by Lois Carroll
Mac had to laugh and then so did Hines. “Now then,” Mac resumed with a much more civil tongue than before, “when the hell can I get out of this torture chamber? I’ll thank you for what you did when I’m riding in a car that’s driving me away from here.”
“Now what could have put you in such a mood? The nurses looked pretty cute to me.” With comic narcissism, Hines smoothed his hair at his temples and loudly kissed the air. “Yes, sir. Pretty cute!”
Mac just looked at him for a long moment. “Are you finished with the fun and games now? Tell me what’s going on.”
Hines exhaled heavily. “Okay, okay. I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news. Which do you want first?”
“Carolyn,” Mac said through gritted teeth. “Just tell me how Carolyn is.”
“Good news or bad news. Take your pick.” Hines wasn’t budging.
“Arrgh!” Mac groaned, clenching his fists. He leaned back against his pillow, defeated. “Okay, Hines, I’ll play your little game. Hell, you get me out of here and I’ll play any game you want.”
“You’re so agreeable, man. I’ll have to call in the nurses so they can see you really do have a sweet side. They tell me you’ve been…” He hesitated, searching for the right word. “…an annoyance to them.”
“Don’t get me started on those nurses. I know they’ve got a job to do, but a man can only take so much. Do you know they deliberately wash their hands in ice water before they come to change the bandages? And the baths they give? Hell, I’d rather go dirty.” They both laughed. “All right,” Mac said, his voice sobering, “give me the bad news.”
“The bad news is you’ve got to stay in protective custody until after the trials. You know what some cops think of one cop who turns another cop in.” He held up his hand to stop Mac’s objections before they started. “Don’t tell me what you think of that, man. I already know. And I know you know it’s necessary to go into protective custody.”
Mac nodded. “So what’s the good news?”
“The good news, my man, is that you can get out of here today if–”
Mac cut him off with a hoot for joy.
“Wait a minute, man. I said if. And it’s a big if. You have to go where I take you. You have to stay put–I mean completely out of sight for at least thirty-six hours–until the day after tomorrow. No variations from the plan in the works. Then we have to move you again to a deeper cover. Top priority is to keep you safe. If we lose you, we lose a lot of what we have against these guys.”
“Yeah.” Mac nodded. He wanted more news. He’d heard all about the case against Bob Morris and the others ad nauseam. He knew now what happened the night Hines found him on the snow-covered road. He wanted to know how Carolyn was. “Is that all your news?”
“Well, the VanVleets are enjoying seeing their names in the paper. They’re town heroes for driving their big tractor to get Carolyn to a phone that worked. That must be what ‘gray power’ is all about.” Hines’s face dropped the smile as he looked up at Mac. “They saved her life. And she saved yours.”
Mac ran a hand through his hair. When he’d looked at his hair in the little mirror over the bathroom lavatory that morning, he thought it looked grayer than before this all began. Maybe it was, but he was sure it would be even grayer before Hines got to the point of telling him how Carolyn was.
“Enough already!” Mac shouted, and then he spoke so quietly that Hines looked up. “How is Carolyn?”
Hines studied his friend’s face. “She’s fine, Mac. You know I wouldn’t make you wait if the news was anything other than good.”
Mac nodded. “And?”
“Home from the hospital. She doesn’t have the old glow back yet. She had pneumonia, and she was pretty banged up, but she wasn’t cold enough long enough to get frostbite.” He paused and struggled to go on. He dropped his gaze to his arms crossed on the chair. “Mac… Oh, hell! Mac, they wouldn’t let me tell her you were alive.”
Mac panicked at the frown on his friend’s face. “What do you mean?”
“I hated it, man. Honest to God, I hated it, but there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t…” Hines stopped again and inhaled deeply. He raised his gaze to meet Mac’s. “All the newspapers reported you died.”
“What?” Mac sat up in bed and swung his feet over the edge. He ignored the lightheadedness he felt from moving so quickly and stared at his friend. The man who had been his friend.
