Good Night Sleep Tight Don't Let the Stalkers Bite (Charlie Bannerman Mysteries)

by Teresa Watson

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “What about Braden?”

  “He’s over here,” the second cop said.

  Moving carefully, we made our way to the kitchen, where the front of the truck rested. “Braden!” I said when I spotted him. Part of the interior living room wall was on top of his legs. I started throwing pieces of it off, but Keaton stopped me.

  “Let us do it, Charlie,” he said, pulling me to my feet. “You’ll just hurt yourself more.”

  I stepped back as he and the two cops, Richard Fox and Harvey Martin, started removing the debris. Cash was leaning against the bed of his truck and I walked over to him. He still had that stupid grin on his face. “Are you proud of yourself, Cash?”

  “Sure, baby.”

  “What were you thinking?”

  “Eye for an eye, baby. You killed Deja in your car, so I was going to kill you with my truck. Poetic justice, don’t you think?”

  I stared at him. “How’s your broken nose, Cash?”

  “It’s fine.”

  I reared back and punched him in the nose. Fresh blood squirted out. He yelled and bent over. I hit him on the side of his face. I hit him a third time before Keaton stepped between us and stopped me. “That’s enough, Charlie!”

  God bless that pain pill, I wasn’t feeling a thing. Oh, I know I will later, but right now, punching Cash felt real good.

  “I didn’t see a thing, did you, Harv?” Officer Fox said.

  “See what?” Officer Martin replied. “I’m busy helping Braden here.”

  I moved back into my ruined kitchen and looked at my brother. They had finished removing the debris, and I could see blood staining his dark blue pants. I opened a drawer, took out some kitchen towels and knelt down beside him, applying pressure to the wound. It caused him to scream. I removed the towels and noticed bone sticking out. “Call 911. Get me a first aid kit from one of your cars.” Martin ran out. “Keaton, get me two pieces of board. Officer Fox, go down the hall to the bathroom and grab two large towels. We need to splint his leg and stop the bleeding.”

  “Charlie, are you ok?” Braden said as I gently pressed down on the wound again.

  “I took a pain pill about an hour before this happened. I’m not feeling anything right now.”

  “What did you do to Cash?”

  “Nothing he didn’t deserve,” I snapped as Martin came back with the first aid kit. I took out some gauze and gave it back to him. “Go put this on Cash’s nose.”

  “Let him bleed,” Martin replied. “I took an extra pair of handcuffs and hooked him to the front porch rail. Good thing it’s metal. He’s not going anywhere.”

  Keaton brought back the boards as Fox came in with the towels. “Hold those boards on either side of his leg,” I instructed. “Rip those towels into long strips, Fox. Good, now hand them here.” I tied two strips together, wrapped them around the boards, repeated the process two more times and made sure they were good and tight. Braden was starting to shiver. “Get me a blanket, Keaton, in the bedroom closet. Hang in there, Braden, you’re doing good.”

  Keaton handed me the blanket and I put it around my brother just as I heard sirens coming down the street. As the paramedics came in, I noticed it was the same two who had treated me the other day. The female paramedic stopped to check Cash while the male paramedic came into the kitchen. “Sorry for the mess,” I said when he came in.

  “You seem to attract messes, ma’am,” he said. “Hi Braden, how you doing?”

  “I’ve had better days, dude.”

  “I’ll bet. Let’s take a look.” I moved my hands so he could see. “Compound fracture with a protruding wound. Who made the splint?”

  “I did.”

  “Keep the pressure on it. Obviously we can’t get the gurney in here, so I need you guys to help me lift him and carry him out there.” He turned to Braden. “I wish I could say this wasn’t going to hurt when we move you, but it is. Your friend here…”

  “I’m his sister.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t know. Your sister here did a good job with this splint, and while it is rather crude, I don’t want to remove it. You two get on either side of him, I’ll support his back. Sir,” he said to Keaton, “if you could support his leg with your arm and keep the pressure on there, we can get him out of here. On three, one, two, three!”

