by A W Hartoin
“Rock years?” I asked.
“It’s like dog years, but the opposite.”
“So you’re like eight. If anything, that’s grosser.”
Wade posed again and said, “I think I got that wrong.”
“Of course you did,” said Mickey. “You failed high school algebra twice. Leave her alone. She has to fix the dog or we’ll never get Mercy on stage.”
Wade leaned over to Dr. Valerie and said, “That’s not right. The second time I got a D.”
“That’s not so bad,” she said breathlessly.
I squeezed between them and said, “It’s terrible. He once spelled my name with a Z. Can you please look at my dog?”
Dr. Valerie went to attention. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She started examining Wallace.
Wade punched Mickey in the shoulder. “Why’d you tell her I failed, asshat?”
“You did fail.”
“You got a C in calculus.”
“That was calculus, Wade,” said Mickey. “And I would’ve had a B if I didn’t sleep with Mr. Reynolds’ daughter.”
“You should’ve slept with Mrs. Harrison.” Wade waggled his hips. “I got an A in chemistry.”
“Because you slept with Mrs. Harrison.”
“Exactly my point.”
Raptor stared at them. “Who are you people?”
“We’re one of a kind,” said Wade with a wink.
“Thank God for that,” I said before sitting next to Wallace and tugging gently on her tail. “What’s the verdict?”
Dr. Valerie purposely didn’t look at Wade, even though he was flipping his hair and being a general weirdo. “She has some broken ribs, but I’ll have to get some x-rays to be sure. There may be damage to her hips. I can take her now.”
“You don’t mind missing the show?” asked Wade.
Mickey elbowed him. “Dr. Valerie will get VIP tickets for nine.”
She smiled. “Thanks.” She gently picked up Wallace and security escorted her back to her car.
Mickey checked his watch. “Time to hit it.”
“I can’t,” I said, spreading my arms. “I’m wet and Wallace peed on me.”
Mickey thought about it. “Alright. You shower and come on after “Banging in Bangkok.” Lacy, fix her up good. I want that purple knot on her head to start a fashion trend.”
“No problem, Mickey,” said Lacy. “I’m on it.”
Lacy pushed me past Raptor, who was being herded by Darren. She whispered in my ear as we passed. “I want my life back.”
“Good luck with that.”
I did go on after “Banging in Bangkok” and stayed dry for a whole twenty minutes before it rained again. But since it didn’t hail, Mickey said we’d play through. The crowd loved it and Wade said we got a standing ovation, but since there weren’t any chairs, I didn’t think it counted.
After the first set, I slept in the bus until Dr. Valerie came back with Wallace. She’d taped her ribs and given her a painkiller. The pug lay on the sofa with her tongue hanging out, making little snores. We went on again at nine and it didn’t rain. Wade was on fire and we went over by a half hour and earned just over 50,000 dollars for charity between donations and what The Buffalo Chip would’ve paid DBD.
Vans from every news organization were in the VIP lot, CNN, NBC, Entertainment Tonight and a bunch of others. Mickey set up a press conference on one of The Chip’s other eight stages. While he was distracted, I grabbed Raptor, pulling her to the bus.
“What are we doing?” she asked.
“Getting out of here,” I said.
“Aren’t we supposed to be at that press thing?”
I raised an eyebrow. “You want to do that?”
“Not really. But won’t Mickey get mad?”
I gently picked up Wallace. “If he does, it won’t last long. We’ll just be a distraction from the band and it’s all about the band.”
“Alright, let’s get outta here.”
Darren caught us making a break for it and I talked him into letting us go. He would’ve left, too, if he could’ve thought of a way to do it. The bassist was never a showboat but very pragmatic. He insisted that we be escorted by a couple of bodyguards and we slipped out the back, tromping through the campground, past the field of flags, to find my truck mired down in the mud. Raptor drove and it took me and both bodyguards to push it out.
We walked into the ER just before midnight. It could’ve been an urban ER it was so packed. The staff ran from patient to patient, handing out bandages and saying, “It won’t be much longer.”
