by Paul Snyder
Temple crawled down low on both hands before looking over the hood of a car. Almost a full minute had passed before Temple figured Dan didn’t look too irrationally angry as he sat on the sand, screaming at Jennifer.
Detective Davis, in her dark business suit, with her impressive height, had pulled her dark hair into a knot. Fierce winds hammered her face with rain, making it impossible for her to see. She wiped the water from her eyes with one hand and then continued to fire into the river at the fisherman.
Jim resisted an urge to race through the rows of cars. You must show control. Tourists are here, caught off guard by the sudden downpour, in their vehicles, and perhaps, with their cell phones and social media.
Temple wanted no comments posted, no stories for cable news talking heads who’ll never let a crisis go to waste. Temple’s likeability in the media was well cultivated and hard-won. He had a public image to maintain, and anyone could archive on social media today’s action for years to come. He’d stay well within the boundaries of public scrutiny.
After advancing twenty yards beside several parked cars, he could see Jennifer more clearly. She was still firing her AR-15. Jim crouched low and twisted to his left and unzipped his blue windbreaker, the workings of his mind still reeling over Jennifer’s shooting spree.
She had simply, selfishly, decided to do what she wanted, without giving a damn about anything but herself. And her behavior mirrored the fire-bombing of Meghan’s house. Temple reached for his shoulder holster. He was still too far away for a clean shot, not to kill, but to wound, just below the femoral triangle and above the knee. I need a confession, not a coroner.
Rain hammered at the parking lot, and water streaked the car windows with gray lines. Jim watched the dots of rainfall combine with downward streams of water on car windows. All videos from cell phones inside cars would be blurry at best. Nowhere on the beach is there any daylight. And being soaked to the skin gave Jim a spectral feeling, made worse by having to watch the disturbing image of a grief-stricken widow firing an AR-15 at a defenseless swimmer in the river.
All was not well in the world. Temple would have to make this right. Yes, Jennifer’s insane over her husband’s death as she fires upon the fisherman. But, now, Jennifer would have a whole new set of anxieties, more medical in nature. Jim pulled his pistol from his holster from a well-concealed position between several compact cars.
38
Meghan glanced over the black stones of the breakwater with the hope of seeing Rick popping up like a dolphin and then going back down underwater. She searched the huge waves crashing in the choppy and gray surf line, then she found him, and Rick disappeared fast.
Rick Weber was following the three-second combat rule he taught her in the Forest Falls training camp. I’m up, he sees me, and I’m down. Rick swam up for a quick breath of air and then went right back down, underwater. During Rick’s three-second move, I’m up, he sees me, I’m down, Jennifer only had a one-second window of opportunity. One second was not enough time for her to aim her rifle, pull the trigger, and then hit the bull’s-eye downrange. And, once the bullets hit the water, they shattered? Firing at Rick was an exercise in futility. Jennifer should have known better.
Meghan shielded her face with her hand, fighting the wind and rain. It was more like night than evening. She was trying to catch up with Rick, but the river ripped him out to sea faster than she could move on the rocks. She grabbed Andrew’s hand, squeezing it hard with her own while they struggled to meet Rick at the end of the jetty.
Heavy rains pelted her face, painfully, but as she looked up, she found Rick’s brown speedboat in the dark ocean. She was suddenly struck by how beautiful the Outerlimits speedboat was, floating, up and down, occasionally disappearing, then reappearing again, on the black, watery horizon.
The skies were still stormy, and the wind so strong, they could hardly go forward. But there was an inescapable desire to arrive on Catalina Island that pushed them forward through an area on a jetty where few dared to be, a place where the wind and the rain and the powerful forces of nature were so outrageously unleashed that only the bravest people in the world would dare defy.
It was a place that Rick and Andrew, and now she loved. “Our boat to Catalina is here.” She shouted at Andrew and tried to get him to read her lips, but she saw that the wind and rain hit his face and eyes so bad that it was pointless. He couldn’t see her. And, as he held his hands above his forehead, the wind blew the water from his face, and she pointed to the horizon and the brown boat.
