(Un) Sound Mind

by Richard Amico

  Sam lay on his belly, one hand pressed against his wound and the other holding his gun braced on the fallen log. He lowered his head to wipe the perspiration from his forehead onto his sleeve. A rustle of leaves and shaking branches to his right drew his fire. Sam fired a single round. He had lost count of the number of shots he had fired. His only chance was to conserve his ammunition and hope his assailant ran out first. A puff of dust flying into the air and a loud pop from his antagonist’s gun made Sam roll to the right and fire. The slide on Sam’s Sig Sauer P226 flew back as it ejected the empty casing but stayed back in a locked position as smoke rose from the empty chamber. He was out of ammo.

  Sam pressed the magazine catch with his thumb to release the empty mag. It popped out of the handle and bounced off the log, disappearing into the weeds and sand. He grunted and removed his left hand from his wound. Sam propped himself on his right elbow as he attempted to fish out a full magazine from his jacket pocket. His fingers were wet and sticky with blood, and he fumbled to orient the mag in his hand, to find the right grip so that he could pull it from his pocket and drive it into his automatic with a single motion, a move he had performed so often that it was second nature to him, like tying his shoes. But he was disoriented. Numbness in his arm betrayed his reflexes. The mag felt alien to him. The shooter was moving around him, trying to find an unprotected angle. Sam shifted his position, now parallel to the log and as close to the ground as possible. Slowly, a hand holding a small silver revolver poked out of a bush not fifteen feet away. The gun leveled on Sam, pointing at his midsection. Sam tried to rip the magazine from his pocket—but it was caught in the fabric and slipped from his grip. There would be no second chance. Sam lowered his head, closed his eyes, and waited for the fatal shot. The hand holding the silver handgun pulled back the hammer and slowly began to squeeze the trigger.

  A shot rang out. Sam’s body jerked at the sound. He waited to feel the pain of the second wound. Maybe you don’t feel the one that kills you. Then he realized that the sound of the weapon was different. It wasn’t the sound of a small caliber handgun; it was a shotgun. There was movement in the bushes. Someone was running fast, just inside the tree line. Then a second shotgun blast exploded a large swath of branches where the movement in the bushes had been. Sam looked in the direction of the second shot. Standing to his left, feet planted firmly in the ground, shotgun braced squarely against her shoulder, stood Ruth, smoke still rising from both barrels of the old twelve-gauge.

  Ruth broke the action on the shotgun, ejected the two casings, loaded two more shells into the breach, and flipped the breach shut with a snap.

  “Did you recognize him?” Sam groaned.

  “No, he was wearing a hood. He was still running after my second shot, but I may have wounded him.” She crouched down next to Sam and helped him prop himself up against the log.

  “Am I going to live?” he asked, opening his jacket to inspect the wound.

  “Wrong kind of doctor,” Ruth said. “Do you think you’re going to live?”

  She leaned him back against the log and ripped open his shirt. She could see that the bullet had entered the latissimus dorsi just below the armpit and exited through the back. She pressed her hand against his ribs and pushed.

  “Hey!” He groaned. “Have a little pity.”

  Ruth smiled. “If I remember my biology well enough, you’re going to be fine. It looks like it just went through muscle and maybe creased a rib. I don’t think it damaged any organs, and the wound is already starting to clot.” She helped him off with his jacket and shirt and tore the shirt into strips. She wadded up two pieces of the shirt and placed them over both the entry and exit wounds, then tied them in place with the long strips.

  “You did that like a pro,” Sam said. “They teach that in shrink school?”

  “No,” Ruth said, “they teach biology and first aid, but not enough to treat gunshot wounds. This is my first time.”

  “Then we’re even,” Sam said. “Over twenty years a cop and this is my first time too.”

  “Now where is that car of yours?” Ruth asked. “We need to find a hospital.”

  ***

  Ruth held the shotgun at the ready, poised to fire at anything that moved as she left the clearing, walking in the direction of the splash of bright light reflected from the car windshield.

