Before I Wake

by Dee Henderson

  “Two upwind, four downwind on this side. The high school can receive.”

  “Put every officer on it except for those Chet has working to pin down the rifleman. Nothing else is higher priority. Get this place evacuated.”

  Nathan swayed and Will grabbed his good shoulder. “I’ll handle the pullout. You’re going down for medical attention right now.”

  The ground was beginning to turn on him. Nathan knew he didn’t have a choice in the matter. “Sorry, Will. I’m leaving you a mess.”

  “Good thing I’m prepared to clean it up then.”

  Nathan could see paramedics and one of the emergency-room doctors rushing up the street to join them. He’d be poked and prodded and stuck before long. He favored living with the pain a few more minutes. He staggered without a choice and Bruce moved him to sit down on the snowy ground. Nathan sat and looked at the blood dripping off his hand.

  His arm was a mess.

  When the paramedics took scissors to the sleeve two minutes later he saw just how bad a mess. He tried to joke about it with the lead paramedic but didn’t even rate a smile from the guy at the humor. Nathan looked away from their work.

  Rae was sitting on the bus steps, watching him be an idiot.

  He tried his smile out on her, but she just rested her chin on her hands and watched the paramedics work. She didn’t have a coat on anymore. She had to be cold.

  “Where’s your coat?”

  “Don’t know.”

  She didn’t sound like she cared.

  “How did you and Bruce get into the tile plant to reach the bus?”

  “Picked the lock.”

  “Picked the lock, while under fire.”

  She just nodded. “Sometimes I’m an idiot too.”

  He laughed. He tried to find a reply to that and realized there wasn’t a good enough one available.

  He watched the doctor try to deal with a dislocated elbow and a bullet hole and thought about what it would be like to have the sheriff pass out on the town street during treatment. He could mentally feel himself losing focus, rather fascinated by the sensation, as he realized he was heading toward passing out.

  “We need to get you to the hospital to deal with this.”

  “No. You can have me all you want tomorrow to fix it, but today I stay put. So just do what you can.”

  “It’s a clean dislocation, and I can deal with it here. But I strongly advise against this. It’s going to really hurt,” the doctor warned.

  Nathan just closed his eyes and nodded.

  The doctor put his elbow back in place.

  Nathan threw up.

  He thought it was the pain exploding at first, the noise that reverberated through his head as he retched; then he heard the second blast. The tile plant began to shower pieces of metal down on the street.

  42

  Nathan shifted soda cans around on the ground to find one still unopened. The number of dropped cans in the snow as people darted for cover had left him with several very cold ones to choose from. He selected an orange one and opened it with one hand. His head felt clearer and he was finally beginning to feel like he was getting his bearings back, even if he’d never been out of the loop for more than twenty minutes since this crisis began.

  “We’ve got the second shooter’s perch,” Chet radioed in. “He was on the rise firing down into the street. We’ve got casings.”

  “Any witnesses? Anyone see the guy come or go?”

  “Not so far. We’re still canvassing.”

  “It’s still a great find. Get dogs up there; let’s use anything we can to track where he went.”

  “Gladly.”

  The wind changed and thick dark smoke puffed down to street level again. Nathan used his temporary sling to breathe through the fabric until the wind shifted again and clean, cold air reappeared.

  What was still standing of the tile plant was a smoldering mess. They still had no idea who their inside shooter was, or if he had gotten out of the building in time. The shootings had stopped rather than been stopped.

  He pushed through the pain in his arm, bandaged enough to get him through to probable surgery later tomorrow, and he kept up his walk along the road, stopping to talk with people he passed. He joined the fire chief at the back of the smaller of the town’s three engines. “What are you thinking as a plan for the night?”

  “We’ll maintain a perimeter to make sure we stay on top of any embers flowing out in this wind and kicking up secondary fires. I’ve got crews sorting out assignments and areas now. But we basically wait it out.”

  “Do you think Isaac is dead in there?”

  “I’m hoping you’ll be able to tell me that before the search begins tomorrow. It will be morning before I want investigators walking those grounds. But we already know what they are going to find. Arson. The fire started in the warehouse area by a guy who knew what to light up to get a fast blaze.

  “I don’t think whoever set it realized what that siren meant. I wouldn’t have wanted to be near that place when the suppression foam tried to grab the fire and choke it out. For what it’s worth, I didn’t hear any reports saying there was someone spotted going out the back of the plant.”

  Nathan didn’t know what to think about that observation. He hoped the fact Isaac’s car was missing from the lot said he had indeed left the plant earlier in the day as word spread about the closing. Too many officers had been too busy to sort that out yet. He nodded his thanks to the fire chief and moved on to the police staging area.

  “Thanks for the help, Luke.” Brentwood’s chief of police had joined them, along with a second group of his officers, just about the time Nathan was losing what there was left of his breakfast into the snow.

  “I’ll be glad to have my guys stay on another day.”

  Nathan considered it and smiled. “I’ll appreciate the highway help, but the rest I think we’re actually getting back in hand. The plant is gone; the union folks have very little left to fight to save. And my drug problem and unsolved deaths appear to have turned into a manhunt.”