The fifty-two foot speedboat bobbed on heavy seas as they watched it. But Andrew was pointing away from the ocean and up to the mountains at Big Bear and signing something to her. And as her eyes followed his fingers flashing in the dark sky, she saw something in the stormy weather beyond their rescue boat. And then she realized what Andrew was signing to her. “Yes.” She said to Andrew. “I will marry you in Big Bear with my family.” She kissed him, and she nodded her head, knowing they had to focus on other priorities. “But we have to be on Catalina Island first.” She leaned in closer while talking. “We can’t stay here. It’s too dangerous. We have another quarter mile on this jetty.”
Rick was beyond the crashing surf, waving to them, signaling he was coming their way, rising and falling in the mountainous swells as she squinted in the rain. He was swimming toward the boat, but it didn’t look like he’d make it there soon.
The brown Outerlimits speedboat was just beyond them, on pitching seas, but they needed to pass through more thirty foot waves, crashing down on the breakwater. The noise that it made was incomprehensible, and it looked like the waves were inexorably grinding the jetty, relentlessly, and nature was pushing them there, without a care for her humanity.
Rick fished on this jetty every day. He loved going underwater after the waves crashed over him. But she couldn’t wrap her head around Andrew being as crazy as Rick. Even if Andrew had been out here in the past, she couldn’t believe what they were doing now.
The waves rolled and pitched toward them. Soon the waves would move over them. The speedboat was still a considerable distance from them. For now, they needed to wait here, where they’d be safely wedged into the rocks until the waves finished crashing over them.
Meghan wondered if the current had taken Rick too far out to sea. Maybe she would have to save him. Anyone could be in danger out here, even the best of swimmers. That’s why we choose this path of escape. No one in their right mind would be out here.
The ocean rose and rolled over her again and pulled at her in all directions. I was ripped up like a rag doll in the last set of waves. Was this wave pulling at Andrew’s arms and legs like it was mine? Or was he experiencing something different?
Andrew promised to hold onto the rocks. But I can’t read his mind. I’ll have just to trust he’ll hold onto the crevices. And I hope he does. The turbulence is ripping at me harder. She tried looking for Andrew through the silvery bubbles. But she couldn’t see him. Am I crazy or foolish? All I want to see is Andrew. No one else looks quite like him when we are surfing in big waves, and I’ve come so much closer to him in the last few minutes.
39
Temple ignored the man, a confused tourist, caught in a rainstorm, stepping from the confines of his car. His shadowed face, behind black sunglasses, reflected the deranged mood of the parking lot. Temple edged lower along the side of a brown car and then peered above the hood to find Jennifer, squinting at her AR-15 rifle like a failed sniper, desperate to zero her scope.
Temple glanced back to the parking lot. The tourist’s black sunglasses glistened in the dark rainfall. Jim waved him back to his car. The tourist nodded and ordered someone to sit still in their vehicle. Jim sidestepped his way through other cars, studying Jennifer, who was again firing on the fisherman.
The tourist left his car again and would reach Dan in a matter of seconds. There were loud voices from inside his blue Mazda, not two people, but maybe three or four, shouting at each other
. Jim waved at the tourist in sunglasses and then pointed at the yellow FBI letters on his blue windbreaker.
The tourist nodded and reluctantly returned to his car. Temple chucked at the absurdity of the tourist. He’s lost in Seal Beach during a dark, December rain. If Jennifer goes into a frenzy and fires at the tourist or Dan, or one of the witnesses… or if I miss wounding Jennifer, for any number of reasons, I may not get her to confess the name of the Kodiak town founder who funded the contract on Wilkerson’s life
Jennifer’s Ruger AR-15 had a thirty-count clip. By the sounds of gunfire so far, Jim imagined how many rounds remained. Steve’s death drove Jennifer into insanity, and she could go on firing in the rain for quite a while. Anyone in the parking lot, with social media, should be able to see that no one should be outside on a day like today, especially if they were firing a black Ruger AR-15 rifle at a defenseless swimmer. But they should approve of me pulling a Sig Sauer pistol from my blue FBI windbreaker.
