Voodoo Daddy (A Virgil Jones Mystery)

by Thomas L. Scott

  “Yes, I did,” she said. “But it wasn’t last night. That was five days ago, Virgil.”

  Rosencrantz turned his head and said, “What was last night?”

  I ignored him, but Sandy turned her head and said, “We’re talking about something else. Last night was nothing.”

  “You know how many times I’ve heard a woman tell me that?” Donatti said.

  Sandy shot him a look and then turned her attention back to me. “What are you talking about?” I said. “What do you mean it was five days ago?”

  Sandy had her hand on my leg. “You’ve sort of been in and out over the last few days.”

  “What?” I could not believe what I was hearing. “What day is this?” I said.

  “It’s Friday,” Sandy said.

  Donatti looked over at Sandy and me and said, “Hey, am I Mutt or Jeff? I think I’m Jeff. I’m Jeff, right?”

  The door to my room opened and a nurse came in and told me the doctor had given the okay for Oxycontin instead of the morphine drip for my pain and then she disconnected the IV from my arm. I thought when she took the tape off of my arm—that hurt like a bitch—that maybe they should have left the IV in after all. The nurse told me that the Oxycontin would probably, in her words, bind me up some, but not much worse than the morphine did.

  “That’s all right,” Rosencrantz said. “He’s full of shit anyway.”

  I looked at him and thought if the food in here didn’t kill me, the cop humor probably would. When I looked at Sandy she mouthed a silent ‘I love you’ to me and I felt my eyes water at the edges.

  It became quiet in the room for a minute, then Rosencrantz looked at Donatti and said, “I kinda like the way she calls him Virgil, don’t you?”

  Sandy shook her head, then stood and said, “Hey guys, I think we need to let Virgil get his rest.” She placed her hand on my shoulder and gave me a little squeeze. Then to Rosencrantz and Donatti, she said, “What do you say?”

  “Yeah,” Doantti said. She’s right. “Virgil’s tired.”

  Rosencrantz turned and gave me a little finger wave. “Okay, bye, Virgil. We’ll see you tomorrow.

  Sandy waved them out. “I’ll catch up with you guys after while,” she said.

  When they were out of the room, I pulled myself up in the bed a little. I could feel the tape around my ribcage. “See what you’ve started,” I said.

  “I’ll talk to them,” Sandy said.

  “Aw geez, don’t do that.”

  “Well what do you want me to do?”

  The Oxycontin was working already. I could feel the buzz, but I was not drowsy like I had been with the morphine drip. The pain was still present, but it was in the background, like it was hiding inside a closet.

  “It feels like…like everything is moving too fast. I was tied up and beaten and it feels like it all happened just this morning.”

  “We don’t have to talk about his now, you know.”

  “I think I need to.”

  Sandy sat on the edge of the bed and put her hand in mine. “Are you sure you’re up for it?”

  “I’m not really sure. I think there might be a lot I don’t remember. In fact, most of it is blank right now, that part of it, I mean. I remember eating lunch at the diner, then nothing until I woke up tied to the post or beam or whatever it was.”

  “And when you woke up?”

  I closed my eyes, and when I spoke, I left them that way. I told Sandy what I remembered about the beatings and the torture with the stun gun, seeing Murton and how he killed the two men, and then how I saw my mother. When I opened my eyes I saw that tears were running down her cheeks and when I reached up to wipe them away she took my hand in both of hers and held it tight against her face. She then kissed the tips of my fingers and held my hand in her lap. I thought she might ask me about my mom, like maybe I might have imagined it, but she shifted the direction of the conversation.

  “We’ve got an I.D. on the men. Their names were Collins and Hicks.”

  “What about Murton? Where is he?”

  “That’s a little more complicated,” she said.

  “I’ll bet.”

  “I might be able to help you with that,” Agent Gibson said. He was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame. He pushed himself upright with his shoulder and said, “May I come in?”

  Sandy let go of my hand and stood from the side of my bed where she had been seated. I nodded to Agent Gibson and he walked further into the room. He looked at Sandy and said, “Would you mind if I spoke with Detective Jones in private?”

  “That’s not necessary,” I said.

  “It’s okay, Virgil,” Sandy said. “I’ve got work to do. A lot has happened. I’ll check back on you later and fill you in then. Get some rest.” She leaned down and kissed me on the lips, then turned and stared at Gibson, her expression a challenge for him to comment on our private life. But he just nodded at her and after she walked out he looked at me and said, “How are you feeling?”

  “I’ve been better,” I said.

  “I checked your records. Saw you were in the sandbox.”

  “That’s a term only a soldier would use.”

  He pulled a chair close to my bed then sat down, a pocket of air held in the side of his mouth. “So maybe I was there.”

  “In what capacity?”

  He chuckled at my question before he answered. “Let’s just say I wasn’t dressed in camouflage and humping a pack. But that was a long time ago, wasn’t it? Right now you’re wondering about Murton Wheeler.”

  “I’ve been wondering about Murton Wheeler for a long time.”

  “So like I said, I can probably help you with that.”

  I thought for a moment before I spoke. “He’s with the G?” I said.

