by S. D. Thames
Shields dropped the Glock just as the second shot hit him dead center in the forehead. This shot wasn’t so clean, and his blood splattered over the balcony glass like a can of spray paint that had exploded.
I rolled over to avoid the trajectory of his fall. Then I stood and turned him over, face down. There was no need to check for a pulse.
I waved across the river at the center minaret, from which I was pretty sure the gunshots had been fired. I might have smiled.
I had to hand it to him—Bob Hunter was still one hell of a shot.
She was crying as I untied her. Once freed, she grabbed me and hugged me, and I hugged her back, but all the while she never stopped crying. She had a surprising strength. I didn’t try to say anything to console her for a while; I just let her cry. It’s amazing what another shot at life will do for one’s morale. I wondered what was really going on inside her head, and then I thought back to what Gus had said—that what would happen today was going to kill her demons. Whatever the hell that meant, I wondered if I was watching it at work.
She cried another five minutes before she asked, “What happened out there?”
I pulled back and looked in her eyes. I wanted to see some sign of death, of change, but if I saw anything, it was only new life. “I’ll explain later,” I said. “First, let’s get the hell out of here.”
Hector picked us up outside Taps a few minutes later. I’d never seen my neighbor quite as speechless as he was when Angie pulled herself into his van. I introduced Hector to my friend. She was still drying her eyes, but managed to smile a nice hello from the backseat.
He, on the other hand, stuttered and said something vaguely resembling “Hi.”
I grinned at my neighbor. “What’s the matter? You’re not your usual chipper self.”
He swallowed hard and cleared his throat before he managed to ask where we were going.
I checked the clock on his dashboard. We were just in time. “Actually, just down the street. There’s a party I’d like to crash.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The End of the Campaign
Judge Pinkerton was waiting for us in the lobby. He wore the same old gabardine suit he’d worn on our dinner date to Armani’s the week before, when I tagged Scalzo with the subpoena. To my surprise, Angie hugged him when we saw him. Then she turned to me. “You sure I should go in like this?”
I looked her up and down. Her makeup was smeared, and Val’s suit would need to be thrown in the dumpster. Just as I was about to tell her not to worry about it, that it was somehow appropriate for the occasion, Hector stepped forward and told her, “You look great.”
Her eyes twinkled, and Hector raised his right arm to escort her. “If you’re not embarrassed to be seen with a cable guy, I’d be honored.”
She stared at him for a moment, grinned, and took his arm. “The honor’s all mine.”
I told them not to go too far, and then Pinkerton and I followed them into the reception room. “Everything go according to plan?” I asked the judge quietly.
He eyed me hard. “Without a glitch.”
“Nice work, Your Honor.”
He winked. “You, too, you sorry-ass tart.”
I nodded toward the reception. “Let’s finish this before we gush anymore.”
“Do I look like the gushing type?” he said as we followed Angie and Hector into the ballroom. It was filled with a few hundred local players making the rounds, drinks in tow, as they schmoozed it up. I recognized several faces from the news, even someone I would have guessed to be the mayor. There were also quite a few lawyers I recognized from the courthouse, and not surprisingly, they were all happy to see the Honorable Francis Lloyd Pinkerton.
“Didn’t know you were supporting Dane,” one of them told the judge.
“I wouldn’t say I’m supporting him,” Pinkerton said. “I’m just here to see how he fares.”
That made for curious grins.
“Speaking of the man of the hour,” Pinkerton said, “where is he?”
“Good question,” another bystander said. “The party line is that he got stuck at the office.”
We helped ourselves to the spread of appetizers, especially the trays of Chick-fil-A nuggets. I left the judge and stood close to Angie and Hector, and we all grew tired watching the number of hands Pinkerton had to shake. “He sure knows a lot of people,” Angie remarked.
“He sure does,” I said. “And doesn’t he look miserable?”
Just then, the ballroom erupted in applause, and we knew Dane Parker had finally arrived. Although the news reports on the TV monitors around the room were predicting he would win by a landslide, Dane didn’t look like a man on the eve of victory. He was pale, wizened, and glistened with sweat, and seemed to struggle to shake hands without trembling as he wiped his mouth and face nervously.
And he hadn’t even seen us yet.
Angie and I stayed hidden in the far corner for a while. It didn’t take him long to step to the podium and address his crowd. “Good evening,” he began in a sketchy voice. Everything about his demeanor said he wanted to make an appearance and get the hell out of there as soon as possible. “I’m sorry to be so late. It’s, uh, it’s been a hard day in the office.”
He paused, as though waiting for laughter, but there were only a few awkward chuckles and many more uncomfortable stares.
“I, uh, I do want to thank you all of your hard work during this campaign. No matter what happens tomorrow, we’ll know that we all gave it our best. And for that, I’m very grateful.”
I leaned forward and whispered for Hector to give us a minute. Then I took Angie by the hand and led her through the crowd, until we were squarely front and center of the podium. Parker was about to speak again, but when he saw me hovering half a foot above the crowd, his pores seemed to open up like a geyser and he let out an audible whimper of exasperation. Then he saw Angie by my side and nearly fell over. A woman in the audience gasped, and someone tried to give him a hand as he reached for the rickety podium.