Temple had the authority to stand and face Jennifer, with his feet set slightly wider than his shoulders. So Jim stood there, facing forward, his knees flexed when he leaned forward from the waist. Lastly, Jim’s arms formed an isosceles triangle as his left hand steadied his right wrist, so the Sig Sauer’s front sight dot aligned with the two rear sight dots.
The rear sight dots on his weapon were blurry, and the front sight dot was bright. His pistol’s sight picture was aligned below Jennifer’s left leg's femoral triangle when Jim fired two shots above her knee. Two more shots went into her right leg above the ankle. Hopefully, I missed her femoral arteries. I need time for her to sign the paperwork without bleeding to death.
Screams pierced the sounds of the wind and sea. It came from the tourist’s parked car's dark, enclosed space as everyone lunged out of the blue Mazda. Dan scrambled backward in the sand. Jennifer fell, grasping her black AR-15 with one hand, holding her leg with the other. Jennifer started to stand but couldn’t move. She tried to stand again but fell, hard, on the sand. She refused to believe awful things had happened to her legs.
She dropped her rifle and supported herself with both hands, shaking her head while Temple stared at her left leg above the knee. “Dan, rip her pant leg open above the knee.”
Dan poked his fingertips through the bullet holes in her pants. After tearing the black fabric open, broken bones poked through her pale skin. Rain washed the blood from the wound. There was no excessive bleeding from either leg.
Temple clapped his hands to clean off the sand. He looked at her with faint amusement. “You’ll be in the hospital on drip-morphine for the next month.” Jim’s voice was warm, being polite had paid him dividends, and Jennifer listened actively. “Then, you’ll be at home in bed on oxycontin and Tylenol with codeine for another few months. If you need metal in your legs, you’ll have to go back to the hospital to take the metal out.”
Temple reached into his blue windbreaker and pulled out a black pen and paperwork. “Once you’re able to stand, you’ll attend therapy to help you walk again. I did you a favor. I helped you embark on a long journey.” Jim knelt near Jennifer and gave her the paperwork and pen. “Now, you can return the favor. Next to the yellow arrows on my paperwork, print, and sign.” Jim rubbed the side of his jaw with his hand and then pointed at the paper. “Print the name of the Kodiak town founder who funded Steve’s contract on Wilkerson’s life. And sign that make yourself available for an affidavit while you’re in the hospital.” Jennifer printed the name Dale Sanders as the Kodiak, Alaska town founder.
“No RICO charges,” Jennifer asked, signing the rest of the documents.
“You’re right. You can do no wrong with me.”
Jennifer faced Dan with a look of pain. “I’m sorry, Dan, do me a favor. Tell these people to step back and call for an ambulance.”
Dan nodded. “I’m sorry too. We will take care of you.” Dan rose slowly to his feet. “This is police and FBI.” In a moment, Dan was standing tall and addressed the crowd with a calm look of authority. “Stand back, everyone. This is the police and FBI’s business, and please, would someone call for an ambulance.”
40
Meghan braced herself in the jetty while underwater. After the wave receded, she didn’t see Andrew. Her spark of hope went out, and for an instant, she was too crushed to move. This was the moment she feared most. It was what she hoped would never happen, and she looked again and again down through the falling surf, but Andrew had vanished.
She kept both her hands on the crevices, turned her head, and looked backward. She was in the valley between two giant waves. She braced for impact, and when the next wave arrived, she released her grip on the rock, and her body surged upward fast. Her head was more out of the water than in it. She twisted to her left to face the wave and then swam upward. She covered her head with her arms. With her eyes blinded by the unceasing spray, she was catapulted in the sky.
After impacting the water's surface, she twisted underwater in the turbulence and then swam upward and gasped for air when she came up out of the ocean. Andrew treaded water ten feet from her. Why did he lose his hand and footholds? She shook her head. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were going to let go and fly over the jetty?”
