Final Vows

by Karen Kingsbury

  By then a police helicopter unit had begun flying overhead looking for suspects. The whirring staccato of the copter’s propeller combined with the barking dogs made it almost impossible to hear the man.

  “Help me!” he shouted, stopping at the bottom of the steps and facing the officers hiding near the front of his property. “I’ve been shot! Can’t you see that? Why won’t someone get over here and help me?”

  Medlin felt his body tense. At first, when the man had walked down the hallway without a limp, Medlin thought he was a suspect. He pushed the thought from his mind. Obviously this man was a victim.

  Standard procedure at a crime scene mandated that the nearest officer take charge of the situation. Medlin looked around and saw he was closest. Even though the man was probably a victim, Medlin knew enough to treat him as a suspect until he was safely in police custody. The officer stood up quickly, giving away his cover and gaining the man’s attention. Medlin aimed his gun at the man.

  “Put your hands in the air and walk away from the house,” Medlin shouted. Amid the commotion the man seemed not to hear the command. He remained frozen at the base of the steps, still holding his right side.

  “Help me! I’ve been shot!” His voice rose a notch above the commotion.

  “Listen, get your hands up where I can see them and come over here.” Medlin motioned with his gun for the man to walk toward the garage.

  The man winced and clutched his right side a bit tighter, putting his one free arm up in the air as he began limping toward the cars parked in his driveway. He stopped once to rest against the white Nissan, parked nearest him, and then slowly moved closer to Medlin, using the car as a crutch.

  Across the street Officer Glen Sorkness moved in to assist Medlin.

  “Medlin, get inside.” Lieutenant Art Moody barked the order and Medlin and Sorkness exchanged a knowing glance.

  “I’ll take it from here,” Sorkness said. Medlin nodded and turned to join three other officers for an initial check of the house. The front door had been open since they arrived on the scene. Medlin opened the front screen door and entered the residence with the other officers right behind him. The lieutenant made a note in his log: Officers entered home at 11:12 pm.

  Sorkness waved his flashlight toward the paramedics parked just down the street. Inside the ambulance Kelly Chulik and Jeff Williams had been waiting. These were the most difficult calls for paramedics. Murder in progress meant someone might be dying inside, but until they were given the all-clear sign they were forbidden to approach. That night as each minute passed Chulik and Williams grew more nervous. They were trained to save lives, not wait outside. When they finally saw Sorkness wave the flashlight, the paramedics snapped into action. They grabbed their medical kits and ran toward the house.

  Sorkness was already questioning the wounded man. Expertly, Chulik and Williams began working to get his vital signs while Sorkness continued the interview. Chulik noticed that the man had been shot once in the back just above his right hip. Although the victim was complaining of severe abdominal pain, Chulik noted there was very little blood near the wound. At that moment, two other paramedics joined them with a stretcher.

  “They’re ready for you inside,” one of them said, motioning Chulik and Williams toward the house. “We’ve got this one.”

  Chulik led the way, running up the front walk and into the house. The officers had taken just two minutes to assess the situation and determine that the suspect or suspects had already fled the scene.

  Once inside, Chulik saw the woman lying motionless in the hallway. She was heavyset with dark brown or black hair and he could see she was lying in a thick pool of clotting blood. She didn’t appear to be breathing.

  “Doesn’t look good,” he muttered as he knelt near her and rolled her onto her left side.

  The woman’s eyes were open and lifeless and her face was covered with sticky, dark red blood. Chulik guessed she had been lying in a pool of her own blood for several minutes. Now the dark red fluid had coagulated into clots the size of cotton balls, which were stuck to her face and the carpet she had been lying on. A dark ring of dried blood circled the woman’s face, showing how deep the puddle had been. Chulik noticed two large holes in the back of the woman’s neck. The fleshy area just above the woman’s chin had a dime-sized hole where one of the bullets had exited her body. Chulik guessed the other bullet was still inside her, possibly lodged in her spinal cord. Later the bullets would be examined by forensics experts to determine what caliber gun had fired them.

