by Jeramy Gates
“Do the two of you have any idea who might have done this?”
“James Pishard,” Joe said without hesitation.
“The guy who threatened to sue you?”
“Yep. I’m sure it was him.”
“You saw him?”
“It was too dark. I didn’t get a clear look at him, but it’s the only thing that makes sense. He started making trouble from the moment he found out we were on this case.”
The paramedics loaded me onto a gurney. Diekmann asked them to give us a second. He turned his gaze on me
“How about you? Did you see the shooter?”
“I’m afraid not,” I said. “Joe’s right about Pishard, though. The man is a psychopath.”
“All right,” said Diekmann. “I’ll send a couple deputies to bring him in for questioning. Joe, you go ahead with Tanja to the hospital. I’ll call you if we find him.”
They loaded me into the ambulance and Joe settled onto the narrow bench next to me. Diekmann stood in the opening behind us.
“Take care of her, Joe. I’m gonna get the S.O.B. who did this.”
“Not if I find him first,” Joe said.
Diekmann slammed the doors shut, and the ambulance pulled away with Diekmann barking orders about photographing everything and collecting the shells for evidence.
Chapter 10
Joe
I’m not the murdering type. I may have broken some bones in my time, but at least a few of them were my own. I admit, I’ve been tempted to take the law into my own hands, especially when standing face to face with some sleazy scumbag who I knew was responsible for unforgivable crimes, but even at times like that, I’ve kept my cool. Mostly.
I’ve learned to stare into the eyes of drug dealers, murderers, and God only knows what else, and smile as if I was one of them. That’s what it took to survive. I always told myself justice would catch up with them eventually. Maybe even karma. But there are some lines you just don’t cross. I’ve been through all sorts of dangerous situations, and never once felt the kind of pure, unbridled rage that I felt that night.
When I heard that first gunshot, and the sound of my living room window exploding into a million shards of glass, my thoughts immediately went to Tanja. Even as the shotgun slugs hammered into the sheetrock just inches away from my head, I was thinking about her.
I dove to the living room floor and felt bits and pieces of glass and sheetrock raining down on me. I pushed to my hands and knees, and the broken glass sliced into my palms like razor blades. I dismissed the pain and ignored the repeated thundering kabooms as I crawled out of the living room and headed straight down the hall. I reached the bedroom and pulled my Colt .45 out from under the mattress.
Tanja hates that. She says I need to get a gun safe before Autumn is born. I will, of course, when I absolutely have to. Until then, I want my gun accessible. In the end, no one but me is responsible for the safety and well-being of my family. If something terrible happens that I could have prevented, no one else will share that burden. How does the old saying go? I’d rather be judged by twelve than carried by six. That’s my philosophy now. When I do lock my gun up, I’m going to find a safe that I can open in half a second, even in the dark.
I was back up the hall in seconds, locked and loaded. The shooter seemed to have focused his attention on the living room. Between firings, I slipped around the corner and into the kitchen. From there, I had a clear view through the kitchen window. He was little more than a silhouette, obscured by the rain and backlit by the headlights of his car. I trained my sights on him. My finger was already squeezing the trigger when I saw the shadow of movement in the park behind him.
At that point, I couldn’t even be sure it was Tanja. I could only tell that a civilian had come into my line of fire. I had to move. I lowered my 1911 and backed around the table, looking for a clear shot. As I moved, the shrubs at the corner of the porch obscured my view of the scene. I still couldn’t get a shot.
I was tempted to run out the side door and around the front of the house, but I didn’t want to take my eyes off the shooter. I considered jumping through the kitchen window. I might get a clear shot when I hit the front lawn. Before I had a chance, the shooter tossed his shotgun in the car and took off like a rocket.
I ran out the front door and saw Tanja on her knees at the edge of the park across the street. For a second, the whole world froze. My guts wrenched up like a busted spring and I instantly assumed the worst. She’d been hit. My wife and baby had been shot…
I crossed the thirty yards between us in about three steps.
