Despite registering some colors, shapes and swimmy images, her eyes drowned behind a deepening ocean of tears. In one quick instant, she felt like she was staring directly into the noonday sun from just beneath the surface of the ocean. As quickly as they’d fluttered open, they slammed shut.
As her visual senses were becoming self-aware, so too were her ears starting to make sense of the gentle noises filling them. At first, her mind registered sounds from the past, confusing her. She flinched at the imagined sound of the gunman’s trigger finger squeezing off his next barrage. A gentle, but alarming “ting-ting” of metal against metal filtered in against the imaginary sound of explosions and rat-a-tats.
Footsteps, maybe. Some sort of screaming. But as with her eyes, it seemed to instantaneously fade into the past, blissfully buried under confusion, weakness and an array of drugs for which Lisa was, at least for a moment, unendingly thankful.
A few soft clicks, a squeak that sounded like wet rubber shoes on linoleum flooring were the only sounds that remained and Lisa realized they were not sounds of the past but of the present.
Cheering.
Voices, though far away.
A television. Sports.
Baseball?
Alex, she thought to herself, but still her voice would not obey.
Her belly hurt. Sharp pain like she was laying face down on a nest of angry porcupines. Grab it, her mind screamed. No use.
Her mind cleared enough to realize it was weakness, not paralysis that hindered her. She assumed she was drugged, fought against the codeine cocktail coursing through her body.
Her mouth was dry. The porcupine nest moved rapidly against her belly.
The distant memory of gunshots echoed through her mind, rattling her. Her eyes popped open, fluttered, filled with tears and refused to focus. Her muscles tensed uncomfortably, flashed hot with pain but did not jerk.
“Easy, Kiddo.”
Danny?
Blinking, she saw him, scratched, and bruised, his shoulder in a sling. Danny looked pitiful.
“Easy,” he repeated. “Alex is on his way. You lay there and rest.”
“The baby,” she thought, still unable to speak. Her eyes filled with tears, sad tears, frustrated tears, tired tears.
Lacking in the ability to communicate—frustrated, scared, nervous, confused, Lisa did the only thing somewhat within her power to control.
Without resistance, Lisa followed Danny’s orders. Drifting into the world where time lost all meaning and meaning became lost in time. Inside her mind, the Rabbit Hole closed, locked.
She slept.
CHAPTER 5
Motivation
Sitting beside the frail frame of his premature son, reading the names of people who were confirmed dead, a single helpless sentiment coursed through Alex.
“I can’t do anything but hurt,” he thought.
He watched as the baby’s hand twitched in reaction to every slight noise that filled the tiny room. The baby was just small enough to fit in the palms of Alex’s hands and was hooked to oxygen, with more tubes, wires and monitors connected to him than Alex wanted to count. Alex began to wonder if this tiny being was ever able to find peace enough to drift into the land of dreams, far away from the shock and horror that marked his entrance into the world.
“They’ll pay,” Alex whispered to his son, not sure how he was going to keep that promise. Not sure who “they” were, not sure if there were any “they” left to even the score, after the maniac had blown himself up, along with half the Longview P.D. Not to mention members of seven other law enforcement agencies and who knows how many civilians. Channel 7’s Katy Winn had been covering another story when the blast killed her and critically injured her cameraman. In the last twenty-four hours, much of channel 7’s news coverage focused on Katy’s short-lived but highly touted career and unchanged updates on the cameraman’s condition.
Channels 3 and 12 seemed to be focusing mostly on local law enforcement. Those that were born and raised in the East Texas area; the high school football stars, church choirboys, Army Rangers,
Former U.S. Marines and All-American Eagle Scouts controlled the airwaves alongside a former prom queen and a standout basketball player from Kilgore College.
An FBI agent, two members of the ATF, One agent from the
Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation and a member of the JAG corps were all confirmed dead. One Texas Ranger and two U.S. Marshals were still unaccounted for. To Alex, that meant that either they hadn’t found enough left to identify or the family simply hadn’t been notified.
