Line of Duty

by Terri Blackstock

  She got to her feet. “Tell you what. I’m going to check back on you tomorrow morning. If I can, I’ll take you home myself. But if I can’t get away, what if I got some of my friends from church to come and help you? They’d love to do it. They’d consider it part of the rescue effort, in a way.”

  He looked genuinely moved. “Well, if there are people that kindhearted, I sure wouldn’t turn them away.”

  She went to his bed and bent down to hug him. “Well, I’d better get back to ICU. You’ll be hearing from me tomorrow.”

  “You’re a sweetheart,” he said. “A God-given angel.”

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  The sheer volume of the debris the detective teams sifted through made Stan wonder if his work here would have any impact at all. But someone had to do it. Somewhere under all the ashes, there was evidence that could link them to the killer.

  Donning safety goggles and breathing masks, and wearing rubber gloves, the investigative teams sifted the ashes and powder into boxes that were later discarded. Big pieces were left behind and sorted into lines and lines of evidence laid out on the floors for the forensics teams to follow up on. Occasionally, someone found something that had higher importance, and the forensics teams would examine it immediately.

  But it was a slow process.

  So far, they’d found hundreds of pieces of car tags, jewelry, computer parts, but nothing that could definitively point to the origin of the bomb, who had made it, or even what it was made of.

  “If I gotta dig through ashes,” Sid said, “I’d rather be looking for bodies. Look at this.” He pulled out a set of car keys. “This goes in the evidence pile, only how can they know if it belonged to some poor soul who worked in the building, or the bomber himself? It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, only we don’t know it’s a needle we’re looking for.”

  “You got any better ideas?” Stan asked him.

  Sid shook his head. “No, man, I don’t. But my talents are wasted here. Let me out there to hunt down Merritt. Now, that would get us somewhere.”

  Stan had thought the same thing himself. It was maddening doing such menial labor, but it had to be done. And not too many were qualified to do it.

  “Well, this is where they need us,” he said. “I guess if we really want to help, we have to do what’s needed.”

  “Thing is,” Sid said, “we could dig through this stuff for months and still not finish. We’re talking thirty floors’ worth of ashes and debris.”

  “Maybe we won’t have to go through all of it. Maybe we’ll find exactly what we’re looking for and it’ll crack the whole case.”

  Sid didn’t look convinced, but Stan knew he didn’t plan to slack off on his work. This was an investigation like any other, and every piece of evidence counted.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  The firehouse at Newpointe’s Midtown Station was a somber place as the crew on duty came for supper. Aunt Aggie had tried to lighten the mood when she’d first come here today, but she had soon realized that she couldn’t combat their moods. They were grieving several of their own. Truth be known, she was grieving too, but busyness was the best antidote to grief she knew.

  She had boiled a pot of shrimp for them today and had made gumbo, which was their favorite because it kept and they could snack on it at night. As she dipped it out of the pot into bowls and passed it around the table, she wondered if any of them would eat a bite.

  “Ain’t none of y’all need to be at work today,” she said in her rapid Cajun tone. “They ought to close down the whole fire department, y’ask me.”

  Ray looked wearier than the rest of them. “Aunt Aggie, you know we can’t do that.”

  “I’m just saying you boys been through a lot. There ought to be some off time ’fore you start burying your buddies.” She put a bowl in front of Nick and stroked his hair. He sat slumped over, staring down at the table. She could hear the wheeze of his breathing. None of them was sucking oxygen like they should today. The whole lot of them needed to be in the hospital, if you asked her. But here they were at work, serving the community who hardly appreciated them at all.

  “Eat up, Nicky,” she said. “You need your strength, sha. You got a lot to do.”

  “Five funerals,” he said, looking up at the men across the table from him. “Five funerals in the next forty-eight hours.”

  “Least you found them,” Aggie said. “You could be still digging through that pile, looking for bodies. Lots of folks still are.”

  She knew her words weren’t helpful, so she bit her tongue and went back to the stove and pulled out the biscuits she had prepared for them. Maybe the food would comfort them, if she could get them to eat. She’d made a big chocolate cake for dessert and had even brought some of that pralines-and-cream ice cream from the Baskin-Robbins up the street. If she could keep their bellies full, maybe their hearts wouldn’t feel so empty.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Stan was tired of the evidence warehouse. It was filthy work in high temperatures, since so much of the debris still smoked and smoldered, and they couldn’t use fans because it would blow the ashes around. He’d logged what seemed like thousands of bits of evidence, yet nothing he’d found seemed of any consequence in the whole scheme of things.

  Then he saw a commotion on the other side of the room. He nudged Sid, who worked next to him. “Think they got something?”

  Sid stopped working and took his goggles off to peer across the room.

  Some of the forensics people had run over to examine something, and people all around that part of the room had stopped working to see.

  “I’m goin’ over there,” Sid said. “It’ll do me good to see ’em pull something important out of that pile.”

  Stan pulled his mask off and followed Sid around the outer perimeter of the room. Others were doing the same.

  A crowd of detectives began to form around the forensics team as they turned over a big chunk of metal. Stan saw that there were letters on it. A commercial sign of some sort, he thought.

