With a gun.
He pulled his service revolver and yelled. “Police! Drop the weapon!”
The woman spun and fired a single shot at Cauliffer. The bullet hit the handheld radio clipped to his belt and when it did a shard from the plastic casing fragmented upward and sliced into Cauliffer’s forehead, just above his left eye. He ducked, winced at the pain, and momentarily lost sight of the woman. He thought about running back to his squad car to call for help, but then he remembered that the Governor was only a few hundred yards away.
And the woman with the gun was running that way.
Cauliffer started after her, one eye pinched shut and full of blood.
Sidney Wells, Jr. heard the cop yell for her to stop, or freeze or some such shit that the cops are always yelling. She spun around, fired once to slow the cop, and then ran toward the Governor. She was still on auto-pilot, the thoughts of what her father had just told her spinning through her brain.
Her father.
She’d been lied to, abandoned, neglected, abused, and rejected her entire life. It was all about to stop.
It was all about to end.
Cauliffer was gaining on the woman. She was fast, but still, he was gaining ground. But it wasn’t going to be enough. He wanted to stop and take a shot, but with one eye full of blood he knew the chances of hitting his target were slim at best. And if he missed she would be on top of the Governor before he could do anything about it. His radio was useless, so Cauliffer did the only thing he could think to do, something that at the Academy they told you never to do because of the danger to yourself or others. Cauliffer fired three warning shots into the air.
When Junior heard the shots behind her she turned to look back, and when she did she tripped in the grass and fell to the ground. The cop was about thirty yards back and coming hard. Junior knew then that the Governor would live and she would not. There would be no comfortable and peaceful villa in the Keys with her lover, Amanda. There would be nothing except a jail cell and ultimately a needle in her vein. She scrambled to her feet and turned toward the cop.
When the Governor’s three-man protection detail heard the shots, two of them took the Governor to the ground and held him there while the third ran toward the sounds of the gunfire. Most of the media people were on the ground as well, but one of the cameramen, a veteran from the war and no stranger to the sound of gunfire put his camera on his shoulder and followed the cop. He got the entire thing on tape.
Cauliffer saw her fall and he kept running until he saw her get up. He stopped, leveled his gun and yelled one more time for her to drop the weapon. He saw her start to bring the gun up, saw the crazy light in her eyes and pulled the trigger. The nine millimeter caught her center mass and Sidney Wells, Jr. dropped in a heap in the grass. Cauliffer ran over and secured her weapon, then sat down in the grass and tried to wipe the blood from his eye.
When it was over the Governor and his protection detail pushed their way through the circle of cops and chaos. The Governor walked up to Cauliffer and shook his hand. “Officer Cauliflower, you’ve saved my life.”
Cauliffer shook the Governor’s hand. “It’s, uh, Cauliffer, sir.”
The Governor reddened at his repeated gaff. “Yes, yes, of course. I keep getting that wrong, don’t I?”
The cameraman got the entire exchange. It made the evening news and went viral on the internet within hours.
Indiana Governor…Saved By Cauliflower.
“That’s all right, sir,” Cauliffer said, as he wiped more blood from his eyes.
“What the hell happened?”
“It was a woman. She was headed your way with a gun. She fired at me. I chased her here and when she tried to fire again I took the shot.”
“A woman? Where is she?”
Cauliffer pointed to the other grouping of cops. “Right over there,” he said.
The Governor walked over and looked at the body of the woman that lay in the grass. When he saw her face he turned away, then vomited all over his shoes.
That went viral as well.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I swam in and out of consciousness, or imagined I did over a period of time that may have been a few minutes or a few days. People shimmered in and out of focus, fuzzy around the edges, like images on a big screen television with poor reception. When I was able to finally hold my eyes open and keep them focused, I found myself on my back in an uncomfortable bed in a darkened room. A tube was taped to my right arm and ran down to my wrist where a needle poked into a vein on the back of my hand, held in place with more tape. My left leg was in a cast that extended from the tips of my toes to just under my knee. As soon as I saw the cast the pain brought me fully awake and I let out a moan.
“He’s awake,” I heard someone say. “Better get the doc.”
A door opened and a shaft of light from the hall snuck into the room then faded away as the door hissed closed and clicked against the latch. I saw Sandy’s face, her eyes tired, a frown line across her brow. My father stood just behind her. She leaned in close and brushed my hair off of my forehead. “Hey, tough guy,” she said. “About time you woke up.”
It was all coming back to me now, the attack, being tied to the steel girder, the beating, all of it. I wanted to ask, how long I had been here, but when I opened my mouth to speak, all I said was, “Hurts.”
My dad had stepped forward, just behind Sandy. He had his hands on her shoulders “Cora was here, Son. She stepped out to get the doctor. There’s a button for the pain. Do you want me to press it?”
I nodded and he reached out and pushed the button. After a few seconds, the morphine made its way through the IV and I felt it beat the pain back, though not completely. I tried to sit up a little, then wished I hadn’t.
“Where am I? What happened?”