  She wore sweatpants and a loose tank top which made it easy for the paramedics to work on her. She was also not wearing a bra. Clutched in her right palm was a wadded-up damp paper towel and automobile registration papers, and near her head was a set of keys. Chulik brushed the thick blood away from the woman’s mouth and nose and listened for respiration. There was none. Next he felt the pulse on the right side of her neck. Again there was no response.

  “Paddles,” Chulik said and instantly Williams handed the electric heart-starter equipment to his partner. Chulik placed them over the woman’s heart and pushed a button, sending an electric shock into her body. This time when he felt for a pulse he tried not to think about the woman’s skin. It was cold and had the stiffness of a cadaver.

  Chapter 3

  The longer the paramedics worked on Dan Montecalvo, the more hysterical he became. At first he seemed interested only in his gunshot wound, but as the minutes slipped by he began screaming that his wife needed help inside.

  “What’s taking so long?” he sobbed. “Someone help her! My wife is dying in there!”

  Officer Glen Sorkness tried to pacify him. Sorkness was tall with blond hair and a physique some men work all their lives to attain. In his single days, his fellow officers had dubbed him “Snake” for his wily way with women. The name had stuck, despite the fact that he was now a happily married family man.

  Despite Sorkness’s efforts to calm the hysterical man beside him, it was obvious he was not going to go willingly with the paramedics until he found out about his wife.

  By then, a buzz had spread through the neighborhood and residents had begun to gather in front of their homes. So far, Suzan Brown was not among them. A few teenage boys on bicycles had ridden as close to the scene as police would allow. As the paramedics began to wheel the stretcher toward the ambulance, Dan jumped off and began running toward the house without any sign of the limp he’d had when he first appeared in the doorway.

  “I have to see my wife,” he shouted as he ran. “Why won’t someone help her?”

  “Listen, Mr. Montecalvo,” Sorkness said as he caught up with and grabbed the man. “They’re working on your wife right now and we can’t have you getting in the way. Now, let’s take you to the hospital.”

  He helped the paramedics strap the man down and wheel him into the ambulance before he had a chance to free himself again. Sorkness climbed into his police car and followed closely behind the ambulance. The drive to St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Burbank took just five minutes but it gave the officer a chance to think about the man’s behavior.

  At first he hadn’t seemed to remember that his wife was dying inside, so busy was he limping and complaining about his own injury. But when they tried to take him away from the scene, he became intent on knowing her condition and, despite his gunshot wound, was suddenly able to jump off the stretcher and run. Of course, at that time Sorkness knew nothing about Medlin’s earlier observation that the man had appeared to manufacture the limp only upon seeing police in his yard. Sorkness figured the man’s reaction probably had something to do with a panic-induced adrenaline burst.

  Sorkness was accompanying the man to the hospital for one reason: to gather information about the shooting. The police would eventually have to solve this case based largely on the details Mr. Montecalvo could remember. If his wife lived, she would also be a valuable source of evidence. Time was of the essence.


  Back at the house Sorkness had asked the victim several questions about what happened, but he had been too distraught to give intelligent answers. Sorkness had gotten the man’s name—Dan Montecalvo. Sorkness wondered whether Dan’s wife would live. He had left before any report on her condition had been given.

  The ambulance swung into the hospital parking lot and Sorkness followed closely behind. He waited until they were inside the emergency room before beginning the interview. He had decided against taking notes. After nearly twenty years with the police force, Sorkness felt confident relying on memory. Later in the evening he would include the man’s comments in his report. Sorkness watched as the nurses worked to stabilize him. He decided to start with the easy questions.

  “You feeling okay?” he asked softly, watching for the man’s reaction. Although the nurses had not yet administered any drugs, the man seemed considerably calmer than he had been earlier at the house.

