John waited for what felt like hours, listening to the exchange of garble on the radio.
The man, who appeared to be well over fifty years old, crouched down beside John, as John stared straight at the man's dusty cowboy boots. "Okay, buddy. Help's on the way. You're lucky there's an ambulance in the area. Bad accident off the road a mile or two ahead. Turns out they didn't need the ambulance. Good thing for you. Not so good for them. Was on my way there when I noticed your vehicle. Just relax."
"Who are you?" John asked, wetting his parched lips.
"Name's Farmer. Brett Farmer." Brett Farmer then reached into the breast pocket of his flannel shirt and pulled out a badge. The guy was a sheriff. Exactly what John needed.
"Listen to me," John breathed. He grabbed the man's sleeve with his bloody left hand, drawing him closer. "There's a helicopter. Stop it! Please!"
"I know. Damn shame. Must have been flying too low and didn't see the mesa. Looks to be no survivors." The man scowled, deep‑set eyes narrowing. "Hey, you're that English feller. Can tell by your accent. You must be that import, the one the wife's been talking about. Sandstone's only celebrity. Mills, ain't it? John Mills?"
"Jillian," John uttered, dragging in a hissing breath. The pain in his shoulder had become a deep explosion of fire, burning down to the core. Nothing, however, matched the loss he felt in his heart. He wanted to die. He wanted to close his eyes for the last time and die.
Brett Farmer shook his beefy head. "Just relax. Don't wanna move or you might puncture a lung, or something. Ambulance should be here any minute. Lucky for you that helicopter went down. Otherwise, it'd take half an hour or more for an ambulance to get here all the way from Show Low. Not so lucky for them, though. Nope. Damn shame about that helicopter. Busy night. Yup. Real busy. You just relax. Everything's gonna be just fine."
John dropped his head on the ground, cheek to the dirt, eyes open, staring numbly at the patch of red on the asphalt from the Camaro's taillights, telling himself that she couldn't be dead. Only a few hours ago, he'd held her in his arms. They'd made love. She wasn't supposed to die. Not this way. Not in a helicopter. Not! In! A! Helicopter!
"Hey, buddy, you all right? Just hold on. Ambulance is coming. Hear that? Just hold on."
CHAPTER 40
"What's the count?" Lyle Guthrie asked as he walked through the smoking debris. He'd never seen such a terrible accident. And being an EMT for over seven years that was saying a lot. Sure, he'd been there to pick up the pieces after that bad wreck two years ago, New Year's Eve. Two dead, that time. One was decapitated. The other had been thrown through the windshield and was found ten feet from the vehicle, and fifteen feet from the vehicle and in a bush, and on the hood of the car. He wouldn't be at all surprised if he returned to Sandstone Corners and found another piece of that guy all dried up and hanging from the branch of a tree. Damn pity too. For that guy had turned out to be the mayor's son. And Mayor Blysdale was still in shock over it.
But this, this was absolutely sickening. They had removed the charred remains of what appeared to be a man from the wreckage and had it all (or most) packaged up in a body-bag for M.E. And then, there was That Other Thing. At first he thought The Thing was a pig. But no. It was too goddamn big to be a pig. Besides, what remained of the body looked all wrong. It had scales, large black scales the size of a fifty-cent piece cut in half. And that huge chunk of charred tail they'd found. Where in the hell did that come from? It looked more like something you'd find attached to a small dinosaur. And of course, there was The Claw. Charred as it was, if he had to make an identification of it, he'd swear it must have belonged to the largest bird on the planet since the age of the dinosaurs. Wild. Freaky. Lyle felt like puking his guts out.
"Hey," he said to Marge Townsend. "I asked about the count."
"Hard to say," Marge shot right back. "One human, dead. We might find more when we widen the search. I don't know what That Thing was. Thank God it's dead."
"Hey, Lyle," Roger Met called out. Roger, who had been just about to hang up his gun and badge when the call came in, knelt down on the ground about thirty yards from where most of the wreckage now lay.
Lyle rushed to where Roger indicated, nearly tripping over a rock, and then shone his flashlight down at what might have once been a quilt. It was rolled up, lightly charred on the outside, and stained with blood. He hunkered down. And together, he and Met uncovered a pale, naked woman.