  I stepped back as they lifted him up and shuffled our way to the open area where my front window used to be. Braden was in obvious pain, but he bit his lip and didn’t say anything. Stepping over the open space wasn’t easy and it took a couple of minutes, but they finally placed him on the stretcher. “I’ll take over,” the paramedic said, pulling a package of fresh gauze out of his pocket and ripping it open. Placing it on the wound, he taped it down. “I could have done this inside, but I thought it was more important to get him out of the dust that is hanging in the air. How are you?”

  “I’m ok.”

  “Let me take a look anyway.” He noticed my bruised wrist and knuckles. “This didn’t happen in the explosion, did it?”

  “No, these are separate injuries from that.”

  “You want to tell me about it?”

  The female paramedic interrupted before I could say anything. “Ok, which one of you cops punched this man?”

  I turned to look at her. “None of them. I did it.”

  She looked at me, eyes wide. “You did? Do you realize he already had a broken nose and you broke it again?”

  “I broke it the first time, too.”

  “Damn, girl. Remind me to never pick a fight with you,” she grinned. “Is that his truck in your house? Or is that your truck in his house?”

  “The first one.”

  “Idiot,” she muttered. She cleaned the cut on Cash’s head, put some butterfly strips on it, ripped the old tape off his broken nose, making him scream, put some new tape on there and stuffed some tissue up his nose to stop the bleeding. “There, good as new. You can have him.”

  Martin yanked him to his feet and put him in the back of his patrol car as the paramedics loaded Braden into the ambulance. “Now, let me look at that wrist,” the female paramedic said as she gently took my left arm. “Did he do this?” she said, jerking her head toward the patrol car. I nodded. She felt around the bones. “Nothing broken, just a sprain.” She took an ACE bandage out of her kit and wrapped my wrist. She looked at the knuckles on my right hand. “Just put some ice on those, you’ll be fine. Hasn’t been your week, has it? First your car, now your house.”

  “I’ve had better,” I admitted. “Please tell Braden we’ll meet him at the hospital.”

  “I will,” she assured me, as she climbed in and slammed the doors shut. They took off down the street. It seemed like they had been there a long time, but it had only been about ten minutes.

  I turned around and looked at my house. The big gaping hole yawned at me. Fox was talking on his cell phone, Keaton was sitting on the porch steps, talking on his phone, and Martin was glaring at Cash through the side passenger window.

  “I called your father,” Keaton said as he hung up the phone. “They are on their way to the hospital right now. I also called Braylen; he said Zayne will watch Finley while he and Sloane go to the hospital. Your dad asked if you were ok, and I assured him you were.” He pointed to the bandage. “What did she say about that?”

  “Just a sprain. She told me to put ice on my knuckles to keep the swelling down.”

  “Do you still want to leave?”

  I looked at the truck sitting in my living room. “What do you think the answer to that is?”

  “I’m pretty sure it is yes, but I do hate people who assume.”

  “We definitely need to go,” I agreed. “I don’t think Cash will be in jail that long. I don’t know what to do about this mess.”

  “I called my foreman, Chet Rogers. He’s coming out here with a crew in the morning to assess the damage and get to work repairing it. He will take care of the paperwork for the building permits
, so you don’t worry about that. Bernie said he is going to leave Fox here to guard the place tonight, and he’ll have someone here every shift until the hole is closed up.”

  “You’ve been busy,” I said. “When did you talk to Bernie?”

  Bernie himself stepped out of the gaping hole. “I came in through the back way. It was a little crowded in the front.”

  “Just a little.”

  “How are you?”

  “Oh, I’ve had better days. You?”

  “It’s been an interesting couple of days. Thanks for livening things up. It was getting dull at the office.”

  “So glad I could help.” I looked over at the patrol car where Cash sat. “What is going to happen to him?”

  “Assault of a police officer with a deadly weapon, destruction of personal property, two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, DUI.”

  “Will he get bail?”

  “Probably. His mother will bail him out, I’m sure.” He looked down at my bruised knuckles. “Did you really break his nose again?”