“I’m fine,” Parker announced, and told them to carry on enjoying their evening. He stepped away from the podium and waited for the noise of the crowd to provide some cover; then he pulled out his cellphone. It looked like he was placing a call, and whoever he was trying to call wasn’t answering.
I had a pretty good idea who that was.
Angie and I stayed put. Parker glanced in our direction, so I smiled an invitation to him. It didn’t take him long to accept. “Porter, isn’t it?” he said, as he approached with an extended hand.
I didn’t take it. “That’s right. And I think you know my friend, Evangeline Hunter?”
He cleared his throat and nodded, leaning forward. “What do you want?” he whispered. “Should we go somewhere and talk? I’m sure it’s not too late to work something out.”
I looked to Angie. “Mr. Silver?”
She nodded. “No doubt about it.”
I shrugged. “Sorry, Dane, but it’s too late to work something out. I saw you trying to call someone. That wouldn’t be Lieutenant Shields, would it?”
Somehow, the last remnants of color left his face, and he swallowed hard. He shook his head faintly. “Who? I mean, what about him?”
“I’m afraid he won’t be joining us tonight, Dane,” I said, smiling slightly, like a gator does before he invites a nutria to dinner. I leaned forward and whispered in his ear, so Angie wouldn’t hear: “Did you know that the Right Reverend Bob Hunter, Evangeline’s daddy, was a sniper during the Vietnam War?”
“Is that so?” he whispered.
“And you see that judge over there?” I nodded toward Pinkerton.
“What’s he doing here?” Parker gasped.
“He’s with us now. But he spent most the day alone. Funny what a retired judge with too much free time on his hands can accomplish in a day’s time. It sounds like this one sent a copy of a special DVD to The Tribune and The Times. Guess what was on it.”
“A DVD?
” he whispered.
“You know, the video? The one you’ve killed for?”
He winced and glanced around before hissing, “That’s preposterous. You can’t prove anything.”
I shrugged. “I don’t have to.”
He somehow turned indignant. “You know who you’re talking to?”
I nodded. “Of course I do. And being the local hero you are, I’m sure we’ll be seeing you in the news, Dane.” I took Angie’s hand and led her away.
The judge apparently had a few drinks in him, and it took some effort to pry him away from the crowd. “Come on, Porter, I’m on a roll,” he pleaded before giving up. He wanted to tell Parker goodbye before we left, but for some reason Mr. Parker had to leave early.
And he did so without telling anyone that he was leaving. Or where he was going.
“So you told him about the video?” Pinkerton asked me while we waited in the parking lot for Hector to return with the van.
“Kind of,” I said. “I told him you sent it to the newspapers.”
Pinkerton grinned toothily. “You sly dog. You didn’t tell him I sent it to Art Scalzo?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t want to ruin the surprise.”
Angie tugged on my arm. “I still don’t understand how you pulled that off in the penthouse.”
She still didn’t know about the help her dad had provided us. I thought about telling her then and there, but a line of police cruisers soon arrived with blaring sirens, interrupting my train of thought. I held out hope that maybe they were there to give Dane Parker a ride, but I gave up on that when Fred Mitchell approached and told me that his colleagues had a few questions for Angie and me.
I glanced across the parking lot at Hector. I couldn’t recall ever seeing him looking so sad as when he watched Angie climb into the police cruiser. I waved and gestured that I’d call him. Of course, I had no idea when.
After a few hours of interrogation, I was happy to see C-Rod appear for clean-up duty. They’d kept me and Angie separated for most of the evening, I supposed to make sure our stories were consistent, but at this point we really had nothing to hide. Well, maybe I did. Regardless, I was happy to see C-Rod’s familiar face, and at least that it wasn’t too bruised. His left eye was black and blue, and his upper lip would need a few weeks to heal.
“You doing all right, L-T?” I said.
“I’ve been better.”
“You’re lucky to be alive,” I told him. “That was quite the collision.”
“Yeah, they say had he hit a foot to the left, I’d be a dead man.”
I found myself second-guessing my use of the work lucky, but I’d have to save that conversation for another day. “I’m really sorry about Shields. I know that can’t be easy to accept.”
He nodded. “As you know, I’d had my suspicions. But I never thought it would be this bad.”
“What about Parker?” I said.
“Let us worry about Parker.” C-Rod pulled his chair closer to mine, and I could tell he was turning fidgety.
“Something else bothering you, C-Rod?”
He nodded. “I’ll cut right to the chase. The guy who shot Shields, the girl’s father?”
“I don’t know who did that.”
“Don’t worry, Porter, we know who he is. But, as you can imagine, a sniper on the campus of the University of Tampa didn’t go over very well. We surrounded him after he fired. He finally turned himself in.”
“What he did was justified,” I said. “Shields was going to kill us, and you know that.”
“I don’t disagree with that,” he said. Then he put on latex gloves.
“Lieutenant, I hope you’re not going to ‘examine’ me.”
“Shut up, Porter.” Once the gloves were on, he pulled out a plastic bag that held a bloodied envelope. “We found this on him.”
“What the hell is it?” I said.