  “It’s a part from one of those Budget rental trucks,” one of the lead forensics guys announced. “Inside’s charred, metal’s melted. Looks like we might have the point of origin of the third bomb.”

  Stan started to laugh, and Sid slapped him a high five.

  “Now we’re talking,” Sid said. “We can run down a rental truck.”

  Stan went to the pile from which that piece had been found. “Let’s work over here for a while,” he said. “Maybe we’ll find more pieces.”

  And as he resumed his work, Stan felt as if it wasn’t wasted after all.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Allie Branning had expected her time with Gordon to be more of a chore than a blessing, but when Jill had asked them to help him, she couldn’t refuse. As she and Celia and Susan escorted the limping man into his house, she found herself enjoying his wit.

  “Ain’t much, but it’s home,” he said. “If I’d known you girls were gonna come home with me, I’d have straightened up before I left. ’Course, when I went up to Icon that day, I didn’t plan on landing in the hospital.”

  “Don’t you worry about a thing,” Susan said. “Now you just come right on in here and you sit down in your chair. This is your chair, isn’t it?”

  He smiled. “Yes, ma’am. That one over there was Alma’s.”

  “It looks like her.” Susan had known Alma before she died, though she had never met Gordon until today. “Your wife was a beautiful woman. I know you miss her terribly.”

  His face sobered up. “I’m glad she’s not alive to see what went on this week.”

  Susan sighed. “All I can say about that is God’s still on his throne. In fact, that’s why we’re here. We want to take care of you because we know how much God loves you.”

  The man chuckled. “Let’s not get carried away.”

  Allie went to the adjoining kitchen and started unloading his bag of medicine. “You don’t think God loves you?”
she asked.

  He gave her a disarming grin. “You wouldn’t blame him if you knew me better.”

  Celia walked around the room, picking up craft items that his wife had probably made. “Well, your wife sure seemed to love you. She decorated this house so sweet.”

  “She made a lot of this stuff herself. Watched them decorating shows on TV and always had new ideas about how to make the house homier.”

  “I bet she cooked, too,” Susan said.

  “Yep. I’ve lost quite a bit of weight since she died, though you couldn’t tell it by looking at me.”

  “Well, speaking of weight, we have a ton of food out in the trunk,” Susan said. “Aunt Aggie made you some of her special recipes that she only cooks for the firefighters, so you can consider yourself privileged. You’re having gumbo for supper.”

  She saw the emotion pulling at his face. “I don’t even know what to say. I can never repay you for all this.”

  Allie looked from Celia to Susan and knew they were all thinking the same thing. The look on his face had already repaid them many times over. Gordon was going to be easy to take care of.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Issie had never frozen on a call before.

  She stood over the patient, who lay on the couch, and watched as her new partner, B.J. Casey, did what needed to be done.

  She was useless.

  She should have known by the woman’s symptoms that it was a diabetic coma. Nausea, vomiting, dehydration, rapid respirations . . . She should have started an IV and drawn some blood, checked the glucose level, administered dextrose . . .

  But she had done none of those things. Her heart had raced as if she were the patient, and her hands trembled as she’d started her primary assessment. B.J., who had years’ less experience, had seen her hesitation and had taken over.

  It was disgraceful. She had no business in the field like this. She should have stayed home, yet they were down two medics, and she wasn’t the only one grieving.

  When B.J. had stabilized the patient, they loaded her into the unit. Issie drove her to the Slidell hospital and went through the motions of turning her over to the emergency staff.

  B.J. was quiet as he got behind the wheel and drove them back to Midtown. “It’s okay, Issie. We’re all a little shaken.”

  “It’s not okay,” she said. “I’m not going on another call tonight.”

  “You’ll be all right. That’s why there are two of us.”

  “No,” she said. “I’m putting people’s lives in danger. Someone’s going to have to fill in for me.”

  She hated being so weak. The others had been on the site with her. They had been there, too, when her friends had been pulled out. But they hadn’t fallen apart.

  When they reached Midtown, she called around to find a replacement. No one seemed to be home. It was as if they were all somewhere together, sharing war stories and talking out their memories.

  Joe’s Place. Of course that was where they were. It’s where she would have been before she’d become a Christian. The bar just yards from the door of Midtown Station would have been her place to unwind, spill her guts, vent her anger, and share her grief.

  Now she had Nick and the church. But Nick was grieving the loss of his own men, planning five funerals, performing his duties as chaplain of Emergency Services. Even now, though he was on duty, he’d retreated to the back of the station to work on what he’d say at the funerals. He had his work cut out for him.

  She went back out of the station and looked toward the bar. The parking lot was full—too many cars to pick out the few belonging to her friends.

  “You find anybody?” B.J. asked from the rescue unit.

  She shook her head. “They’re at Joe’s. I’ll go find somebody who hasn’t been drinking.”

  She stepped across the street, hoping Nick wouldn’t glance out the window and see her heading to her old haunt.

  She crossed through the parking lot, a sense of nostalgia beating through her. When she opened the door, light spilled out, along with the smell of smoke and alcohol.

