Wall of Silence

by Gabrielle Goldsby

  The bullet slammed into me, spinning me around and knocking the gun from my left hand. The 9 fell to the wooden stage floor and slid to a stop at the edge of the curtain. I landed on Riley.

  The chief’s body seemed to pause in midair, then topple forward. His head crashed into the edge of a table before he slumped to the floor. Someone was screaming. I thought it might be me, but my throat felt too tight to emit a sound.

  I looked down at Riley. Her eyes were open, but unseeing. I could feel her trembling beneath me. She’s alive, I thought weakly as my hands went up to the sides of her face. Her hair was barely contained in its braid, and for some reason I wanted to help her braid it again, because I knew how neat she liked to keep it. A tear slipped down my cheek and fell onto hers.

  I heard people yelling and running around us, but it didn’t matter. I had found her. She looked so hurt, so bruised. I started to shake as I tried to make her look at me. But her gaze was blank. She didn’t recognize me. She didn’t recognize anything.

  “No,” I said as I felt someone touch me.

  “You’ve been shot. Hurt pretty bad.”

  I continued to stare at Riley. “He should have taken me. I would have told him anything he wanted to know as long as he didn’t hurt you. He was wrong. You’re the strong one, aren’t you? You wouldn’t have told him. Even if you knew, you wouldn’t have made a sound.” I was babbling, and she wasn’t moving. My tears mixed with her blood and rolled down her cheek.

  Suddenly everything made sense. And there was something so fucked up about it that I wanted to scream. I was lifted from her body, and my shirt was ripped open. I felt a sharp pain and sucked in a breath. But it wasn’t enough, and I could hear myself gasp and moan for air. I was moving fast, so fast.

  “Riley.” Her name clung to my lips. Please help her. I need to tell her…I need…

  “She’s going into arrest. We’re losing her. We’re losing her…”

  “Foster…”

  “God damn it, Everett. Breathe, breathe.”

  “No…Foster…”

  “She’s gone.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Heaven…Want to know what it feels like? It’s like being held close and protected by the most beautiful light in the world. It’s knowing you will never be beaten, hurt, tired, or hungry again. And no matter what, you will be cared for. That’s what heaven feels like…at first. But then you remember. You remember that there are people who love you back there in that hell called Earth. People who are hurting because they will miss you. And if you’re lucky, like me, there’s someone whose heart is breaking every time yours stops beating. And knowing all that, knowing what kind of pain you’ve left behind, what kind of heaven would heaven be, anyway?

  So I simply decided not to stay. And when I opened my eyes, Riley was there, asleep in a chair across from me. For a moment I felt peace. The only thing that mattered was that we were both alive.

  Dawn filtered through the partially open blinds, segregating light and shadow on Riley’s sleeping face. Her lip was almost healed, making me wonder how long I had been out. Wisps of dark hair had escaped the restraints of her braid. She looked so disheveled that it broke my heart. White plaster encircled her arm from knuckles to elbow. Another cast? Damn, I’m sorry, baby.

  Even in sleep she frowned, her fist balled up in her lap as if ready for combat. I winced, because I somehow knew that if she wasn’t in that chair she would be curled into a fetal position.

  I watched her every breath and waited for those beautiful eyes to open. When they did, it was like drinking lemonade on a sunny day, just the best feeling in the world.

  She sat up in the chair, her good hand gripping the armrest so hard I was sure it would crumble from the pressure. Neither of us said anything. She just stared at me until I was forced to blink from the heat of her eyes. And then she smiled so widely that if I didn’t know her better, I would have thought she was going to laugh out loud. Almost as quickly, her smile crumbled away like the foundation underneath an eroding building, and she shook so hard it scared me.

  “I thought I had lost you,” she said in my ear.

  “No,” I said. My throat felt like someone had scraped it raw.

  “Thank you.”

  I didn’t answer her. How do you answer something like that? You don’t.

  *

  I’d been shot in the chest. The bullet had passed cleanly through my lung and nicked my heart. They were able to repair the damage, but when I didn’t wake up, they hadn’t held out much hope for me. I’d slipped into a coma for three weeks.

  Riley hovered near the bed, unconsciously checking my monitor as she pulled a blanket around me. At first, I was so relieved she was okay that I didn’t notice the dark circles under her eyes, how pale her face looked, or how her hand lingered against my heart while she adjusted my bedding one too many times. For three days she sat and pretended not to watch me breathe. And for three days I let her, without complaint, because I knew how she felt. I was glad she was alive, too.

  “Everett, can I speak with you for a moment?” Captain Simmons stood in the doorway.

  I’m sure my expression hardened, but it wasn’t aimed at her. I was angry with the people responsible for putting me in the hospital, the ones who had killed Marcus and were to blame for the fragility that hovered just below the surface of Riley. I hated that the most, because it was a constant reminder to me that I’d failed to keep her safe.

  Riley stood up.

  “No, stay,” I rasped, and she glanced toward the captain.

  “I don’t mind if you stay, Riley.” Gail Simmons seemed to soften her voice when she spoke to Riley. I wondered if she sensed the damage, too. “You have just as much right to hear this as she does.”

