by Willow Rose
Pastor Rutherford didn’t move.
“It’s over,” I said.
He shook his head with a sniffle. “Not till I say so.”
The pastor looked into the scope, then fired a shot, then another. My heart stopped as I heard the bullets whistle through the air, not knowing if any of them hit my son. As I turned to look, tears springing to my eyes, the pastor had picked up my gun and pointed it at me.
In the moonlight, I could see his lips peel off his teeth in a smile. Then he pulled the trigger.
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I stared at the gun in the pastor’s hand. His eyes were wide in the sparse moonlight, his mouth gaping. I gasped and felt my stomach, but much to my surprise, I felt no blood, and I was in no pain.
What happened?
As I slowly started to breathe again, gasping for air, I realized I wasn’t the one who had been hit. The pastor gurgled and dropped the gun, then clasped his chest, and that was when I saw it. Blood was gushing out from a bullet wound. The pastor tried to speak, but nothing came out, and soon he collapsed. His limp body landed on the rooftop with a thud, while my heart raced in my chest. I turned to look behind me and spotted someone standing there. As he approached me, I recognized him.
It was Douglas Rutherford, the pastor’s brother.
“Charles!” he yelled and ran to his brother’s body. He knelt next to him and lifted his head into his lap. He rocked him back and forth, crying. The pastor remained lifeless. He was dead.
“I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry, brother.”
He looked at me, and I exhaled.
“I had to stop him,” Douglas said, sobbing. “He was going to kill you.”
“I…I…”
I tried to speak, but I couldn’t really find the words. I still couldn’t quite believe I wasn’t the one lying there in a pool of my own blood. I had been so certain this was the end.
“He was the good one, you know?” Douglas said. “I was the black sheep. I was the one who was supposed to be lying there. He tried to kill me. He came to the shack and tried to shoot me, but I escaped. I hid for days till I realized I had to act. I knew what they had been up to. I saw Beatrice kill Benjamin. I even helped her and that other woman carry the dead body to the freezer, while Charles Junior just watched us. I also knew that my brother Charles killed the stable guy and Lyle Bishop. I knew what they had done to Benjamin, stealing him so he would never talk. I knew everything, yet I kept quiet. I was a drunk. Who would ever believe me? I kept asking myself. But that was just a lousy excuse. Fact was, I was a coward. I didn’t dare stand up to my own brother. I should have told him it was wrong when he told me about Charles Junior’s accident and taking the boy. That was when I should have taken my stand. But I didn’t, and then suddenly the ball was rolling. One lie became a lot more just to cover up that first one, and soon I was just as guilty as they were. I even went so far that I cleaned the darn freezer out to cover for them after I saw you coming out of there. But then he wanted to kill me. Me, who had been loyal to him for all those years. Because I got drunk and told. One stupid night when I couldn’t keep it in anymore. I managed to get away, and I think he thought I was dead. After he tried to kill me, I was done with keeping their secrets. I went there to tell him. I wanted to give him the chance to tell the truth himself, so I went to his house. I didn’t come unprotected this time. I broke into a cabin where I found the rifle and brought it with me in case he tried anything again. I went there to confront him, but as I got there, I saw him with that kid by the creek. I watched from between the trees as he grabbed him and ran away with him. I followed him here, and that’s when you showed up. It took me a while to gather the courage to stop him. But now, I have. Once and for all.”
I was breathing easier now. I looked at him, then placed a hand on his shoulder.
“For what it’s worth, thank you.”
He sniffled and looked down at his brother. “Those that said better late than never weren’t really in this type of situation, were they?”
“Still, you saved my life.”
I said the words while dialing nine-one-one. Clutching the phone against my ear and talking to the dispatcher, telling her to send help, I climbed down the stairs and ran as fast as possible while still supported by the cane. I rushed toward the roller coaster.
“How many?” the dispatcher asked. “How many ambulances? How many are hurt?”