I’d said that sentence. It meant at least forty-five minutes. I flagged down a nurse and asked, “What happened?”
“Hail. Lots of accidents and head injuries,” he said without looking up from his chart. “Allison Brewer! Allison Brewer!”
A woman in full leathers stood up and wavered. She held a bloody bandage to her forehead and had a fat lip the size of a banana. Raptor reacted faster than the nurse or me. She grabbed the woman before she went down and deftly maneuvered her into a wheelchair.
“Thanks,” said the nurse, looking at Raptor and me, startled. “Oh crap! You’re the DBD girls.”
Raptor’s face darkened. “We’re BSNs.”
“Sorry. I mean, oh, you know what I mean.”
“It’s fine. We’re just looking for Barney Cranston, fifties and poisoned, and my grandfather, Ace Watts, seventies with ripped stitches.”
“Of course. They’re all over the news.” He turned the wheelchair and swiped his security badge on the door scanner. “Both will be fine. Follow me.”
He took the head injury into triage and walked us back into the depths of the ER. Patients lined the walls in various degrees of distress.
“Is it always this bad during the rally?” I asked.
“No, the hail’s been particularly bad this year and some riders don’t wear helmets. I don’t know what they think’s going to happen when they get hit with golfball-size hail.”
“I’m guessing they don’t think about it,” said Raptor.
“Most of the time, they can pull over and hunker down, but it hit too fast this time. God, what a mess.” He escorted us around a corner and stopped to give a man an emesis bag. “We put Mr. Watts in a bed.”
“Thanks”—I glanced at his tag—“Joseph.”
Joseph whispered to me. “Your grandfather is a bad ass. He didn’t even want any lidocaine for the lavage.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“His back”—Joseph shook his head—“I’ve never seen anything like it. Those burns. Car accident?”
“Helicopter crash in Vietnam.”
“Damn. He is one tough buzzard.” He plucked a chart off the wall next to a door. “Looks like we’re ready to release. You’re just in time. I’ll see what the holdup is.”
We went inside and found Trevino and Bennett at Grandad’s bedside, drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups and kicking back. Bennett appeared surprisingly happy, considering he was missing a pocket on his shirt and had an abrasion on his cheek.
“Don’t you two ever stop working?” I asked.
“Not since you came to town,” said Trevino.
Grandad sipped a vanilla Ensure and smiled. “That’s my girl. Wreaking havoc, just like her old man.”
“That’s not a good thing, Grandad.”
“Depends on your point of view.”
“I think it’s universal,” I said. “Why are you drinking Ensure?”
Grandad tipped down his chin. “I lost weight.”
“Shocking,” I said. “Mom’s going to kill me. I stopped charting your food days ago.”
“Murder’s a pretty good excuse,” said Trevino.
“You don’t know my mother,” I said.
Bennett downed his coffee and stretched so that we could hear his back cracking. “We sure do.”
I went rigid. “Is she here?”
Everyone laughed.
“You
should see your face,” said Grandad. “Pure terror.”
“Is she here?” I repeated.
Bennett held up a pair of phones, giving me a devilish grin. “It’s your lucky day. I picked up your replacement phones.”
“Swell. My mother?”
“The lovely Carolina Watts—she has the best phone voice I’ve ever heard—is still in St. Louis. She wants you to call her.”
“You talked to my mother?”
“At length.”
“How mad is she?”
Grandad finished his Ensure. “I’d give her a five out of ten. She seems to think you should’ve stopped me from ripping my stitches.”
“Of course she does. Why wouldn’t she?”
He picked up a second Ensure. “I’ll gain the weight back. It’ll be fine. Carolina’s reasonable.”
Reasonable and Mom. Two words that don’t go together.
“You’ll handle her?” I asked.
“I will. I already am.”
Joseph stuck his head in. “Done in fifteen.”
“Thank you,” said Grandad.
He gave us a thumbs-up and jogged away.
“Got a minute?” Bennett asked me.
“Fifteen. Why?”
