* * *
Senior had the van backed in at the rear of the lot which gave him a clear view of the Memorial and the area where the Governor was going to speak. He moved to the back and slid the rear window of the van open just enough to allow the barrel of the rifle to slip through. The lot was virtually empty. They were good to go.
* * *
Cauliffer turned into the mostly empty lot and parked right next to the building. He unwrapped his sandwich, took a quick bite, then set it down on the passenger seat. He unbuckled his seatbelt, turned the volume on his radio down, lowered the window on his squad car and settled in. He was on the last day of his tour before his three days off. Four hours to go. He couldn’t wait.
* * *
The governor stepped up to the podium and turn on his camera smile. “I have a quick announcement to make, and then I’ll take a few questions, if you have any, that is.” The reporters all laughed politely. “Well, as you all probably already know, I am here today to announce my intentions to run for reelection for the office of Governor for the great state of…”
* * *
Senior put the cross hairs on the Governor’s forehead. His finger had just started to pull the trigger when Junior spoke and everything changed. “City cop turning in. He’s parking right next to the building.”
Senior relaxed his finger. “Son of a bitch.”
“Want me to take him?” Junior said. She reached under the seat and pulled the silenced pistol out. “I bet I could get him before he knew what’s what. Just like that state boy.”
“No, no, hold off. Let’s see what he’s doing.”
“Looks to me like he’s eating a sandwich.”
“Maybe today’s not the Governor’s day,” Senior said.
“It has to be today. We don’t have a choice.”
Senior thought about it. It did have to be today. The cops would put it together before too long, and they did not want to be around when that happened. The Governor had flown the plane, everyone knew that. But it was Rhonda Rhodes’ husband, the on-scene Fire Department Commander that wouldn’t let anyone in the hotel after the crash. Elle Richardson’s husband, the City cop had backed him up. Together they let Sara burn. Goodwin’s wife, Tess was the twat that had switched Sara’s schedule to the night shift, otherwise she wouldn’t have even been there that day. And Bob Anderson? That motherfucker worked the tower that morning, so his hot little number of a wife, Jenny, well she had to go too. Now every single one of those cocksuckers would know what it felt like to Sid, Sr., what it still feels like every god damned day of his life.
The weight of it all had been building for such a long time that Sid felt like he might bust. He laid the rifle down, turned and spoke, his voice as hollow as Junior had ever heard. He was always going to tell her, but he was also going to wait until after they were done with the Governor. But now…
“There’s something you should know, Sidney. About the Governor.”
“What?” she said. “I know everything there is to know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“What else is there? He crashed his plane into the hotel and Mom burned to death,” Junior said as she pointed to where the Governor stood talking to the media. “Nobody went in to rescue her or anyone else, all while that son of a bitch floated down in his parachute and landed without a scratch.” She shook her head. “Now pick up your gun, take the fucking shot and I’ll go take care of the cop.” Junior reached for the door handle but Senior caught her arm and stopped her. The pressure of the situation was almost too much for Junior to take.
“What?”
“Listen to me,” Senior said. He practically hissed it at her. “There’s something you don’t know. Something I should have told you a long time ago.”
“Well what is it, for fuck’s sake?” Junior yelled.
So Senior told her…
* * *
Cauliffer finished his sandwich and for the first time noticed the van at the back of the lot. It was white. He scrolled through his computer and checked the logs. There was something about a BOLO for a white van. There was a plate number too, he thought. He found the report and read through the details.
* * *
…and when Junior heard the words, she snapped. Her life had been a sham, everything she knew to be true, everything that made her who she was and what she had become was a lie. She didn’t think, she didn’t weigh her options, she just did what she thought anyone would do, something that she was very familiar and very comfortable with after all these years. She raised her gun and fired. Sidney Wells, Sr., took one in the forehead. Then two in the heart.
* * *
When Cauliffer saw that the make and model of the van matched the BOLO he picked up the microphone to call for backup, but then just as quickly set it back in it’s holder. Check the plate first, he thought. Lots of white vans in the city. He opened his door, got out, and brushed the crumbs from his uniform shirt. He was about half way across the lot when the side door of the van flew open and a woman jumped out.
With a gun.
He pulled his service revolver and yelled. “Police! Drop the weapon!”
The woman spun and fired a single shot at Cauliffer. The bullet hit the handheld radio clipped to his belt and when it did a shard from the plastic casing fragmented upward and sliced into Cauliffer’s forehead, just above his left eye. He ducked, winced at the pain, and momentarily lost sight of the woman. He thought about running back to his squad car to call for help, but then he remembered that the Governor was only a few hundred yards away.
And the woman with the gun was running that way.
Cauliffer started after her, one eye pinched shut and full of blood.
* * *
Sidney Wells, Jr. heard the cop yell for her to stop, or freeze or some such shit that the cops are always yelling. She spun around, fired once to slow the cop, and then ran toward the Governor. She was still on auto-pilot, the thoughts of what her father had just told her spinning through her brain.
Her father.
She’d been lied to, abandoned, neglected, abused, and rejected her entire life. It was all about to stop.