  Sam tried to call to her to check her progress and to confirm that she was all right, but each time he attempted to shout, his ribs complained louder than his voice. The ringing in his ears had subsided, and he could now hear the lapping of the water on the lakeshore. The sun warmed him, or maybe it was a fever coming on. Ruth’s pretty good in an emergency. She even remembered to release the safety from the shotgun this time. He laughed, and then grabbed his ribs. Sam was in pain, but not enough pain to outweigh the humiliation he felt. He had been saved by the woman he’d come here to protect. There would be no way he could quash her involvement in this murder case now.

  Seconds later he heard a car engine start. Sam had contended that his car was hopelessly mired in a ditch and only a tow truck could extricate it. He argued that they should leave it, retrieve his belongings, and walk back to the cabin. Ruth’s car, tires now inflated, and Franklin’s car, if the nut hadn’t run off by now, were available to drive to the hospital. Ruth would hear none of it. He was not fit to walk, and she would deliver his car to him.

  “You can’t do it,” Sam had said, holding his side as he spoke.

  “I can’t?” Ruth had countered as she parted the bushes with her shotgun barrel and disappeared into the foliage.

  The roar of the car engine grew louder, along with an uneven amalgam of squeaks, thuds, and the sound of splintering branches and scraping metal.

  The trees and bushes at the edge of the clearing seemed to shake as small branches cracked and leaves erupted into the air. A short silence, and then the car burst through onto the lakefront, coming to rest in the sand. Twigs and pinecones were embedded in its grill, mud painted its side one-third of the way up its doors, and a plastic headlight housing dangled over the bumper by a pair of red and black wires.

  Ruth rushed from the driver’s seat to help Sam traverse the four or five yards to the passenger door. Sam had an opportunity to inspect the damage as he leaned on her shoulder for support. He made a mental note: In future discussions with Ruth, use the word “can’t” sparingly.

  38

  By the time Ruth pulled up to the emergency entrance of Lowell General Hospital, steam was rising from the hood of Sam’s car and the transmission wasn’t totally cooperating with the controls. Sam wasn’t totally cooperating either. He groused about needing a hospital at all.

  “Just give me a few bandages and some pain-killers, and I’ll go back out and catch this guy,” he said to the triage nurse. But Sam wasn’t going anywhere. Local police were called in by the ER doctor, as was required by law with all gunshot wounds, and after X-rays were taken and various tubes attached to his body, Sam was given a sedative to relax him while the doctors decided if surgery would be necessary. Ruth tried to fill out some of the information on the admission papers, but she wasn’t too helpful. She didn’t know his address or any details about his insurance or even if he had a middle name. She was, however, able to direct the hospital administrator to Sam’s office for further information.

  Sheriff Thompson, the overweight, tobacco-chewing, red-faced leader of the Lowell County Police Department was less than sympathetic. “I’m tired of these city cops coming up here to my jurisdiction without a how-do-you-do and shootin’ up my county. We have procedures for investigating in Lowell County, and those procedures start by asking permission,” he said to Ruth, pausing after every few words to spit a black viscous liquid into a paper cup he held just below his chin.

  “Sheriff Thompson,” Ruth said, trying not to gag, “Lieutenant Peirce was on vacation. He was staying with me when he was accosted.” A little white lie might help smooth things over, she thought. “There is a
gunman out there on the loose; don’t you think we should be talking about that?”

  “OK, lady, don’t get your panties all in a bunch, I’ll take care of it. Let’s start with your name. Miss?”

  “It’s Dr. Klein,” Ruth said, biting her lower lip to keep from snapping back. “Dr. Ruth Klein.”

  Ruth spent several torturous minutes with the sheriff, explaining all she knew about the incident, which wasn’t much. She postulated that the gunman could have been a suspect in an investigation Lieutenant Peirce was leading, but she had no evidence to support that assumption. She had the name of a suspect, Dennis Cleaver, but knew little else about him. Sheriff Thompson said he would have someone stop by the lake to look around, but the gunman was probably miles away by now, and this Dennis character was no more than a name on a piece of paper to him.