“She wants to talk to you,” said Trevino.
Please don’t say Cheryl.
“She?” I asked.
“Cheryl Morris.”
“That’s a hard pass unless you want me to smack the crap out of her.”
Trevino stood up and arched his back. It cracked more than Bennett’s. The cops were wearing out. “We’d prefer that you didn’t.”
“Why do I have to talk to her?” I asked.
“Because Ace won’t,” said Bennett.
I looked at Grandad and he sucked up half of his drink, making a slurping sound. “I’m busy.”
“And she murdered Hal,” said Raptor.
“That, too.”
Grandad held out a lukewarm cup of coffee to me and said, “Do it for me, sweetheart.”
“Why does anyone have to do it?” I asked. “You got her on Barney, witnesses and everything.”
Trevino handed me a small digital recorder. “We think she wants to confess.”
I snorted. “They never confess.”
“That’s my experience, especially without a deal on the table, but Cheryl Morris isn’t like any other suspect I’ve dealt with.”
“I’ll pass. You don’t need a confession.” I chugged the coffee, tossed the cup in the trash, and set the recorder on the foot of Grandad’s bed. “I’m going to see about that paperwork.”
Trevino stepped in front of the door, blocking me in. “If you won’t do it to make our lives easier, do it for Barney and Janet.”
I rubbed my eyes, smearing Lacy’s stellar makeup job all over my hands. “What’s it got to do with Janet?”
“Maybe she’ll agree not to press charges on the assault. Janet did assault her. There’s video all over the internet. Most people are with her, but in the eyes of the law, that doesn’t matter.”
Bennett picked up the recorder. “Johnson Dales has been charged. The evidence against him is strong.”
“And circumstantial.”
“Cheryl’s attorneys can use him to get her off. You know how they work. Without her confession, at best, he’ll stay in jail for months. At worst, he’ll be convicted of her crimes.”
Ah, crap!
“Fine, but I’m not happy about it,” I said. “You want to come, Raquel?”
Her eyes went wide. “Hell, no. You do it.”
I sighed and took the recorder from Bennett. “No promises.”
“All we ask is that you try.” Trevino looked tired but totally confident. “Just talk to her the way you talk to that serial killer.”
“I don’t talk to him really. He makes me eat fish tacos and tells me nothing.”
“That’s not the way Barney tells it,” said Bennett.
“Barney’s a half-full kind of guy,” I said. “Where is she?”
“Down the hall.”
The cops took me to Cheryl’s room, a tiny single guarded by a couple of bored uniforms. One patted me down and escorted me in. Cheryl lay curled up on the bed, cuffed to the bedrail with oxygen and an IV. She had an enormous hematoma on her forehead that had a nasty split in the middle that was butterflied closed.
Please don’t let that be a Bennett thing.
I clicked the record button and placed the recorder on the table. “What happened to your head?”
Cheryl glanced at the recorder and then blinked at me. “I hit my head on the oxygen tank.”
“You hit your head?” I asked.
“I thought…I thought I could crack my skull.”
Not Bennett. Thank goodness.
“You wanted to die?”
“Wouldn’t you?” she asked quietly.
I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t imagine being Cheryl. I knew what she’d done, but I couldn’t understand it. “Who cares what I would do? I’m not you.”
She rolled over, sat up, and wrapped her free arm around her knees. “You’re not what I expected.”
“I get that all the time.”
“Where’s Ace? I asked for Ace.”
“My Grandad isn’t interested in talking to you.”
Her eyes filled. “I always liked him so much.”
“And he thought he liked you, but then you killed his friends so, you know,” I said.
“I was going to confess.”
I sat down in a vinyl padded chair and crossed my arms. “Go for it.”
She frowned, wincing in pain. “You don’t want me to confess?”
“I want you to drop all charges against Janet and keep an innocent man out of jail. How about that? How about doing the decent thing?”
“Johnson Dales isn’t innocent. He’s a violent drug addict.”
I leaned back and kicked my feet up on her mattress. “But not a murderer.”