  “What do you know for certain at this point?” Luke asked.

  “I’ve got a drug lab, with one kid dead out there. I’ve got cans from this tile plant in that lab. I’ve got a shooter outside the plant, and another one inside who also likely set the plant fire. I know I’m looking for at least two people and maybe a third who was working at the cabin with the kid. It’s a busted-up group now and those guys are running. I doubt they remain in Justice, waiting to be found.”

  “Whoever has unexpectedly disappeared in the last twenty-four hours is a pretty good place to start the search.”

  “I’ve already got one possible name on that list. I’ll find the others.”

  “For what it’s worth—I can’t remember the last time a town got shot up like this in broad daylight, or when a business closing reverberated so seriously, and I have never even seen a four-alarm fire with explosions going off like clockwork every few minutes. Put all that together in a period of one day—property damage and the one significant injury being the sheriff—that speaks of both a lot of providence and great training among your men.”

  “It was their finest hour,” Nathan agreed, pleased at his friend’s observation.

  Nathan gestured to the mostly empty street. “It’s going to take some time to debrief my guys and figure out everything that happened, but if you wouldn’t mind sitting through the summaries, I’d like you and Philip to walk it back through with me and help me figure out what I can learn for next time.”

  Luke smiled. “‘Don’t get shot’ should sit high on the list.” He nodded. “I’ll be glad to help however I can. But I can give you my initial assessment right here. Your department handled this extraordinarily well. Justice is a peaceful town. Let’s get it back that way for you.”

  “I think the way you’re thinking.” Nathan held out his good hand and shook on it.

  * * *

  “Hey, Rae.” Nathan sat down o
n the porch steps beside her. She’d found her coat sometime in the last couple hours. Or Bruce had found it for her. Her earmuffs were back on and gloves. She looked exhausted. Given she’d been out of the hospital all of a day, it was a wonder she wasn’t needing to be readmitted.

  She smiled at him rather than answer.

  Adam had set up base in this house, one of his men offering his home for a gathering place, and among the union men was no longer an unwelcoming place for cops to mingle. Shots being fired had changed that equation fast.

  Nathan nodded toward the front door. “Bruce inside?”

  “Making calls.”

  “You should go home.”

  “I’m not interested in a hotel room and watching this on television. The television reporters are all from out of town; they basically don’t even know what they are talking about.”

  He smiled. “I doubt they get many street names right; but importing media does fit the amount of excitement around here today. The town will be talking about today for as many years as it has left in its history.”

  “The town will survive the plant closing. It has to.”

  “I hope so.”

  She looked at his arm. “Do you understand God? Why He allowed this to happen?”

  Surprised by the question, Nathan studied her, then eased his good hand around hers and gently squeezed. “Don’t worry so much about it. Sometimes life is just awful, and that’s the way it is. It doesn’t have to reflect so much on God, as just be noted as this is what man is willing to do to his fellow man. It doesn’t mean God is like this too.”

  Rae thought about that and nodded but still looked at him with a question haunting her eyes. “I still don’t understand why God lets evil like this exist. It hurts. How can God let us get so hurt if He loves us?”

  Nathan felt sick that he didn’t have a good answer for her. He was so rarely asked this depth of question and he heard this one and knew it was deeply important to her. “I tell my boys in Sunday school that asking why is like a line that never ends; there is never a point you will have all the answers you need. But if you ask instead who, it gives you a tight circle. A lot of the picture still isn’t clear, but it is complete.

  “God is good, Rae. Men have free will and often do evil. God has freewill and constantly chooses to do good. That’s the difference between us. God is good. Men have a bent toward evil that won’t change unless we appeal to God to take us in hand and make us good again. And since only a small fraction of men ever think it worth laying down their will to ask for God’s goodness instead, we end up with days like this.”

  “God not stopping something like this is God being good?”

  He so understood the emotion behind that question. He saw violence every day on the job and yet went to church on Sunday to worship God and proclaim Him as good and perfect and loving.

  “God is passionate about good happening in this world, not evil. I’m convinced of that. God hates what happened here, Rae, the same way He hates divorce, and He hates injustice. But He won’t destroy people to proactively prevent them from doing evil things, nor will He destroy them today after they have done evil things. Not until His great patience has extended to them every chance and opportunity there is to change and become good again.”

  “I may buy that in my head, Nathan. But it still feels so incredibly cold to the rest of us. He says He loves us, and yet He lets our lives get destroyed by others and seems to do nothing about it. I don’t understand God.”

  Nathan smiled at the depth of that emotion in her voice. “Yeah. I appreciate that level of emotion too. When love your enemies to us sounds impossible, and to God it sounds like the obvious thing to do—it should be obvious how deep is the gulf between man and God. Only someone who is fully good can understand a being who is perfectly good by His very nature.

  “It’s not a lack of love, God’s vast patience. It’s not an eternity of this, Rae. He knows days like this badly hurt the innocent, and there will be a day He’ll say for the sake of the innocent, ‘My patience is eternally over.’ Evil around us may last a lifetime, but it won’t last past that final judgment. And in the vastness of eternity, these few decades of life will eventually be seen as just the blink of an eye. Evil will cease to be a part of our lives in heaven. Think about that future, and don’t worry so much about this one. This life you just live one day at a time and trust God to take you through it.

