by Thomas Scott
Sandy shook her head. “Has it? I changed jobs, a change that I’d be the first to admit was something I’d been thinking about anyway, but it ended up being something I was forced into so you and I could get on with our lives. Except you were almost killed and now you’re hooked on pain medicine. How is that ‘working out,’ exactly?”
Virgil ignored her remark about the pills. “You still haven’t answered me. What did you say to her?”
“When I was venting or trying to communicate?”
“Aren’t they the same thing?”
“No. They’re not. When I was venting I’m pretty sure I referenced the size of her ass.”
“I see. And after that?”
“I told her that she’d just lost the best thing that’s ever happened to her.”
Virgil reached over and took hold of Sandy’s hand. “Thank you. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you or cause you any embarrassment.”
She pulled her hand away and waved it in the air. “It’s not that. That’s not what upsets me. God, Jonesy, where is your head?”
“Then what is it?”
She turned and looked out the passenger window as she spoke. “It’s what she said back to me. I told her she’d just lost the best thing that’s ever happened to her and she looks me straight in the eye and says if I don’t get you off those pills then she and I will have more in common than either of us wants. I’m scared, Virgil. I’ve never been this scared in my entire life.”
__________
Virgil thought it odd that the doctor had ordered the removal of the PICC line at the hospital instead of the office until he discovered that the doctor would not be the one removing the line. They had been waiting for almost half an hour when a nurse came into the room. She wore plain green scrubs with white tennis shoes, had a stethoscope around her neck and her hospital I.D. badge clipped low on a side pocket. Virgil guessed her age to be about twenty years younger than he was which would put her somewhere in her early twenties. Her hair was short and choppy and looked like she spent a considerable amount of time in an effort to make it look like she’d just rolled out of bed. Her eyes were clear and brown and her teeth were perfect. When she saw Virgil sitting on the hospital bed she stopped in her tracks and when she did, her shoes made a little double squeak on the floor. The sum total of her greeting went like this: “You’re supposed to be wearing a gown.” She sounded bored; her voice dull and flat like a butter knife at the back of the drawer…if a butter knife could sound dull and flat, that is.
When Virgil didn’t immediately reply, she shrugged her shoulders and pulled a gown from the cabinet next to the bed. “Slip into this. I’ll be back in a minute.” She looked at Sandy, pointed an index finger her way and said, “No funny business.”
After she left the room Sandy said, “Maybe she was here last time we were.”
Virgil smiled at her and then changed into the gown after the nurse left…then they waited another half hour. When the nurse came back in Virgil made the mistake of asking her if a doctor might be available to handle the removal of the line. She rolled her eyes, put her hands on her hips and spent the next five minutes explaining her qualifications and training. When she finished, she looked at him and said, “So, okay if I pull the line now?”
Virgil may have been half stoned on morphine, but he wasn’t an idiot. “Absolutely,” he said.
The nurse pulled the tape from the entry point—a little harder than necessary—then cleaned the area with rubbing alcohol. She told him to hold still even though he wasn’t moving and slowly began to extract the line. It was an unusual sensation. Not painful, but he could feel the line snake away from his heart and through his chest. The tube was longer than he thought it would be. She pulled it out with one slow and steady motion and by the time it was all the way out her arm was almost fully extended.
After she cleaned the entry point again, the nurse put a bandage over the area and told him to keep it dry for a couple of days. Virgil said he would, then asked, “Is that it then? Can we go?”
“Not yet,” the nurse said. “I’ve got to do the paper. Just a couple of questions. Are you currently on any medication?”
Virgil kept his head still, but his eyes slid over toward Sandy. “Yeah, I’m on some pain medication.”
“Still hurts, huh?”
“You could say that.”
“I know I could say that,” the nurse said, “but what would you say? Where do you rate your pain on a scale of one to ten?”
“I thought we were just going to pull the line and then I could go.”
She stared at him without answering. Sandy stood from her chair and said, “I’m going to wait outside. Can I have the keys to the truck?”
“Sure,” Virgil said. “They’re in the pocket of my jeans. I think we’re almost done here though. Why don’t you wait for me?”
Sandy pulled the keys from the pocket of his pants as if she hadn’t heard him, then said, “See you outside.”
The nurse looked at Virgil. “So, as I was saying, on a scale of one to ten…”
__________
Sandy was waiting for him in the parking lot. They got in the truck and as Virgil was about to start the engine, she reached over and took hold of his hand. He let the keys dangle in the ignition and looked at her. “What?”
She dropped her head a little and looked over the top of her sunglasses. “You’re going to make me say it?”
“Say what?”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean there’s something that you’re not telling me.”
Virgil gave her his best ‘everything is all right’ smile, but it had no effect. “Okay. Here it is. You’re going to think I’m crazy, but I had an interesting conversation this morning.”
“You mean with Pearson and Cora?”
“Not exactly. It was just before they showed up.”
“Someone else came over?”
“You could say that.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “I spoke with my dad today, Sandy. He was standing under the willow tree. I looked over and he was just…there.”
“What?”
