by Don Weston
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Be me,” he said. “Do whatever I’ve been put on this earth to do to the best of my ability.”
“I love that you see life that way. It gives me hope. But death still worries me. I don’t want to miss out on raising a family like Dad.”
“What about your job?”
“I’ll have to quit it.”
“What will you do?”
“I’ll be—I’ll be a homemaker,” I said.
He shook his head and smiled at me.
“What?”
“With you, it’s always all or nothing. You don’t have to drastically alter your life to get what you want. Leaving the job would kill you. You might get married and resent your husband, your children, and your life. You can have both, you know. You may just have to take less risky cases. Maybe go into corporate investigations.”
“You think so?” I said.
“Just don’t jump into anything right away. Take some time and think it over. This near-death experience could be a good thing if it improves your life but take some time and make sure you’re making the right decision.”
“Thanks, Darrin.” I hugged him. He made me feel good about myself, but that was Darrin. He knew the right thing to do and, unlike other people, he always did it.
Steve came in a few minutes later and we chatted. I didn’t want to scare him away so I didn’t tell him about my marriage plans. I was ready to go when a nurse finally showed up.
“I’m tired of waiting for the doctor,” I said. “I’m leaving.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” she said. “Besides, he just called and said you could leave. You should have a wheelchair though. It’ll only take a minute for an orderly to bring one up.”
I got off the edge of my bed, grabbed my purse and started walking. The nurse made noises about hospital policy but they were half-hearted. I think she was glad to get rid of me. I hadn’t been an easy patient. Steve picked up my bag of hospital junk while Darrin stuck around to make my apologies.
Steve followed me into the elevator, and I pushed a button as Darrin scooted on ahead of the closing door. “You get any leads on the guys who tried to do me in?” I asked.
“I think we might have an ID,” Steve said. He showed me a picture of the little man who fired the big bullets into me.
“That’s him!” My heart lurched when I saw him. I felt the adrenaline source of hyper-vigilance course throughout me as the fear returned.
“The little guy is known as Monty, The Jet, a.k.a. Montgomery Bales. He’s called The Jet because of his sleek frame and the ability to jet in and out of tight places. We think he may be part of a gang on the East Side, but we haven’t been able to run him down. We’re still working on the other two suspects.”
“Every cop in the precinct is pursuing them,” Darrin said. “You have a lot of friends downtown, Sis.”
“I’ve got three patrolmen standing by outside,” Steve said. “No one is going to get close enough to shoot you today.”
I tried not to smile. It might ruin my image.
“Chris is a no-show as stoolie,” I said to myself. “I guess he figured I was bluffing about putting him away.”
“Eh,” Steve grunted. “How are you going to do that?”
The elevator stopped and we maneuvered around an elderly woman coming in as we exited. I spun an elaborate mix of double talk in rushed tones meant to bewilder him and at the same time change the topic because I didn’t want Steve to know about the threat and outright lie I told The Creep.
We walked through the revolving whoosh door at the hospital entrance and a chill in the air surprised me outside. It was cooler than I remembered. Of course, I had spent a couple weeks in the hospital since the ambush and October was upon us. Although the sun made an appearance, grey cumulus clouds decorated the sky and a cool breeze foreshadowed a turbulent season.
As we stood at the hospital pickup area, I noticed a familiar figure loping across the street, closing fast. Steve didn’t see him and mumbled something about getting his car from the parking garage. As he strode away, two uniformed policemen closed ranks around me, Darrin, and Angel, but mostly around me.
A third cop ran up behind the approaching figure and closed the gap as Chris continued to scurry toward us. He looked dapper in slacks and a camelhair sport coat sans tie. His hair was stylish in a spiky gelled sort of way and a big grin belied the fact that he had bad news.
The cop from behind grabbed Chris’s arms and pinned them behind his back before he could speak. One of the other cops patted him down as Angel and I watched mutely, amused.
“He’s clean,” the cop said, and the other officer let go of his arms.
