“He did and it was quite nice.”
“What did you say?”
“Are you asking what my answer was?”
“Clearly,” she said.
“A lady doesn’t kiss and tell, you know.”
“Tsk, tsk. I need to put some type of surveillance camera on you at all times. That old geezer must be fifteen years your senior.”
“More like forty.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself, leading him on.”
“Who says I’m leading him on?”
I changed clothes and made sure I had everything I would need for a late afternoon jog. The temperatures would likely be falling closer to dark, so I had to make sure I had sufficient towels and sweatshirts to keep me warm after the jog.
“Take your earpiece in case you need to call. Faster than your antiquated flip-phone, dearie,” she reminded me.
“I wasn’t planning to take my phone. I wanted some alone, down time.”
“Take the earpiece or I’ll call Uncle Walters.”
“Sometimes you’re just plain invasive in my life,” I said. I retrieved the earpiece. It was automatically programmed to link me with Rogers who could then link me with anyone in the world who had either a computer or a telephone of any variety. Quite a gadget.
“You’re coming back in ample time to get ready for Rosey’s arrival, I would assume,” she said.
“No problem. I’ll return about dark and have plenty of time.”
“You’re not planning on cooking, I hope.”
“Oh, how I wish I could force feed food into you after a remark like that.”
“It’s a known fact that your cooking skills are non-existent.”
“I’m gradually improving that art,” I said.
“Operative word being gradually,” she added.
“I don’t get a whole lot of practice.”
“And the number of lab rats to test your results is also limited.”
“Cute.”
“Don’t be late,” she said as Sam and I left.
With all my recent focus and remembrance on Barraud Park, it crossed my mind to drive over there and run. Despite the years that had elapsed since the brutal slayings of the brother and sister, the park had no appeal to me as a runner. The whole atmosphere of the space was detrimental to positive vibes, at least for me. And since Rosey was arriving later in the evening, I decided to run closer to home. Running the backstreets of my neighborhood containing both houses and businesses had its own value and convenience. The chief value lay in the fact that there were most always people around. The convenience was the proximity to my apartment.
I do think lurking in the back of my brain was the fact that I had not been able to find the killer. The years had passed quickly but the assailant was still at large and could likely be around. I also had the imprint of the attack on me, two attacks to be precise. I am sure that all played a role in my disdain for Barraud Park and its environs.
The coolness of the late afternoon was readily apparent as we began our course. It didn’t take too long for me to warm up and get loose. Sam seemed to always be warm and loose. He was always ready and able to run whatever course I chose.
“Let’s do fifteen miles, Sam,” I said. “I need to push myself a bit today.”
He barked once without breaking stride. Did I also mention that he was usually agreeable?
I was comfortable in my sweatpants and tank top despite the setting sun and the cooling conditions. I estimated that we were some five miles into our hike. I decided to turn down a small street that was not part of our usual trek. I was a good two hundred feet into this new direction before I realized that Sam was no longer running beside me. The last thing I recall was that I had increased my speed and had passed him. I thought maybe he had stopped to smell the roses. I figured he could catch up quickly.
I turned around and jogged back toward my turn-off to see if he was coming behind me. He was nowhere around. Apparently, he had not seen me make the adjustment in our run.
I whistled.
I jogged a few more feet and watched. No dog forthcoming. I decided to keep going, so I turned around and headed in the direction I had originally planned on taking. After another fifty yards or so, I turned to see if he was coming. No dog. Facing the direction I had come from after my turn into this alley street, I decided to move backwards, keeping my eyes focused behind me as it were. I slowed to a backward walk. I whistled some more.
No sight of him.
A cool breeze moved through the narrow street and I took my heavier sweatshirt from around my waist and put it on. The warmth helped.
“Sam!” I called.
Sam made no appearance. I continued backward several more yards still concentrating on the entrance to the narrow street as I slowly moved away from it. It crossed my mind to go back to the entrance and look for him once more. I discounted that immediately since I knew that he would come running any moment now.
Time passed slowly. I stopped walking backwards and simply stood there looking back over the area I had come. It was not like him to stay away from me for this long.
“Sam!” I called again. No response.
“Lost your dog?” a man’s voice came from behind me.
I turned and looked squarely into the eyes of Jaz Connell. He pulled a small revolver from his jacket pocket and fired twice. The first shot hit my left arm close to the shoulder. The second shot missed me entirely.
“Are you crazy?” I yelled at him as I grabbed my upper arm with my right hand on instinct.
I realized the danger I was in once the bullet hit me. The earpiece was in my left ear, so I had to be careful in making a movement to it so that Rogers could be alerted to my predicament.
“Maybe a little,” he said, in answer to my query regarding his mental health. Then he fired again. This time the bullet hit me a few inches lower than my left shoulder, just above my left breast. The pain from both wounds on the left side of my body was intense, to say the least. I was hurt but stood my ground.
“You plan to kill me?” I said.
“That’d be nice, but I’ll get to that later. First, I want my dog back. Second, let’s go somewhere private so we can talk.”
“And you can finish me off after our little chat,” I said.
