“Deacon James is dead in my house.”
“Where are you?”
“On the way to the hospital.”
“I thought you said he was dead.”
“He is, but the rest of us aren’t.”
I gave him a brief explanation of what had happened and told him the crime scene was secure and he was welcome to it.
“I haven’t called the Tallahassee cops yet, so you’ll probably want to do that.”
“Well, considering the man was killed in their jurisdiction, yeah, I think I just might.”
Sutton wasn’t pleased with the situation, but he didn’t tell me to go back, and he didn’t waste my time telling me what I should have done. Probably because he couldn’t come up with any better ideas. Noel pulled up in front of the emergency room entrance.
“I gotta go. I’ll be at the hospital if you need me.”
I hung up and handed Noel her phone instead of putting it back in the glove box. She tucked it in her purse. Call me superstitious, but I didn’t want to be shoving a gun out of the way in front of the emergency room. Noel helped me get Ben inside, then ran back out to park her car. A guy in uniform was eyeing it hungrily.
Things went downhill after Noel left. A young man helped me get Ben into a wheelchair, took one look at me and left to get another. Initially I protested, but then they started asking questions. Ben was obviously a minor, so was I his mother? If not, where was she? They needed a waiver to treat him. Where was his insurance information? I tried to lie, to say he was 18, but they weren’t buying it. Of course, then I couldn’t turn around and say I was his mother. I realized belatedly I didn’t even know his mother’s name, and that we should have stopped by his house on the way. By the time the young man returned with the wheelchair for me, I was ready to sit in it. Just for a little while.
Someone began wheeling Ben away, and that was when I lost my tenuous hold on reality. He was Ben, but he was my brother Allan, and they were taking him away, and they wouldn’t let me see him. He would die, and I’d never see him again. The blue and white coats explained that they couldn’t treat Ben without parental permission, which they hoped to get soon, but they were going to evaluate the extent of his injuries. Of course, I was beyond being rational and made an exemplary scene for the small audience in the waiting room. Noel’s appearance finally cut my drama short. She squeezed my shoulders hard trying to focus my attention. The resulting crow bar pain did much more to snap me out of it than her stern gaze ever could.
“Sydney, he’s not dying. I promise. When they’re done checking you out, they’ll let you see him.”
Whether it was due to my histrionics or the subsequent arrival of several cops very interested in what I had to say, I didn’t have to wait long to be seen. My arm and ribs were x-rayed, but I had emerged relatively unscathed. No broken bones, not even my bloody nose. I’d be sporting lumps and bruises for a while—nothing new there—but the only real casualty was my strap-on wrist splint. It was soaked with blood and had its own internal injuries. It didn’t quite flop like a soggy french fry, but it definitely no longer served its splinting function. I was issued another splint and told that my antics had bought me an extra two weeks in the new one. If I was lucky. Why are doctors always so damned optimistic? Maybe it’s just the ones who meet me.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
The cops were interviewing Noel when I was released, so I slipped over to see Ben. I couldn’t believe they were really letting me see him. Of course, I did sort of slink into his room, so maybe no one noticed. Ben had been cleaned up a bit, but until his mom arrived they couldn’t treat him. Apparently it had taken a while to track her down, but she was on her way. I sat with him for a few minutes before he opened his eyes. His cracking voice squeezed my heart.
“Syd, I’m sorry.”
“For what, you goober?”
“He said he was a cop. He had a badge and everything.”
I reached out to stroke his hair gently, mindful of bruises. “It’s okay, hon. Everything’s okay now.”
“Where is he?”
“Don’t worry. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
“Syd, he beat the shit out of me. Where is the mother fucker?”
“He’s dead.”
He sighed and let his eyes drift shut. “Good. You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine. Is that what happened the last time? Him?”
“Yeah.”
“He said he was gonna kill you, Syd.” His voice started to crack at the end. I reached for his cup of water, as if I thought a parched throat and not emotion was responsible. He shook his head, a few slow fractions of an inch.