“What’s with the police brutality?” Chris said. “I didn’t do anything. Tell ‘em, Billie. You wanted me to come see you.”
I’d have liked to see the act go on. To see him unnerved and roughed up some more. In the end I figured I’d better see if he’d turned up anything.
“What have you got for me?” I asked.
Chris swept at imaginary dirt on the arms of his sport coat and brushed the rough stuff off. “Uh, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way.”
He withdrew a white envelope from inside his sport coat pocket and handed it to me, staring warily at the two cops. It was a letter-size envelope with a legal document inside. I opened it and read.
“It’s a restraining order.” He took a step back “I told my lawyer what you said about implicating me in your attempted murder. He said you aren’t allowed to be within two hundred feet of me. He also said we’re going to sue you for slander and intimidation.”
“What?” Darrin and Angel squawked in unison.
I waved them off and gave Chris a steely-eyed glare that unsettled him more than the cops. “Chris, this is a bunch of crap and it’s not going to hold up because this time you have no witnesses.”
“I don’t want any trouble,” Chris said. “I went to my lawyer ‘cause I was scared. He’s the one wants to sue your butt again.”
I took a deep breath. My bright idea about frightening him into a confession had backfired. It was a calculated risk to see if he would break, and I had failed.
“To prove I don’t have hard feelings, I got something for you.”
I waited, expecting him to say he’d settle for half of the twenty million his lawyer was probably going to sue me for.
“That guy who shot you? I know who he is and maybe where you can find him.”
“Holy shit,” Darrin said. “Spill it, mister.” He put my suitcase down and pulled out a notepad and pen from his pocket.
Chris ran his fingers through his gooped hair and alternated his weight from one foot to the other. He gaped around furtively, like he might be seen squealing to Portland’s finest.
“I wasn’t even asking around much. This friend of mine was at the hospital here a few days ago, visiting a girlfriend. He came out and saw this tiny guy running down the hallway and out the back of the hospital. A minute later he saw two cops searching the hallway asking about this guy. One of them blurted out to a nurse how he tried to kill some lady up on the fourth floor.”
“Was he after me?” I cried. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“We didn’t want to worry you,” Darrin said. “We got a call that a little person burst into a room below you with a gun. He ran out without incident, and we think he thought it was your room.”
Another surge of fear struck me squarely in the chest.
“Why didn’t your friend tell the officers?” Darrin said.
“Jeff doesn’t much like cops,” Chris said. “Besides, he might have an outstanding warrant or something against him.”
“Jeff who?” I asked.
“I’m sorry. That’s privileged,” he said, serious like. “I can’t reveal my sources.”
“You don’t have any ethical reasons to withhold information,” Angel said. Her face reddened, and I stepped in between them.
“Yo
u said you knew the guy,” I said, good cop like.
“Well, sorta,” Chris said. “I don’t really know his name, but Jeff was with me yesterday when I was down near City Hall preparing this restraining order. He said, ‘Hey, there’s the guy the cops were chasing at the hospital.’ He told me about it, and I connected the runt with the guy you wanted me to find.”
“Go on,” Darrin said.
“We followed him, and he went into City Hall.”
We waited for the punch line. It was slow in coming, mainly because Chris was enjoying the suspense he created.
“Where did he go?” Angel blurted out.
“You won’t believe this,” he said. “I sure didn’t.” He paused again for effect, but nobody took the bait. He pouted. “He went into the Mayor’s office.”
“What?” Darrin said. “Impossible. You’re lying.”
“He walked in like he worked there or something.”
“The Mayor’s office?” I shook my head.
“Well, a couple of commissioners are nearby too. He could have been going to see one of them. Actually, he went into the reception area separating the offices. The Mayor’s office is to the right and two commissioners are on the left.”
“What time was this?” Darrin asked.
“It was noonish,” Chris said. “I know because we waited for him to come out and I was hungry, so I sent Jeff for a hotdog.”