The door opened again and I watched Cora come into the room, a doctor in tow. “You’re at Methodist Hospital, Detective,” the Doctor said. He took a pen light from his pocket and shone it in both of my eyes. “If you had to rate your pain on a scale of one to ten, what would you say the number is?”
I tried to blink the light away and the after images hung on the back of my eyelids. “Uh, I don’t know. Eight now, I guess. My dad just pushed a button.”
I watched the doctor inspect the IV line that ran into my vein, and then he made some sort of adjustment to the pump next to my bed. “I upped the dose a little. You can push this button every seven minutes if you have to, and you’ll probably have to for the next twenty-four hours or so. Did anyone tell you what we did?”
“He just woke up,” Sandy said. “We haven’t had a chance.”
The doctor wrote something on a chart while he spoke. “You apparently took quite a, uh, thrashing. You’ve got a broken rib on your left side that punctured a lung. You lost quite a bit of blood and I don’t mind telling you that you had us all a little worried there for a while. Your chest is taped and we’ve repaired the internal damage so you’re going to be just fine, but you’ve got a nice scar on your belly that will make a great conversation starter at the beach. The discomfort you feel in your leg is what’s going to be the worst of it. We had to pin it, so it’s going to take a while to heal. You’ll need physical therapy. The pain you’re feeling now is from the surgeries, and it’ll get better over the next few days, but you’re going to be pretty sore for a while. That cast is going to drive you bonkers for about eight weeks. You’ll know when the weather is about to change, too.”
The morphine filled my brain like a convective fog that floats over a pond and while I heard the words the doctor spoke, their meaning was lost. I stared dumbly at him and when he stopped talking, I said, “Okay.”
“Your leg is broken, Son,” my father said. “The surgery took almost four hours.”
“We used an artificial bone graft material, along with a few pins,” the doctor said. “Had lots of success with it in the past, so you’re going to be alright. There’s always a slight chance of infection, but
we got you cleaned out pretty good. I’ll check on you in the morning. The nurses will be in to bother you every time you’re about to fall asleep. Good night.”
I reached out and found the pain button and pushed it. Twice. I looked at Cora and motioned her over to the bed. “Where’s my gun and badge?”
“We’ve got them, Jonesy. They were there, at the scene. Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay.”
“Listen, Jonesy,” Cora said. “I’m going to get out of here and let you rest. Sandy’ll fill you in on everything. Donatti and Rosencrantz were here earlier while you were still out. They said to let you know they’d be back in the morning. The Governor sends his best. I’ll check on you tomorrow.”
I could feel the morphine, its warmth flowing through me as if my blood were being heated then recycled through my veins. “Okay.”
After Cora left Sandy moved closer and stood at the edge of the bed, her hand resting on my upper arm, her touch light and cautious. I could feel her tremble. “My god, Virgil, you could have been killed.”
I was drifting now, and there were still questions I wanted to ask, but I could not seem to get them out. “I heard the sirens, Sandy. I saw my mom, too. She was there. I think she was there with me the entire time.”
My father was sitting in a visitor’s chair in the corner of the room, and when he heard what I said he walked over to the side of the bed. “What was that, Son? Say that again, will you?”
But the drugs pulled me back under and I don’t think I answered him.
The doctor was right. The nurses did come in every time I fell asleep. It got to the point where I thought they were all sadists. The doctor ordered rest, but then they didn’t let you get any. But the next time I woke on my own, the light of the day peeked through the slats of the window blinds and I could hear the business end of patient care coming alive from the other side of the door to my room. Sandy lay under a thin hospital blanket, curled in a ball on a recliner next to the window. I watched her sleep and felt ashamed at the pain she had endured because of my injuries.
My leg still hurt like hell, but it was not as bad as last night. The pain was more isolated, and not over my entire body like it had been before. I found the call button for the nurse and pressed it, and when she came into the room I asked her about switching to a pain pill instead of the IV drip. “It’s making me pretty loopy,” I said.
“I’ll have to clear it with the doctor,” she said. “But between you and me, I don’t think you’re ready just yet. In the meantime, don’t be a hero. Hit that pain button if you have to. Loopy ain’t all bad, honey.”
A short time later an orderly wheeled in a breakfast tray and set the cart next to the bed. All the in and out woke Sandy and I watched as she stretched, yawned, and then walked over to the bed. She leaned in and kissed me, hard, on the lips.
“You should have gone home last night,” I said.
“Would you have?”
“No.”
“So, okay then.”
My leg was throbbing now, the pain worse as I became fully awake. “I was thinking about last night. The way you called me Virgil.”
The door opened and Rosencrantz and Donatti walked in. “Of course she called you Virgil. That’s your name, isn’t it?” He looked over at Donatti. “Isn’t that his name?”
Donatti nodded. “Yep. Hey Small, what’s shaking? Did you know his middle name is Francis?”
“About time you woke up,” Rosencrantz said as he lifted the lid on my food tray. “What’s for breakfast?” He put the lid back down. “Geez, are they trying to cure you or kill you?”
“You know, you don’t get jack shit for workmen’s comp in Indiana,” Donatti said. “I think you’re faking.”
“Yeah, definitely faking,” Rosencrantz said.