“Sounds like a plan,” he said, grinning at me.
Chapter 54
Most of the precarious situations in which I find myself in my work require both calmness and clear thinking. If I ever allowed myself to panic, then my chance of survival would be minimal. Talking is sometimes a good thing to do when facing someone holding you at gunpoint. Calmly talking, that is.
Pain management is another item that we gumshoes try to handle from time to time. This wasn’t the first time I had been shot, but because of the double wounds the pain was much more difficult to endure. I moved my right hand away from my left arm to just under my left shoulder. Neither of the two wounds would likely cause me to die, but I could bleed to death if I didn’t get some help soon. I removed my headband and used it to put some pressure on the wound to my torso.
I was in serious trouble. That much I knew.
Sam was somewhere else doing something. He was not with me. Calmness was eluding me. The lack of my ability to manage the pain was adversely affecting my clear thinking. This was not going too well at present.
I had the 9mm in the small of my back. I go practically nowhere without it, including bed. It has a requisite place under my two pillows providing me with tranquil sleep. Despite the presence of my handgun, the pain in my chest cavity and the pain in my left arm near my shoulder hindered me considerably from making any quick moves to divert this idiot with a gun in front of me while I might attempt to draw my own weapon from its hidden position. Clear thinking was not something that was happening at the moment.
Jaz motioned for me to move toward him by gesturing with his gun.
“Come this way. We need to move to a more secluded spot.”
<
br /> “We need to wait on Sam to catch up,” I said. “And this place appears to be fairly secluded.” I looked around as if to suggest that we were alone in this place that was more of an alleyway than a usual street. I was stalling to give my dog time to arrive. I was also stalling in order to give myself time to consider what my options were.
“Do what I say,” his voice intensified.
“Or you’ll shoot me?”
“Yeah, I’ll shoot you. Again.”
“You’ve already shot me. Let’s wait on Sam and then you can just kill me here.”
“Sam’s not coming,” he said and grinned.
My heart sank since I had already concluded that Jaz was a sociopath in need of some serious incarceration. I was counting on Sam being my ace in the hole. If he was still out there somewhere, then he just might show up and save me. My fearful curiosity forced the next question. I was never one to shy away from the hard truths of life.
“But you said—”
“Never mind what I said, he’s not coming.”
“How do you know?” I said, noticing that my voice was a little shaky. I was really trying to remain calm, to think clearly, and to protect my fearless reserve. The fearless reserve part was not going so well. Neither was any of the other stuff we tough detectives desire.
“He’s in my car waiting on us.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
He fired again and missed. I was grateful for his limited marksmanship. I was also a tad restless as I stood there nakedly vulnerable to the odds that he might get lucky again and hit me. Two misses so far. A third hit could be dead center and…I didn’t really want to go there.
“Get over here, now!” he yelled. His gun hand was shaking as he spat out his command to me.
I used that moment of his shaking hand and the fact that he looked down for a couple of seconds to move backward gradually. It crossed my mind that he was perhaps inebriated just enough to be wobbly. Could also explain his poor shooting. I was counting on an increased distance between us adding to his accuracy issues. I was also counting on him not noticing that I had shifted the front of my body away from him. Maybe five inches. Just enough to create an even more difficult target to hit, intoxication notwithstanding.
“How do I know that you have Sam? He would never get into your car willingly,” I said.
“Are you just stupid or something? He was my dog for more than a year. You don’t think I can control him? No wonder you have no idea what’s going on,” he said as he laughed rather loudly this time and then ended his demonic-like laughter with his signature stupid grin.
“You’ve lost me, Jaz,” I said. I was telling him the truth, but still trying to stall.
“You have no idea what’s happening, do you?” he grinned. His hand was still shaking a little.
“Like I said, I’m a little lost here. Tell me what’s happening.”
“This is what makes all of this so delicious…so much fun.”
“Tell me about that fun, delicious part,” I said, “and why Sam’s not coming.”
He looked down again, dropped his handgun to his side, laughed a little to himself, and then shook his head as if reacting to some private joke of which only he was aware. I was dealing with a lunatic, that much I was certain. He was definitely on another wavelength, likely enough a few light years away from reality. At least that many years away from where I was.
While he was looking down, I inched backward from him a tad more. I also took the opportunity to move my right hand from my torso wound to hit the earpiece and engage with Rogers.
He waved the handgun as he looked upward into the sky. His entire demeanor was manic at this point. I had the fear that I was watching someone slowly but surely lose control. I was doing my best to keep control of myself all the while watching him flow in the opposite direction. The pain from my wounds were now bothering me more. Excruciatingly more.
“You stupid bitch!” he screamed at me this time.
“Not the greeting I expected to hear, love. Are you okay?” Rogers said in my ear.
I was not at a place where I could answer her.
The handgun came down from his waving motion and aimed in my general direction. He fired. He missed again. Whew. Thank God for lousy shots. And alcoholic beverages.
“This way! Now!” he screamed. His voice was in fever pitch. When he said it, he looked down and pointed his gun to the ground. He used a kind of pumping action, up and down, as he gesticulated wildly with his gun hand. First aiming at a spot close to his feet, it seemed, and then moving wildly and quickly away from that to a more distance target. Perhaps he was hallucinating. I could hope.