“Just hear me out, will you? Jesus, I feel like I’m losing my mind. I’ve got this buzzing in my head…I don’t know how to explain it. I was just sitting there. I had a line in the pond and I was letting the Vanco run through me and when I looked over at the willow tree, he was standing there. He was sort of hidden behind a few of the branches and when he saw me, or when he noticed that I saw him, he moved just enough so I could see him clearly. He was there. I don’t know what it means, but the buzzing in my head was gone while we spoke to each other.”
Sandy leaned forward, her elbows on her thighs and put her face in her hands. After a few seconds she raised her head and looked at Virgil like he was a stranger. “I can’t do this, Virgil. You’ve got to stop. Do you hear me? You have to stop. I just can’t do it.”
__________
If the ride to the hospital was one of strained silence—and it was—the ride back was like a vacuum. When they pulled into the drive and up toward the house, Sandy looked at him and said, “What are you going to do?”
Before Mason died, he and Virgil owned a downtown tavern called Jonesy’s. It is Jamaican themed and one of the most popular bars in the city, if not the state. When Virgil spoke, he did so with little care or forethought. “I’ve got to go down to the bar.”
Sandy gave him a deliberate look. “That’s not what I meant. And you know what else? I think you know it.” She hung her head and let it sway back and forth. “What I meant, Virgil, is what are you going to do about you? God, Jonesy, where are you? Where is the man I fell in love with? I’ll tell you something…he’s not here right now. In fact, I haven’t seen him for weeks.”
“Hey, Sandy, come on now. That’s not exactly fair. I’m right—”
Sandy opened her door and got out of the truck. When she turned back her face was red a
nd the wind blew her hair across the corners of her mouth. “Don’t you say it. Don’t you dare try to tell me you’re right here, because you’re not. Your body is here, but your mind? Your spirit and your soul? They’re someplace else. I think they’re living in that pill bottle you carry round in your pocket. I don’t fit in a bottle, Virgil. I never thought you did, either.” She slammed the door of the truck and started to walk away, but just as quick she turned around and yanked the door back open. “I’ll never leave you, Virgil. Never. Not after what we’ve been through. But let me ask you something. How do you think it feels to know that right now, right this very minute, of the two of us, I’m the only one who can honestly say that?”
When Virgil didn’t answer she let the door of the truck hang open and walked away. Virgil knew there were about a hundred different things he should have done right then, but he did none of them. Instead, he dropped the truck into gear and drove away, the door slamming shut against the frame, gravel pinging at the underside of the wheel wells.
__________
Sandy’s words and the manner in which she spoke left little doubt in Virgil’s mind about the state of their relationship and what he needed to do. His addiction to the pills was driving a wedge between them, a situation that was unacceptable, especially after what they’d been through together. Sandy was not only his girlfriend and lover, she was Virgil’s entire life. Their future had been sealed by fate long ago when her father died while saving Virgil’s life. His name was Andrew Small and he was the Station Chief for the fire department that served the neighborhood where Virgil lived when he was just a young boy. When the house caught fire and burned he was trapped inside, buried beneath a pile of rubble that collapsed over his head as he tried to escape. Chief Small and another fireman went in to rescue him, but Sandy’s dad perished in a secondary explosion before he made it out of the house. So Virgil grew up happy and healthy, but it came at the expense of Sandy’s lifelong sorrow. Yet fate had intertwined their lives, now at once beautifully connected with a level of expectation that amazed and often frightened Virgil.
He made it about halfway to the bar before he turned the truck around and drove back to their house. He hadn’t been gone very long, but by the time he returned, Sandy’s car was not in the drive or the garage and when Virgil went inside he discovered she was no longer home.
6
__________
Nichole Pope had her arms crossed, the look on her face a mixture of disbelief, anger and fear. Mostly anger. She jabbed her finger at Miles. “What do you mean there’s no body? Let me tell you something, that’s wrong on about ten different levels, but the main thing is, when you use the word ‘body’ it implies that my brother is dead. Are you saying my brother is dead, Detective?”
“Ms. Pope, we don’t really know what’s going on just yet, other than the blood in your brother’s apartment and the apparent lack of a victim.”
“So in other words you don’t know anything, do you, Detective?”
Miles was still more than a little hot himself about the side of his new car and he wasn’t about to be pushed around, grieving sibling or not. “I’ll tell you what we know for sure. We know you’re a lousy driver and you just wrecked my new car.” Jabbing his finger right back now. “That’s what we know for sure.”
“Your car? You’re dancing around the fact that you’ve got blood all over my brother’s apartment, buckets of blood in fact, no witnesses, no body—your words, not mine—and you’re worried about your car? Let me tell you something, Detective, and hear me when I say this: Fuck your car.”
__________
Mimi walked over, introduced herself to Nichole and said, “Ms. Pope, if you’d be willing to let us take a sample of your blood we’d be able to get a definitive answer as to whom the blood belonged to much faster than we normally could. It will still have to be processed through the lab and all that, but they could begin with random samples and we’d have a conclusive answer much quicker.”