It was all about to end.
* * *
Cauliffer was gaining on the woman. She was fast, but still, he was gaining ground. But it wasn’t going to be enough. He wanted to stop and take a shot, but with one eye full of blood he knew the chances of hitting his target were slim at best. And if he missed she would be on top of the Governor before he could do anything about it. His radio was useless, so Cauliffer did the only thing he could think to do, something that at the Academy they told you never to do because of the danger to yourself or others. Cauliffer fired three warning shots into the air.
* * *
When Junior heard the shots behind her she turned to look back, and when she did she tripped in the grass and fell to the ground. The cop was about thirty yards back and coming hard. Junior knew then that the Governor would live and she would not. There would be no comfortable and peaceful villa in the Keys with her lover, Amanda. There would be nothing except a jail cell and ultimately a needle in her vein. She scrambled to her feet and turned toward the cop.
* * *
When the Governor’s three-man protection detail heard the shots, two of them took the Governor to the ground and held him there while the third ran toward the sounds of the gunfire. Most of the media people were on the ground as well, but one of the cameramen, a veteran from the war and no stranger to the sound of gunfire put his camera on his shoulder and followed the cop. He got the entire thing on tape.
* * *
Cauliffer saw her fall and he kept running until he saw her get up. He stopped, leveled his gun and yelled one more time for her to drop the weapon. He saw her start to bring the gun up, saw the crazy light in her eyes and pulled the trigger. The nine millimeter caught her center mass and Sidney Wells, Jr. dropped in a heap in the grass. Cauliffer ran over and secured her weapon, then sat down in the gras
s and tried to wipe the blood from his eye.
When it was over the Governor and his protection detail pushed their way through the circle of cops and chaos. The Governor walked up to Cauliffer and shook his hand. “Officer Cauliflower, you’ve saved my life.”
Cauliffer shook the Governor’s hand. “It’s, uh, Cauliffer, sir.”
The Governor reddened at his repeated gaff. “Yes, yes, of course. I keep getting that wrong, don’t I?”
The cameraman got the entire exchange. It made the evening news and went viral on the internet within hours.
Indiana Governor…Saved By Cauliflower.
* * *
“That’s all right, sir,” Cauliffer said, as he wiped more blood from his eyes.
“What the hell happened?”
“It was a woman. She was headed your way with a gun. She fired at me. I chased her here and when she tried to fire again I took the shot.”
“A woman? Where is she?”
Cauliffer pointed to the other grouping of cops. “Right over there,” he said.
The Governor walked over and looked at the body of the woman that lay in the grass. When he saw her face he turned away, then vomited all over his shoes.
That went viral as well.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I swam in and out of consciousness, or imagined I did over a period of time that may have been a few minutes or a few days. People shimmered in and out of focus, fuzzy around the edges, like images on a big screen television with poor reception. When I was able to finally hold my eyes open and keep them focused, I found myself on my back in an uncomfortable bed in a darkened room. A tube was taped to my right arm and ran down to my wrist where a needle poked into a vein on the back of my hand, held in place with more tape. My left leg was in a cast that extended from the tips of my toes to just under my knee. As soon as I saw the cast the pain brought me fully awake and I let out a moan.
“He’s awake,” I heard someone say. “Better get the doc.”
A door opened and a shaft of light from the hall snuck into the room then faded away as the door hissed closed and clicked against the latch. I saw Sandy’s face, her eyes tired, a frown line across her brow. My father stood just behind her. She leaned in close and brushed my hair off of my forehead. “Hey, tough guy,” she said. “About time you woke up.”
It was all coming back to me now, the attack, being tied to the steel girder, the beating, all of it. I wanted to ask, how long I had been here, but when I opened my mouth to speak, all I said was, “Hurts.”
My dad had stepped forward, just behind Sandy. He had his hands on her shoulders “Cora was here, Son. She stepped out to get the doctor. There’s a button for the pain. Do you want me to press it?”
I nodded and he reached out and pushed the button. After a few seconds, the morphine made its way through the IV and I felt it beat the pain back, though not completely. I tried to sit up a little, then wished I hadn’t.
“Where am I? What happened?”
The door opened again and I watched Cora come into the room, a doctor in tow. “You’re at Methodist Hospital, Detective,” the Doctor said. He took a pen light from his pocket and shone it in both of my eyes. “If you had to rate your pain on a scale of one to ten, what would you say the number is?”
I tried to blink the light away and the after images hung on the back of my eyelids. “Uh, I don’t know. Eight now, I guess. My dad just pushed a button.”
I watched the doctor inspect the IV line that ran into my vein, and then he made some sort of adjustment to the pump next to my bed. “I upped the dose a little. You can push this button every seven minutes if you have to, and you’ll probably have to for the next twenty-four hours or so. Did anyone tell you what we did?”
“He just woke up,” Sandy said. “We haven’t had a chance.”
