Divine Justice

by David Baldacci

  “Story of my life,” Caleb replied without a trace of a whine.

  CHAPTER 28

  STONE HUSTLED DOWN a clay-packed path, really no more than two truck tire tracks wide, as he followed the cries. From out of the darkness loomed a long shape. The double-wide trailer was no longer “mobile” since it had a cinderblock undercarriage. The hulks of old cars and trucks, like the skeletons from faded battlefields, flew past as Stone hurried to the trailer. It had long strips of vinyl siding dangling off and the front steps were blackened railroad ties nailed together. Stone went from the bottom to the top step in one leap as the screams picked up.

  The door was locked. He pounded on it.

  “Hello, what’s going on? Do you need help?” He suddenly wondered if the frantic calls were coming from a TV set turned up far too loud.

  A moment later the door was thrown open and an old man stood there, his body trembling as though he was in the throes of a Parkinson’s meltdown.

  “What’s going on?” Stone exclaimed.

  The next moment Stone was knocked aside as a young man burst past his trailer mate and sprang into the air, landing hard on the ground. Stone recovered his balance and stared after him.

  Aside from the fellow’s obvious agitation, he was remarkable for having no clothes on. He stopped next to one old wreck in the yard, moaned and fell to the ground, writhing in the dirt like he was being Tasered.

  The old man grabbed Stone’s arm.

  “Help him, please!”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He’s got the DTs. Coming off the pills or something. Went crazy. Ripped off his clothes. Tearing up the place.”

  Stone raced to the fallen man’s side. His breathing was shallow, his eyes unfocused. His skin was cold and clammy.

  Stone yelled over his shoulder, “Call the ambulance.”

  “Ain’t none up here.”

  “Where’s the hospital?”

  “Hour drive.”

  “Is there a doctor around?” Stone was holding on to the stricken man, trying to calm him.

  “Doc Warner’s place is on the other side of town.”

  “You have a car?”

  “Truck right there.” The old man pointed to a battered old Dodge. “Is he going to be okay?”

  “I don’t know. Who are you?”

  “His grandpa. Come to check on him. Then this happened.”

  “Can you help me get him in the truck?”

  Together they lifted the young man into the cab and Stone covered him with a blanket. The old man was still shaking so badly he couldn’t drive. Stone took the wheel and followed his directions to the doctor’s place.

  “What’s your grandson’s name?”

  “Willie Coombs. I’m Bob Coombs.”

  “Where are his parents?”

  “My son—his daddy—is dead. His momma ain’t much good.”

  Stone glanced at Willie. He’d stopped thrashing and screaming and was now lying quite still. Stone again checked his pulse, slammed on the brakes and grabbed a flashlight off the dash to look at his pupils. They were pinpoints.

  “Shit!”

  “What is it?”

  “He’s not in withdrawal. He overdosed. And his heart’s stopped.”

  Stone pulled Willie out of the cab, set him on the ground and started doing CPR. He checked his pulse and then looked desperately around while he continued to push down on the man’s chest. There was nothing but woods here, not even the wink of a house light in the distance.

  “Come on, Willie. Come on! Don’t die on me. Breathe.”

  Stone checked his pulse.

  Bob Coombs looked at him. “Is he okay?”

  “No, he’s not. He’s technically dead. And we’ve got maybe sixty seconds before there’s brain damage.”

  Stone ran to the truck and threw open the hood. The battery didn’t throw off the juice he would need, but something else in the engine did. He ran to the cargo bed and started tossing items around there. His hands seized around a set of battery cables, masking tape and a nail.

  He turned to see Bob staring at him anxiously. “Whatcha gonna do with that stuff?”

  “I’m trying to get his heart restarted.”

  Stone ripped out a spark plug wire leading from the distributor cap and jammed the nail in the end of it, securing it there with the tape. He attached the positive end of the battery cables to the nail while he grounded the negative clamp onto a metal part of the engine. He knelt next to Willie and placed the other ends of the battery cables onto his right and left fingers respectively.

  He called out, “Bob, fire the truck up!”

  Bob looked at the cables leading from the truck to his grandson. “You gonna fry him!”

  “We’re out of time, Bob. This is our only shot. Just do it! Now! Or he’s dead.”

  Bob jumped in the truck.

  Stone looked down at Willie, reached over and made sure the connections were solid. The young man was already turning blue. They only had seconds left.