Unlike the man, her body appeared, for the most part, intact. She had the smoothest porcelain white skin he'd ever seen. Absolutely perfect woman, with one exception: She was broken and dead. The quilt had evidently spared her from the flames. But it hadn't prevented the woman from getting her throat slashed open.
He was sure there were numerous internal injuries. Aside from the throat injury, he found no other explanation for the blood pooled in her mouth. And evidently, since she'd bled so much, the woman hadn't died instantly. Blood dried in and around her right ear. Her right foot had twisted and hung only by a few tendons. The woman didn't have a chance of surviving after crashing into the side of a mesa. Regardless, Lyle checked for a heartbeat. Nothing. He pulled back her eyelids, checking her pupils with a penlight. "Fixed," he said, shaking his head.
"What a pity. Pretty thing like that."
<<>>
John slipped in and out of consciousness throughout the ambulance ride to Show Low. At one point, he’d reached up with his left hand, grabbed the EMT by the collar and gruffly whispered, “Save Ryan,” through clenched teeth. Then his bloodstained hand dropped as he fell away into a restless daze.
Dr. Geffield was on duty in the E.R. that night. He was a tall man with a thin hook of a nose, who looked about thirty, despite being all of forty-seven. He had long fingered hands, and was just as skilled with a scalpel as John had once been with the keys of a piano. As the EMT rolled John through the emergency room doors, Geffield ran to greet them, already barking out orders. It wasn’t every day that a man as well known as Mills graced Geffield’s presence. When one of the nurses had announced that John Mills – The John Mills – was on his way in with a gunshot wound, Geffield knew immediately who the man was. He’d been a fan for a good many years.
Geffield checked the drip that had been started in the ambulance, got an update on the vital signs, and ascertained that his patient needed to be sent directly to surgery.
John, who had appeared unconscious when they’d transferred him from the stretcher, opened his eyes while lifting his head. “Need to…to use the phone.”
“Later,” Geffield replied.
John clenched his left hand into a fist. He wasn’t playing games. At this moment, there was nothing more important to him than contacting Mel in Phoenix… provided Mel was in Phoenix and alive. Because, John had to know. He had to know if everyone he loved was dead. “Now!” he growled, dropping his head back. “God damn it. Now!”
“Mr. Mills, you’re in no condition,” Geffield said.
John’s eyes narrowed, cheek muscle twitching. “You lay one hand on me ba‑before I place my call, and you…you’ll have…” He gritted his teeth, feeling cold and faint. “I’ll slap you with a…with a lawsuit that’ll leave you ba‑begging in the streets.”
Geffield backed off while ordering a nurse to bring a telephone.
When the nurse, Billie Sanchez, set the phone on the counter behind John’s head, she said, “What number?”
“Call information. Phoenix.”
<<>>
After nearly tripping once, Lyle walked a little slower, shining the flashlight to the ground in front of him while watching his step. He found Marge over by the meat wagon.
Marge, the most beautiful woman he’d ever met, stared up at the stars, tears streaming down her lovely face. She had a tender heart, which was only one of the many reasons Lyle found her so attractive. At five foot six inches, two hundred forty‑three pounds of mostly muscle, she had hands that could squash a watermelon. And those same hands were balled u
p at her sides as her bottom lip quivered and her large heart ached…because two people she'd never seen before were dead.
Lyle slipped a hand partway around her waist, tucking her rounded head beneath his chin. "Couldn't save them, babe. Wasn't anything we could do. We're only human, Marge."
"It ain’t right," she gasped, sniffing a time or two. "If only we could have got here sooner. That...That poor woman might not have died."
Lyle considered himself cold‑hearted by no means, but he knew he had to make a point, thereby letting Marge off the hook. Otherwise, Marge would cry herself to sleep tonight...if the woman found sleep at all. So, he walked around to the rear of the meat wagon, pulled open the double doors and waved an arm while telling Marge, "Come over here."
She came, wiping the tears from her face with the fingers of both hands. "Yes?"