  “God showed up in person in Jesus to say ‘I get it; I really do know what is happening here. I feel your pain having lived through it Myself. But trust Me. Eternal life is very different than this.’”

  She thought about it and eventually just nodded. “Thanks. I don’t necessarily think that solves my problem with today, but at least it wasn’t a cardboard answer.”

  Nathan smiled. “I’m not good at answering adult questions; it’s why I stick to ten-year-old boys. They prefer to talk about King David and how he used a sling and a rock to kill Goliath or how he dealt with the lion and bear coming for his sheep.”

  Rae smiled. “They’ve got a teacher who is a good role model.”

  “Let’s hope I can be. Sometimes I wonder.”

  Nathan considered the last of the orange soda and poured it out.

  “Where are you heading now?”

  He tried to put together a plan. At the moment he was interested in just sitting here. “Will is getting warrants for Isaac Keif’s apartment. I’ve got to find an Andrew Grayson that works for the management side—he hasn’t been accounted for yet. The coroner thinks he has some information teased out of those notebooks from the lab that I should hear.”

  “And tomorrow they operate on your arm.”

  Nathan grimaced. “I sincerely hope not. But yes, I work tonight, because tomorrow afternoon someone in a white coat is going to be ordering me around and dictating my life.”

  “I saw Sillman a few minutes ago. He sounds pretty certain the shooters can be found and this can be wrapped up by this weekend.”

  Nathan smiled. “I pay him to be optimistic.” He pushed snow with his boot toe and found another layer of reserve energy. “ I’ve got to go. Anything I can do for you before I disappear?”

  “I don’t like it when you bleed on me.”

  “Sorry about that. I don’t think I can promise I won’t ever do it again.”

  “I know.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Go back to work.”

  Nathan sat there for a moment considering that. “Okay.”

  He pushed to his feet, adjusted the sling, and headed back to work. He glanced back when he reached his car and saw her smiling at him. “Okay,” he whispered to himself.

  43

  Will drove them to Isaac’s apartment. Nathan scanned the warrant paperwork one last time, then pushed it into his jacket pocket. It would cover the searching of any e-mail or files they could locate as well as personal belongings.

  “Isaac was listed in Peggy’s notebook,” Will pointed out. “He was a friend of Prescott’s grandson. He’s involved. Why else cross the picket line and risk the wrath of friends, except to get access to a shipment? A day’s wages isn’t enough to explain his actions. He’s most likely our inside shooter.”

  “I’m leaning that way,” Nathan agreed. “But he may have left the plant earlier in the day when news of the closure came down, and that means he might be the outside shooter, or he may simply be the guy picking up a few bucks to move a can out of the building occasionally.”

  “Are you sure you want it being just the two of us knocking on his door?”

  “With vests on and caution, but yes, just the two of us. I’m not having another officer get shot at today. If Isaac is our guy, he’ll have split town entirely by now. Who are you thinking for the second shooter?”

  Will crossed through downtown and turned into the block where houses had been divided into duplexes and most turned into rental property. “Isaac hasn’t been hanging around with anyone in particular that I am aware of; he’s either
at the tile plant or the chocolate shop or working on his car. It doesn’t fit that it is Andrew Grayson—I think the guy just picked up his wife and got away from the trouble for the day, probably went to see family. And if the shooter was involved only because of the drug tie-in and not the strike, then maybe it is someone who doesn’t even live in this town.” Will parked behind the house they were interested in.

  “We just walk up? His entrance is that west door,” Will pointed out.

  “We just walk up.” Nathan confirmed his vest was tight. He pushed open his car door. “Did your wife have words for you about today?”

  “Not many. She wanted to know why I hadn’t called to tell her I would be missing dinner.”

  Nathan looked over the roof of the car. “Truly?”

  Will smiled. “A standing question with her. When she doesn’t mention the fact I missed a meal with her, I’ll start to worry about the marriage. She’s fine. I don’t think she ever thought I was in much danger.”

  They walked together up the path toward the door.

  “She got so many details at the café for what happened; she was telling me facts about who did what that I didn’t even know myself. She just said, ‘I heard the sheriff got shot’ and went on from there to talk about how Mrs. Vernham suddenly had twenty-two people bursting in her front door to take cover and how much excitement that was in her day.”

  “One of us probably needs to apologize to Mrs. Vernham in the next day or so.”

  “You got elected,” Will pointed out.

  “I keep wishing I could forget that,” Nathan replied. He turned serious, studying the house they were approaching. He moved into position to the side of the door, waited for Will to get into position, and he reached over and knocked.

  They got no answer.

  Nathan knocked again. “This is the police. We have a warrant to search these premises.”

  A neighbor appeared to see what the shouting was about and Nathan pointed him back into his house.

  “Kick it in.”

  Will stepped back and obliged. The door had decent locks but a poor frame, and the wood splintered.