It had been eight weeks since my father died.
In the end, I decided that my father’s death could only be attributed to a certain sense of bad luck and a failure of imagination on my part. Amanda Pate had pulled the strings on her husband for years as she lived with and hid from his desires, all while she served an agenda of her own. We were able to piece together certain facts, Amanda Pate and Sidney Wells, Jr. being lovers, chief among them. When that fell into place, eventually the rest did too.
The fire that killed Amy Frechette, Murton’s girlfriend, was traced back to Collins and Hicks by forensics and the hard work of the Arson squad. It was ultimately decided that it was nothing more than a way to draw Murton out into the open and it worked better than either Collins or Hicks would have liked, I’m sure. It took a number of weeks, but I was finally able to put the final piece of the puzzle in place, and when I did, I almost wished I’d left it alone.
I thought I knew the rest of the story. No, that’s not quite right. I did know the rest of the story, but I needed someone to confirm it for me. So I called the Governor on a Sunday morning at home and asked him to meet me at his office.
He resisted the idea of the meeting.
I insisted.
I let him get there ahead of me, and when I walked into his office he was seated at his desk, a glass of scotch in his hand. It was only ten-thirty in the morning. I limped in and sat down in one of the chairs in front of his desk. I didn’t say a word.
He watched me for a few minutes. Then he unlocked the center drawer of his desk and pulled out a brown expandable file folder. He set it flat on the desk, removed the elastic string from the flap and pulled out a number of different photographs and laid them on his desk. I couldn’t see the person in the photos, but I didn’t need to. “I should have known you would figure it out,” the Governor said. “Who else knows?”
“Sandy, and probably Murton Wheeler, though he hasn’t come right out and said so. But no one else that I’m aware of. My gut tells me you’ve probably confided in Bradley though.”
“Your gut tells you true. That makes five people in the entire world who know, Jonesy. You, Sandy, Murton, me, and my aid, Bradley Pearson.”
“Your wife doesn’t even know?”
The Governor took a sip of scotch then shook his head. “No, she does not. We were never able to conceive and I thought the cruelty of it all, the fact that I had a child by another woman, would break us apart. So no, I never told her. How did you put it together?”
“Murton had a lot to do with it,” I said. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a copy of the birth certificate that had been in the safe deposit box and handed it to the Governor. “He gave me this. Amanda Pate had the original before Murton got hold of it. How she got it, I don’t know. I guess we’ll never know.”
The Governor passed a stack of pictures over to me and I leafed through them. They were all pictures of Sidney Wells, Jr. at various ages in her life. And then he told me his story.
“Her name was Sara Wells. One night I stayed at the hotel where she worked. It was as simple as that. She was stuck in a bad marriage, I was stuck in a bad hotel, and when we met in the bar, I’m telling you, Jonesy, it was magic. She stayed with me that night and we met every chance we got for the next year and a half.”
“And when you found out she was pregnant?”
“I’m not sure I understand your question. Is it my honor you’re asking about?”
“I’m asking you what happened next.”
The Governor looked at nothing and spoke to me. “She told me she knew the baby was mine. She said she knew it to be true because Sid had been to the doctor. He had a low count or something. I asked her to divorce Sid so she could marry me, and she told me she would. My God, Jonesy, we were happy. That’s where we were when everything changed.
“My call sign that day was Voodoo. You know what’s funny? I remember almost every single detail of that day except the one that matters. The one where I picked up the phone and filed my flight plan. I had the option of going to Indy or Ft. Wayne first. For some reason I picked Indy. If I’d have picked Ft. Wayne…” He let it hang there.
“She might still be alive today,” I said.
The Governor pointed his finger at me. “Wrong. She would still be alive. I’d probably be flying for the airlines and we’d have a ton of kids. Instead, the woman I loved and my only child are dead because of me.”
“Governor…”
He held up his hand to stop me. What he said next didn’t surprise me, but it made my stomach turn just the same. “I’m sorry about your father, Jonesy. I really am. But what’s done is done. I see no criminal involvement on my part in this matter. The Pate’s and the Wells’ are gone. I’ll consider the matter closed as soon as I have my daughter Sidney’s original birth certificate. You do have that, don’t you?”
I did indeed have it. It was in my pocket.
I had two choices.
One, give the birth certificate to the Governor and be complicit in hiding his secret, one that would all but destroy his political career if it ever came out, or two, include the birth certificate in the official file, and let the Governor fend for himself.
I stared at him for a long time.
He stared right back.