“It was the only way to keep you alive. This whole illegal setup within the force stinks a lot more than we thought. Once we started peeling away at it, we knew it was essential to keep you safe.” Hines sighed. “A need-to-know basis. You know how that works. Hell, Mac…Carolyn thinks you’re dead.”
Mac lunged at Hines. He’d just grabbed his shirtfront with his good hand when the dizziness overwhelmed him. Instead of shaking Hines within an inch of his life, Mac clung to him for support.
“Come on, Mac! They said they’d have my badge if I told anyone. Even today I couldn’t say a thing about springing you.”
Hines guided Mac back to the bed and sat him down. “Let’s get you dressed and out of here before you undo some of the embroidery they did on your shoulder. You don’t want them to insist on keeping you any longer, do you?”
Hines reached for the brown paper bag he had tossed on the bed when he came in. “You’ve known me a long time, man. You gotta know I hated doing that to her. I know it was low, but they didn’t know her and I couldn’t get them to change their minds. Now, tonight, I can help you right that wrong, but only if you wear this,” he said, holding out to show the bag to Mac. “And you do exactly what I tell you to. Agreed?”
Mac, subdued by pain and by wanting to get out of the hospital in the worst way, nodded. “Just get me out of here, Hines.”
“Where are the clothes I sent up this morning?”
Mac’s head jerked up. “This morning? Do you mean I’ve had clothes here all day?” This time Mac bellowed loud enough to bring in the guard seated outside his door.
“Everything all right in here?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Mac assured him. “Sorry. I got a little carried away.”
The guard started to leave and then turned back. “Oh, I almost forgot. Someone sent up some clothes for you this morning. When they brought them in, you were gone to x-ray so I think the nurse put them in the closet.”
Mac didn’t bother to answer. He was furious about not knowing the clothes were in the closet. He could have been dressed all day instead of prancing around in that…that handkerchief with ties they gave him to wear. With his hospital gown tails flying out behind him, he tried to grab the hangers and the stack of underwear on the shelf at once and with one hand. The shirt slipped off the hanger to the floor.
Before he could reach for it, Hines spoke behind him. “Wait, let me get that for you, Mac. If you lean over dressed only in that piece of nothing you’re wearing, I’ll have to arrest you for indecent exposure.”
“Laugh away, buddy,” Mac told him.
Hines did. The guard, who had stayed in the doorway long enough to hear it, enjoyed the joke too. Mac glared at him. He turned and stepped back out to his chair, still laughing.
Mac tugged at the ties behind his neck to get out of the gown. He didn’t have the use of his injured arm. They had wrapped it up in a sling to hold it in place. Nevertheless, with a little help from Hines, he managed to get dressed in record time.
Mac knew he would do anything if he could just see for himself that Caro was all right. Hell, he just wanted to see her again, to hold her, to let her know he was alive and to hope she would forgive them for not being able to tell her. He had to thank her for saving his life and then he would…
The sight of the blond wig dangling from Hines’s dark fingers brought him back to the present. Their laughter erupted.
“It’ll make me look like I got a finger caught in an electrical socket,” Mac pleaded. He took the wig from Hines and held it up, shaking his head. Howev
er, knowing it was the ticket out, he went to the mirror. Again with a little help from Hines to get it straight, he got the thing on and tucked his own dark hair underneath.
Mac turned to face Hines. “Now will you just get me out of here!”
The stringy wig and leather jacket covering his sling made him look like a punk hood, and made both men laugh easily again as they walked out of the room. The cop at the door was to stay several hours more so Mac’s absence wouldn’t be so evident.
Mac absolutely refused the wheel chair so he walked right out as Hines led the way to an older-looking car by the emergency exit. The color was accented with the fifty-cent-piece-sized rust marks that were a common result of exposure to the salt used so often on winter roads in the hilly countryside.
“New wheels, Hines?”