I found the control room and found the big STOP button and pressed it. The carousel music died, and the roller-coaster stopped abruptly.
“Sir? How many are hurt?”
I swallowed as I spotted my son in the front wagon, hunched forward. He wasn’t moving. I ran to him, while the woman on the other end grew impatient.
“Sir? Sir?”
I grabbed my son and pulled him upright, my heart knocking violently against my ribcage.
Please, let him be alive, God. Please.
As I touched my son, I felt my hand get sticky, and I looked at him with a loud gasp. Tears sprang to my eyes as the woman yelled at the other end.
“Sir. Are you still there? Hello? Sir?”
I took a deep breath, forcing myself to calm down as I reached over and grabbed my son, pulling him out of the seat, crying desperately. I dropped the phone into the snow when Austin was finally in my arms, and I slid to the ground, holding him tight, his blood soaking my jacket.
“Sir? Sir? How many people are hurt? Please, sir?”
I held my son close and spoke through a curtain of tears.
“TWO. Two people have been shot!”
82
It was the longest night of my life. I waited in the hospital for news about Austin, and Shannon came to be with me. She had gotten Bridget to keep an eye on the kids, so I didn’t have to be alone. We held each other tight all night while Austin was in surgery, and in the morning, Bridget brought all the kids to us. Abigail climbed into my lap and curled up like a small ball, crying.
“Please, tell me he’ll make it,” she said. “Please, Daddy.”
I had never seen her like this. Usually, Abigail always found some way to keep positive and make the best of any moment, but this was her twin brother, the one she had shared every moment of her life with, even in her mother’s womb. She had never known life without him.
Shannon brought me coffee while Abigail curled up in my embrace. I took it and drank it, wondering how I could have been so stupid. How had I missed Austin’s drawings? How had I not even thought about looking at them? Especially when he had refused to talk. I should have known that this was how he’d communicate about things he couldn’t talk about. Him being in there, on that surgery table, was all my fault.
Shannon saw how tormented I was and leaned over to kiss me. She looked into my eyes.
“You can go all the way back to deciding to come on this trip,” she said, “if you want to find more ways to blame yourself for this. I mean, it was your idea, right? To go skiing.”
I exhaled. “It’s hard not to.”
She shook her head and kissed me again. “Don’t do this to yourself. It’s not doing you any good. It’s not even helping Austin.”
A tear escaped my eye and Shannon wiped it away with her thumb.
“I can’t lose him, Shannon. I simply can’t. I will never be able to forgive myself.”
“At least you solved the case,” Shannon said. “Beatrice Rutherford is in jail, and so is her son.”
I sighed. “It’s not much of a consolation. I just want my son back. I just want to go home with my son.”
Shannon sighed and grabbed my hand in hers. “I know. I know.”
I leaned my head back till it touched the wall behind me. I was getting sick of sitting in these uncomfortable chairs. I didn’t even know how long I had been there.
“Why don’t they say anything?” I asked. “It’s been so many hours.”
“They will,” Shannon said. “They’re probably just busy, you know?”
“You should have seen him, Sha
nnon. When they rushed him off down the hallway and told me to stay behind. I almost lost it. My little boy with all those people and tubes and the doctors were yelling and rolling him away. It almost broke me, Shannon. What if that was the last time I saw him alive? I can’t stand the thought.”
“How bad was it?” she asked, her watchful eye constantly on Tyler, who had started exploring the waiting room.
“He had lost a lot of blood. I tried to wake him up while we waited for the helicopter to get him, but he was completely lifeless. The longest minutes of my life. I was so scared, Shannon.”
Shannon squeezed my hand as the door suddenly opened, and a man in blue scrubs entered. The front of his suit had blood on it, and I wondered if it was my son’s. He took off his mask and looked at us, a serious look in his eyes.
“Mr. Ryder?”