A few hours later, the doctor -a young Indian woman with a thin face and a large smile- gave us the test results. “I’m Doctor Sharma,” she said with a strong accent. “I want you to know that your sonogram was clear and everything looks fine.”
I took a deep, relieved breath.
“What about the pain?” Tanja said. “I thought I felt something tearing.”
Dr. Sharma lifted the front of Tanja’s gown and felt around her belly. Tanja winced as she touched a spot.
“That is what I expected,” the doctor said. “You most likely strained a muscle. You’re in a very late stage of pregnancy and things are moving around in there constantly, stretching, trying to make space for the baby. Whatever you felt, it wasn’t anything dangerous. Our tests have shown that you and Autumn are perfectly healthy. There’s no sign of internal stress or bleeding.”
“Thank goodness,” Tanja said. “Can we go home?”
“I’d prefer to keep you overnight, just for observation. We’ll release you in the morning. In the meanwhile, get some rest. From now on, no strenuous activity: no exercise, no jogging, nothing like that. You can walk, but take it easy. Your baby has two more weeks before the due date, so let’s not rush anything.”
We thanked her, and the doctor left us alone. Tanja turned the television up, and for a while, we were quiet. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened. My adrenaline was high, and now that I knew Tanja and the baby were safe, I wanted to get out there and find the guy who’d done this.
I kept glancing out the window, knowing he was out there somewhere, and feeling helpless and frustrated just sitting there in that hospital room. And more than a little claustrophobic. At one point, I began to pace, and Tanja guessed what I was thinking:
“Joe, don’t leave. Stay here with me, please… I don’t want to be alone.”
I settled onto the bed next to her. “He’s out there somewhere,” I said. “The piece of trash shot at my house. He could have killed any one of us.”
“I know that, Joe, but I don’t want you to go after him alone. Just wait until we hear from Diekmann, okay?”
I sighed. It was the look on her face that made up my mind. I wouldn’t leave her. I couldn’t. If I left my wife alone and afraid on a night like that, I couldn’t even consider myself her husband. It didn’t matter how badly I wanted to go after Pishard. I belonged there, with her. There would be a time for revenge, but it wasn’t now.
Tanja drifted off to sleep and I settled into the chair next to her.
An hour later, the sheriff called to let us know that he’d questioned James Pishard. “We found him at the pool hall in Santa Rosa, drunk as a skunk,” he said. “Said he had been there all night, and he had a dozen witnesses to prove it. He’s not our shooter. The bartender asked if I could lock him up anyway.”
“Did you?”
“Consider it a late Christmas present.”
I hung up laughing, but somewhat disappointed. I was sure the shooter had been Pishard. I fell asleep trying to figure out who else it could have been.
The next morning, I woke with a dull throbbing headache and a deep pain in my hip. At some point during the night, a nurse had offered to let me sleep in an adjacent room with an empty bed, but I had refused. I was going to pay for that decision all day long.
Tanja and I shared some sort of rubber-flavored pancakes for breakfast,
and before we left, the nurse kindly gave us a handful of the hospital’s ten-dollar aspirins. Not long after that, Diekmann and Grandma picked us up.
One of the nurses wheeled Tanja to the front door in a wheelchair, and Diekmann pulled up driving Grandma’s old green Malibu. It was strange to see Diekmann sitting where Grandpa had always been. Stranger still, seeing Grandma sitting across the bench seat with that adoring smile as we drove home. I was getting used to it, though. It was nice to see Grandma smiling.
When we pulled up to our house, Tanja gasped. “You fixed the window! How did you find a repairman in the middle of the night?”
“Being the sheriff has certain advantages,” Diekmann said with a wink. “Come on, let’s get you inside.”
I helped Tanja back into the house, but she really didn’t need any assistance. The pain in her belly was mostly gone, and as long as she didn’t do anything strenuous, it didn’t seem to bother her. I, on the other hand, felt bolts of lightning go shooting through my hip every time I moved my left leg.