Oddly, nothing much was on CNN or any other national news channel, despite the array of victims from various law enforcement agencies as well as prominent members of several charities and non-profits listed among the dead or missing. Most news stories stuck by the same politically correct spiel that people were missing or their whereabouts could not be confirmed.
Whatever the case, they were dead. Alex wasn’t a pessimist, but he was very much a realist. Anyone that would have survived had most likely already been found. Anyone that wasn’t found initially would likely be dead by the time they were pulled from the charred rubble that once was the Longview Police Department headquarters—barring a miracle, of course. For sure, Alex believed in miracles. After all, he was one. Still, when the hope of miracles conflicted with the harshness of reality, Alex tended to side with reality. Faith, though not in short supply, could hardly dispute fact in Alex’s mind.
It was thirty-six years ago that Alex was born. The second son of a Puerto Rican mother and Mexican father, Alex was a picture of conflicting Hispanic origins. His skin tone was undoubtedly Puerto Rican. His nose, eyes and mouth were his father’s. Strong Mexican features sharpened with the Indian influence of his Apache grandfather.
At thirty-six, most men might start thinning in the hairline. Not Alex. A full head of ebony hair crowned his youthful face.
It was thirty-six years ago that Alex was born. It was less than a year since he had died and been reborn. Reborn, not in some hugely profound religious or spiritual sense, though he’d undoubtedly been irreversibly changed, spiritually speaking. Rather, his rebirth was more of an emotional awakening. A realization to the fragility of life and how helpless he was as an individual.
In thirty-six years, Alex had known helplessness on more than one occasion. The helplessness of losing his beloved brother was, at the time, the most helpless he’d ever felt. It was tragic, but it was motivating. If one event defined who he had since become, it was the brutal slaying of Ted. It had been the driving force behind Alex’s determination to become a cop. To become who he was now, instead of who he had been.
He’d worked hard in school after Ted’s death, graduating in the top ten percent of his class. Up from nearly dead last, that had been quite an accomplishment for Alex. He’d graduated from Junior College with a degree in Criminal Justice before pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree. He’d often thought about getting a Master’s or perhaps pursuing a degree in Criminal Psychology but he knew his best shot at serving Ted’s memory was to pursue the career denied the elder Mendez brother.
With a furnace of desire burning inside him, Alex fought his way through the academy, re-wrote the rule book for cops, redefining the standard of excellence by which all future cops would be measured.
Alex knew the secret to his quick rise was in the feelings of helplessness brought on by Ted’s death. Alex had always hated feeling helpless. No doubt that Ted had always been a hard worker. From the day he was born, it was said, Ted had to fight for his life.For everything.Though Alex was hardly given to laziness, he’d always felt the unenviable sting of being second born—as if that had somehow resigned him to second best. Helpless, Alex had come almost to an acceptance of his position in the Mendez hierarchy by the time he entered high school. Very little had been expected of Alex. He no doubt knew his parents loved him. But love and pride was not the same thing. No matter what he accomplished, Ted had done it first. E
ven being a cop. Helpless to change birth order with his celebrated brother, a flame of resentment had begun to build in young Alex.
While Ted was alive, Alex’s one ambition had been to do something first—to do something better. Years after first pinning on his shield, Alex had questioned his motives for becoming a policeman.
Was he really there to find Ted’s killer? Was it motivated by brotherly love or was there a darker ambition that had pushed Alex into the field that had beaten his brother? Meeting Lisa, Alex had finally been able to answer that question. Being a cop had been a way to honor the man he’d spent so many years jealously envying. His resentment had risen out of a simple wish to be like the great man he knew as Theodore Mendez. Alexander Mendez the Great was a childhood fantasy that had died out of shame weighted on him when his unspoken curse had been levied upon the head of his brother. Just once, Alex the teen wished to see Ted fail at something, anything. He couldn’t ever imagine his wish would come so painfully, unforgivingly true.
His penance had taken several years to come back on him, but come it did. He spent three months in a wheelchair, six more on crutches and was likely never to walk without the limp acquired from the fall he’d suffered in a warehouse very similar, he guessed, to the one where Ted had spent his final moments. He’d died, stood before
God and been forced to relive every painful regret he had ever known, ever could know. Even regrets he was unlikely to ever experience.