  “No, if it’s okay, I’ll go ahead and get cleaned up.”

  “It’s all right sweetheart, go,” I said.

  She paused at the door as if she was going to speak. But instead, she left us alone.

  “How are you?” the captain asked.

  She’s nervous. I wonder why. I shrugged slightly and raised an eyebrow.

  “Look, Everett, you’re a good cop. I never believed you had anything to do with this mess. I asked them to bring you in to talk to me, and when you ran, it just looked so bad that I had to get the warrant so that we could haul you in. I had no idea that those two were in with the chief. They came highly recommended.” Her mouth twisted. “By the chief, so—”

  “I understand.”

  She shifted uncomfortably, probably wishing she could take back some of the shit she’d said and thought about me in the past. I felt exactly the same way, maybe more so since I knew my thoughts had been even less flattering than hers. All of it seemed trivial now, at least for me it did.

  I stopped, frustrated that the pain and breathlessness left from having a ventilator shoved down my throat kept me from voicing my thoughts. I looked over at the chair that Riley, aside from restroom visits and a trip to the cafeteria, had sat in since I woke up. I had also learned that she had basically lived there for the three weeks I was in a coma, too. The captain had made that possible, and I was grateful to her for that. Not for my own sake, but for Riley’s.

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For being here when we needed you,” I said.

  “You should thank Big Sherm and Chandra. Without them telling me what was going on, the outcome could have been different. I wish you had come to me earlier.”

  “I didn’t know who I could trust, other than Riley.”

  “She cares about you a lot. I thought she was going to rip us apart when we first tried to give her medical attention.” The captain’s expression made me smile. “I wanted to tell you how sorry I am that, you know, we never got along.”

  I shook my head. “I was an asshole.”

  She smiled. “So was I.”

  I raised my eyebrow. “Was?”

  She looked startled for a moment. The animosity that I
used to feel for this woman seemed like it belonged to someone else. Like rumor and innuendo that had proved incorrect. Whatever she had done to me, whatever perceived misunderstandings we’d had, were gone.

  “Okay, now that we have the warm fuzzies out of the way, maybe we can get down to business.” She pulled out her pad. “I thought you could tell me what you pieced together. I’ve already talked to Riley, and she told me what little she knew. We also found your notes, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of some of it. Monica lawyered up. The chief is dead, and we can’t find this mythical tape, so it’s kind of up to us.”

  After she finished talking, I pointed to my throat and grimaced.

  “Oh, sorry. We can do this another time.” She hesitated. “It’s just that you’ve been out of commission for three weeks and this has turned into a media circus, so I was hoping to have something to throw them.”

  I hadn’t thought about the blow it would be to the department. I mouthed, “Sorry.”

  “Not your fault.”

  We stared at each other for a minute, then I pointed to her pen and paper. Smiling, she tore off a few sheets for herself and passed me the notepad and a spare pen. I spent the next ten minutes writing until my penmanship degenerated to the point where I was blinking at every word. I then invited her to read.

  “We should use this system more often,” she said with deadpan humor. “You completely silent and me doing the talking.”

  I couldn’t laugh, but I think my grunting noises worked for her. She concentrated on my notes for a few minutes before concluding, “So you think this Michael Stratford went in and stole the tape from Pete’s room?”

  I nodded.

  “But why? Did Canniff put him up to it?” She handed the pad back and leaned in close so that she could read what I was writing.

  “Michael is the one who paid Pete to move the boxes. When the tape turned up missing, Stein must have sent him to look for it and he saw an opportunity.”

  “But why take it in the first place?” she asked after reading my scribbles.

  “Security blanket.”

  “He was going for blackmail?”

  I shook my head. “He knew he was working for a jerk and he wanted a lever so he could get out. They let him go with no strings attached, he gives the tape back. They go after him, he goes to the police and makes a deal.”

  ???Instead they kill him? Makes no sense. They still didn’t have the tape, otherwise why would they have gone after you and Riley?”

  I shook my head and whispered, “Wilson and McClowski.”

  The captain groaned. “I didn’t even clue in to them until I found out about the bag.”

  I cocked my brow, and she explained. “I didn’t buy the ‘Oh yeah, and we forgot to mention we found a plastic bag with her fingerprints on it’ story. So I had the damn thing tested. I found out the day before you were shot that the plastic bag came from the same batch that we use in our office. I would bet a month’s salary that they used the bag from your own garbage can to try to frame you.”

  I grimaced as I remembered emptying a trash can over Alvin Wilson during our fight in the office. The prints would have been fresh and ripe for a framing. It was yet another occasion where my own temper and lack of control had almost cost me more than I cared to think about.

  The captain’s voice broke into my morose thoughts. “I can’t believe two of my detectives killed that man.”

  “Marcus, too.”

  “I’m sorry, Everett.”

  I wrote, “I don’t know where the tape is. All I know is that Chief James said Smitty didn’t fire the gun. Smitty wasn’t the one who killed those kids. Something happened afterward. If I’m wrong about Stein, and he’s still alive, maybe he can fill in some of the blanks.”

