“Well?”
Sonny had a thought. He was just about to walk back to his workbench when the door squeaked and began its noisy slide across the track. An old friend stepped into the workshop and pulled the door behind him.
“Hey, Sonny. Got a minute?”
“Jim, my friend, of course, of course. Come in.” Sonny dropped the wrench on the workbench. “Your timing’s perfect. I was just about to lose my temper with this old thing.”
Jim chuckled and sauntered slowly around the shop, picking up tools, glancing at them, setting them back down. He wore a pair of off-white Columbia shorts, a yellow fleece pullover, and a faded coral-colored ball cap bearing the insignia of a local sailing club. A pair of expensive looking tinted sunglasses hung around his neck and, except for a pair of salt-encrusted Top-Sider shoes and a bandaged knee, he looked like he could have just stepped from the set of an L.L. Bean photo shoot. But there was something more—Sonny detected an unusual heaviness around his friend’s eyes. Deep concern seemed to etch the tanned furrows of his brow.
“Son, are you all right?”
“I need your advice, Sonny.”
“My word,” Sonny said, suddenly noticing a row of stitches on the side of Jim’s face. “What happened to your cheek?”
“It’s a long story.”
Sonny grabbed a towel and wiped the grease from his hands. He slid Jim a stool. “If there’s one thing I have, son, it’s time. Sit down. Talk to me.”
“I’m in trouble, Sonny.” Jim pulled the newspaper from his back pocket and held it out. “Have you seen this?”
“Is this today’s?” Sonny took the paper.
“Take a look at the local news.”
Sonny unfolded the paper and read the headline:
LOCAL PARAMEDIC KILLED ON CORE STREET
Sonny felt his eyes widen as he read the caption and found the name of the victim. He couldn’t believe what he was reading. He looked at Jim, suddenly realizing the reason for the sadness in his young friend’s eyes.
“Is this right? Is this your friend, Sid?”
Jim nodded. “Take a look at the picture.”
Sonny glanced at the black-and-white photograph at the bottom of the page, a grainy 5x7 of Jim lying on the ground, his face frozen in a mad scream, his arms and legs pinned to the ground by an army of uniformed cops. Sonny felt a strange heaviness build within in his chest.
“Oh Lord, what happened?”
Jim stood up and started pacing.
“My partner and I were cruising The Terrace. You know we do that sometimes between calls. Helps make the shift go by faster. I heard gunfire and a couple minutes later a call came out for a subject shot. We get those all the time so I figured it was just another call, you know, one gang member kills another one. Big deal, right? But when we got there, we found—” Jim paused and wiped his eyes. “They shot him, Sonny. Five times.”
“Oh, my.”
“I went berserk. I couldn’t help it. Got in the truck and went after them. I had to do something.”
“I see you found them.”
Jim tapped the picture with his finger. “This guy came at me with a knife. He shouldn’t have done that.”
Jim pulled a switchblade style knife from his pocket, pushed a button on the side of the handle, and a jagged blade swung out and clicked into place. Sonny backed away. The sight of the weapon gave him a chill.
“I took this from him. Had it at his throat when the cops got there. Sonny, man, I almost killed the guy.” Jim hung his head. “I don’t know, I don’t know what I’m doing any more. All this anger and violence in me, I can’t control it.”
“You’re drinking again too, aren’t you?” Jim didn’t respond, but Sonny could tell by the lost expression on his face that it was true. “After all you’ve been through, son?” Sonny thought back to a conversation they’d had the year before, after Jim’s last bout with depression, when Xanax pills and alcohol had him practically under the table. Comes with the territory, Jim had said. I can’t help it, Sonny. It’s just who I am. But you can help it, Sonny had told him. You have to. And Jim had listened, and he had made some progress since then, but Sonny could see the danger signs again—the anger, the depression, and the constant intense desire for justice at any cost. Jim would soon be spiraling out of control, and it would prove to be the end of him one way or the other if he couldn’t pull himself together. “What’s it going to take?” he said. “Son, you’ve got to stop.”