On the front porch, we found a gift basket from one of our neighbors. It had a bottle of wine, a box of crackers, and several varieties of cheese.
“They must have felt guilty,” Diekmann said. “We got seven phone calls last night asking if you were drug dealers.”
“What are neighbors for?” Tanja said with a laugh. “I suppose by the end of the week, we’ll all be mafia kingpins or serial killers.”
“At least they won’t be asking to borrow the lawnmower,” I said. I opened the front door and a buzzer went off. I froze.
“Relax, that’s your new alarm system,” said Diekmann. “Come inside, I’ll show you how it works.”
Tanja and I didn’t know what to say. The sheriff had installed a full-featured alarm system with a keypad by the front door, and sensors on all the doors and windows. “When the alarm goes off, the system will automatically dial dispatch,” he said. “If that happens, just take cover until we get here.”
Tanja threw her arms around him. “Thanks, sheriff.”
“Just doing my job, ma’am,” he said, doing his best John Wayne impression. As they separated, Grandma stepped closer and put her arm around his waist.
“If the two of you need anything else, you just let us know,” she said.
Tanja was on the verge of tears. “I need a shower,” she said in a cracking voice. “And some time to pull myself together.”
“Take all the time you need, dear. Joe and I will get lunch started.”
While Tanja showered, I fired up the barbecue and Grandma threw together a salad. We hadn’t been shopping in a while, but I found some ground beef in the freezer. I defrosted the meat and made it into patties. Unfortunately, we didn’t have buns, so we were stuck with burgers on white bread. Sometimes, you just have to improvise.
We enjoyed a nice quiet lunch and a few games of cards. At four o’clock, Grandma and Diekmann decided that it was time to give us some privacy. We didn’t discuss work or the shooting during the entire afternoon.
After they left, Tanja spent most of the evening in the back bedroom. She said she felt uncomfortable in the living room after what had happened. “It’s too easy,” she said at one point. “Someone can just walk right up and start shooting. We need to put up a concrete fence, or some bulletproof glass.”
“Bulletproof glass the size of our living room window?” I said. “If we had that kind of money, we’d be living in a mansion.”
“What can we do, Joe? I feel like a sitting duck.”
“A sitting duck with one of the best views in town. You live across the street from a park and a redwood grove. Do you really want to give that up, just because of one lunatic?”
“I don’t know. I’m just scared. I’m worried about our baby.”
“I know,” I said, settling down on the bed next to her. “Look, we both knew this business could be dangerous. If you want me to find something else, just say the word. I hear the construction business is picking up.”
“No. Absolutely not. We’re going to see this through. This is what we were meant to do. I can feel it.”
“Then don’t let one bad guy ruin it. He had his shot, and he missed. Now we’re on high alert. We have an alarm. He’s not coming back here.”
“But he’s still out there, Joe. He’s out there somewhere, just waiting for the chance to try again. Maybe next time he’ll get lucky.”
“He won’t. I promise you that.”
Tanja gave me a big hug. “I suppose it’s for the best, this happening now. It allows us to work through our feelings.”
“Sure it does,” I said. I had the sinking feeling all husbands get when they sense a long, emotional conversation bearing down on them.
“It’s just frightening, you know? The idea that someone might be out there stalking us.”
“It’s not just some random stranger,” I said. “Somehow, this is connected to the case. Whoever shot at me last night was probably the killer.”
Tanja bolted upright in bed, with her eyes open wide. “My things!” she said. “Where are my things?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The bag! The hospital bag with my things in it…”
“Oh.”
I stepped around the end of the bed and picked it up. Tanja lunged forward, snatching it out of my hands. She began fighting the zipper, trying to tear it open. Frustrated, she reached out and stole the knife poking out of my jeans pocket. I watched in amazement as Tanja whipped out the blade, slit the bag open across the top, and yanked out Becky’s .mp3 player.