“What time did he leave?” Darrin jotted something in his notebook.
“Oh, he didn’t. At least not while we were there. And we hung around until one-thirty. He either had a lot to talk about or there’s another way out.”
“Probably went in to steal somebody’s purse and snuck out the back,” Angel said.
“I’m not so sure,” I said.
I could tell Darrin didn’t buy it either. That’s what I thought at first because he had an odd demeanor on his face, kind of like a snake-bit cowboy in denial. A clammy feeling came over me and I started to sway.
“Something wrong, Billie?” Angel said.
Sunlight flashed off something metallic from the top of the parking structure across the street and hit me in the eye for a second, dazing me more. I gazed to the source and saw a figure hunched over the wall on top of the parking garage. Instinctively I turned to find cover. I saw by the alarm in Darrin’s eyes he flashed on it too.
“Sniper,” I yelled.
We all moved in one motion toward the ground with one exception. A bullet struck just before the retort from the rifle was heard. I fell and felt a sudden pain tugging at me. But it wasn’t from the bullet. Nor did it emanate from contorting my recently aerated torso to avoid the bullet. The pain was in my soul. Darrin had jumped in front of me with his hands stretched outward. I saw him hesitate and slump and fall to the ground like a building gradually yielding to detonation.
“Noooo!” someone screamed, and I realized it was me. Angel and I crawled across the sidewalk and behind a shrub near the entry to the hospital, and I fumbled to get my gun from my purse. Two more shots bounced off the pavement. A bullet ricocheted near my leg. I crawled further behind the bush and another bullet rustled its leaves. I came up with my Glock and fired three rounds at the shadow up high. One of them almost hit him, I thought —even at that range—and the shadow slinked away before I could squeeze off more rounds.
Behind me, Angel held a 25-caliber pistol she normally carried as a backup piece on her upper thigh, under her skirt. “Dropped my damn purse when we dove to the sidewalk,” she said. “Otherwise I’d have offed the S.O.B. with my three-fifty-seven.”
The cops Steve brought ran around with their weapons drawn, trying to figure out where the shots originated. I knelt over Darrin as the blood gushed from his throat, his body armor useless here. I clamped a towel from my hospital junk bag over the wound and tried to stem the bleeding, but the pooling under his head told me the bullet must have gone clean through. It seemed like forever before Steve rolled up in his blue Crown Vic. He ran to us with a lost look on his face.
“Darrin’s been shot,” I cried. “He took a bullet meant for me.”
I sobbed and let Steve pull me away as he tried to help Darrin. An EMT ran over from the Emergency entrance parking lot, radioed someone, and bent over and checked his pulse. One of the cops joined him and he started CPR as the EMT applied pressure to the wound to stop the bleeding. A minute later another EMT joined them and they had tubes connected to Darrin and injected him with adrenaline and something else.
A doctor joined the fracas. They continued pushing compresses against his wound. Steve hovered over the little circle while shouting orders into his remote police radio. Angel kept pulling me away.
“Let them handle it,” she said. “You can’t do anything.”
Her face was white and shaken. I stepped out of reality, watching from above as everything unraveled, not believing the scene. In a moment of clarity, I scanned the parking structure. A dark cloud hovered directly above it. There were no glints from the barrel of a sniper’s rifle now. No lone figure watched and laughed at me.
I turned back to Steve’s somber face. He held my hands but avoided my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said, flatly. “Darrin’s dead.”
Chapter 5
“Darrin’s dead?” I said. “How can that be? Only a few minutes before he’d told me not to make any rash decisions. Then he steps in front of a bullet and now he’s dead?”
The reality and irony of the situation set in like storm clouds at a weathermen’s golf tournament. Darrin protected me. I was the target. Again! Darrin stepped in front of the bullet and saved my life.