The doctor wrote something on a chart while he spoke. “You apparently took quite a, uh, thrashing. You’ve got a broken rib on your left side that punctured a lung. You lost quite a bit of blood and I don’t mind telling you that you had us all a little worried there for a while. Your chest is taped and we’ve repaired the internal damage so you’re going to be just fine, but you’ve got a nice scar on your belly that will make a great conversation starter at the beach. The discomfort you feel in your leg is what’s going to be the worst of it. We had to pin it, so it’s going to take a while to heal. You’ll need physical therapy. The pain you’re feeling now is from the surgeries, and it’ll get better over the next few days, but you’re going to be pretty sore for a while. That cast is going to drive you bonkers for about eight weeks. You’ll know when the weather is about to change, too.”
The morphine filled my brain like a convective fog that floats over a pond and while I heard the words the doctor spoke, their meaning was lost. I stared dumbly at him and when he stopped talking, I said, “Okay.”
“Your leg is broken, Son,” my father said. “The surgery took almost four hours.”
“We used an artificial bone graft material, along with a few pins,” the doctor said. “Had lots of success with it in the past, so you’re going to be alright. There’s always a slight chance of infection, but we got you cleaned out pretty good. I’ll check on you in the morning. The nurses will be in to bother you every time you’re about to fall asleep. Good night.”
I reached out and found the pain button and pushed it. Twice. I looked at Cora and motioned her over to the bed. “Where’s my gun and badge?”
“We’ve got them, Jonesy. They were there, at the scene. Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay.”
“Listen, Jonesy,” Cora said. “I’m going to get out of here and let you rest. Sandy’ll fill you in on everything. Donatti and Rosencrantz were here earlier while you were still out. They said to let you know they’d be back in the morning. The Governor sends his best. I’ll check on you tomorrow.”
I could feel the morphine, its warmth flowing through me as if my blood were being heated then recycled through my veins. “Okay.”
After Cora left Sandy moved closer and stood at the edge of the bed, her hand resting on my upper arm, her touch light and cautious. I could feel her tremble. “My god, Virgil, you could have been killed.”
I was drifting now, and there were still questions I wanted to ask, but I could not seem to get them out. “I heard the sirens, Sandy. I saw my mom, too. She was there. I think she was there with me the entire time.”
My father was sitting in a visitor’s chair in the corner of the room, and when he heard what I said he walked over to the side of the bed. “What was that, Son? Say that again, will you?”
But the drugs pulled me back under and I don’t think I answered him.
* * *
The doctor was right. The nurses did come in every time I fell asleep. It got to the point where I thought they were all sadists. The doctor ordered rest, but then they didn’t let you get any. But the next time I woke on my own, the light of the day peeked through the slats of the window blinds and I could hear the business end of patient care coming alive from the other side of the door to my room. Sandy lay under a thin hospital blanket, curled in a ball on a recliner next to the window. I watched her sleep and felt ashamed at the pain she had endured because of my injuries.
My leg still hurt like hell, but it was not as bad as last night. The pain was more isolated, and not over my entire body like it had been before. I found the call button for the nurse and pressed it, and when she came into the room I asked her about switching to a pain pill instead of the IV drip. “It’s making me pretty loopy,” I said.
“I’ll have to clear it with the doctor,” she said. “But between you and me, I don’t think you’re ready just yet. In the meantime, don’t be a hero. Hit that pain button if you have to. Loopy ain’t all bad, honey.”
A short time later an orderly wheeled in a breakfast tray and set the cart next to the bed. All the in and out woke Sandy and I watched as she stretched, yawned, and then walked over to the b
ed. She leaned in and kissed me, hard, on the lips.
“You should have gone home last night,” I said.
“Would you have?”
“No.”
“So, okay then.”
My leg was throbbing now, the pain worse as I became fully awake. “I was thinking about last night. The way you called me Virgil.”
The door opened and Rosencrantz and Donatti walked in. “Of course she called you Virgil. That’s your name, isn’t it?” He looked over at Donatti. “Isn’t that his name?”
Donatti nodded. “Yep. Hey Small, what’s shaking? Did you know his middle name is Francis?”
“About time you woke up,” Rosencrantz said as he lifted the lid on my food tray. “What’s for breakfast?” He put the lid back down. “Geez, are they trying to cure you or kill you?”
“You know, you don’t get jack shit for workmen’s comp in Indiana,” Donatti said. “I think you’re faking.”
“Yeah, definitely faking,” Rosencrantz said.
“Hey, is it true you can predict when it’s going to rain, now?” Donatti said. “I heard TV 8 is looking for a new weatherman.”
“I’ll bet they’re giving you some good shit for the pain. Can I have some?” Rosencrantz said.
I looked at Sandy with my best ‘help me’ expression, but when she held her hands up in a ‘what can you do gesture,’ I did the only logical thing I could think to do. I said fuck it and pressed the pain button again.
* * *
The room spun and I felt like I was caught in a vortex. Rosencrantz and Donatti were standing under the television, their heads tilted up toward the set, watching something on the screen. A few minutes later when the rush of the morphine tapered off I looked at Sandy and motioned for her to lean in closer. “Did you hear what I was saying before Mutt and Jeff walked in?”
Voodoo Daddy (A Virgil Jones Mystery) Page 20