“You must be tired of me by now,” Jim croaked, coughing and trying to laugh.
“Never. You four make my otherwise boring life interesting. I just wanted to come by to see you and to let you know we have a team up there with the county sheriff’s crime scene people. We want to see if it has anything to do with the drug project we’ve been working on in the city. I’ll get back to you as soon as we have anything definitive.”
Morton shook everyone’s hand and left as the doctor pushed the curtains aside and stepped to Jim’s side, looking at the myriad of digital displays. The nurse insisted that everyone but Penny leave to let a tiring Jim rest.
“We’re going to discharge you tomorrow if all the vitals continue to look good.” The neurosurgeon told Jim and Penny.
“Great! A full week in a hospital is too long. I’ve had more fun in here than I can stand,” Jim said with a big smile.
“Well . . . it could have been a month or longer if that piece of sheet metal hadn’t shielded you from taking the full force of that blast. Or, it could have been just a five-minute visit . . . .”
“I hear you, doc.” Jim said, looking at Penny, who was shuddering at the thought.
“I’ll see you in the morning for a final checkup and sign out. By the way, there’s a detective Morton waiting to see you,” he said as he turned to leave.
“Hey, Dale, what’s new?” Jim said as Dale Morton walked up to the bedside.
“Here’s what we’ve got, but it’s not much. The bomb was in the motorcycle’s gas tank. It peeled it open like a banana. The explosion tore the bike into three pieces that scattered in different directions. The front wheel and handle bars were in the trees on one side of the clearing, the engine was still in the same place by the cabin, covered by debris from the cabin wall, and the rear wheel assembly was blown in the opposite direction into the trees just outside the clearing. It was a damn powerful bomb.”
“What set it off? Any ideas or evidence?”
“No evidence. Our best guess is that it was either a pressure sensor or motion detector hidden on the cycle—probably in the seat. There weren’t any of the signs of wireless devices or timers that the bomb squad usually find when those are the trigger mechanisms. You didn’t touch it, did you? If you were close enough to touch or sit on it, you wouldn’t be here.”
“No. I remember that as I was coming up to the back of the cabin where the bike would be, I stumbled a little and fell against that corrugated sheet metal wall that formed one side of the lean-to. It was only a second after that when I think the explosion happened.”
“There were shelves on the inside of that wall. You may have knocked something off a shelf that hit the bike and set off the bomb,” Morton said.
“I guess that stumble saved my life. The sheet metal shielded me from the worst of the blast.”
“Nothing like being clumsy at the right time,” Morton tried to joke.
“So, it was a booby trap waiting for someone to sit on it?”
“Probably.”
“Who? Mack? Do you think it was intended to kill Mack and had been set up before he was shot downtown?” Penny asked.
“Possibly,” Morton replied.
“But why wouldn’t they have come out and disarmed it so no innocent person would get killed?” She asked, but knew the answer as she asked the question. Penny and Jim glanced at each other in horror, both now realizing the truth.
Morton stood silently for a long while, letting it sink into Penny and Jim before saying, “Mack probably wasn’t the target, at least not any longer.”
“Jesus Christ! The murderers; the bastards. Why?” Jim said bitterly.
“It could be Mack was the primary target, and after he was killed, Penny became the secondary target—or both of you became the targets. It would have killed you both.”
“But why? We weren’t trying to do anything to them,” Penny said through clenched teeth.
Morton shrugged his shoulders, “There’s no explaining crazy people. We’re going to get them for you, I promise.”
“Jim, I told you I’d hate myself if my stupid decisions ever got you hurt. And now this happens—right next to your dream home. I’m so, so sorry—”
Jim cut her off, saying, “Penny, it’s ‘our’ dream home. If it wasn’t for what you call a stupid decision, we’d never even have met. I’ll take a little danger to not having you at all. We’ll deal with it, hon.”
She leaned over the bed, no longer needing to dodge an array of tubes, and kissed him lovingly on the mouth. “You keep finding ever more wonderful things to say. I love you, Jim Schmidt.”
Riding back to their La Jolla Colony home from the hospital in Penny’s Mustang, Jim repeated the question Penny had just asked: “Why was I saying, ‘I’m coming, dear. I’m coming,’ when I was first waking up in the ER?”
“It was just like when you were coming out of it in the ER in New Mexico, almost the same words.”
“You may find this hard to believe, but I was in that white space again, on the same gravel road in farm country somewhere, and the same motorcycle was parked crossways on the road, just like in the last dream—if it was a dream. But this time, the bike was there—with no rider. James Dean wasn’t with it.”
“He wasn’t there to tell you to go back this time?”
“No, there was only a leather jacket hanging on the throttle side of the handle bars—and a pair of aviator sunglasses on the seat.”
“Oh my God, Jim. This is getting too strange. It’s like this dream has become your guardian angel.”
“But that may be over, now.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I didn’t stumble over my own feet or trip on something on the ground when I fell against that wall of sheet metal. I lost my balance . . . because I saw him there . . . as I was approaching the cabin.”
“At the cabin?”
“Yes, it was the same thing: a white space, the gravel road with a motorcycle parked sideways across it, and Dean standing beside it. He was giving me that palms-up, pushing sign again, and mouthing ‘Stop’. I was so surprised, I lost my balance and fell against that wall.”
“Jesus! He was there to save you again?”
“I guess. And the fact that the last time I saw the motorcycle—without him—when I was coming around in the hospital, you know . . . just the leather jacket and sunglasses on the bike, makes me think it was a message.”
“What? What do you think was the message?”
“You’re not going to see me again; don’t count on me anymore.”
“A last message . . . from a rebel—without a cause . . . ?” Penny’s voice softened and faded.
“Seems like it. But I think he did have a cause.”
“A cause? What do you think it was?”
“It was about you. It was always about you.”
“Me? What about me?”
“Making sure I’d hold onto you and we’d stay together.”
The End
Robert Gilberg
Acknowledgments
Anne Marie Welsch: my critic, book doctor, consultant, and friend.
Leslie Wolf Branscomb: my copy editor and proof reader.
Alice Chang, for gracing this book with her, and a few of her friends’ presence in this book.
The spirits of James Dean, Wyatt, and Billie.
Van Morrison, for the use of a few of his lines.
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