Nichole gave Miles a parting glare before she turned her attention to Mimi. “How much faster?”
“We’d be looking at hours instead of days.”
“Then, yes, of course. Let’s do that. What do I have to do?”
Mimi took her by the arm. “Just come with me. We’ll get you all set up. It should only take a few minutes.”
“If that’s my brother’s blood in there, is there any chance that he’d still be alive?”
Mimi shook her head. “I’m not going to dance around it, sweetie. With that amount of blood…”
__________
Rosencrantz introduced Miles to Lola Ibarra, the tenant who lived in the apartment directly below Nicholas Pope. She was on the far side of middle-aged, but not too far, Ron thought. She wore a flowered housedress that matched the flowered scarf in her hair, the flowered sandals on her feet and the flowered bracelets on her wrists. The apartment was, Ron discovered, surprisingly well kept and clean. It smelled of pine scented cleaner, incense and coffee. But it was the artwork and absurdity of Lola Ibarra’s decorative choices that caused Ron to bite the inside of his cheek.
The walls were covered with paintings of Jesus Christ, all on black velvet. They were markedly similar to the Elvis on velvet series, or the dogs playing poker on velvet series, except of course, these all pictured Jesus. Elvis had apparently left the building, took the dogs with him and left Jesus behind to fend for Himself.
There were paintings of Jesus at the last supper, Jesus carrying the cross, Jesus hanging on the cross, Jesus walking on water, Jesus praying in the garden of Gethsemane and everyone’s favorite, Jesus wearing a crown of thorns with blood dripping down His forehead, the latter sort of a headshot for holy rollers. The only thing missing, Ron thought, was a painting of Jesus Christ in a chicken basket.
“Mrs. Ibarra, I’d like to walk through the sequence of events with you. Would you tell me what happened, please?”
“I have already talked with the other man. I cannot remember his name. Detective, um, Happenstance?”
“That would be Rosencrantz.”
“Yes, of course. Rosencrantz.” Ibarra tugged at her scarf until it was arranged just so, then pointed to the coffee table in the center of the small living room. “I woke up and sat down on the sofa to wait for the coffee. I boil it on the stove instead of using one of the drippy machines, so it takes a little longer. That is when I saw my statue of the Holy Mother. It had blood on it. I thought it was a miracle.” She crossed herself when she said miracle and it gave Miles the impression that it was a ‘just-in-case’ crossing, like just in case it really was divine intervention and not something quite so simple as evidence from a crime scene.
“I see. And how long did it take you to figure out that it wasn’t a miracle?”
“Hmm. I am not sure. I began to pray right away of course. I got down on my knees and prayed like I have never prayed before, I can tell you that. But then I could smell my coffee starting to burn—I had prayed so long that the pot boiled dry—so I had to clean that up. When I came back I was going to pray some more—which I did—and then I went in the bathroom to shower and get cleaned up. I wanted to look nice for Father Peralta, my priest.”
“And did Father Peralta come by?”
“Yes. He was the one who told me it was not a miracle after all and that we needed to call the authorities.”
“And how did he determine that, Mrs. Ibarra?”
She pointed at her ceiling directly above the statue. A dark stain covered the thin plaster. “He looked at the ceiling.”
“So…no miracle I guess.”
Ibarra shrugged her shoulders and then crossed herself again. “Who is to say?”
Well, I am, Ron thought. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to confiscate your statue as evidence in an ongoing investigation. It will be returned but we’re going to have to take it for now.”
Ibarra waved her hand in the air. “This is not a problem for me. I have a whole box full of them in storage. I
sell them on the E-bay.”
“I’ll have one of our crime scene technicians come over and get it then. In the meantime, please don’t touch it.”
“Yes, yes.”
“Just a couple more questions then, Mrs. Ibarra. Did you hear anything last night or yesterday either outside or in the apartment above you that seemed out of the ordinary?”
“No, I hear nothing. Nothing at all.”
“No loud bangs, or thumps, or shouting? Nothing like that?”
“Si. Nothing.”
“Huh.”
“What is this, huh?”
“Well, I don’t mean to alarm you Mrs. Ibarra, but whatever happened up there, it had to have been violent. I’m just surprised you didn’t hear anything.”
“I did not hear anything because I was not at home.”
Miles audibly exhaled and then scratched the back of his head. “I see. And what time did you get home?”
“Hmm, I would say it was well after midnight.”
“Sort of late, then.”
“Si, very late for me. It was Bingo night at the church. It was my turn to be caller.”
“What do you know about Mr. Pope? Did you ever speak with him? Was he friendly to you?
“Oh yes. My little Nicky, he was very friendly. A very nice man. Most of the people around here do not like to give you the time of day and to tell you the truth, you would not want it if they did, comprende?”
“Yes, I comprende. But you and Mr. Pope were friendly?”
“Yes. He always fixed my computer for me whenever I had a problem. I think the E-bay messes it up somehow.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
Ibarra looked up at the ceiling, either trying to remember, or looking for a sign from Jesus, Ron couldn’t tell for sure. “Three days ago. He carried my garbage to the container for me.”