“You put me on Pate right out of the gate,” I said. “Why?”
“That was Bradley’s doing, though I agreed to it,” the Governor said. “We knew he was being looked at by the FBI, but they were dragging their feet.”
“I don’t think that’s entirely accurate, Sir. In fact, with all due respect, it’s flat out wrong.”
“It’s neither right or wrong, Jonesy. It’s politics. How long do you think I would have lasted in my next campaign against Sermon Sam once he started digging up old news stories about me punching out of my plane and taking out that hotel? Or better yet, how long would I have lasted once everyone found out that the woman I was sleeping with, the woman who just happened to be married to that idiot Wells was at work and in the hotel that morning? Not very long, I can tell you that,” the Governor said.
“And what about the shootings?”
The Governor took another drink of his scotch. “What about them? Sidney Wells was a psychopath. He was trying to destroy me by murdering family members of anyone and everyone he thought was even remotely responsible for the crash that day. He knew all along I was Sidney, Junior’s father. If Pate’s wife and my daughter were having some sort of illicit affair, as you allege, then the plan must have been put together by them. Who knows?”
I tried to hide the contempt in my voice, but I don’t think I succeeded. “And who cares, right?”
I picked up a few more of the pictures and looked through them. I thought the Governor’s priorities were about as far out of line as they could be, but in truth, who was I to judge? After a few minutes I did what I thought was the right thing—which may eventually be my downfall—and reached into my pocket and gave him the document. When he used my formal title I immediately knew I’d made the wrong choice.
“Thank you, Detective Jones. That will be all.”
I gave him a chance to correct himself, but he didn’t take it. “Are you sure about that, Sir?”
When he looked away and didn’t answer me, I pulled myself out of the chair and walked out of his office.
* * *
Sandy touched my arm and pulled me out of my thoughts. “Hey, you with me, big guy?” she said. We stood next to the edge of the pond behind my house and when I looked out across the water I saw it wrinkle in spots, the blue gill hungry, nicking at the surface.
“Why did you want to come out here?” I said.
Just then, a landscape truck pulling a back-hoe on a lowboy trailer turned off the road and came up the drive. I lost sight of it for a moment, then it came around the side of the house and stopped next to the out building I use as a storage space for my lawn equipment.
“You’re about to find out,” Sandy said. “We
wanted to do something. For you. Me, Murton, and Delroy. ”
I watched as Murton backed the tractor from the trailer and drove over to where we stood, about ten yards from the edge of the pond. He lowered the bucket on the backhoe and scooped out a pile of soil then placed it carefully in a mound a few feet away from the hole. He repeated the process two more times, then turned the tractor around, winked at me like he may have just noticed my presence and drove back to the truck. When he returned the next time Delroy rode along with him. There was a Weeping Willow tree in the bucket of the tractor, its root ball enclosed with burlap and twine. Murton lowered the bucket next to the hole opposite the pile of dirt, shut down the engine and climbed from the operator’s seat, a small package in his hands.
“Hey Jonesy. Sandy,” he said, as he handed me the package. It was wrapped in plain white paper, the kind a butcher would use at a meat market, and tied across both ends with brown string that knotted in the middle. The paper wrapping was stiff, but the contents of the package soft and pliable. I let a question form on my face and I saw Sandy nod at Murton. “It’s the shirt your father was wearing at the bar when he was shot,” Murton said. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, Virg. I spent a year undercover with the Pate’s and never once looked at Amanda. I could have prevented the whole god damned thing.”
Sandy walked over and wrapped her arms around Murton and when she did, his eyes locked on mine. “It’s alright,” I said. “It’s time to let go of the past, Murt.”
I held the package against my chest, my father’s blood wasted and dry under a wrap of string and paper. I looked at Sandy. “He was telling me he loved me,” I said. “In the bar, when you came out of the bathroom. He didn’t say the words, but that’s what he was telling me.”
Murton walked over to the tractor and pulled a shovel from the side rack and stood next to the hole. Sandy and I walked over and I got down on my knees and placed my father’s bloodied shirt at the bottom of the hole. Then I stood back and watched as Sandy and Murton and Delroy wrestled the willow tree into the hole and filled the remaining space from the pile of dirt.
“Willow trees use more water than just about any other tree,” Murton said to no one. “I don’t know how I know that.” Then he looked away. I thought there was more he wanted to say, and I think Delroy thought the same thing.