  Stone had done this once in Nam with a fellow soldier who’d gone into cardiac arrest when a massive round had sheared a chunk of his torso off. Stone had gotten his heart going again, but the man had bled to death on the way to the field hospital.

  The truck started.

  “Rev the engine,” Stone screamed out.

  Bob smashed the gas to the floor and the engine roared.

  Even though he wasn’t touching Willie, Stone could feel the surge of current. The effect on the young man was far more intense.

  His legs and arms came off the ground and Willie sucked in an enormous breath. He sat up and then fell back, choking and coughing.

  “Cut the engine,” Stone yelled and Bob instantly did so. The only sound now was a miraculous one. A dead man was breathing.

  Stone ripped the cables off and checked the pulse. Pretty strong and steady.

  Bob and he lifted Willie into the truck. Stone put the spark plug wire minus the nail back in place, threw the battery cables in the back, and drove off. They made it to the doctor’s home office five minutes later and carried him inside. Warner worked on Willie after Stone told him what he’d done. Warner was not Stone’s image of a rustic country doctor. He was barely forty, trim, with a clean-shaven face and wide, intelligent-looking eyes behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. He gave Willie an injection and made a phone call.

  He said, “That injection should stabilize him for now. But can you get him to the hospital quick as you can? I called ahead and I’ll follow in my car.”

  Stone nodded. “But if his heart stops again on the way? I don’t want to rely on the truck’s juice again.”

  Warner opened a cabinet and pulled out a portable defibrillator. “If it happens again, pull off the road and we’ll use this.”

  As they were loading Willie back in the truck the doctor said, “You saved his life, you know.”

  Bob placed a hand on Stone’s shoulder. “I can’t thank you enough, Mr. . . . ?”

  “Just call me Ben. And he’s not out of the woods yet. Let’s go.”

  They arrived at the hospital less than an hour later. Stone went in with them, but after Willie was checked in, he came back outside and leaned against the truck, sucking in the crisp, cool mountain air.

  The hospital was big. It probably had to be since it was probably the only one for a few hundred square miles.

  He walked around the parking lot trying to push back the adrenaline rush. He spotted the squat one-story cinderblock building next to the hospital and walked in that direction.

  When he saw the sign on the building Stone realized this was the methadone clinic, where the truck parade came every morning. As he watched he noted the armed security guard patrolling in front of the building. When the man saw Stone standing there, Stone smiled and waved. The man neither smiled nor waved back. Instead he put a hand on his holstered gun. Stone turned and walked back to the hospital. He assumed the presence of the guard meant that the clinic w
as a target for either drug dealers or druggies. Stone knew that liquid methadone on its own couldn’t deliver a high, that’s why it was used to wean addicts off drugs. But when combined with other drugs, like anti-anxiety pills, it could produce an often deadly cocktail.

  About an hour later Bob came back out and explained that Willie was out of danger and was being admitted.

  “So what did they find out?” Stone asked.

  “They said he overdosed on something.”

  “That I knew. You have any idea what?”

  “The emergency room doctor asked that too. I saw a crack pipe in Willie’s hand when I came in the trailer. He tried to hide it from me, but I still saw it.”

  Stone shook his head. “Crack’s a stimulant. His eyes would’ve been dilated, not pinpoints. He overdosed, but on a depressant, not a stimulant.”

  “Well, I guess I could be wrong about what he took,” Bob said hesitantly.

  Stone looked at him curiously but the old man didn’t seem inclined to add anything to what he’d already said. Stone drove Bob back to Willie’s trailer where he’d left his truck. He tried to pay Stone for his help but Stone refused.

  Bob dropped an exhausted Stone off at the rooming house. As Stone slowly walked up the stairs he figured that despite the massive manhunt after him he would have to get out of Divine pretty soon, just to get some rest.

  CHAPTER 29

  BY THE NEXT MORNING nearly everyone in Divine had heard of Stone’s heroics. Apparently Bob Coombs had told everyone he encountered of the stunning rescue, and the story had quickly spread.

  “Cool a hand as I ever seen,” he repeated over and over, referring to Stone.

  “Heard he was in Nam,” another man said. “Good under pressure.”

  “A true American hero,” said one lady. She added in a lower tone while talking with a girlfriend of hers, “Too bad it was wasted on Willie Coombs.”

  Sheriff Tyree came to Stone’s room that morning to congratulate and thank him. “Willie’s a good young man except for the pills.”

  “He’s a coal miner, right?” said Stone.

  “How’d you know?”

  “Scars and banged-up hands. And he had coal dust embedded in his skin. Does his mother know?”