“It’s a letter, Porter.”
“What’s it got to do with me?”
C-Rod sighed. “We need your help, Porter. We need your help with the girl.”
It was my turn to put on the gloves.
What I’d come to understand to be Bob Hunter’s suicide note sat on the table between Angie and me. I’d explained to her several times how it all went down, and what the officials of TPD were proposing, but all she could do was cry.
“Let me get this straight,” she said. “My dad killed that crazy cop, saved our lives, and they want to pin this on him?”
I nodded. “He put it in this note, I guess you could call it a suicide note, to save you, to clear you of any wrongdoing.”
“By why? He didn’t die.”
“He thought he was going to.”
“Why?” she cried.
“Because he wanted to help you. And he knew the police would bite at anything to cover up Shields’s corruption.”
“So they’re going to pay me to stay quiet?”
“That’s my understanding. But why don’t you read it for yourself?”
She picked up the letter, which I’d already read a few times, and cried as she read her dad telling her how long he’d prayed that God would give him the chance to show his daughter that he really loved her. He explained how sorry he was for all the ways he’d failed her; he told her he loved her, and that her mom had come to him in several dreams this week and told him he was going to have to die for their Angel, and he was willing to do that, if that was what it took.
“But she told me that,” Angie cried. “She told me I was going to have to die.”
I thought about what Gus had told me about her demons dying. “You sure that’s really what she said?”
“I don’t know anymore, Milo. I just don’t know!”
“Maybe she meant it figuratively, for both of you. That you can die and start all over. They’ll give you enough money to start over, Angie. A clean start. You can leave everything behind. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
“What about my dad?”
“He might have to do some jail time. But he wants to do it for you.”
She cried louder. “And if I say no?”
“Well, you say no, then there’s nothing they can do about it,” I lied. I didn’t want to tell her they’d be pressing charges against me if she didn’t agree.
I was sure she had enough guilt to carry around for the rest of her life.
For better or worse, it didn’t look like I’d have to do that. Angie seemed content to honor her father’s wishes and accept the government’s bribe, but first she wanted to sleep on it for a night or two. And she wanted to do that somewhere far away, somewhere she’d never been before, where she was sure no one could find her (except, of course, for her mother, were she to visit her in a dream). So I helped her to get a cab to Tampa International, where she intended to book the next open seat on Southwest, regardless of where it was going.
We stood outside the State Attorney’s Office while she waited for the taxi. “So, if I come back,” she said, “your neighbor seems really nice.”
“He is,” I said. “And… well, I don’t want this to come out wrong.”
She tilted her head and seemed to brace herself. “Don’t worry, Milo.”
“Well, if you do come back, just take it easy on him,” I said. “He’s kind of damaged goods.”
She touched my cheek. “Aren’t we all?”
I nodded. “I guess we are. But he’s a good guy, too.”
“Like his neighbor.”
“You seem different,” I said. “You going to be okay with your dad?”
Her eyes floated down and settled on something I couldn’t see. “I think so, one day. It will take time.” Her eyes rose up and met mine. “You really mean what you whispered in my ear up there?”
I nodded. “I sure do. Like a sister, you know?”
She nodded. “I never had a brother before,” she said. “I love you too, Milo.” She kissed me on the cheek just as the cab arrived.
Later, C-Rod was kind enough to
give me a drive home. We didn’t say much during the drive.
When we reached my driveway, I looked at my dark house. The Volvo sat alone in the driveway. I was hoping I’d hear from Gus soon; I wanted to hear if I’d done right. I wanted to see my dad’s face again, or at least Gus’s angelic reiteration of it.
I nodded good night to C-Rod. I didn’t see any reason to plague the moment with words. But C-Rod spoke up: “Porter,” he called as I stepped out of the car. “You really think that was luck?”
“What?”
“What happened to me today? Everything that happened this week?”
I told him I didn’t believe in luck, and wished him a good night.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Rest & Resolution
In my living room there was just enough light from the street to see the outline of someone sitting on my couch. I can’t say I was disappointed to see that it was Val, not Gus. She flipped the switch on the lamp, and I fell onto the couch next to her and stared at her. She avoided eye contact. Then she crossed her arms, sighed, and asked, “Is it over?”
I nodded. “All done.”
She turned slowly and met my eyes. “You going to do it again?”
I thought about what Gus had told me, about the cross I had to bear. “Honestly?”
“Honestly,” she said. “I’m fine with it, Milo. I know you have to.”
“You do?”
She nodded. “And I want you to know something else.” She paused. I knew how hard this was for her, and I loved her for it. “What you said last night.”
I gave a nod of encouragement.
“I love you, too,” she said.
What followed was without question the sweetest kiss of my life. It didn’t seem to end, despite the fact that we eventually ended up in my bedroom. I fell asleep as she held me that night, and I fell into the deepest, most peaceful sleep I could remember enjoying, at least on this side of 9/11. Val never asked me to explain anything, never told me she understood or was happy I was okay. She didn’t need to. We communicated things that night that words could never convey, and I saw deeper into her eyes—no, into her soul—than I’d ever imagined possible. It was a night I never wanted to end.