  “If that boy is from your county, get your lieutenant’s people to find him. I’ll send someone by the hospital later to talk to your boyfriend when the docs are through with him, but there ain’t much else I can do. Most times these things are just hunting accidents. Some good ole boy thought your lieutenant was a deer, and then he hightailed it when he seen what he done. I’ll get back to the lieutenant if I hear anything. You have a good day now.”

  Ruth, for one of the few times in her life, was unable to speak as Sheriff Thompson tipped his hat, smiled, threw his quarter-filled, foul-smelling paper cup in a trash barrel, tucked another chaw between his cheek and gum, and walked down the hall.

  The hospital was quite modern for a small country facility. All the equipment and the furnishings seemed new. The floors were buffed to a glaring shine, and the walls were painted a pleasant shade of green. On the wall in Sam’s private room hung a whiteboard with the name Martha Gonzales, RN scrawled across the center in dry-erase green marker.

  “He’s still asleep,” the nurse said while flicking her finger against the air lock on the IV tube to check to see if the drip was still running. The patient monitor was beeping in a steady rhythm, one beep for every precious beat of Sam’s heart. Ruth looked at the presentation on the screen, trying to remember if a blood oxygen level of ninety-six was normal.

  “He’s doing very well. You’re the woman who brought him in, right?” Martha said.

  “Yes, I’m Ruth—Dr. Ruth Klein.”

  “His vital signs are solid as a rock,” said Martha. “He’s OK, but you look like you could use some help. Have you looked in the mirror lately?” In the excitement, and her concern for Sam’s condition, she hadn’t noticed the damage that her clothing had sustained. There were bloodstains on the front of her blouse where she had wiped her hands after bandaging Sam’s chest, and her elbow was beginning to poke through a small tear in her sleeve, probably sustained while thrashing through the woods from the cabin to the lake. She had a smudge of dirt and blood on her cheek. Martha stepped forward and delicately removed a torn piece of a leaf from Ruth’s hair.

  “You can clean up in the bathroom if you like,” she said, pointing toward an open door near the corner of Sam’s room. “I can get you some scrubs to wear until you get a chance to go home to change, Doctor.”

  “No, I’m not a medical doctor, Martha; I’m a psychologist.”

  “That’s OK, Dr. Klein, we won’t hold that against you. Take the scrubs; you’ll be more comfortable.”

  An hour later Ruth was sitting next to Sam’s hospital bed. The wound had been a clean through-and-through shot. There were no bullet fragments or foreign material to remove, so surgery would not be necessary. Sam had been given a unit of blood and was heavily sedated. He would probably sleep through the night.

  Sam’s cell phone on the nightstand began to vibrate. At first Ruth decided not to answer it, but each vibration brought the phone closer to the end of the table, and by the fourth ring, Ruth snatched it up just before it went over the edge.

  “Hello, Lieutenant Peirce’s phone, Dr. Klein speaking.”

  “Dr. Klein, this is Sergeant Holloway. How’s the boss?”

  “He’s sleeping; the doctors say he is going to be fine. Do you know the details of what happened?”

  “Ah yeah, he called me before they put him out. We put out an APB on Dennis Cleaver, but we really don’t have any information to go on. Anything you know that can help?”

  “Not really, but I know someone who may be able to provide some information. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “Should I come up?” Holloway asked.

  “I don’t think that will be necessary. I’ll make arrangements to stay until he’s released, and I’ll bring him home.”

  “You don’t have to do that, Dr. Klein. I called his…ah…cardiologist, and I think Dr. Goodman is on the way right now. Should be there in a couple of hours.”

  “That’s a surprise, a cardiologist coming all the way up here to see a patient. Lieutenant Peirce seems to have a lot of people who care about him.”

  “Yeah, maybe too many,” Holloway said.

  ***

  It was time to get organized. Ruth retrieved Sam’s overnight bag from the trunk of his car, removed his sweatshirt to wear against the cold, and placed the bag in the closet of Sam’s hospital room. Ruth took his car to a local garage to see how much of it was salvageable. The damage she’d inflicted to the body was superficial. A small hole in the radiator was repairable, and although the transmission was slipping, the mechanic swore that it would get them back to the city as long as they topped off the transmission fluid occasionally.