“I know, Sonny, I know. Please don’t lecture me again. Not today.”
Sonny emitted a heavy sigh. “Okay then, what about the police? You being charged with anything?”
“You remember my friend, Rico Rivetti?”
“Big cop? One you call Back Door?”
“Just talked to him. He says the case detective’s thinking of charging me.”
“With what?”
“Aggravated assault.”
“Oh, Lord.” Sonny grabbed a rag and wiped the sweat from his face. “Sid dead? You charged with assault?”
“Sonny, I almost killed the guy.”
Jim walked to the workbench. He picked up a ball peen hammer and looked around the shop as if searching for something to smash.
“I lost complete control of myself. I was so close to doing it.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know.” Jim hesitated and sighed. “I just couldn’t.”
Sonny picked up the rubber mallet and gave the flywheel a few soft taps. “You couldn’t, Jim, because you’re not a murderer.”
“I don’t know what I am anymore.” Jim shook his head, shrugged and then tossed the hammer onto the workbench. “What are you working on there?”
“Oh, just an old outboard that’s probably not worth saving.”
Sonny attached the wrench and gave a tug. The flywheel still held tight. He pointed to the silver drill like tool on the far workbench.
“Would you hand me that impact wrench, please?”
Jim grabbed the tool and brought it over, pulling along the orange air hose attached to it.
“Jim, that was rage driving you—”
Sonny fit the socket over the center bolt of the flywheel puller and pushed down on the impact wrench with all his might. He squeezed the trigger and the wrench began to hammer, striking repeatedly against the head of the bolt. He held it there for ten seconds but nothing happened. He tried again and the air compressor in the back of the shop kicked on.
“Pure and simple rage brought on, of course, by whatever alcohol you happened to have in your system at the time.” Sonny put the wrench down, sprayed a copious amount of WD-40 over the shaft and then waited for it to sink in. After once again striking the flywheel with the mallet, he walked over to the tool bench and grabbed a butane torch and lighter. “You can be hardheaded and stupid at times, but, son, you are not a murderer.”
Sonny cracked the valve on the butane bottle and struck a spark before the brass nozzle. The torch ignited. He adjusted the valve to reduce the flame to a blue point, and then brought it over the flywheel, providing just enough heat around the threads to reduce the rust to an oily slush and expand the tenacious steel.
“Now.” Sonny killed the flame and set the torch down. “Let’s see if it worked.”
He started off gently, slowly increasing the pressure until the muscles in his arms began to ache. Finally, he gave one great heave and the bolt moved.
“I think you got it.”
“Almost. Spray some more of that WD-40 on it.”
Jim did as ordered and sprayed the oil on the shaft. Sonny tapped the flywheel excitedly, and then went back to the wrench. This time the flywheel let go and started freely up the shaft. Sonny set it down on the workbench and picked up a rag to wipe his hands. He figured God was trying to tell Jim something. God only knows how long he had been praying for him, because the last time they had discussed his religious beliefs Jim had wanted nothing to do with it. He was hard. An unmovable stone.
>
“I wish he’d just shout it, Sonny.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re always saying that God’s trying to tell me something. I wish he’d just shout it.”
“Well maybe he is and you’re not listening.”
Jim picked up the rubber mallet and whacked it against his palm. “Well, he’s got my attention this time.”
“That’s the first step.” Sonny scratched his chin. “Jim, you should probably take a couple of days off, son. Stay out here on the island. Cool off. All that anger you seem to be carrying around, it’s not going to solve anything.”
“I can’t just sit around here. I’ve got to get out of here. I’m thinking of sailing to Lookout, want to come along?”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Sonny, we’re old friends, right? Can I be honest? It’s been a long time. Annie and little Jack aren’t coming back. You’ve got to let them go.”