  “I refuse to answer on the grounds I may incriminate myself.”

  “You were defending yourself inside your own home,” Bernie laughed. “I don’t plan to charge you.”

  Considering the fact that Cash had his hands cuffed behind his back when I broke his nose, I’m pretty sure you couldn’t call it self-defense. However, I wasn’t about to argue with the chief of police. “If you say so, Bernie, then yeah, I broke his nose again.”

  He shook his head and chuckled. “He had it coming, but you didn’t hear me say that. Do you still plan to get the heck out of Dodge?”

  “Yes, but I would like to stop at the hospital and check on Braden first.”

  “I’ll make sure we take our time booking Cash. He won’t be able to see the judge until tomorrow morning anyway. That will give you plenty of time to get out of here.”

  I thanked him, looked at my house one more time, and followed Keaton out to the Ford Edge. At that moment, my life felt the way my house looked: a complete shambles.

  Chapter 19

  Keaton dropped me off at the emergency room doors and went to park the car. I walked in to find my parents, Sydney, Braylen and his wife Sloane in the waiting room. My mother rushed over and hugged me. “Are you ok?”

  “I’m fine, Mom, I promise.” She looked at my bandaged wrist and bruised knuckles. Thankfully, she is used to me looking like a walking ad for Johnson & Johnson, so she didn’t say anything. “How is Braden?”

  “The doctors are still checking him out. One of the paramedics stopped by and said that your quick thinking probably saved his leg. How bad is it?”

  “The interior living room wall fell on him in the kitchen. They told me it was a compound fracture. There was a piece of bone sticking out and he was bleeding badly when they dug him out. I didn’t do anything special.”

  “Is that how you got the bruised knuckles?” Mother asked. “From digging Braden out?”

  “Um, no. I might have hit something.”

  “She didn’t hit something,” Keaton said from behind me. “She hit someone.”

  “Charlotte!”

  “What?”

  “I know I raised you better than that,” my father said. “Turn the other cheek, remember?”

  “The first cheek is still sore from my exploding car. The second cheek hurts from an idiot trying to turn my house into a drive-thru restaurant,” I said. “While you did raise me better than that, I punched someone anyway because he almost killed three people in my house!”

  Keaton put a hand on my back as my parents stared at me. “I just came to find out how Braden was. I would appreciate it if someone would keep me posted.”

  “You aren’t staying?” Sydney said.

  “I have an out-of-town assignment I have to get to. I’ve tried to reschedule it, but I can’t. Keaton is going to drive me since I am still taking pain meds for the broken ribs.”

  One of the E.R. doctors came out at that moment to give us an update. “He’s doing ok. We’re going to schedule him for surgery to insert a rod and some screws in his leg. He’ll have to stay off his feet for a while, but with some physical therapy, he’ll be just fine.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Dad said, shaking his hand. “Can we go see him?”

  “He was asking for Charlie. Is that his brother?”

  “That’s me,” I said. “Short for Charlotte. I’m his sister.”

  “I’ll take her back there, and once she’s done, the rest of you can go back to see him for a few minutes.”

  I followed the doctor down the same hallway I had just been in myself two days earlier. Was it really two days? It seemed longer than that to me. Despite the pain pill, my muscles ached now that the adrenaline was gone.

  “You look pale,” Braden said as I entered his room.

  “So do you.”

  “I wanted to make sure you were ok.”

  “I’m fine, just tired and sore. The paramedics checked me out at the house before they brought you in.”

  “What about Cash?”

  “He is on his way to jail.”

  “Are you going to tell me what you did to him?”

  I grinned sheepishly. “I might have broken his nose again. And I might have left some bruises on his face.”

  He shook his head. “Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. You are going to get in big trouble for that.”

  “With who? Mother or Bernie?”

  “My guess would be Mom. I’m sure Bernie let you off the hook.”

  “He did, and I am. Actually, Mom and Dad are both mad at me right now. I kind of told them off a few minutes ago. Dad gave me the “turn the other cheek” line.”