“Hey, is it true you can predict when it’s going to rain, now?” Donatti said. “I heard TV 8 is looking for a new weatherman.”
“I’ll bet they’re giving you some good shit for the pain. Can I have some?” Rosencrantz said.
I looked at Sandy with my best ‘help me’ expression, but when she held her hands up in a ‘what can you do gesture,’ I did the only logical thing I could think to do. I said fuck it and pressed the pain button again.
The room spun and I felt like I was caught in a vortex. Rosencrantz and Donatti were standing under the television, their heads tilted up toward the set, watching something on the screen. A few minutes later when the rush of the morphine tapered off I looked at Sandy and motioned for her to lean in closer. “Did you hear what I was saying before Mutt and Jeff walked in?”
“Yes, I did,” she said. “But it wasn’t last night. That was five days ago, Virgil.”
Rosencrantz turned his head and said, “What was last night?”
I ignored him, but Sandy turned her head and said, “We’re talking about something else. Last night was nothing.”
“You know how many times I’ve heard a woman tell me that?” Donatti said.
Sandy shot him a look and then turned her attention back to me. “What are you talking about?” I said. “What do you mean it was five days ago?”
Sandy had her hand on my leg. “You’ve sort of been in and out over the last few days.”
“What?” I could not believe what I was hearing. “What day is this?” I said.
“It’s Friday,” Sandy said.
Donatti looked over at Sandy and me and said, “Hey, am I Mutt or Jeff? I think I’m Jeff. I’m Jeff, right?”
The door to my room opened and a nurse came in and told me the doctor had given the okay for Oxycontin instead of the morphine drip for my pain and then she disconnected the IV from my arm. I thought when she took the tape off of my arm-that hurt like a bitch-that maybe they should have left the IV in after all. The nurse told me that the Oxycontin would probably, in her words, bind me up some, but not much worse than the morphine did.
“That’s all right,” Rosencrantz said. “He’s full of shit anyway.”
I looked at him and thought if the food in here didn’t kill me, the cop humor probably would. When I looked at Sandy she mouthed a silent ‘I love you’ to me and I felt my eyes water at the edges.
It became quiet in the room for a minute, then Rosencrantz looked at Donatti and said, “I kinda like the way she calls him Virgil, don’t you?”
Sandy shook her head, then stood and said, “Hey guys, I think we need to let Virgil get his rest.” She placed her hand on my shoulder and gave me a little squeeze. Then to Rosencrantz and Donatti, she said, “What do you say?”
“Yeah,” Doantti said. She’s right. “Virgil’s tired.”
Rosencrantz turned and gave me a little finger wave. “Okay, bye, Virgil. We’ll see you tomorrow.
Sandy waved them out. “I’ll catch up with you guys after while,” she said.
When they were out of the room, I pulled myself up in the bed a little. I could feel the tape around my ribcage. “See what you’ve started,” I said.
“I’ll talk to them,” Sandy said.
“Aw geez, don’t do that.”
“Well what do you want me to do?”
The Oxycontin was working already. I could feel the buzz, but I was not drowsy like I had been with the morphine drip. The pain was still present, but it was in the background, like it was hiding inside a closet.
“It feels like…like everything is moving too fast. I was tied up and beaten and it feels like it all happened just this morning.”
“We don’t have to talk about his now, you know.”
“I think I need to.”
Sandy sat on the edge of the bed and put her hand in mine. “Are you sure you’re up for it?”
“I’m not really sure. I think there might be a lot I don’t remember. In fact, most of it is blank right now, that part of it, I mean. I remember eating lunch at the diner, then nothing until I woke up tied to the post or beam or whatever it was.”
“And when you woke up?”
I c
losed my eyes, and when I spoke, I left them that way. I told Sandy what I remembered about the beatings and the torture with the stun gun, seeing Murton and how he killed the two men, and then how I saw my mother. When I opened my eyes I saw that tears were running down her cheeks and when I reached up to wipe them away she took my hand in both of hers and held it tight against her face. She then kissed the tips of my fingers and held my hand in her lap. I thought she might ask me about my mom, like maybe I might have imagined it, but she shifted the direction of the conversation.
“We’ve got an I.D. on the men. Their names were Collins and Hicks.”
“What about Murton? Where is he?”
“That’s a little more complicated,” she said.
“I’ll bet.”
“I might be able to help you with that,” Agent Gibson said. He was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame. He pushed himself upright with his shoulder and said, “May I come in?”
Sandy let go of my hand and stood from the side of my bed where she had been seated. I nodded to Agent Gibson and he walked further into the room. He looked at Sandy and said, “Would you mind if I spoke with Detective Jones in private?”
“That’s not necessary,” I said.
“It’s okay, Virgil,” Sandy said. “I’ve got work to do. A lot has happened. I’ll check back on you later and fill you in then. Get some rest.” She leaned down and kissed me on the lips, then turned and stared at Gibson, her expression a challenge for him to comment on our private life. But he just nodded at her and after she walked out he looked at me and said, “How are you feeling?”
“I’ve been better,” I said.
“I checked your records. Saw you were in the sandbox.”
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