“What are you doing?” I said, watching her fumble with the headphones.
“Joe, Becky talked to the killer! She talked to him! That’s not all. You have to listen to this!” Before I knew it, she was out of bed and wrestling with the headphones. She tried to jam them into my ears, but I pulled away.
“Slow down,” I said. “Give me that thing for a second.”
I took the .mp3 player from her and walked over to the stereo. I located an adapter cable in the top drawer, and plugged it into the auxiliary input on the stereo. I pressed play, and Becky’s voice came drifting out of the speakers.
“Skip past all this,” Tanja said, rushing to my side. “Here, give it to me.” She ripped the recorder out of my hands and began scanning ahead through the files. At last, she came to the one she was looking for. We listened to it together, staring into one another’s eyes as the killer’s voice drifted out of the speakers.
“You keep talking like that, you’re gonna end up just like them,” he said.
“Just like them,” Tanja repeated. “He killed that missing boy, Joe. He murdered Myles Meyer, and Becky’s father.” She skipped back, and played the whole recording a second time.
“They never found Meyer’s body,” I said. “If he was murdered, his body is still out there somewhere.”
“That’s it, Joe!”
“What are you talking about?”
She settled onto the edge of the bed, staring at me with a wondrous gaze. “That’s why Becky and Randall were at the reservoir. They were trying to find Myles Meyer’s body. Think about it: why else would they be there? They didn’t meet at that secluded spot to have an affair. They met because Becky convinced Randall to help her. She knew something, something that would prove her father had been murdered. That was the big story Randall was talking about. He was going to expose a double murder!”
“That’s why she had a shovel and pickaxe in the trunk of her car,” I said.
“Yes, exactly! Meyer’s body must be buried up there somewhere.”
I started pulling on my boots as we were talking. I didn’t even realize what I was doing until Tanja said, “Joe, what are you doing?”
“Um… getting dressed?”
“No, you’re not. It’s almost bedtime. It can wait until tomorrow. Besides, we’re going to need help to find that body.”
I glanced out the bedroom window and realized it had been dark
for three hours. It was starting to rain again. No wonder my leg was so stiff. I pulled my boots off and limped to the bathroom in search of an aspirin.
“Joe,” Tanja said in a quiet voice. “Do you think he’s killed anybody else?”
“No,” I said. I turned off the light and crawled into bed with her.
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I’m tired. Too tired for this case to become any more complicated tonight.”
She giggled and pulled the covers up to her chin. “I love you, Joe.”
“Wear your seatbelt,” I said with a smile.
She snuggled up against me.
The seatbelt thing is sort of an old joke between the two of us. At one point, after we had been dating a while, Tanja made a big deal out of the fact that I’d never said I loved her. Of course, she knew that I was no good at things like that. I don’t like talking about my feelings. I don’t like sharing. It’s not that I don’t feel emotions; I just don’t wear them on my sleeve.
Of course, It didn’t make matters any easier that Tanja had put me on the spot. You can’t just tell a guy that he should say he loves you. It doesn’t work that way. Of course, I had just assumed that she knew I loved her. Why else would I have been dating her and spending all that time and money on her? Wasn’t it obvious? Why do women always have to make things so complicated?
At any rate, after our date, Tanja was getting into her car to go home for the night. I told her to put on her seatbelt. She smiled and said:
“So you do love me.”
I smiled and leaned into the window to kiss her. Of course, Tanja had known all along how I felt about her. She was an FBI agent with years of training on body language and psychology. She had just been giving me a hard time. Ever since, I’ve returned the favor by telling her to wear a seatbelt instead of saying that I love her. It has been a running joke between us for as long as we’ve been together.
With our new alarm system installed and a loaded forty-five under my pillow, I slept like a baby. It was the first sound sleep I’d had in three days. Tanja hadn’t turned on the alarm clock, so we both ended up sleeping in. She woke me at nine a.m.