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“The projectile entered the patient on the right side of his chest. There’s severe damage to the tissue, shattered bone, and damaged nerves. Luckily, it seems that no heart venous or arterial vessels are fractured. Now, the right lung was damaged, and that is the serious part. There is a great risk for pneumothorax, a collapse of the lung, but for now, we seem to be in the clear as we have reestablished the pressure in his lung and inserted a chest tube. This will continuously remove air from the chest cavity until his lung is healed. His ribs were shattered when the projectile entered his body, and the splinters themselves have been cutting into blood vessels and arteries surrounding them. We have spent all night removing those splinters.”
Shannon glanced quickly at Jack. He was listening with his eyes wide open, and she could tell he was trying to understand what was being said, but not succeeding very well. She couldn’t blame him. She had a gazillion thoughts in her mind too, and it had to be a lot worse for him.
“But what does it mean, Doctor?” she asked, trying to help him out. “Is Austin…?”
The doctor nodded. “He’s alive, yes, and stable for now. But he needs to be monitored closely. The next twenty-four hours will be crucial for his chances of survival. We can’t say anything with certainty yet, but as I said, he is stable for now. We’ll let you know if anything changes in his condition and update you as often as we can. But I need you to be patient. Okay?”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Shannon said and grabbed Jack by the shoulders as the doctor disappeared back out the same door that he had entered a few minutes earlier. Jack stood motionless and stared at the doors.
“It was good news, Jack,” she said, trying to get him to look her in the eyes. “Austin is alive. Now, all we have to do is wait.”
Jack lifted his eyes, and her heart dropped when she saw the look in them. He shook his head.
“Come here. Sit down,” she said and guided him to a chair. She sat next to him and took his hands in hers. “He’s not in the clear yet, but he’s stable. He will get better, Jack. I know he will.”
Jack exhaled and leaned back in the chair, letting his head rest on the wall behind him, covering his face with his hands while groaning. Tyler crawled into his lap and sat there, looking up at his dad with a big smile. When Jack bent his head back down, the boy handed him something, and Jack looked at what it was. An old smeared chocolate bar that Shannon had no idea how he had gotten ahold of. He hadn’t even opened it but kept it in his hand where it had almost melted.
“I am sorry, Jack,” she said and reached for the bar. “I’ll get you a new one from the vending machine outside.”
Jack moved his hand with the bar in it so she couldn’t reach it. Then he laughed. Tears streamed across his cheeks, and he leaned over and kissed his son on the top of his head.
“This is the best present I ever got. How did you know, buddy? How did you know that this was just what I needed?”
Tyler smiled from ear to ear, then pointed at his head. “Magic.”
Jack chortled and pulled the boy into a deep embrace while the tears kept rolling. Shannon watched the two of them while bracing herself for having to go through yet another twenty-four hours of despairing uncertainty.
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Exactly thirty hours later, they finally gave us the all-clear. The doctor from earlier came out and told us Austin was no longer in critical condition and that he was awake.
“You can go see him now,” he said.
Never have I rushed so fast, heart throbbing in my chest, the cane clacking against the floor as I hurried down the hallway.
“Austin? Austin?”
Panic erupted in my voice as I finally found his room and pulled away the curtain.
“Austin?”
There he was. My little boy, lying in that awful bed surrounded by machines, his small blue eyes lingering on me. I saw such sorrow in them; I could barely take it.
“Austin?” I said and approached him. He reached out his hand, and I took it, pressing it against my cheek, tears gushing from my eyes. “Oh, Austin, I was so scared.”
“I…I’m sorry, Daddy,” his small hoarse voice whispered. “I…I should have…”
“No,” I said, cutting him off. “I am not going to let you blame yourself for this. I am the one who didn’t see; I am the one who was blind.”
Austin smiled wearily. He was so pale I could hardly recognize him. He coughed and I could tell speaking was tough on him. A tube still helped him breathe. He was going to have to stay at the hospital for the next two weeks, according to the doctor. I was going to stay with him until he was fully recovered. I was never leaving his side again.