  Ruth then checked in with Sofia and spoke to Emma. Neither one was happy about her decision to stay a few more days, but she didn’t see an alternative.

  Next on the list was an attempt to find information about Dennis Cleaver. At twenty minutes to five, Ruth walked into the Lowell County Public Library. She sat at a computer terminal and began a search for any information on a Dennis Cleaver born in Binghamton, New York, between 1967 and 1970. That seemed like a wide enough range. She found a website that boasted free birth records from the New York State Archives. She found a birth record for a Dennis Cleaver in Binghamton, New York, although she was required to submit a credit card before beginning the “free trial.” Hmm, they don’t tell you that part when you start to search. It didn’t give much information, but at least she now had his parents’ names.

  Next she decided to search the Binghamton newspapers for the article about the boating accident that Franklin had described in one of their sessions. It had been a lightning strike, she recalled. The accident had occurred when Franklin and Dennis were nineteen years old. Her hope was that the newspaper had printed a picture of the boys, an image that Dennis might still resemble.

  “We’re closing, ma’am,” the male librarian said. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

  “Could I stay online for just a little longer? I ordered a copy of a newspaper article. I’ve already paid for it, but I’m afraid someone in Binghamton is searching the archives and probably won’t send it for at least another half hour. It’s very important.” Ruth realized that she was batting her eyelashes at the young man, hoping to convince him to let her stay. She was so close.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am but I have to lock the doors by five fifteen, and everyone has to be out.”

  “Is there any way I could convince you to let me stay until my article comes in?” Ruth asked. She would go no further than a smile and maybe a cup of coffee with the young man. That was her limit. She didn’t like using feminine wiles to get her way but this was an emergency.

  “Well, I can’t let you stay, but maybe I can leave this computer on and print the file for you in the morning when I open for the day.”

  “And what would you want in return?” she asked with a coy smile.

  “Twenty bucks ought to do it,” he said.

  “Twenty-five, and you deliver it to room two-seventeen at the hospital by nine a.m.”

  “Deal.”

  Time really flies when you’re having fun; it also runs out w
hen you have a limited amount, fun or not. The sun was setting, and a sudden surge of dizziness reminded Ruth that she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Breakfast…Ruth knew she wasn’t much of a cook, but that breakfast had been enough to turn off any man. What could Sam possibly like about her that could make up for her shortcomings? What qualities did she possess that could overcome being so domestically challenged? Maybe after that inedible breakfast, he recognized that I had no redeeming qualities at all and shot himself, she mused. The story of a gunman hiding in the woods was probably just a subterfuge, an attempt on his part to protect my ego.

  39

  The ceiling fan slowly rotated, turned by the breeze blowing through the open window. Franklin pulled the patchwork quilt from the bed and wrapped it around his shoulders. He was shivering. The afternoon sun was low in the sky, and the temperature was dropping. The room heater did little good with the window wide open. He thought he might have had another dream, but he couldn’t remember the details. Someone was running, and there had been loud explosions. It was all fuzzy, and he felt lightheaded.

  Franklin looked at his watch. Five fifteen. How could they have let him sleep all day? Slowly the events of the morning came back to him. He had argued with Dr. Klein and Lieutenant Peirce. They had accused Dennis of being a murderer. He was still angry about that, but there was something else. It was there, in the back of his mind, but he just couldn’t get the image to gel.

  Frustrated, Franklin pulled the quilt tighter and rose to his feet. The sudden force of his rising made his head spin and put too much pressure on his weak leg. It collapsed, sending him staggering forward. He reached for his cane with his right hand, but the quilt restricted his movement and his fingers fumbled on the shaft. Although he finally caught the stick and planted it firmly on the floor, his body was already past the tipping point. He didn’t have the strength to arrest his fall. Falls like this seemed to happen in slow motion, and although he could see what was coming next, he couldn’t lift his arm in time to protect himself. His head struck the corner of the dresser, sending a spray of blood from his eyebrow onto the lampshade. He spun as he collapsed and landed flat on the floor. He felt a sharp ache in the middle of his back; it ached terribly.