  The captain shook her head. “Stein’s body showed up in the morgue a few days ago. We got a positive ID yesterday. A blow to the head is what killed him, but his body was mutilated postmortem. We found your notes on Mrs. Stein and her boyfriend, and turned them over to Homicide. They’re trying to gather enough evidence to take to the DA, but so far it doesn’t look good.”

  I nodded, not really caring how their investigation was going. My eyelids drooped and I wondered where Riley was. I wanted to see her before I fell asleep.

  “Oh, one thing we did find out from Monica. She claims that Smitty admitted to killing Canniff in his suicide note. He said he was sorry he let you go through all of that for so long. She says her father forced her to forge a new note, omitting that information. She seems to think Smitty purposely made his death look suspicious, hoping someone would investigate.”

  I blinked rapidly. I hadn’t even thought about Smitty. I hadn’t thought about anyone but Riley. But now pain coursed through my chest as I realized that my partner, the man I’d thought of as my best friend, had let me go through hell. He had let me believe I was a murderer to suit his personal agenda.

  I think I retreated into myself for a moment, and when I came back, the captain was holding my hand and patting it awkwardly. I was touched that she would even try, but I was growing weary of this question-and-answer session. All I really wanted was to be left alone so I could grieve. I pulled my hand away and picked up the pen.

  “Thank you. I’m sure that at some point it will mean something that he left a note. Right now…” I stopped because I didn’t want to think about how many lives Smitty and Monica had ruined.

  The captain sighed. “Well, I should go.” She placed the pad in her briefcase and stood. “It’s our niece’s birthday, and I promised I would get her a new doll. I’ll stop back by in a few days if I have any more questions.”

  “You have family?” I asked, before I realized it might have sounded rude.

  She grinned. “My partner has two sisters, two brothers, three nieces, and one nephew, with one on the way. I guess you wouldn’t have known that.” She sounded almost regretful. “Well, I’d better go get that damn doll before the stores close. Give me a call if you need anything.”

  I frowned. Something was bugging me. “Captain.” My taxed throat finally gave out completely. I shook my head and mouthed, “Doll?”

  “What about it?” She was looking at me as if she thought I was nuts. I pointed at her briefcase. With a frown and a glance at the wall clock, she reluctantly handed me the pen and pad.

  “What you said about the doll, it reminded me of something,” I scribbled. “Michael Stratford bought his daughter a doll right before he went into hiding. I remember because it was a mess. You know, for it to be fairly new. When I picked it up, it sort of felt like something was moving around inside.”

  “You think the tape’s in there?”

  “Could be.” I thought the doll was probably just big enough to hold a VHS tape.

  “I know it’s got to be hard for you to just sit back and let me take care of everything, but I want you to concentrate on getting out of this place.” She looked around distastefully.

  I nodded.

  “I’ll give you a call if I need anything else,” was the last thing I heard her say before I fell asleep.

  *

  Riley and I sat in Captain Simmons’s office, both of us looking like several miles of bad asphalt. Whatever glow I had managed to get in my weeks with Riley at the cabin was gone, and in its place were hospital pallor and a case of the jitters that seemed to attack at the most inopportune moments. I didn’t really trust myself to walk alone yet, so I made sure Riley was close at hand to help if my body decided to take a dive on me.

  I was still worried about Riley. She didn’t look quite right to me. She had lost her peace, and I felt responsible for that. She was still sleeping with her hands balled up and her eyes closed too tightly. I wanted to go somewhere where we could nurse each other back to the way it had been before. Only this time, there was no reason for me to hold anything back. I was looking forward to that.

  “Are you sure you’re okay with this?” I whispered. “You don’t need to be here, Riley. You�
��ve been through so much already.” My eyes wandered to her fingers, which were already picking at her plaster cast. I squeezed her good hand and we both gave our attention to the tape that had caused so many deaths.

  A black-and-white picture came into view. The barn was actually a converted, wide-open space with beds lined up from one wall to the other. With cradles lining each side and people walking in and out of view, it looked more like a summer camp for adults than a church daycare.

  “Is there sound?” I asked.

  “No, doesn’t seem like it. But we can have some specialists look at it later. You don’t need sound to figure out what happens.”

  All of a sudden, chaos seemed to erupt. Smoke billowed around the room as people ran out of the camera’s view. If there had been sound, I’m sure I would have heard terrified screams that would have left me sick to my stomach.

  “Pay close attention here,” Gail Simmons said.

  For about two minutes there was nothing, then what could only be a younger version of Smitty came into frame. I could see now how much this whole affair had aged him. Even though the film was only about five years old, Smitty looked a lot younger than thirty-five on the tape. I saw him bend over a bassinet, his face contorted in rage and grief. Surprisingly, my heart ached at the sight. I didn’t know if I would ever be a mother, never thought I wanted to be, but I hoped like hell I never knew the pain that Smitty must have felt in that moment. He reached into the bassinet and picked up a small, bloody bundle and held it close.

  I saw his mouth move. “What did he say? Is he talking to someone?”