  “Shirley? Doubt she’d care.”

  Stone chose not to ask about that. “Bob Coombs said his son, Willie’s father, was dead.”

  “Yep. Hunting accident. Didn’t have his orange slicker on and somebody thought he was a deer. Abby told me to tell you she’s got some more work you can do. Same pay scale.”

  “I’ll head over there right now.” After the news on the radio last night he was even more uncomfortable being around the lawman.

  When Stone arrived at Rita’s Restaurant Abby had breakfast waiting for him. When he walked in customers smiled and waved at him. A few miners came over and clapped him on the back, thanking him for helping their fellow miner.

  “How’s it feel to be a hero?” Abby asked, pouring him a cup of coffee.

  “I’m just glad he’s okay. But he’s got a long road ahead of him. Apparently he has a drug problem.”

  “Most miners do. Willie Coombs is actually a good young man. He and Danny played ball in high school together. Best of friends but then they had a falling-out.”

  “Over what?”

  “When we were all poor, that was one thing. Then when we got the settlement money Willie seemed to think Danny owed him. We gave him some money, sure, but most of it went up his nose so we stopped.”

  A tall, thin man came over to them. He was the only man in the place dressed in a suit and tie. His gray hair was neatly parted and fashionably cut. His eyes were gray and alert and his face was deeply lined, carrying the gravitas one usually found in scholars.

  Abby said, “Ben, this is Charlie Trimble. He runs the Divine Eagle, the local newspaper.”

  It was all Stone could do not to leap up and run out of the place.

  A smiling Trimble said, “I would love to interview you about your experience with Willie, Ben.Not only because it’s an amazing story but it shows why we need to reinstate the volunteer rescue squad program here.”

  Abby looked at Stone. “Is that okay?”

  Stone said slowly, “What I did wasn’t all that special. And I’m not looking to get any publicity just because I helped someone.”

  Trimble smiled more broadly. “And modest too. That will work well in the story angle. It’s just a few questions, Ben. We can even do it here or back at my office.”

  Stone stood. “Abby, if you have some more work for me to do that would be great.” He looked at Trimble. “I’m sorry, Mr. Trimble. I’m sure Bob would love to talk to you. He helped as much as I did. Maybe more.”

  Trimble looked put off. “Just a couple of questions?”

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  Abby gave him a list of jobs to do while Trimble sat at his table, drinking a cup of coffee and staring at Stone. And Stone could feel the burn of the man’s gaze.

  Stone worked half the day at the restaurant and the other half at Abby’s home. And every minute he was desperately trying to think of some way out. If he left Divine he would probably be caught. If he stayed in Divine someone might put two and two together and one morning the feds would rumble into town. For one of the few times in his life, Stone did not know what to do.

  On his way back to his rooming house that evening he saw Bob Coombs standing in front of it. The old man looked nervous, rocking back and forth on his heels, hands shoved in his pockets as he studied the pavement. Stone crossed the street.

  “Hey, Bob, is Willie okay?”

  Bob looked nervously around. “Can we talk somewhere private?”

  Stone led him up to his room. “What’s up?”

  “Talked to Willie this morning and the docs over at the hospital and some things don’t make sense.”

  “Like what?”

  “It was sort of like you said. Drugs Willie said he took don’t add up to what happened to him.”

  “Was it crack?”

  “That’s what Willie said he was on.”

  “He might have made a mistake.”

  Bob was shaking his head. “I know some folks think Willie’s nothing but a pillhead, but he’s not. He’s a smart boy but killing himself in the mines. Started there right out of high school and looks like he’s been there thirty years, just the way it is. But if he said it was crack, it was crack, you can count on it.”

  Stone studied him, not really sure why the man was telling him this. “Well, if you think something’s wrong, Bob, you should let Sheriff Tyree know.”

  “I was wondering, sort of, if you could maybe step in.”

  “Me? Step in what exactly?” Stone said cautiously.

  “You saved Willie’s life. Easy to see you been around, know stuff. I was just hoping maybe you could talk to Willie, get his side of things and see what you can find out.”

  “I’m not a PI.”

  “Lost my son, see. Willie’s the only thing I got left. Can’t lose him too. Well, that’s all I got to say. If you go see Willie, I thank you. And if you don’t I still thank you for all you done.”

  “Has that fellow Trimble from the paper been by to see you?”

  “Yep. Had some questions. Told him what you did. He said he’s writing up the story. Said you wouldn’t talk to him.”