"You know there was nothing we could have done for the man. The woman was in bad shape, too. I doubt she remained alive three minutes after the crash. Take a look and you'll see I'm right."
Marge shook her head, brown eyes filling with fresh tears.
"Come on. It's not as if you haven't seen a dead body before."
He caught the end of the stretcher upon which the woman in the body bag now rested. He pulled it about a quarter of the way out, just far enough so he could reach the zipper, which he now pulled along its tracks. "I'm telling you, Marge, the woman…"
He could have sworn the woman's throat had been laid wide open. Lyle let go of the zipper and rubbed a hand down the length of his tired face. He had the strangest urge to smile. Because...he finally understood the situation. He was in a dream. He had fallen sound asleep in his own bed, dreaming. It explained that pig‑thing that wasn't a pig. It explained that long, thick chunk of tail they'd found. And it also explained why a woman whose throat had been laid open, now appeared unblemished in that area. Either that or he was so darn tired he was imagining things.
Lyle grasped the zipper once more, pulling it down the rest of the way. He told himself he had to be mistaken. And yet, uncertainty left him anxious. He wanted confirmation. But Dave and Roger, the two men who'd helped him load the body, had already left. He and Marge were the only two people still at the scene, aside from Sheriff Farmer who'd arrived not ten minutes earlier.
"Marge, you ain't gonna believe this," he said, gazing down at what should have been a foot hanging by tendons. Instead, what he observed was a perfectly normal foot in a perfectly normal position with the toes, all unmarred, pointing upward.
"What is it, Lyle?" she asked, still unable to force herself to look at that beautiful woman’s torn body.
Lyle removed the penlight from his pocket while climbing into the rear of the ambulance. He made his way to the cadaver's head, walking in a crouched position. He pulled the left eyelid up with a thumb, shone the light then sighed heavily. Still fixed. Of course it was fixed. What else had he expected to find? He shook his head lightly, not wanting to answer that question. Next, he reached for the cadaver's neck, feeling for the carotid artery, and then letting go. The woman was dead, cold. Very dead.
"Lyle? Something wrong?"
"No, babe. Go ahead and get up front. I think it's time we get the heck out of here."
He went to the rear doors, pulling them shut. As Marge started the engine, Lyle took a seat, knees drawn to his chin, hands folded over his shins. He stared at the dead woman as a child might stare at a dark and foreboding closet from his not‑so‑safe bed. He considered pinching himself to make sure he was awake, only to decide he'd rather not know.
CHAPTER 41
The line was answered on the second ring. And Mel's voice, grumpy as it was, pleased John immensely. "What do you want?"
"Mel. I've been...Where's Valerie?"
"Sleeping, until the phone rang. What's up? You sound like shit."
"Been shot.”
"Fuck," Mel breathed. "You're not shitting me, are you, man?"
"They're all dead. Jillian, Brewster…all of them. I'm in...the emergency room. Show Low. Got some..."
The phone slipped through the fingers of John's left hand. And the nurse who'd dialed the number retrieved the phone from the floor. She held it up, shrugging, as if asking Dr. Geffield what to do with it.
All Geffield said was, "He goes to surgery. Now!"
Billie brought the phone to her ear. She was a graceful woman of twenty‑eight years, with long dark hair, perfectly twisted into a bun, and a smooth olive complexion. She shook her head, unsure of what to do, then said: "Hello?"
"Who is this?" Mel asked.
"Billie Sanchez. I'm an R.N. attending Mr. Mills. Who is this?"
"I'm Mr. Mills' brother," he lied. "Name's Mel. What's going on? "
"Well," Billie said, watching two nurses and a doctor roll Mr. Mills out of the room, "It seems that your brother was shot. I can't give you any more details over the phone, Mr. Mills. But if..."
<<>>
Mel slammed down the phone, flipped on the overhead light, and sat Valerie up on the edge of the bed. This afternoon, during a three hour shopping spree, he’d purchased the child five complete outfits of winter attire and two pairs of shoes…all at John’s expense. He dressed her in one of those outfits now. He didn’t take time to match the clothing, but slipped a red turtleneck over her head, then held out a brown pair of trousers for her to step into.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, dragging the back of a hand across both squinting eyes.