Sonny felt himself cringe. Jim was right, it had been over ten years since his wife and son had drowned, but he could still see their faces, and he could hear their cries for help as they slipped beneath the waves behind the sinking sailboat. Jim’s words cut him hard, deep, to the soul. If only I could have reached them, God, if only I could have gotten there in time. Sonny went back to that night in his mind, to the dark black water in the middle of the Beaufort inlet. The brutally stiff current. The relentless waves and wind. And his own foolishness at ever believing he could handle the sailboat by himself. He could feel the wave hit the hull, and the roll of the boat as it flipped, and the agonizing horror he had felt as he watched his wife and son struggle and then succumb and slip beneath the waves. He hated the ocean! Everything about it. Its power, its allure, its ever changing motion, but most of all its cruelty, that it would dare to swallow a human life and conceal it for all eternity. They never did find his family, and Sonny knew he could never forgive himself. Or the sea. He had given his life to the sea, and in return, the sea had taken all he had.
“I’ll never go through that inlet again. Never.”
“Sonny, I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to—”
“You be careful out there today, according to my gauges it’s blowing over thirty. That tropical depression is moving our way.”
Jim nodded, patted the motor housing, and started toward the door. “Good luck with the outboard.”
“Jim—” Sonny reached out and took him by the arm. “Keep your chin up, son. You’re young. You have your whole life ahead of you. Things could always be worse. Much worse.”
Sonny saw Jim out, pulled the old rusty door shut behind him, and then dropped to his knees in the middle of the shop and prayed. Then he stood back up, rolled up his sleeves, and started back into what he knew would be the toughest part of the job.
Chapter 8
“...nine, ten, eleven…right. One more. C’mon, sir, push it!”
Rico Rivetti lowered the fully loaded barbell to his sternum and pushed. His pectoral muscles felt as if they would rip from their joints. He looked up through squinting eyes at the tall blond man standing above and behind his head. Corporal Lance Albright’s fingers just barely touched the bar.
“C’mon, you bugger. Push!”
“I am pushing!”
Rico felt his upper body begin to shudder. Beads of sweat burst out across his face. He pushed the barbell two-thirds of the way up before his arms started to shake and any semblance of forward motion stopped.
“That’s all I got,” he managed to say, his voice quivering. “Get…it…Lance.”
Rico felt the weight diminish considerably as Albright grabbed the bar and began to lift. The last six inches were easy. He pushed the weights to the top of the bench rack, dropped the bar into the cradle, and then dropped his arms, barely able to move. After a minute of heavy breathing, he sat up and grabbed a towel.
“I’m losing it.”
“Three sets of three-fifty, and you think you’re losing it?” Albright laughed out loud. “Sir, I could take steroids every day for a year and not lift that much. What do you eat, raw buffalo meat?”
“Lance, do you think you’ll ever be able to stop calling me sir?”
“No sir.”
“Didn’t think so.”
Buffalo meat or not, there was no doubt in Rico’s mind that Lance Albright was every bit a man, and that if he wanted to, he could outrun his boss, out swim him, out box him, and even out shoot him. He was built like a linebacker—six-three, two hundred pounds—but he had the tight lean physique of a tri-athlete, and Rico had never known a man with greater endurance. He’d seen Albright run for an hour without ever slowing down, swim a mile, then put on his uniform and chase down bad guys like he was out for a walk with the dog. But he followed Rico with the loyalty of a bodyguard. Rico trusted him like a brother.
“Lance,” Rico said, starting toward the locker room. “Need to ask a favor.”
“Name it, sir.”
“I need your help keeping an eye on an old friend. He’s in a lot of danger. Doesn’t even know it. You heard about the paramedic killed over on Core,” Rico said.
“Right. Lad people called the preacher, right?”
“Yeah, well my buddy Jim Stockbridge was the paramedic dispatched to that call. He and the preacher, they were best friends.”
Lance frowned. Rico turned and rotated the combination wheel on his locker.
“He went wild, Lance. Hunted down the Core Street Crew. Busted up three of their members.”
“The Crew? I’ve had few run-ins with those lads. Bad news, the lot of them.”