No greater helplessness had ever weighed down upon him as the helplessness he found standing—accused, loved, admonished and admired, all at the same time—in the breath of God. Ted’s death had been a tragic reminder of the pitfalls of jealousy and missed opportunities. His own death, while equally tragic, had provided Alex the wakeup call even the death of his brother couldn’t provide. With Ted’s death, Alex’s faith had been smashed. He’d been spurred on by anger, brutish passions and a deep adolescent desire for revenge against not only the man who had killed his brother, but the creator himself, who had forced Alex to watch the whole thing, years after it had actually taken place. God taught that vengeance belongs to Him alone.
If Alex could have found a way back then, vengeance would have been his, not God’s.
In death Alex had, to a degree, found resolution. Peace was his.
The child Alex Mendez could be satisfied. Alex had faced death and come back to fight another day. Alex the man could step out of the long, tall shadow cast by Ted’s life and legacy. He’d married Lisa. Fought his way back from spiritual, mental, emotional and physical destruction. He had raised a beautiful daughter and, now, had fathered a son.
Born two months premature, weighing barely two pounds, Baby Mendez bore no sign of Alex’s strong ethnicity. His hair was bright reddish-brown, like his mother’s Irish ancestry. His features were soft, rounded, delicate and tiny. Nothing like the clan whose last name he bore. Though he refused to put it on the birth certificate, Alex had taken to calling his newborn son Joseph. Biblical in origin, Alex had hoped a name tied to overcoming great tragedy would empower the child, strengthen the Mendez heart beating within his chest.
Alex knew the story of Joseph all too well. “King of Dreams” the writers at DreamWorks had dubbed him. Joseph was the son of Jacob.
One of twelve, though Joseph stood out among his brothers. He was the son of Jacob’s wife, Rachel. He was a miracle child in Jacob’s eyes.
Though Jacob’s other wife and two concubines had bore him sons and daughters, Joseph was born of Rachel. For that reason, he was singled out, given special gifts and privileges. Angered and bitterly jealous, Joseph’s brothers had sold him into slavery. Eventually, Joseph ended up in Egypt where he would become the second most powerful man in the entire land. Facing slavery, starvation, prison and staring into the eyes of death, Joseph had become a strong, powerful man of honor, love, strength and charity.
As Alex sat beside his son, staring at the oxygen tube that looked gargantuan compared to his tiny child, Alex again felt helpless.
What’s in a name, the famous saying asks. In this name, temporary as it might be, there was a prayer—a request that God do more than he’d already done for Alex Mendez and family.
In another room, in another part of the hospital, Lisa Mendez lay clinging weakly to life. One of a handful of officers lucky enough to have survived the carnage when an unknown terrorist wearing body armor and strapped to enough explosives to demolish half of the police headquarters had bulldozed his way into their existence. She’d been shot in the shoulder and in the stomach, missing the baby by mere centimeters, one doctor said.
As Alex rocked his son gently, the television whispered more disturbing updates. Several more officers were confirmed dead, fourteen prisoners, several administrative personnel and one janitor were among the list of names released. As the reporter read off the list of names, an imaginary bell sounded in Alex’s mind for each soul lost in the worst disaster ever to befall the Longview Police Department.
Jerry Young, age 21, fresh out of the academy, dead; Shavonna Johnson, age 25, receptionist, dead; Bill Myers, aide to Chief Bouknight, age 24, dead; Uniformed officers Terry Price and Tracy Hinton, ages 26 and 27, dead; Sheriff’s Deputy Wayne Morris, age 43, dead; Familiar names, comrades, friends. Two firefighters died from burns and wounds suffered when part of the building collapsed on them.
Dead, too, were Chief Bouknight and another aide Alex did not know. They had been in the midst of a surprise inspection when the carnage had broken out.