  The truth was, she could use a drink right now. Just one would calm her heart and steady her hands. Then maybe she could trust herself again.

  She found her colleagues sitting around a table in the corner, their faces grim as they leaned in, talking in quiet voices. She longed to join them.

  Bob Sigrest looked up as she approached. “Preacher’s wife, two o’clock.” The others laughed.

  “Very funny,” she said.

  Frenchy scooted her chair over to make room for her. “I thought you were on duty.”

  “I was . . . am. Look, I need one of you to fill in for me. I can’t work tonight.”

  Their smiles sobered again. “What’s wrong?”

  She thought of glossing over it, pleading illness or something. But she knew word would get around. “My head’s not in it or something,” she said. “I froze on the last call. If seconds had counted, if someone’s life hung in the balance, they might have died.”

  Twila slid her chair back and got up. “I’ll go. I just got here, haven’t had anything to drink.”

  Issie looked at her friend. Her eyes were red, too, as if she’d been crying before coming in. Twila had been Karen’s partner. She was sure the deaths had hit her hard too.

  “Thank you, Twila. Sorry I had to ask.”

  “It’s okay,” Twila said. “I may have to call on you sometime.”

  She hurried out to get her uniform and join B.J. in the rescue unit, and Issie stood there for a moment, thinking of pulling up a chair and settling in.

  “You okay?” Frenchy asked.

  She nodded. “I will be.”

  “Don’t feel bad, Issie,” she said. “It did a number on all of us. Sit down, have one beer. You need to relax.”

  Issie looked toward the bar. Would it really be a scandal if she ordered one beer or a glass of wine? If she sat here with her friends and coworkers for a few minutes?

  What would Nick say?

  More importantly, what would Christ say?

  “No, I’ve got to go home.”

  “Come on, Issie,” Bob said. “Jesus drank. Take off your preacher’s wife hat and put on your medic’s. This is where you belong right now.”

  She had heard that argument that Jesus drank before, had even made it herself a time or two. But one drink wasn’t the problem. It was the lure of the lifestyle, the temptation of her old self calling her back, the pull that she couldn’t explain.

  “I’ll talk to you guys later,” she said.

  She hurried out of the place, crossed back over to Purchase Street, and got into her car in the parking lot next to the station.

  Finally, she let herself fall apart.

  Nick sat in the TV room, his notes spread out on a small table in front of him. He heard the car door in the parking lot, and glanced out.

  Was that Issie sitting there behind the wheel? Why wasn’t she on duty?

  Worried, he went outside and opened the passenger door. The light came on, illuminating her anguished face.

  “Baby, what’s wrong?”

  She stared straight ahead through the windshield. “I kind of lost it and had to get Twila to fill in for me.”

  He slipped into the car and closed the door, making the light go back out. He slid his arms around her, and she sank into him. She smelled of cigarette smoke. He wondered if B.J., her new partner, smoked. “Honey, I told you it was too soon for you to go back to work.”

  “But it wasn’t too soon for you,” she said. “You went through worse than I did.”

  “Why didn’t you come get me?”

  “I’m okay, Nick. Really. I didn’t want to give you one more person to counsel.”

  “Issie, you’re my wife.”

  “I know, but . . . I thought I could handle it. But I can’t seem to function. I can’t think.”

  Nick knew just what she meant. He’d felt fragmented for days and couldn’t seem to put himself ba
ck together. One minute he was numb, and the next he was crying like a baby.

  “I’ve had the same problem. And I’ve been hearing it over and over from the others.”

  “I’ll start to do something and forget what I was doing,” she said. “I walk into rooms and don’t know why I’m there. A little while ago, we got a call, and it was so simple, but for the life of me, I couldn’t think what to do for her.”

  Nick reached into the backseat for a box of tissue, handed it to her. She blew her nose, then pulled out another one and dabbed at her eyes.

  “Nick, I went to Joe’s Place.”

  Nick stared at her for a moment and felt that cowardly feeling of dread, as if another part of his life might fold over and snap.

  “That would explain the cigarette smell.”

  “I went to get someone to replace me. They were all sitting there around that table, relaxing and swapping stories. And I thought of all the times I’d sat there with Karen and Steve. I thought if I could just have one drink to calm my nerves . . .”

  He waited, that dread pulsing through him.

  She swallowed. “And then I realized how strong that pull was, too strong, like there was some force that really wanted me to go back to that life. So I left and came back here, and I started thinking what a wretch I am, that one disaster could shake me like that, when I’m the one who has so much to be thankful for. It could be you being buried tomorrow.”

  The relief shooting through him almost made him lightheaded. He kissed her then, a long, grateful, hungry kiss that had healing power for them both.

  “I’m sorry I went there,” she whispered against his lips. “I’m sure word will be all over town tomorrow that the preacher’s wife was in the bar. But I didn’t sit down, Nick, and I didn’t drink a drop.”

  So many in town were watching Issie, waiting for her to mess up and show what they considered her true colors. But he knew the changes in her life were real. He pressed his forehead against hers. “Baby, don’t worry what they say. You haven’t embarrassed me. And what you’re suffering is post-traumatic stress syndrome. It’s normal.”