“We’re going for a ride,” he replied.
“To see Mommy?”
Pausing long enough to look into her sleepy eyes, John’s words finally pounded home; the little girl’s mother was one of the dead. Mel lowered his gaze, grasping the small shoe as Valerie slipped her bare foot into it.
After tying the laces of her little Nikes, he grabbed her by the hand, leading her to the door, which was when he realized he also needed to get dressed. Mel, for the first time since elementary school, had actually worn pajamas to bed. He looked down at the striped top and baggy bottoms he wore, wiggled his hairy toes, and thought to himself: Fuck it. The only things he needed were the keys to the Bronco and his wallet, which he found in the bathroom, in the pockets of the jeans he’d left crumbled on the floor.
<<>>
John awoke in a semiprivate hospital room, his senses assaulted by a strong disinfectant. He felt groggy, listless. He had a bandaged shoulder, which indicated the surgery was over. And yet he didn't have the use of his right arm or hand.
His second waking thought hit him hardest. Practically everything he loved was dead: Jillian, his music, Jillian, Bear. It didn’t matter that he would never play a guitar again; he'd never play anything on the piano other than a one handed rendition of Chop Sticks. What bothered him most was what all this would mean to Valerie. Five years old and she'd already lost both parents. It would crush her. No doubt, she'd become hysterical…or worse. The child had no family, which meant she'd be tossed from one foster home to another. John, being single, knew the state wouldn't look kindly upon his petitioning to adopt the child.
But he did have money, the kind of money that could buy the best damn attorney in The States. The only other recourse was to do it the illegal way. And Mel would help if it came to that.
John gazed out the window at the arrival of dawn. In these few short weeks, his entire life had changed. From wanting nothing more than complete solitude, to finally allowing himself to dream and feel again. As the sun rose higher, and the desire to join Jillian began to settle into his heart, the only movements he made were to blink his eyes, to breathe, and occasionally cough. An hour passed. Twice, someone had come into the room. A nurse, he supposed. The woman had lifted his wrist, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was now awake, holding his arm for several seconds before disappearing through the door on a pair of soft-soled shoes.
With each added second, he felt more and more numb. It just didn't seem possible that Jillian was dead. His mind kept rejecting it. As he'd o
nce told Mel: He'd close his eyes and see her face. Vibrant. Alive. Full of beauty. The only woman he'd ever met who actually quoted Sappho. One of the few people who he'd ever allowed to touch his heart. And now that heart remained beating, while her heart had fallen still.
He started to bring his left hand to his bandaged forehead, only to realize an IV attached him to a bottle of glucose. Numb. Barely coming out of the groggy stage of the anesthesia-driven sleep.
<<>>
"You awake?" Sheriff Brett Farmer said, stepping into the room.
John turned his head on the pillow, and regarded Brett Farmer evenly. "Barely," he replied, his voice a gruff whisper.
"Been a long night," Farmer stated, looking down at the jeans he wore. "Supposed to be my day off, but I got a few questions. Found five bodies out by your place last night. First, I'd like to know who shot you."
"He's probably amongst the five bodies you found on my property."
Farmer pulled up a chair by John's bedside, and plopped his rounded butt into the cushioned seat. He laced his fingers together over his sagging belly and said, "You own an AR‑15, Mr. Mills?"
"No, sir." He tried to lift his right arm, which seemed all but dead from the shoulder down. "Neither did I have the opportunity to...shoot back."
"Glad to hear it wasn't you."
John sensed doubt in the man's voice. Farmer had probably saved his life. Farmer was also a sheriff. So John had two good reasons for wanting to set the record straight. "I was shot and went down before I knew what was happening. When I made it outside, I found all five of those people the same way you probably found them, last night: dead."
Farmer shook his beefy head while flicking a thumb at his nose. "The motive behind the break‑in appears obvious: Robbery. Looks like they were in the middle of loading up all your stuff when they were murdered. Every last one of them had fake ID. We’re running the prints now."
"The guy in the helicopter," John said. He gazed up at the ceiling. "Must have been he who shot them."
HIDDEN DOORS, SECRET ROOMS Page 24