“Well, he didn’t.” I snorted, trying to abort a laugh. I knew laughing would hurt, and laughing might lead to uncontrollable crying, which would hurt even worse. “But the asshole killed the TV.”
“Man, that’s cold. That’s okay. Your TV was too small anyway. I’ll help you pick out a new one.” He groaned and shifted. “So when do I get some drugs?”
Soon, apparently. A commotion drew Ben’s eyes toward the hallway and I turned to watch through the glass. A woman, maybe a few years older than me, was screaming and gesticulating wildly. I couldn’t make out the words, but her mouth stretched wide and her face flushed with anger. Noel seemed to be her target, facing her in the hallway. Noel responded calmly and the screaming stopped, but the woman still didn’t look happy.
“That’s my mom.”
“Yeah, I kinda figured. Time for me to go, kid.” I leaned over and kissed the top of his head. He tried to make a face at me, but winced at the effort. “Easy there. Your disgust has been noted—don’t hurt yourself. I’ll check on you again soon.”
When I left Ben’s room, his mother slipped past me without speaking, carefully avoiding any physical contact. Her mascara was smeared, whether from concern for her son or having just crawled from someone else’s bed I didn’t know. She had taken the time to brush her hair and pull it into a ponytail at the base of her neck.
“What was that about?” I asked Noel.
“She didn’t want you seeing her son anymore. Something about you getting him killed, her getting a restraining order. Blah, blah, blah.”
“Can’t say I blame her.”
“I can.” The corner of Noel’s mouth slowly curled. “I made a few observations about the kind of nighttime activities one engages in that take you away from your home and keep your child from getting emergency treatment until 2 a.m. She reconsidered her position.”
“Thanks.”
“Any time. You know what the funny thing is?”
“There’s something funny? Please tell me.”
“She didn’t know you were a woman.”
“Noel, I know I look like crap right now, but I’m really finding it hard to see why that’s funny.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. She apparently knew Ben was spending time with ‘Sid,’ but she didn’t know Sid was a woman.”
“Really? That sneaky little twit. I’m lucky I didn’t end up on America’s Most Wanted as some kind of perv with a teenager in tow.”
“Uh-huh.”
We almost made it out the door unmolested ourselves, but a local cop caught me by the arm, none too gently, as the automatic door began to whoosh.
“I’ll be waiting outside,” Noel said, with a sour look at the assembled uniforms. Her first interrogation apparently hadn’t been a pleasant experience. I wasn’t looking forward to it myself, but I was glad to see that Sutton had made it to Tallahassee. I guess when you’re a cop you can drive as fast as you want to. Sutton didn’t speak, just nodded at me once and listened while I told the Tallahassee cops my story.
I said Deacon had started to swing at Ben when Noel shot him. It felt true enough to me, and no one contradicted me. In fact, they took it easy on me. When they said I could leave, Sutton walked me to the door.
“Thanks for coming all this way to see little old me.”
/>
“It’s the least I could do when you closed a couple of my cases in one night. Of course, you prompted those cases by being attacked, so it’s your fault I had them in the first place, but hey, why split hairs?”
We’d made it to the front and lingered, leaning against the wall.
“I hate to break it to you, but I may have opened a few more. I’m coming out your way next week. We can have a sit-down then and I’ll explain everything, but for now you may want to start looking through missing person reports, especially prostitutes. Also any unsolved homicides of women, and closed cases where Deacon was an investigating officer. It’s something he said right before he tried to choke me to death.”
I hadn’t seen a mirror yet, but I hoped Deacon had left bruises on my neck. They’d add automatic credibility and gravity to everything I said while they lasted.
“How far back?”
I had the grace to squirm. “Early 1980s.”
“No wonder Drake can’t stand you.”
My mouth dropped at the honesty. At least he’d said it with a smile.