Among the dead were at least nine civilians with little or no real business even being at the police station, except to pay a traffic ticket or something. Assistant D.A. Linda Skinner had initially survived the carnage only to die this morning of internal injuries. She was the mother of twin three-year-old girls. Her husband, Detective Larry Skinner, was listed as unaccounted for. To Alex that meant he was dead. Twin three-year-old girls are now without a mother or father.
Alex knew nothing of their extended family, so he couldn’t help but suffer the horrific sting of uncertain sympathy.
Too, Alex remembered several times in the past few years when he’d wished Chief Bouknight would just retire, transfer or, if nothing else, just be stricken mute so as to render him unable to efficiently maintain his position as Chief of Police. Now, hearing Chief Bouknight’s name among the dead, Alex wondered if his unwanted ability to doom an innocent soul had once again forced its will upon the unsuspecting life of Chief Bouknight.
A mournful cry built in Alex’s soul. His Lisa had survived. Baby Joseph had been perfect. Ten fingers, ten toes—a little small but blissfully unaware of the carnage that sparked his arrival.
Alex was aware. Aware that the carnage rippled much farther than the microcosm that was the Mendez family.
The Longview Police Department had suffered a horrific blow. In the last twenty-four hours, law enforcement agents from all over the country were volunteering their time and energy to fill in if, when and wherever needed. Captain Steelman had been named interim Chief until a permanent replacement could be named. He would be expected to name a temporary replacement to the Homicide Captain’s position.
A snippet of the press conference showed a sullen-faced Captain Steelman accepting the position with no less than complete humility and a declaration of his devotion to the task at hand.
Duty, honor, loyalty.
All three had compelled Captain (now Chief) Steelman to ask Alex to come out of retirement. He would have been given rank of captain. Theoretically, they would have been running the division together. Alex had been promised almost blank-check authority over every aspect of the department’s functions. Those same three characteristics forbid Alex to come out of retirement. There was a need. A need to rebuild all that one crazy man tried to destroy. Not just the building, of course. Rather, the idea behind the principles of law enforcement.
Much like the reasons people argued to rebuild the twin towers after September 11th, 2001, Alex believed it was t
he duty of the town of Longview to show the lunatics of the world that justice would prevail, freedom would flourish and the great phoenix would rise from the ashes. Alex knew that his part was at home. The town of Longview had a city to rebuild. Alex needed to start at the center of his world. His family.
A soft bleep-beep removed Alex back to reality. The tiny cuff on Joseph’s arm was taking a reading of some sort. Blood pressure, temperature? Who knew? Whatever it was, the heart rate was steady and seemed strong. No alarms sounded, so Alex did not worry.
Joseph blinked once and, Alex thought, smiled at him.
“That’s right,” Alex whispered, offering a daddy finger to his son’s tiny grasp. “Daddy’s here. I’m gonna take care of everything.”
Joseph’s heart rate grew faster. Happy, nervous, scared, determined, confused, confident, Alex wept. Tears raining down, his soul offering up a prayer for which his mind could not yet find the words. Blinking, Alex watched as a single teardrop fell into Joseph’s open palm. His tiny body twitched. Instinctively, his tiny fist clinched hold of his father’s love.
“Sweet dreams, Little One,” Alex whispered, returning the childback into the safety of his hospital bed, placing a soft hand on Joseph’s tiny head. “Sweetest of sweet dreams.”
I’ve got to go see about Mommy.
CHAPTER 6
The Stage
Walking down the hallway toward Lisa’s hospital room felt like the longest, most uncomfortable journey in the world. Not unlike a voyage across the Sahara, wearing an itchy turtleneck and gauchos. He ringed his hands together nervously, stopping a few doors down to shake loose the quivering and take some slow, deep breaths. He kept repeating his mind’s call for calm. She didn’t look bad. That much he knew. She bore no visible scars that wouldn’t heal with time. She wasn’t bruised or broken unrecognizable. A few bumps and cuts, but nothing like he’d expected. Alex’s fears were not based on what he saw when he looked at Lisa. It was what he didn’t see, what he hadn’t experienced, that which he had been unable to prevent and, now, was viciously powerless to avenge.
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