“Well—” Rico pulled off his shirt and tossed it onto the floor of his locker. “They may be bad, but one of ‘em’s still in the ICU at Regional. Closed head injury. Fractured jaw. Jim really messed him up.”
“It sounds to me like your friend did us all a favor, eh?”
“Yeah? May be, but their leader isn’t exactly the type to play dead. J-Rock’s bound to seek revenge. And Jim’s got another problem too. Sean Murphy has all the evidence he needs to charge him with aggravated assault.”
“Murphy, Murphy…” Lance’s eyes widened. “Oh right. The Irish squaddy with the red hair. You guys are tight, right? Why don’t you have a talk with him?”
“Have. He’s agreed to help me out if he can, but I’m afraid Jim’s gonna blow it. If he steps over the line Sean will throw the book at him.”
“Then maybe you should tell Jim to stay out of East Beach for a while.”
“Yeah? Well I don’t think you understand, Lance. Keeping Jim on a leash is about as easy as keeping a pit bull away from fresh meat.”
Chapter 9
Worse? How, Jim wondered, could things get any worse? He removed the little black box from his pocket and pulled back the hinged lid. The diamond sparkled like a tiny blue fire set in a thin gold band. He imagined it on Valerie’s finger and wondered if she would ever wear it. He suddenly doubted it.
Jim limped to the end of the fuel dock and stepped aboard his boat. Shoal Survivor greeted him with the creak of aged teak. He stepped into the cockpit and turned the ignition key. A puff of heavy black smoke rose from the stern and disappeared on the breeze. He revved the engine a couple of times then climbed atop the cabin roof to remove the mainsail cover. That done he stepped around the deck, freed the dock lines, and quickly returned to the cockpit.
He felt a strange emptiness as he pulled away from the dock, a strong desire just to sail away and never return. He engaged the forward gear and started across the harbor toward the main channel. The helm vibrated softly beneath his hands as the engine began its rhythmic beat. He motored to the end of the jetty and turned hard to port. Core Creek Sound opened up before him like a huge lake. He followed the channel markers to the ICW, careful to avoid the ill-placed crab pots and the ever-shifting shoals made shallower by the outgoing tide, and motored beneath the huge steel structure of the Beaufort high-rise bridge. Sixty-five feet above the water, cars zoomed across the span, th
eir wheels clacking against the concrete connections creating the familiar echo that he had always found rather strange. He waited until he was well clear of the bridge in the middle of the shipping channel before setting the autopilot and leaving the helm. Traffic was light, fear of collision low. He stepped up to the mast and hoisted the huge white canvas fabric of the mainsail, then returned to the cockpit and eased out the jib. With a slight turn to port the sails began to fill and flap. He wrapped the jib sheet around the winch and cranked. The sail tightened nicely, assuming the shape of a big hollow wing.
With both sailed trimmed and the wind on her nose Shoal Survivor heeled over and went to work, cutting through the smaller waves on a spirited course for the open sea. Soon the waves began to rise. Up and down the boat pounded. Saltwater splashed across the decks. The cold spray slapped Jim in the face, washing his skin, stinging his cuts. He threw his head back and howled as Shoal Survivor barreled over the rolling swells. She rose and fell, and smashed and surfed, until finally leveling off at six knots as the boat cleared the inlet and started toward the horizon.
Jim was sailing. He had no idea where he was going and no concern for how long it would take to get there. He engaged the self-steering mechanism and settled back for what he hoped would be a long peaceful journey. Somewhere. Three miles from shore he heard his boat’s name being hailed over the VHF. He recognized the caller’s voice and redirected him to Channel 71. A few seconds later Rico Rivetti’s voice came back.
“Police unit two-twenty-two to Shoal Survivor…Jim, are you there?”
Jim keyed his mike. “No offense, Rico, but this better be good.”
“I’ve been calling your cell phone for the last fifteen minutes, bud…where are you?”
Jim rolled his eyes and re-keyed the mike. “I’m running away.”
Tested by Fire - He sought revenge ... He found forgiveness (Medic 7 Series - Book 1) Page 6