“Okay, dear. Since I am given to superior intellect, I detect that you are in some type of desperate situation wherever you are. Should I alert Wineski of your situation?” Rogers said.
“Yes,” I whispered as I turned my head to my left side.
I inched backward a step or two more. By this point I figured I had distanced myself close to five feet from him. I was hoping that this increased my odds of survival. I was also hoping that by stalling Jaz I had increased the chances that Sam might yet arrive and save me. That meant I still did not believe he had captured my dog.
“Do you not know who I am?”
“Ah, now we’re getting somewhere,” Rogers said. “Keep him talking, sister.”
I wanted to scream for two reasons – one, the pain coming from my two gunshot wounds; two, at Rogers for her laissez-faire attitude with my crisis. Of course, she had no way of knowing that I had been shot twice. I had no way of informing her as yet.
This time Jaz’s voice was not screaming at me. He had suddenly found whatever control he had been lacking. I was frightened. It’s one thing to fend off a psychopath who appears to be in control of his emotions, quite another to stop one who is losing his flimsy grasp of any reality.
“As far as I know, you are Jaz Connell,” I said trying to sound quite confident with my ever-present latent fears.
“Oh, the idiot who wants compensation for his dog,” Rogers said in my ear.
“I’m Jasper Connelly.”
It took me a moment to register his words. It must have been the pain I was feeling that created the time lapse from his words to my recognition and the meaning. It took Rogers less time.
“My, oh my,” Rogers said. “Jaz Connell is Jasper Connelly. Could he be…?” her processing took over when she stopped forming the sentence.
The realization of this revelation penetrated my pain. It intensified. I decided to see if I could play dull with him and maybe even dull my own suffering a bit.
“Good for you.”
“Whattaya mean, good for you? Are you just stupid? I’m Jasper Stone Connelly. Don’t you get it, bitch?”
It’s funny how some revelations gradually sink into the brain as the words are being spoken. My brain generally works quickly, but there are times whenever the process seems to slow and it’s as if those synapses inside my skull are moving in slow motion, taking their own sweet time to connect. A pattern was now taking shape inside my mind. Wow.
“Clancy, this is the guy,” Rogers said.
“The eldest son of Garnet and Pearl,” I said with some new-found clarity in my predicament.
“Well, goodness sakes alive. The broad does finally have a brain in the head. Good for you, Clancy Evans. Good for you. But do you know why I have taken so long to satisfy my revenge with you?”
“Didn’t know you had any revenge scheduled for me,” I said.
“This is not promising,” Rogers said.
“Yeah, I know. Makes it all the more sweeter.”
“Tell me,” I said. “My curiosity is aroused. Why me? Because of Sam?”
“Wineski’s not answering his mobile. I’ll keep trying,” Rogers said to my ear.
“You mean Andy. His name is Andy. I don’t give a damn what you call ’im. But…yeah, I wanted my dog back. That’s done. But that ain’t the reason I aim
to take your life.”
“So, tell me. Why do you want to kill me if not for the dog?” I said.
“Wineski’s on the line,” Rogers said to me.
“You got too close. And you helped that homo Drew Sizemore years ago. He got my baby brother killed and corrupted him you know. And you helped that dirty pervert. I almost killed you back then,” he said. “You remember that stabbing, right? Almost got you then.”
“What’s going on?” Wineski’s voice was now in my ear.
“So you killed Drew and Jeffrey and Candace. I get your anger at Drew, but why Jeffrey and Candace? What had they done?”
“Needed to be purged. They were involved with the pervert. Sizemore and that Jeffrey guy were…together. Nasty stuff. There’s too much of that crap going on. I wanted to make Sizemore suffer. He hurt me and my family. He’s the reason my mother died. She had a broken heart when Odem was killed in prison…all because of Sizemore. And you came around defending his perversion.”
“Your mother died of complications in childbirth,” I said to Jasper.
“Who are you talking to?” Wineski said.
“She’s talking to Jasper Stone Connelly, aka Jaz Connell, who just confessed to all three murders,” Rogers said without realizing what she had done. The tense situation of my predicament did not allow me to jump in and correct what Rogers had just done.
“But you got away. Years ago. A triple murder. Why come back now and risk getting caught?” I said as I moved a few more inches away from him.
“Risk getting caught? Are you crazy, bitch? Look around you. You’re the one caught. I got the gun. Besides, I’m here for my mama. I blame it all on you. You took away my mama’s little gem, Odem. No way in that condition could she have a healthy baby. She had no protection. There were no forces around her to keep her safe.”
“I assume you can’t talk freely and that some microphone on your person is picking up this conversation and transferring it via a phone line,” Wineski said.
“I wasn’t even involved in the case when Odem died. I had nothing to do with Odem’s death,” I said.
“You took my dog from me,” he said as if that justified killing three people and now wanting to kill me. I couldn’t tell if he was providing me with a list of reasons why he had come after me now, or if he was simply having difficulty following our conversation, staying on point.
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