  “Something like that,” he said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’ll let him explain it. Believe me when I tell you though, Detective, he’s paid a tremendous price for his country. I personally owe him a debt I’ll never be able to repay, but that’s another story. From what I gather, that puts you and me in the same boat.”

  “Where is he?” I said.

  “Out in the hall, waiting to come in,” he said.

  * * *

  Murton walked into the room and stood about halfway between the door and my bed. I pushed the button on the control panel attached to the rail and elevated the bed into a sitting position. We stared at each other for a minute, neither one of us sure of what to say. It might have been the pain medicine, or it might have been the nervous tension, but I felt the corner of my mouth turn upwards, then before I knew it we were both smiling.

  “You’re a fed?”

  “Well, I was,” he said. “But not anymore. I put in my papers this morning.”

  “Why?”

  He laughed without humor. “Which why are you asking me about? The why did I disappear? Or the why didn’t I tell you what was really happening in my life? Or the why I had to let everyone, including you, your parents, and even my girlfriend think I was a criminal and a complete fuck up?”

  “I’m sorry about Amy,” I said.

  “Yeah, me too.” He stayed quiet for a long time. “We buried her yesterday. Her mom slapped me in the face at the service. Bet you didn’t know that, did you? She thought her death was my fault. You know what? She was right, but for all the wrong reasons. After the service I told her who I was, who I really was and she didn’t believe me. So I pulled out my badge and handed it to her and you know what she did? She fainted. Just like that. I thought I killed her. I’ve been under too long Jonesy. I had to get out. I let my job get in the way of my girlfriend’s well being and it cost her and my unborn child their lives.”

  Jesus, Murt, I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say. God damn. I’ve been an asshole. I’m fucking sorry, man.”

  We sat there, both of us quiet for a long time. We had spent the first half of our lives together as best friends, brothers, and the last half under a flag
of deception that drove us apart.

  “Well, at least Pate got his, huh?”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “You’re kidding, right? You mean no one told you?”

  “Told me what, Murt? No one’s told me anything.”

  “Aw, that’s beautiful, man. After everything that’s happened, I get to tell you.” I watched the light in his eyes go dark and it reminded me of the look he carried with him in the desert over twenty years ago. “Guess you haven’t been watching the news. Pate’s dead, Jonesy. Yesterday morning at the taping of his show. Except it wasn’t just a taping. Because of everything that’s happened, he convinced the network to run a live special. The place was packed. He stood up there on the pulpit and confessed all of it. He had tears running down his cheeks and everything. It was like every other preacher you’ve ever seen on TV when they bare their soul and confess their sins, except ol’ Sermon Sam out did them all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “After he confessed to burning his church in Houston, and taking responsibility for the deaths of Franklin Dugan, and Amy, and trafficking in child pornography, he stuck a gun in his mouth and blew the back of his head all over the choir. All on live TV.”

  “You said with everything that’s been happening. What else did I miss?”

  “Plenty. A city cop who now has the unfortunate nickname of Cauliflower shot your sniper to death and saved the Governor as well.”

  “What?”

  “Say, I don’t mean to change the subject, but I’ve got to tell you something else,” he said. “When I was cutting you down, I could hear your mom’s voice. In my head, I mean. It’s like she was telling me exactly what to do. Can you believe that, man?”

  * * *

  I was still processing what Murton had told me when a physical therapist came in the room and explained that it was necessary to get up and move around. Murton said good-bye, explaining that he had six or seven reams of paperwork to complete and would look in on me when I got home. Then, before he left, he walked over to the bed and kissed me on my forehead. “Never stopped lovin’ you, brother,” he said. My lips trembled, but I couldn’t get any words out. I grabbed his arm as he went to turn away and held him in place. After a few seconds I saw his eyes crinkle. “You’re welcome,” he said, then ruffled the top of my head like we were kids again and walked out the door.

  The physical therapist watched our exchange in silence. She was a short sassy brunette who looked like she had never quite lost her baby fat. I had the thought she looked like she should be working in an ice cream parlor or maybe a pet supply store.

  “You can’t see it, but there’s a rubber knob on the bottom of your cast, right under the heel of your foot. Like the stopper on the end of these crutches,” she said, holding up one of the crutches for me to see. “When you’re moving around, I want you to keep as much weight off of your leg as possible. But, if you have to put any weight on it, keep it on the knob. That’s what it’s for. That, and to make sure you don’t slip and fall. She tried a smile on so I tried one right back at her, and when my scar lit up, she momentarily jerked the crutch across the front of her body, like a shield. “Uh, anyway,” she said, “here, let me help you. Swing your legs off the side of the bed, but don’t try and stand, yet.”

  “Just give me a minute, will you?” I said. Then I gathered myself together and sat upright on the side of the bed and with the therapist’s help I managed to stand mostly on my good leg, my broken one held at an odd angle at the knee to prevent it from touching the floor.

  “Good, good. That’s good,” she said. “Now straighten your knee and let the knob on the bottom of your cast rest on the floor, but don’t put any weight on it. I just want you to get a feel for where it is down there.” I did what she asked, and when I did, the pain flared in my shin and the room spun. The therapist grabbed my arm and eased me back down on the bed. “I said not to put any weight on it.”