Hines nodded. “Like it? Wish they made a car just the color of rust and with a roughed-up surface. Then you wouldn’t notice all the spots at all.”
They were joking and laughing as they climbed in and melted into the rush hour traffic. It didn’t mean they were any less aware of their surroundings than the situation demanded. There could not be any more mistakes. No false sense of security now. Both men watched the cars around and behind them.
“Hines, I should have said it the minute I laid eyes on you. I have a lot to thank you for. You’ve always been there for me. A man couldn’t ask for a better friend. Well, I just want to say thanks.”
A smile curled its way across Hines’s full lips. “Cut it out, will ya? I’ll be drying my eyes in another minute.”
“I mean it, Hines.”
Hines glanced at Mac and then back at the road. “All in the line of duty, man.”
It was obvious Hines was making light of a moment heavy with emotion. How did men and women who were prepared to lay down their lives for each other ever say thank you to those who had been ready to do the same for them? Nothing seemed adequate. But, God, they were great friends to have.
That was what made a cop-gone-bad so devastating to the rest of the force. That’s what had made Mac’s nightmare so terrifying. Mac’s mind didn’t want to admit that a cop had gone so far wrong he’d shoot another cop–several, in fact, killing one.
“No. Above and beyond,” Mac insisted softly.
“Hey. Lighten up, Mac. You would have done the same for me.”
Hines was trying to stop Mac from going on, but they both knew what he’d said was true. They both hoped it would never be necessary.
“So where are we headed?” Mac asked when they got on the interstate.
“What, and spoil the surprise?” Hines answered with a grin.
Chapter Fifteen
They drove in silence for a few miles, but soon Mac was asking Hines to fill him in on all that had happened.
“When Carolyn’s call came in from Cooper’s Tree Farm, we were already searching for you,” Hines began. “Some neighbors saw her going in that direction in the car with Harry. Of course we didn’t know who he was at that point.”
Mac listened as Hines continued about the nature photographer who had studied the map with him and talked about the places north and east of town that Harry might be taking Carolyn. The cabins in the rundown motel were one of the possibilities they were going to check out, but hadn’t gotten to yet because of the storm.
“Carolyn getting away to a phone brought us on the run hours earlier than we would have come otherwise,” Hines concluded.
“By then Morris might have made it there through the snow. He would have discovered that I’d remembered he was the one who shot Sam.”
“What do you think happened that night?” Hines asked, glancing sideways at Mac who was staring out the passenger window.
“Near as I can figure it, the men bringing in the bundles off the boat must have let Morris’s name slip, so Sam, being inside the warehouse while the deal was going down, learned of his involvement. Morris, on surveillance, was listening to the whole thing. He couldn’t let Sam live once he knew the truth.”
“You said Sam came out of the warehouse yelling to you,” Hines said. “He was probably telling you to watch out for Morris because he’d just been named as the man in charge.”
Mac sighed audibly. “Yeah. That’s about the size of it. I couldn’t hear what Sam was saying amidst all the shooting that started as soon as he exited the warehouse. Morris stepped out and I saw him when he shot Sam. I saw his gun turn and shoot me, too. Morris wanted to kill the last witnesses to the fact he was behind this operation.”
“Morris had set the time for the exchange and told the dealers a time earlier than he told the other cops,” Hines reported. “He’d made sure the operation would be completed by the time back-up got there. That was why the police cars were so late coming to the warehouse.”
“Did they ever figure out why my transmitter didn’t work? I was pressing that thing like crazy.”
“Back-up wasn’t close enough to receive the signal. They thought everything was coming down much later. Your transmitter wasn’t within range of any of the cars.”
“So Morris sacrificed the dealer, an insignificant part of the whole operation he’d set up, an expendable little guy as far as he was concerned.”
Hines snorted. “Probably snuffed him because he was the one who let Morris’s name slip.”
“I guess we’ll never know,” Mac said, then watched the passing scenery for a few moments before turning back to Hines. “Have they learned why he remained silent throughout the trial?”