  “I’m in a lot of pain,” Dan answered, wincing as the nurse drew a blood sample from his right arm. “How’s my wife? She here somewhere? Where is she?”

  “Sorry, Mr. Montecalvo, I have no information about your wife right now. I’m sure you’ll hear something soon.” Sorkness paused a moment and moved a bit closer to the bed. “What happened tonight?”

  “Burglars,” Dan answered, shaking his head and putting his left arm over his eyes. “Darn burglars.”

  Sorkness tried to be patient. “Mr. Montecalvo, I know this is going to be difficult for you but I need you to take it from the beginning. What exactly happened tonight?”

  Dan took a deep breath and nodded, moving his arm from his face and Sorkness wondered if he was going to become hysterical again. Instead the man sighed and began to talk.

  “Me and the wife were on vacation, supposed to go to Hawaii tomorrow morning, had the trip all planned out and everything,” he said. “Tonight, well, you know, we packed and went out to eat at the pancake house here in Burbank. After that, went by the May Company. You know, bought some stuff for the trip. Then we came home.”

  Sorkness interrupted. “What time was that, Mr. Montecalvo?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Might have been sometime around nine-thirty, ten o’clock. Something like that.”

  Sorkness nodded. “What happened after you got home?”

  “Well, nothing at first. I mean, you know, we packed a few more things and then we took a walk. We take a lot of walks at night, you know. Later in the evening.”

  “What time was the walk?”

  “Must have been maybe ten-thirty, ten-forty-five.” Dan winced as he struggled to find a more comfortable position.

  “You lock the house up before you left?”

  “Yeah, we always lock the house up, locked it up good and then we took a walk around the neighborhood.”

  Sorkness made a mental note of those details. “What happened next?”

  Dan rubbed his eyes and again Sorkness wondered if he’d be able to make it through the entire story. “We finished the walk, got back to the house, and we noticed the tags on my wife’s car were set to expire tomorrow.”

  Sorkness looked puzzled. “You mean the registration tags?”

  Dan nodded. “Yeah, we was gonna take her car to the airport tomorrow and we didn’t want any delay with the police, you know, getting pulled over for expired plates or nothing. So I told the wife to go on inside the house, get a wet paper towel so we could clean it off and everything.”

  “You both went inside then?”

  Dan shook his head. “No. The tags were in my car, the other car, inside the glove box. That’s where they’d been for a long time and we just remembered about them because of the trip and because they were about to expire the next day and all.”

  “Then what?” Sorkness said, picturing the events as Dan described them.

  “Well, so I went toward my car to get the tags from the glove box and my wife went inside the house for the paper towel.”

  “She had the house keys?”

  Dan nodded. “Yeah. She opened the house up, went inside, and that’s when it happened.”

  Sorkness waited as Dan buried his head in his hands and began breathing very fast. He wondered if these questions were too much for the man. But Sorkness knew if he could get the man past this point in the story he’d have enough details to start an investigation.

  “Mr. Montecalvo, I’m sorry. I need to know what happened next.”

  “Okay.” Dan slowed down his breathing and continued to talk with his head facedown in his hands. “She walked inside and I heard her shout, ‘What are you doing here?’ and then all of a sudden there were two loud shotgun blasts.”

  “You were still outside at this time?”

  “Right, out by my car looking for the registration tags. Soon as I heard her scream and then those shots . . .”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I ran into the house to see what was going on, you know?”

  Sorkness nodded.

  “Well, I got inside the house and right away I was grabbed from behind, around the waist. I never had a chance to see what the guy looked like, just got grabbed soon as I walked inside.”

  “Was it a man?”

  Dan shrugged. “I think so. I don’t know.”

  “He say anything?”

  “No, nothing. Before I could get free I heard a gun go off a third time and felt this deep pain in my right side. I knew I was shot, no doubt about it.”

  “Then what?” Sorkness watched Dan’s expression but the man seemed to be holding up better than he’d hoped.