“The ground water will soak tru the paper and into dat shirt, mon. Your father’s blood, it will flow tru dat tree just like it do your own heart, Virgil Jones.” I think it was the first time I had ever heard Delroy say my full name.
“It might not be much, but we had to do something,” Murton said.
Sandy sat down in the grass next to the tree, and after a few minutes, Murton and Delroy and I did too. Sandy took my hand and looked at me. “I’m sorry, baby,” she said. If I had been just a little quicker….”
I cut her off. “We agreed we weren’t going to have this discussion anymore.”
The shine in her eyes sparkled a turquoise blue, the un-felled tears caught in her lashes. “I can’t help it, Virgil. I can’t get these thoughts out of my head. My father died saving your life, and I keep thinking that surely there must be some reason things turned out this way. I was supposed to save your dad, Virgil. But I didn’t. Don’t you see that?”
“No, I don’t. Amanda was after me. When Dad yelled out, he took a bullet that was meant for me, and one that probably would have hit you. He not only saved my life, but he saved yours as well.”
“And how am I supposed to live with that, Virgil?”
“The same way I have all these years. The same way I’m still learning how to.”
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“I’ll show you,” I said. “I’ll teach you. We’ll do it together.”
Sometimes though, at night, as we lay together under the sheets, I wonder if maybe our roles aren’t reversed, if maybe it isn’t me who is being led and taught, not just by Sandy, but by those people who have held a place in my life and still rent pieces of my heart as tenants in perpetuity. And when sleep does not come as it sometimes does not, I’ll get up and walk out onto my deck and watch the moon journey across the sky, its reflection set deep in the sheen of the black-watered pond at the back of my house. I’ll stand quietly and listen to the wind hiss through the leaves on my father’s Willow tree or the dull echo of semi tires as they snap over the expansion joints out on the four-lane. The sounds surround and comfort me, ground me in some way.
And after a while I’ll go back to bed and wrap my arms around the woman I love and remind myself it probably does not matter who is the teacher and who is the student, only that we learn how to live and love along the way. God has put us here, and when our time is over God will take us away on a calendar not of our own making, but one that benefits the continued growth of our souls. Everything in between is part of a timeline we think we control, though I doubt we do. In the end I think we simply ride the rails, safe in the belief of a master plan we only witness after the fact, if ever at all.
May 2012
Author’s note:
This story is a work of fiction, but it is based upon fact. In 1987 a military jet crashed into the Ramada Airport Inn, located right next to the Indianapolis International Airport. It was a horrific and tragic accident where lives were not only lost, but changed forever. Beyond that, virtually every single detail of this book is a product of my imagination. I have taken complete and total dramatic liberties and literary license to tell a ‘what if’ story. I hope you enjoyed it.
Oh, here’s one more thing you may find noteworthy…
One of the lives that changed that day was my own.
You see, I was there, at the airport, when it happened.
I had just been hired as a First Officer for the now defunct Britt Airways, a commuter airline that operated primarily out of Chicago, Illinois. When I say just hired, I mean exactly that. I was on my first official trip as a pilot for Britt. We departed Chicago’s O’Hare International airport and flew down to Indianapolis. Our passengers deplaned and shortly after, we loaded up with other passengers returning to Chicago. We had no sooner gotten everyone aboard when the unthinkable happened and the jet hit the hotel. I was in the middle of my speech to the passengers about how to fasten their seat belts, how to open the door in the event of an emergency, etc., when we heard a terrific boom. I exited the plane and looked across the tarmac and saw a huge plume of black smoke as it rose above the terminal building. The Captain of the flight, a fine and decent man by the name of Ron Miles, (who remains one of my best friends to this day) got on the radio and asked the tower controller what had happened.
After Ron exited the aircraft and informed me of the crash, he asked me if I wanted him to tell the passengers. I said, “No, I’ll do it,” and I did. I can still remember the looks on their faces. But more than that, it’s what happened next that I’ll never forget. Each and every passenger on board that morning listened to what I told them and then together, as a group, they stood and got off the plane. No one said a word. They just got up and walked off. When we taxied away from the terminal a short while later for our return trip to Chicago, with the exception of Ron and I, we did so with an empty airplane. I’ll never forget that day.
I was right there. And the writer in me always wondered…‘What if...’
I think that’s where really great stories come from. I hope you agree.
Thanks for reading…
Thomas L. Scott lives with his wife and children in northern Indiana. You may connect with Thomas on his website http://thomaslscott.com or on Twitter @scott_thewriter
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Voodoo Daddy (A Virgil Jones Mystery) Page 24