“Too many waves.” Andrew signed. “Rick’s already at the end of the jetty. It’s faster to swim through the channel.”
She agreed and looked further up the breakwater near the end, and in a storm like this, anyone, even the best of swimmers, could get seriously injured on the rocks. She looked at Andrew. There were no abrasions or signs he had been scraped up, and she was fine. They swam past the impact zone. Andrew climbed out of the water and onto the rocks behind her. After Andrew met her, she stepped out of the channel and onto the breakwater.
It was rare this rapport they had in the ocean. Everything was as though they were too cool for school, and it was all just a walk in the park, and soon they were laughing and running on the jetty toward the boat.
She knew Rick would be fine. She also realized something else, something she wanted to believe, and would never be too crazy to think. In a short time, they would be safe and warm on Catalina Island. And, in a little while later, they would be married in Big Bear, and Rick would be her father-in-law, helping her with their adopted children. What if Jennifer and Steve Davis had killed them back at her beach house? What if they hadn’t made it to the end of the jetty? It had once made sense to think about such things.
Only an hour ago, it made perfect sense for all of them to feel that way, not just her. But once they reached the end of the jetty, she knew that she would be crazy not to believe Rick would have everything under control.
Rick swam closer to the rocks. While battling the wind and the waves, he stopped swimming. Thirty yards from her, he treaded water. Was he resting? He may have been shot. If it were a bullet wound, he’d have an injury, preventing him from climbing up onto the rocks.
She stepped down to the rocks at the water’s edge to help him. Rick bobbed in the choppy surface as though an anchor were pulling on his leg. He was swimming with all his might to stay afloat. Rick’s body moved against his will. She looked at Andrew for help.
Rick whipped his hands up above the water, arching backward under the impact of something. Rick twisted to his right, holding his diamond pendant cross in his left hand and a green, three-foot needlefish in his right.
She was close enough to see. Rick’s showing me that a needlefish attacked his five carat sparkling diamond necklace. Rick thrashed in the water, his body dipping, then lurching forward as he held the needlefish and pointed to things underwater. It was needlefish, attacking Rick for his diamond necklace. Rick’s face is red from an open wound. A needlefish ripped his face open!
Andrew shielded her from the sight of Rick’s bleeding. “The needlefish are cutting him up.” Andrew signed. “The needlefish are eating his diamond cross like anchovies.”
Meghan ripped herself out of Andrew’s arms and shouted at Rick. “Throw us y
our cross.” She demanded. “It’s killing you. Big mako and hammerhead sharks live here.” Meghan shouted. “You’re bloody and thrashing like a wounded fish. The big sharks will attack you. Give your cross.”
Rick threw it high in the air. She squinted against the storm and grabbed the big diamond cross in her palm. “I caught it.” Meghan waved back at Rick as the long white gold chain was swinging around her wrist.
Andrew stood next to her, hugging her, waving back to Rick, despite their clothes, soaked to the skin from the wind and constant rainfall. But she didn’t care if the weather tore at them. Rick will be fine now.
Rick shouted. “The money is buried in Forest Falls under the bathroom floor in the master bedroom.”
“I don’t care about money.” She only wanted Rick to be safe. “I care about you.”
“Tell me where the money’s buried now,” Rick demanded. “I’m in trouble and hurt bad.”
“Under the bathroom floor in Forest Falls. Now come out of the water. We’ll help you.”
“There’s a big mako in the water.” Wounded, Rick screamed, his hands now lashing out at anything he could grasp. His eyes were blinded by rain and excruciating pain. Several feet underwater, a twelve-foot shark came at Rick. It ripped Rick’s body down into the darkness below the surface of the ocean, twisting him in circles as he gasped for his last breath of air.
A man came onto the deck of the fifty-two foot brown Outerlimits speedboat. He waved to her then, and she waved him off. There’s no Catalina Island without Rick. Andrew grabbed the fabric of her shirt with his fist and held her tight.