy was on his way to San Simeon Beach, via Dallas, with the false ID he’d need to get the money.

  “But when Coy showed up at Big Mama’s this afternoon and said he was from the Grantham PD, Big Mama apparently palmed the kid off on him. Coy probably found it easier to take him than to argue.”

  “He said he intended to leave him here,” I said. “He said he was going to pick up his extra passport at his office and leave the little—leave Andy. Oh! What about Bill Martin? The Gazette security guard. Is he alive?”

  Hammond gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. “He was cussing a blue streak as they loaded him in the ambulance. He might still be outside. Beat it, you two.” He reached down and patted Andy’s red head. “I’ll square it with child welfare.”

  We sidetracked into Coy’s office so I could collect the folder for the Gazette library. As we got in Mike’s truck, somebody handed me a diaper bag. I was relieved to find that it contained a change of clothes for Andy. We drove to Mike’s house, and I learned that he did own a bathtub. It was in a second, smaller bathroom at the back of his house. I ran water, and Mike lifted Andy into it.

  Mike found a couple of plastic glasses to use as tub toys, and we were sitting on the bathroom floor, watching Andy happily splashing water around, when I heard Wilda’s voice.

  “Mike!” She’d come in the back door.

  This was going to be sticky. Wilda was not likely to be happy to learn that her husband not only had had an affair, but also fathered a child.

  “We’re back here, Mom.” I saw Mike frown, and he got to his feet. “Might as well get it over,” he said. But he stood in the bathroom door, blocking it, as Wilda came back.

  His mother pushed him aside and came right in.

  “Mickey heard that a kid was involved,” she said. “He heard that he had red hair. That you and Nell took him home.”

  “We’re not exactly sure where his home is yet,” Mike said. “But his parents are both dead. We know that.”

  Wilda sat down on the lid of the commode and stared at Andy. “Who was his mother?”

  “Apparently his mother was Coy Blakely’s estranged wife,” I said. “She went by Merri when she worked for the A.P.B. I met her once. She told me her name was Lee.”

  Tears welled in Wilda’s eyes. “Coy pushed her at Irish. Irish wouldn’t tell me, but I knew she was the one he’d been seeing.”

  Andy crowed and threw water high in the air. Then he got to his feet. I grabbed at him, since Mike’s bathtub was not equipped with a rubber tub mat. But Andy didn’t slip. He leaned on the edge of the tub and looked up at Wilda. His gray eyes were clear and unafraid. The freckles that covered his nose, the red hair, the round pink bottom—they all added up to completely adorable.

  “Oh, Mike!” Wilda said. “His hair’s exactly the color your’s was at that age. And he’s got freckles like Irish!”

  “Up!” Andy said firmly. “I frew with bath.”

  I reached for a towel, but Wilda took it away from me. She wrapped it around Andy and lifted him out of the tub. She cuddled him into her lap and put her arms around him. When she looked up at Mike, there were more tears in her eyes.

  “Irish would have loved him,” she said. “We wanted another child so much! But after Alicia died—we were afraid to try. I had my tubes tied.

  “But why didn’t Irish tell me Merrilee was going to have a baby? He told me the affair he’d had was over, but he still had to see this woman. He wouldn’t tell me why. But he couldn’t abandon her if she was pregnant. I’d have understood that.”

  “He probably thought it would hurt you even worse,” Mike said.

  Wilda squeezed Andy tightly, but Andy wasn’t having any. He kicked and pulled away. His bare feet popped out of the end of the towel.

  “Piggies!” he yelled. “Do piggies!”

  Wilda leaned back. She couldn’t seem to talk, and Mike had leaned against the door frame, with his arm covering his eyes. I longed to get up and put my arms around him.

  Instead, I reached for the plump bare toes. “This little piggy went to market,” I said. “This little piggy stayed home.”

  By five-thirty the hostage situation at the Grantham Police Headquarters was on the national television news. Two hostage situations at the same place in the same week—heck, we were probably going to make Time magazine.

  At five-forty-five Mike got a call from Dr. Willingham, the minister of Dallas’s Lovers Lane Presbyterian church.

  “Yes, we have him here,” Mike told him. “He seems to be fine.”

  They talked a few more minutes. “Okay, then. We’ll see you tomorrow,” Mike said.

  He hung up and turned to Wilda. “Dr. Willingham says he’ll come tomorrow and tell us the whole story.”

  The whole story made me wish I’d known Irish Svenson. He must have been a heck of a guy.

  When he had been minister of the Grantham First Presbyterian Church, Dr. Willingham said, he and Irish had been acquaintances, rather than close friends. So he’d been surprised when Irish had called about two and a half years earlier and asked for a counseling appointment.

  Once there, Irish had confessed to having an affair. “I’ve done the stupidest thing a middle-aged man who loves his wife can do,” he’d said.

  “People always think ministers are going to be shocked by their peccadilloes,” Dr. Willingham said. “But believe me, after the first couple of years in the ministry, you’ve heard it all before.”

  But when Dr. Willingham launched into his usual advice to the repentant adulterer, Irish cut him off. “I think I’ve learned my lesson,” he’d said. “The problem is this girl. First, she’s about as stable as a bass boat on a choppy lake. Second, she’s mixed up in something crooked that involves my department, and she swears the other people involved are dangerous. Third, she’s pregnant. And fourth, she’s determined to have the baby and keep it.”

  Dr. Willingham had admitted this combination of events went beyond the scope of his usual counseling session.

  “So,” Irish had said, “all I have to do is to hide her from the bad guys in my department—whoe
ver they are. And she’s in a job where she knows every cop in the Grantham P.D., so that’s not easy to figure out. Then I have to make sure she sees a doctor and has money to live on and can get a job after the baby is born. Get her into counseling, so that there’s a chance she’ll be sensible enough to raise a kid. Then—after the baby is born she says—she’ll tell me what’s going on in my department. And I want to do all this without hurting Wilda.”

  “It was a tall order,” Dr. Willingham said. “But I did my best to help.” He’d helped Irish find an apartment for Lee. One near the church. He got her into a support group which the church sponsored for single parents, and into treatment with a psychologist whom he respected. Lee hadn’t been enthusiastic about the support group and the psychologist, but Irish had pushed her until she cooperated.

  Dr. Willingham had deduced from hints Lee and the psychologist threw out that she’d been an abused child—probably sexually abused—and certainly she’d been emotionally abused by every important person in her life. She’d told me things that backed that up.

  “The psychologist thought she was making real progress. Becoming less of a victim,” Dr. Willingham said.

  Dr. Willingham also found Lee a sort of godmother: an older lady in the church. “Recently widowed. No kids. Frankly, she needed to worry about somebody besides herself.”

  The godmother had checked with Lee every few days and had made sure she went to the doctor. Irish had paid a year’s lease on Lee’s apartment and bought her a car, as well as helping with other finances. The church had hired her as a bookkeeper and helped her get health insurance.

  “She was a good bookkeeper, too,” Dr. Willingham said. “She was a computer whiz. Got our financial records set up in much better shape than we’d been.”

  When Lee went into labor, the godmother had been her coach in the delivery room. Andy had weighed more than eight pounds, Dr. Willingham said, beaming.