  “Bad timing on his part, but he meant well.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll talk to them while you are gone. You are still going, aren’t you?”

  I nodded. “I gave them the assignment story and said that Keaton was driving me. I better go. Mother is dying to get back here to make sure you are ok. Sydney is waiting out there, too.” I leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.

  He grabbed my sore hand. “Be careful, Charlie. Cash isn’t going to stop until…”

  “I know,” I said. “I know.”

  I left his room and went back down the hall. Braden was right: Cash wasn’t going to stop until I was dead. A heartwarming thought, isn’t it?

  Chapter 20

  My parents gave me a hug before rushing back to see Braden, leaving the rest of us in the waiting room. I sunk into a chair, leaned back and closed my eyes. “Is he ok, Charlie?” Sydney said, sitting in the chair on my left.

  “He’s feeling no pain,” I replied. “They’ve got him juiced up pretty good. I told him you were out here waiting to see him. He looked happy about that.”

  Keaton brought a cup of coffee to Sydney and handed me a cold Dr Pepper. “Are you going to tell me what happened to your wrist and hand?” she said, taking a drink of her coffee.

  “Cash was involved in both incidents. He did the wrist, I did the knuckles.”

  “How do the injuries to your knuckles involve Cash?”

  “Because she hit him three times while he was standing in her ruined living room,” Keaton answered.

  “You did what? Are you insane?”

  “He was handcuffed,” I said in my defense.

  “Oh great, so Bernie is going to charge you with assault.”

  “He’s not going to charge me with assault. I already talked to him.”

  “She broke Cash’s nose again.”

  Sydney shook her head. “Unbelievable. I thought Dr. Lance told you no physical activities.”

  “He did.”

  “I’m pretty sure that included fighting, Charlie.”

  “Oops.”

  Keaton looked at his watch. “It’s almost 11 p.m., Charlie. We should get going.”

  I turned to Sydney. “Listen to me. There is more going on here than you know about right
now. You’re just going to have to trust me, ok? Braden will explain everything to you when he can. If anybody asks, I am out of town on a writing assignment.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Just trust me, Syd, please. Don’t volunteer the information unless someone directly asks you. Whatever Braden tells you stays between the two of you. No one else can know.” I gave her a hug and stood up. “I’ll be back in a few days.”

  I hated leaving her without explaining everything to her. Sydney was my best friend. But in all honesty, I was too tired to deal with all the questions she would ask me.

  We made it out the door before I stumbled. Keaton grabbed me before I fell. “What’s wrong?”

  “I just don’t have any energy right now. I used it all at the house.”

  He led me to a bench. “Sit right here. I’ll go get the car.”

  I wasn’t about to argue. The cool night air felt good to me. I wasn’t sure the pain pill was working anymore because I hurt so much. I couldn’t lean over to put my head in my hands; my back was throbbing, my muscles ached and I just wanted to crawl into my bed and sleep for two days. Keaton pulled up in front of me, but I couldn’t even stand up to get in the car. He came around, opened the passenger’s door, picked me up and placed me in the seat. Securing the seat belt around me, he closed the door and got in. I sank into the seat and closed my eyes.

  I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, Keaton had opened my door and was standing next to me. “Charlie, put your arms around me.”

  “Where are we?” I said as he picked me up.

  “My condo.”

  “We can’t stay here! Cash will find us!”

  “We can’t go on, either. You’re in no shape to make a four-hour drive. He will be looking for my Mustang, not this Ford Edge,” he replied. He carried me up a flight of stairs, into his condo and placed me down on the couch. He brought in our bags and closed the door. “I’m going to turn down the bed and find some towels for you. I’ll be right back. Just lay there.”

  Too tired to argue, I closed my eyes again and was almost asleep when there was a sharp knock on the front door. Adrenaline kicked in again, and I stumbled off the couch, frantically looking for a place to hide as Keaton came running in. “Charlie, it’s ok. Calm down.” He opened the front door and let in Dr. Lance. “I asked him to make a house call. I wanted to make sure you were alright.”