The doctor, who tried to resuscitate him, still on his knees, spotted me and shook his head. I wiped a stream of tears from my eyes onto my blouse’s blood-stained sleeves, choked, and watched helplessly as patrol car after patrol car screeched to a stop at the turnaround in front of the hospital. Steve barked orders and the cops charged the parking structure. I heard squad cars’ tires squeal inside the garage area.
The only ammunition I had to unload now was a barrage of cursing, and I found plenty of targets to vent my anger. I cursed Angel for not seeing the sniper, I chastised Steve for leaving my side to get the car, and I yelled at a couple of bewildered policemen for not spotting the assassin. I told the doctor, who tried to save Darrin’s life, he was a quack.
But mostly I spewed this venom at myself for letting my little brother take the bullet meant for me. Someone wanted me dead so badly they killed Darrin to get to me. I wished I’d never survived the bullets two weeks prior. Somewhere in my collection of grief I thought of going after the killer. But tears blurred the images around me, and I realized I was more of a target than a threat in my current condition. I dropped to my knees and wailed.
In minutes there were scores of earnest-faced, blue-suited cops running around. Most of them paused and searched Darrin’s lifeless eyes, as if expecting to find a clue to their own mortality. I know what each one of them thought. It could have been me. Each cop stopped and wiped his or her eyes before running off in search of the killer.
Somebody finally decided it would be a good idea to get me the hell out of there, and Angel and I were whisked into a squad car. A patrolman hopped in and we sped off without a siren or blue and red flashers.
My thoughts began to clear, and I wondered what happened to Chris Johnson. On the way out, I surveyed the scene of cops, medical staff, rubberneckers, squad cars, police tape, and police photographers, but there was no Chris. He wasn’t the kind of guy to stick around when shots were fired.
“I’m so sorry,” Angel said. “I should have been watching for trouble. I feel so bad.”
“It’s too damn late to change things.” I took a deep breath and shuddered. “I’m going to find the guy who pulled the trigger on my baby brother and he won’t ever go before a judge, I can promise you that.”
I wiped some tears with a handkerchief the patrolman handed me over the seat. Angel nodded and grab
bed at the handkerchief. I leaned toward the officer I had seen a few times while still on the force.
“McGraw, isn’t it? I want to go home.”
“Yeah, Ms. Bly, I’m McGraw.” He eyed me through the rear-view mirror. His mustache twitched as he talked. “But Lieutenant Thomas said I should take you to the precinct for your own protection.”
“That’s B.S.,” I said. “Hell, there’s no one to protect me at the precinct. They’re all at the hospital. A killer could walk in and help himself to Danish in the break room.”
McGraw mulled this over and radioed back to the crime scene. I heard Steve nix the idea of my going home, and I reached over and grabbed the mike from McGraw.
“If you don’t want another homicide on your hands, you’d better tell McGraw to take me home.”
“Billie,” a voice cracked over the radio, “you’ll be safer at the precinct until we get a handle on this.”
“You have no right to hold me against my will.”
“You’re a material witness,” he said. “I need to have you some place safe where I can interview you. What you might have seen can help us find the killer.”
“I’m not feeling too well, and I’ve got Darrin’s blood all over me. I need to go home and wash up and maybe lie down.” I coughed laboriously into the mike. “Angel will be with me and you know she packs an arsenal.”
“Darn right.” Angel pulled her Smith & Wesson out of her purse. “Let them come. I’m just itching to put some lead in the low-life that killed poor little Darrin.”
“I’ll even let Officer McGraw stay with me until you can get reinforcements if you like.”
“You’ll let me station a few officers at your place?” Steve said.
“Suuure,” I said.
“That doesn’t sound like you, Billie.”
“It doesn’t, does it?”
“Okay,” he said. “But on one condition. You’ve got to let the police handle this. I don’t want you going around messing up our investigation.”
“No way,” I said. “This is my brother you’re talking about. I have just as much a right as anybody to investigate his killing.” I realized that my new outlook on life would have to be put on hold for a while until I found Darrin’s killer.