“I’ll make sure he’s in the office when you drop by next week. Don’t forget to call ahead.”
Noel sat on the curb waiting for me, and I settled gingerly next to her, another exercise in controlled falling. It seemed neither of was quite ready to go anywhere else. The city was quiet, as it almost always is away from campus. With no sunlight to dry it, the curb still felt damp beneath my butt. No wonder. You could see the fine mist of the humid air in the streetlight halos. I breathed the cool damp into my lungs, leaning back to ease the pressure on my ribs.
I hadn’t told the cops about the gun that didn’t kill Deacon, the one still in Noel’s car, not even Sutton. In fact, I would never tell anyone else about it, about the length of those moments between Deacon’s threats and the bullets that ended them, and I wouldn’t lose a moment’s sleep over the omission. But there were other things gone unspoken for too long. I gave up trying to take a deep breath and plunged ahead.
“You remember that message you took, from Lisa? She is my sister, but we haven’t spoken since my mom died about 10 years ago.”
“Sydney, you don’t have to explain.”
“I know I don’t, but I want to. I had a brother too. Allan. He died. I guess you could say he’s the reason I have issues with hospitals.”
“Syd—“
“There’s more. Let me just get it out, and then you can—whatever. A few years after he died I wanted to make the break from my family official. I changed my name.”
I look at Noel’s face carefully. I didn’t see anger or revulsion. I wasn’t even sure I saw comprehension. “Sydney Brennan isn’t the name I was born with.”
Noel leaned over until her shoulder bumped against mine. Even now, after everything that had happened that night, her posture was still too stiff for the gesture to look casual, but she had tried. She smiled, taking my hand, or more accurately the fingers protruding from my splint.
“Thank you, but it doesn’t matter. I know who you are now.”
I looked up to see Mike standing over us. I didn’t know how long he’d been standing there, but it never occurred to me to question his presence. I just patted the curb on the other side of me. Noel apparently had a tighter grip on reality, the barriers of the space-time continuum that usually separated us from Mike.
“So what brings you to Tallahassee at this late hour?” she asked.
“I got a call from Sutton. He said you might need bail money.”
We laughed. It was too close to the truth to be funny, and laughing intensified the physical pain, but it relieved the tension.
“Richard sends his regards. He wanted to come, but his wife’s away and he had to stay with their kids. So how about an early breakfast?”
Since it was after 9 p.m., all-night breakfast/trucker food was all we’d be able to find in Tallahassee. “We look like rejects from a war movie.”
Mike reached up and, after a few tugs, managed an asymmetrical rip in his plain gray T-shirt. Then he walked over to the landscaped grasses and shrubs and dug through the mulch until he reached damp dirt, which he smeared on his face and forearms. He came back to us grinning.
“Moral support.”
Mike drove. I found that I was ravenous, devouring an omelet and hash browns. I’d missed dinner, and almost getting killed takes it out of you. We lingered over our meal, chatting as if it were a normal night and every eye in the place weren’t on us. When we got up to pay, a brave soul finally broke societal taboos and asked us what had happened. Noel and I were at a loss for a reply. It’s easy to say something like, “car accident,” but that wasn’t true and would probably elicit more inquiry. “Run-in with a psychopath” had the advantage of being true, but I really didn’t want to have that kind of effect on a stranger this time of day. Mike saved us.
“Movie extras,” he said. “In a student film over at FSU. Swear to God, the kid’s the next Scorsese.”
When we went back to the hospital for Noel’s car, we found out that Ben had been released. Nice to have some good news. Noel headed home. She said she’d be all right, and she’d call me this evening after we got some sleep. Mike drove me to my house, a.k.a. the crime scene. He didn’t turn the engine off immediately, apparently so I wouldn’t get out before he was ready.
“You knew, didn’t you?” He glanced at me once, quickly, then gripped the steering wheel with both hands and tried to bore a hole through it with his eyes. When he spoke his voice was rough with emotion—anger, frustration, and other things I couldn’t identify. “You fucking knew this would happen, didn’t you?”