She flushed, matching the red of her eyes. “He could be.”
“But he’s not. Are you going to do the right thing or what?” I asked.
“You’re not what I expected.”
“You already said that.”
Cheryl clutched her legs, the skin of her arm crepy and pale, revealing her age more than her face or neck. “You don’t want to talk to me.”
“Look, I’ve spent the last three days dealing with your mess and you weren’t even right about what happened in Vietnam. By the way, we know you murdered Dr. Grenville.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Did you tell Dot?”
“Not yet, but I will.”
“Is that recorder on?”
“Yes. Confess or I’m out. It’s been a seriously long day. Thanks to you.” I had absolutely no confidence that she’d confess. According to Dad and Chuck, they never confessed, not unless they were under severe duress. A low IQ, being young, or total exhaustion could force it, but those kind of confessions were suspect.
“I’m sorry.”
I yawned. “For what?”
“I killed them.”
“Oh, really? You don’t say,” I said.
She cocked her head to the side and revealed a hint of grey at her temple. “You don’t believe me.”
“Tell me how and why. Then we’ll see.”
And she did. Cheryl Morris confessed to everything, except killing Steve. She implicated Jeanette in his murder. Jeanette knew all the particulars of her interactions with Steve. Steve did tell Cheryl that Wayne Millford had stolen from the dead in Vietnam and that he found out from Hal. Wayne told her that he didn’t steal anything and that Hal was a liar. He said he had Walter’s sidearm and implied that Hal was the one that stole it.
Cheryl bought the weapon and the knife used in the stabbing for five thousand dollars. She said that Wayne, also, had a second M1911. Since the Millfords didn’t have a M1911 on them when they died, I was willing to bet that Jeanette bought it and used it on Steve in hopes th
at her crime would be lumped in with the rest. It would’ve worked if Cheryl hadn’t had an alibi.
Cheryl cried softly. “I believed Steve. I believed him.”
“Why? Everybody knows he was a dirtbag,” I said.
“Because he told me things I didn’t know. There was a bullet. I didn’t know there was a bullet. He said and Steve said.”
I sat up. “Wait. What?”
“He said there was a bullet fragment and he was right. Steve confirmed it.”
“Who’s he? Not Steve?”
Cheryl sucked in a ragged breath. “No, the other one.”
“What other one? Dr. Grenville?”
“I don’t know his name. He called me and he gave me the pictures,” she said.
A chill went through me. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
Cheryl turned away. “It doesn’t matter now. Nothing matters.”
I stood up, ignoring my rising nausea, and went to her bedside. “I have a feeling that it might matter very much to me.”
Another nurse named Betsy hustled in and said, “How are you feeling? They’re ready to transfer you to the jail.”
Cheryl sobbed and I asked if we could have a moment.
“They’re in a hurry,” said Betsy.
“Just a minute. Please. It’s really important,” I said.
She glanced at Cheryl and then nodded. “I’ll hold them off for as long as I can.” She left and closed the door on the curious uniforms who were peering in.
“Cheryl, please tell me what you’re talking about. Was there another person involved?” I asked.
There was another person, a man who didn’t give his name. He called Cheryl for the first time nearly a year before. He said that the rumors about Walter being fragged on the battlefield were true. He claimed that he was a member of the platoon and witnessed the attack.
The call upset Cheryl, but she did nothing about it. She loved Judith and decided not to think about it. Still, she never could bear to be around Robert and that was why she never visited St. Louis. The man continued to call every so often, teasing her with hints and allegations but no proof. At some point, she began to hang up on him and blocked his number.
But then Judith died. Somehow, he got through to Cheryl and called that very day, insisting that Walter was murdered and unavenged. The man’s call preyed on her mind and a package showed up on her doorstep the day after Judith’s funeral. It contained a photo of a bullet fragment, an autopsy report giving the cause of death as a gunshot to the chest signed by Dr. Grenville, scanned pages of a diary that appeared to confirm the fragging, and a typed note saying that my grandad would be in Sturgis.