  “Well, you know, I fell to the floor and all, just lay there for a few seconds. While I was down there, seemed like I felt someone moving near my head and I heard someone say, ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’ ”

  “Was it a man’s voice you heard?”

  “Well, now that you mention it, I think it was a man’s voice. He didn’t talk real loud or nothing. Couldn’t really tell what his voice was like. But I’m almost positive it was a man.”

  “Okay, so what happened next?”

  “Well, I was just lying there trying to get up but I was in a lot of pain. Then I remembered my wife. I had to help her out, so I got up and walked into the hallway.”

  Dan began rubbing his eyes again, looking like he was about to break down. Sorkness thought the man was holding up very well considering he had just found his wife shot in their family home. Sorkness figured the man must have still been in serious shock because otherwise he would probably have sobbed through the entire story.

  “I found her and she was just lying there, bleeding,” Dan said quietly. “So I checked her and I knew she was still alive.” He paused.

  “What then?”

  “I began praying. I just asked the Lord to please help my wife, please let her live. Then I ran into the bedroom to call for help but I couldn’t get the phone to work. So I ran into the den and called from there. That’s when I saw the cash box pried open, lying empty on the floor.”

  “How much money was in the cash box?”

  “Somewhere around eight hundred dollars in bills and maybe another twenty dollars in change.”

  Upon hearing that detail Sorkness was almost certain the shootings had taken place as the result of an interrupted burglary. Over the past year police had been dealing with a rash of break-ins, especially in the older part of Burbank where South Myers Street was located.

  “Okay, what happened next?”

  Dan nodded. “I told the lady we was hurt, we needed help. Then I hung up and went back to help my wife. At that time, she was still holding on. Then the phone rang and I had to leave her again to answer it. The nine-one-one lady wanted to know about the burglars, what happened and all.”

  Sorkness nodded.

  “Don’t remember exactly what I told the lady. Told her the burglars had already gone, told her we’d been shot and we needed help. Then I hung up again and left the phone o
ff the hook.”

  “Why’d you do that?” Sorkness watched the man’s reaction, hoping he wasn’t pushing him too far.

  “Again, my wife was bleeding in the other room, in the hallway. She’d been shot twice and I wanted to help her. The operator was wasting time on the phone when she should have been getting someone in there to help us,” Dan said, clearly irritated.

  Sorkness nodded. “All right, what happened next?”

  “I went back to my wife and she was still alive. I kept thinking to myself, where are the police, where’s the paramedics. She was dying in there and no one was coming to help. I looked down at her and I said, ‘Honey, hold on. Don’t give up. Help’s coming,’ things like that. And I kept praying.”

  “You give her mouth-to-mouth or any other first aid?” Sorkness asked softly. He didn’t want to upset the man any further. But it might be helpful later to know what had been done to help the woman before paramedics arrived on the scene.

  “No mouth-to-mouth or nothing. But I took her pulse, just to make sure she was still hanging in there.”

  “You felt a pulse?”

  “Yeah, she was alive all right, definitely hanging in there at that time.”

  “You take it from her wrist or where?”

  Dan began rubbing his eyes again and when he answered Sorkness heard his voice crack. “Took it from her neck, right side of her neck. Knelt right there beside her and checked it to make sure she was still with me. Then I stayed right there and prayed.”

  “What then, Mr. Montecalvo?”

  “Well, nothing happened. Nothing at all. Kept waiting and she was alive but no one showed up. Then I thought I heard something outside, helicopters or something. That’s when I got up and walked outside and saw all the police waiting around.”

  Sorkness heard an edge in the man’s voice. He seemed very upset that police had taken several minutes before sending someone in to help his wife. “Anything else you can remember?”

  “Yeah, the cops pulled a gun on me. Treated me like some kind of criminal while they waited around and refused to let those paramedics inside. Why wouldn’t they let someone help her? She was bleeding everywhere and still they wouldn’t let the paramedics inside.”