  I nodded, my breath whistling through my teeth. “I didn’t.”

  “Well, maybe you did a little. Do you want me to see about getting you a wheel chair?”

  “No, I do not want a fucking wheel chair,” I said.

  “All right, then, Come on, let’s try again.”

  I looked over at the side of the bed where the IV stand had been and wondered if maybe they might hook me back up if I asked. Just for a little while.

  “Come on, give it another try. It only gets better from here.”

  “I can believe that,” I said. I gripped the handle of the crutches, the therapist standing next to me like a gymnastics spotter. I leaned forward, put my weight on my good leg and pulled myself up.

  “All right. Now, let’s try moving around the room a little. You look like a pretty strong guy. Just remember, the key to using crutches is in the forearms, not your armpits, okay? Keep your leg bent, and use both crutches at the same time. Step with your good leg, then follow with your arms, okay?”

  “Okay, okay,” I said, and found that I hated her already. But after a few minutes of her help and some painful practice, I had to admit, she had me moving around fairly well.

  She handed me some kind of waiver stating that she had demonstrated the proper use of the crutches and asked me to sign at the bottom. Her parting words were, “Remember, if you stumble and think you’re going to fall, and you probably will, just let your body go limp. Don’t try and save yourself. Just relax and go ahead and let yourself go. You’re more likely to reinjure if you try to save yourself than if you just go ahead and let it happen.”

  For some reason, her statement made me think about my relationships with my dad, Murton, and Sandy.

  * * *

  A few hours later, one of the nurses came in and told me my ticket out would be to show the doctor I could get around on my own, and that was all the motivation I, Virgil F. Jones required. I picked up my crutches and made my way toward the door. I leaned against the jamb for a few minutes and waited until the hall was mostly clear before I ventured out. I found it was not too bad, the moving around, but the physical therapist was right; the key was to keep the weight off my leg. I went up and down the hall a few times, stopping to rest only once at the opposite end of the corridor from my room. The hardest part really was holding my leg in the air, bent at the knee, and it did not take long before I could feel the burn in my thigh. There was a couch at the end of the hallway next to the elevators, so I decided to sit and watch the business end of the hospital for a while.

  As soon as I sat down I knew it was a mistake. The couch was lower than I thought—going down was not too bad—but once I was seated I knew I would not be able to get back up without help. The nurses station was at the other end of the hall, so to get back up I would have to either yell for help, or wait until someone happened by who was able-bodied enough and took pity on me.

  Smooth, Jonesy, I thought. I closed my eyes for a while and when I opened them back up my father was sitting next to me and the look on his face told me we were thinking the same thing. “This place will kill you, you know that?” he said. When I didn’t respond, my father looked over at me and said, “You remember your Uncle Bob?”

  “No, not really. I might remember the name, but that’s about it.”

  Mason nodded. “Yeah, I’m not surprised. You were pretty young when he died. He was your mother’s uncle, your great uncle. He was a mortician. Had his own funeral home up in Kokomo. After he passed, his family sold out to a conglomerate, but I was talking to him one time, this was years ago, before you were even born I think, and you know what he told me? He told me that in the funeral home industry, they call it death care. I always thought that was the damnedest thing, Death care.

  “I’d sit up here with your mother, just one floor above this one while they pumped that poison into her veins trying to kill the cancer inside her, and in the end all they did was make the last few months of her life more miserable than they already were. Every time we’d come in here I’d think about th
at conversation with Uncle Bob. They might call this health care, Virg, but it’s really all the same thing sometimes.” Then, like the concept of a segue was foreign to him, he finished with, “So, when they letting you out?”

  I looked at him, not quite sure what he was trying to say, if anything. “Tomorrow, I think. Want to help me back to my room?”

  “You bet,” Mason said. “You bet I do.”

  We took our time going down the hall, and he told me Delroy and Robert were going back to Jamaica for a week, so he was going to close the bar to sand down and refinish the bar top. When I said I would stop by to help if I could, he laughed, and told me not to worry about it.

  When we finally made it back to the room, we stood next to the bed for a moment, and I looked at my father and said, “I can’t explain it Pops, but it was her. She was standing right behind him and her hands were over the top of his. She helped him untie me and get me down. She was smiling at me, Dad. What do you think of that?”

  “You were bleeding out from the inside, Son. The doctors said you had about two and a half minutes left by the time they got you here. The mind can play tricks on you when you’re in that kind of shape.”

  “I’ve been in that bad of shape before, you know.”

  “I know, Son, I know. You saw what you saw. Was it real to you?”

  “Yeah, it was.”

  He opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out. We stayed there for a moment, then he did something he had not done in almost forty years, an act that brought tears to his eyes.

  He helped his son to bed.

  * * *

  A short while later the nurse came in to take my blood pressure and when she offered me more pain medication, the nature of the conversation that followed must have made her think I might be suffering from brain damage.

  “Do you believe in ghosts?” I asked her.