“Finally, you’re awake, doofus,” Abigail said and came up to him. She too seemed weak and out of it. Her eyes were blank, and I could tell she had feared losing him.
Austin gave her a feeble smile as their eyes met, and I felt that deep connection that only the two of them had. It was a twin-thing, a doctor had once explained to me. They connected on a deeper level than any of us ever would. I sighed with relief, thinking there was no way Abigail could have made it had Austin died. In their eyes, there were only the two of them and then the rest of the world. One didn’t exist without the other.
“How are you feeling, Austin?” Angela asked as she came up to him. Angela had had a crush on him ever since I met Shannon and their lives were brought together. A tear escaped her eye, and she wiped it away. He lifted his hand and signaled for her to take it. They held hands for a few seconds, while Tyler crawled up on the bed and handed Austin a flat chocolate granola bar.
“Seriously? Where does he get them from?” Shannon asked, startled.
That made all of us laugh. It wasn’t even that funny, but I guess we needed a good laugh more than anything at this point.
Epilogue
Two days before they released Austin, I bumped into Deputy Winston by the vending machine in the hallway. I had been living off bars and sodas for almost two weeks now. Shannon and the kids had decided to go back and get the kids to school before they missed too much important stuff. Meanwhile, I had stayed at the hospital, sleeping in a chair, not letting my boy out of my sight. Austin was improving rapidly, the doctor told me, and would probably recover fully in time. But he needed to take it easy for a few more weeks once we got back. Meanwhile, I had finally lost the cane and was walking almost normally now.
“Hello there, Detective,” Winston said.
“Deputy? What brings you here?”
“You didn’t hear? Eliza Reuben woke up. The sheriff and I just spoke to her, got her statement. Everything she told us supported your story. It was the pastor she had faced in Harry Mayer’s house when finding his dead body and trying to resuscitate him, and it was also him who followed her in the black truck, chasing her until she crashed. Too bad the laptop in her briefcase was destroyed by the impact. She said she had recorded interviews with all of them on it, but she also said she uploaded them all to a drop box, that she always does that in case something happens, and she’ll try to access it as soon as possible. Fingers crossed that it’ll work since that will give us the last evidence we need for our
case against Beatrice Rutherford and her son Charles Junior. We want to put both of them away for a very long time.”
“Sounds good,” I said.
“Say, how’s that boy of yours doing? He any better?”
I nodded, feeling confident that it was all going to be good again. I opened my granola bar with peanut butter and took a bite.
“He will be. I’ll be taking him home in two days.”
“That’s good,” Winston said. “Don’t reckon we’ll be seeing any of you back here next year.”
I chuckled and chewed. “Probably not. Might want to go someplace warm next time. I’ve always wanted to go surfing in Puerto Rico.”
Winston nodded and shook my hand. “Well, it was nice to meet you, Detective. Take care now.”
“You too.”
I stared after Winston as he left, then continued down the hallway past Austin’s room, where he was sound asleep, and stopped in front of another room. I knocked gently and waited for the response.
“Come in.”
I peeked inside and smiled. She returned my smile.
“I know who you are. I saw your picture in my paper,” she said and held a copy of The Mountaineer up. They had been writing about the case consistently since it was revealed that it was his own mother who had killed Benjamin, or rather the woman everyone believed was his mother. The last I had read, they had written that, after her release, Benjamin’s sister, Penny, had gone up north to live with her aunt, Ginger Rutherford, who was apparently some famous author. The media had been on top of one another to get a statement from the girl, but she had refused to give one, and her aunt had instead pleaded with them to give the family some peace to recover. Penny had admitted to having been the one who attacked Colette, trying to get her to stop seeing Benjamin, but Colette had decided not to press charges, and so she was free to go. Douglas Rutherford, the uncle, had admitted to helping hide the body of Benjamin and was facing accessory charges.