Had it been anyone else, I would have gotten defensive and vented my own emotions. Instead, seeing Mike that far from center helped me maintain control.
“No, I didn’t. I knew we’d never catch him otherwise, never prove what he’d done. And I knew he would follow me. I didn’t know he would be waiting for me. And I didn’t know he’d grab Ben.”
Mike still didn’t look at me, but he nodded and turned off the engine. “I’ll wait for you.”
The officer in charge was nice enough to let me in to pack an overnight. He gave me little booties and a female officer for an escort, I’m sure not because I’d get lost in my own house, but to guarantee I didn’t take anything of interest.
They had nearly finished processing the scene, but Deacon’s body was still there. In life it had been easy to see the sneering menace, but hard to think of him as truly dangerous. In death, it was even more difficult to see the threat in the big middle-aged body, but obviously it had been there. He had killed Vanda. I believed he had killed Isaac and other women yet to be discovered, and I knew he would have killed Ben and me, and Noel once she had arrived.
The officer in charge was obviously wondering the same thing, trying to see the “victim” as a boogeyman, without the benefit of my experience. He was youngish, maybe a year or two younger than me, clean-cut. I wondered if he’d ever been afraid for his life. Not in the sense that many cops are daily, dealing with unknown potentially deadly threats, but in the imminent gun-at-your-head, “barring divine intervention I’m about to die” kind of way.
“Three shots to take him down, huh? Well, he was a pretty big guy.” He looked me over, no doubt assessing that I was in no way a pretty big guy.
“Yeah. Three shots instead of three dead bodies seemed like a pretty good trade to me. Of course, I’m biased, being one of the potentially dead bodies.”
“Yeah, I guess you would be.”
At that moment, someone in a white jumpsuit called out from the floor where a couple of guys had just rolled Deacon’s body over onto its belly. He was massive enough that the body lay at an angle, compensating for the protuberant belly. “Mitch, we got another gun here. Small of the back.”
Not that there was anything small about Deacon, in his back or anywhere else. I tried not to smile.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
I knew Ralph and Diane were early risers, so I gave them a call when I got to Mike’s car. They were glad to have me for a couple of days until my house was released and back to normal, and I got Mike to drop me off there. I was slow getting out of the car. All right, I’d started to doze. I woke up when Mike opened the passenger door to let me out. He leaned across me to unhook the seatbelt and helped me step down to the ground from my Jeep perch. I was a little unsteady on my feet, and Mike held my shoulders gently, gazing into my eyes until he could see them start to clear. One hand moved up to rest against the side of my head, and I tilted against it, mashing my fuzzy hair.
“You okay?” he asked.
I nodded. His hand slid to the back of my head, and he pulled me toward him, his own body meeting me halfway. I could feel the steady thud of his heart as he held me against his chest. I hadn’t realized he was so tall.
“Ben’s gonna be okay, too,” he whispered to the top of my head.
I didn’t respond. I just wanted to stand there against him. He didn’t stroke my hair. His body asked nothing of me, just offered support. It was something I’d never felt before, an embrace from a man with no demands, no expectations. At least I hadn’t felt it since Allan died.
It was the thought of Ralph watching from the window that finally made me move, step back from Mike. “Thank you.”
“Sure. What are friends for?” He walked back and got in his Jeep before I could answer. He didn’t leave though, just sat in the car waiting until Diane opened the door for me. Then he gave a small wave and drove away. I could see the speculation in Diane’s eyes, but she didn’t ask.
“Come on in, honey.”
Ralph was at the kitchen table having his coffee, and I’m sure he was dying for details (of my adventures, not any possible love life) but Diane wouldn’t hear of it. I wasn’t a stranger to their spare bedroom, so I suspect she led me there simply to act as a Ralph buffer.
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