“Because he knew if he fingered Morris, he would be killed.” Hines shrugged.
“I thought he might have given Morris up if he could get in the witness protection program.”
“No way, man. He was shaking in his boots. His visitor record showed Morris went to see him right after he was in there. He must have known Morris wasn’t the only one keeping an eye on him and he never said a word to anyone after that.”
“And in the end he was killed anyway,” Mac said. “Hell, he wasn’t coming across the state to kill me, he was just running from the bad cops who he knew were after him. I wonder if he ever knew he was being set up and he would never be safe.”
“What I can’t figure is why they didn’t kill you a whole lot sooner.”
“I guess they figured so much time had passed that I wouldn’t remember. I hate to think they would have killed Carolyn as well, if she’d been with me when they decided to take me out. That’s why Harry was tailing us all over Lakehaven.”
“Why let you even get out of the hospital?”
Mac shrugged. “In the rush that night, Morris must have thought he killed me at the warehouse. After that, he couldn’t get a shooter in the right place at the right time.”
“It must have taken him a while to learn where you were. The boss did pack you off pretty fast, man. Once Morris located you, he put Harry on your tail. Now you’re one of a line of witnesses, which takes the pressure off you.”
“I’ve got a chance at a normal life, huh? I just wish it hadn’t taken so long for me to remember.”
“When you hadn’t remembered by then, we…I mean they must have guessed you never would.”
“Et tu?”
“Say what?”
“Means ‘You too?’ Julius Caesar said it to a friend who did him in.” Mac drew a ragged breath. “You didn’t believe I’d ever remember either,” he said in a low voice.
Hines shrugged. “I never quit hoping you would, but from what the doc said…” He left the rest unsaid as they traveled in silence for a few miles.
“God, I feel bad about involving Carolyn in all this. She sure didn’t deserve to be dragged down with me.”
“Hey, I hate for her to be in this mess too, but from what I’ve seen your meeting her was the best thing that ever happened to you.”
“Hell yes,” Mac agreed. “But look at the trouble I brought her. After the night in the cabin, they would never have let Carolyn live. She was a witness to what they did to me and sh
e heard Morris’s name being used as being the boss. Getting her out of the cabin to safety was the only way to keep her alive. It was close. So damn close.”
“You can say that again. We picked up Harry just a mile away from where you’d fallen. The State Police stopped Morris and his driver trying to get through another closed road. The storm impeded their progress so they never got close, but if it hadn’t snowed… Well, I don’t think we’d be having this conversation.”
Mac sighed and leaned his head against the back of the seat. He felt tired. “The department seems to be moving toward speedy trials, at least.”
Hines barked a laugh. “They’ve got to re-establish a good reputation in the eyes of the public. And fast. There may be some cops upset cops are turning in cops, but the public is all for you. All the media in the state is watching the department. They want all the bad cops weeded out of the division and punished as the criminals they are. Let’s hope the media doesn’t let it rest until that goal is accomplished.”
Mac adjusted his arm in the sling. “After all they dragged out of me, after taking bullets for them on two occasions, did they have to treat Carolyn that way?” He raised his good arm and scratched under the wig. “Damn. She wouldn’t have told anyone!” he added vehemently.
“It wasn’t my idea, bro. Faking your death had to look real to make it work. They waited until she was stronger and nearly ready to leave the hospital before they told her, I’ll have to give them that. In fact, ah, they made me tell her. They thought it would be easier than hearing it from a stranger. Man, it was a hard thing to do, let me tell ya. I hated doing it. I’ll never forget the look on her face. I hope she’ll forgive me one day. You’ll put in a good word for me, won’t you? When I saw her today, I wanted to tell her so bad. I figured at this point, you would want to do that.”
“When can I see her?”
“I can’t give you a specific time. You’re my responsibility now, against everyone’s wishes I might add. For the next few days, if I say jump, you jump. Got that?”
“Boy, you sure are bossy,” Mac told his friend with a grin.
