by Mark Nolan
The mother said, “Thank you, I just don’t know what to do with that poor dog. He’s been like this ever since…” She couldn’t finish saying that Cody had been like this ever since her son had died of a heroin overdose. Her lower lip trembled, and she looked at the gravesite in misery.
“Something I wanted to share with you both is that Jake was a war dog handler in the Marines, just like Stuart was,” Terrell said. “Jake’s pet dog Gracie died recently, and he’s taken it pretty hard.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Stuart’s mother said.
“Alicia had the idea that maybe Cody and Jake could be helpful to each other by spending some time together. At least until your dog gets through this difficult adjustment period.”
Both parents looked over at the gravesite and watched Jake talking to Cody in a military voice and petting him. Cody seemed to be ignoring Jake but on the other hand, he was not growling at Jake or trying to make him go away, the way he did to most other people. He seemed to be respecting Jake’s authority to talk to him.
“It’s just something to think about,” Terrell said. “Stuart might have wanted Cody to be with another dog handler if he was this upset. Military working dogs and their handlers were meant to be together. Nobody else understands them like they understand each other. Nobody. It’s like they have ESP or something that runs up and down the leash between them.”
The parents considered this information as they both turned to gaze into each other’s eyes for a moment and then look again at the gravesite where Jake was trying to comfort their son’s beloved dog. Everyone else had walked away from Cody but Jake was there by his side. Jake looked like he was willing to stay there through hell and high water, forever if necessary.
Stuart’s mother said, “Stuart had adopted Cody under law H.R. 5314, when the dog was retired due to lingering injuries. There had been a waiting list for dogs, but as a former handler, Stuart got a special dog. Cody was considered too smart, too independent and way too much of a handful for a civilian family to deal with. He refused to give up his military skills. He needed a former dog handler like Stuart to guide him in his daily duties and provide him with the strong leadership he required.”
She watched Jake petting Cody and holding his paw and talking to him, using that voice she’d heard her son use so many times. Jake seemed to be one of those dog whisperers, like Stuart. She looked at the man and dog and saw the pain on both of their faces, the love and understanding, the deep loyalty and duty and commitment. Jake reminded her of her lost son. And her heart told her what to do. “Thank you for telling us more about Jake. He never talks about himself but we’ve gotten the impression that he’s a good person.”
“Yes ma’am, I can vouch for that,” Terrell said. “Jake and Stuart were working in different platoons, but they did the same job as dog handlers. They had a lot in common.”
Alicia said, “Jake is obviously a tough man, hardened by combat and the things he’s been through in life. However, he’s also soft-hearted when it comes to somebody who is in trouble and needs help. Just look at him, standing there in the pouring rain, comforting that sad dog.”
They all looked over at Jake. As he stood there, he appeared like a protective, dangerous bodyguard. But his eyes revealed a hidden gentleness when he looked at the brokenhearted dog that had lost his best friend.
Stuart’s father said, “Cody took it hard, really hard. He needs something to do, a job to keep him busy. Stuart adopted him as a therapy dog and Cody went through that type of training too. He understands hundreds of words. He can open doors, turn on and off light switches, and pick up items off of the floor. He can even open the refrigerator and fetch a six-pack. But the one thing he can’t do is sit still for long and do nothing.”
Terrell and Alicia listened politely and let the man talk, he had been quiet most of the time, and now he was finally opening up.
“Cody is ornery too. He will turn off the TV if you don’t take him for a walk or give him his dinner right on time. That retriever is way too smart and too dedicated to just sit around the house. Cody was not able to be deprogrammed as much as other former military war dogs usually are. He still searches any bags he sees, and he tries to get in front of his pack to protect them from anyone who approaches. Old habits die hard, and that dog always seems to have something on his mind that he’s thinking about. He has skills and training that he doesn’t want to give up. A mission that he can’t let go of.”
The mother said, “I think Cody got as much therapy from being with Stuart as our son did from him. Maybe Jake could keep him busy, and keep his mind off his sorrows.”
At the nearby gravesite, Cody howled again. His fur was soaking wet from the rain. Jake’s hair and clothes were plastered to him too, but he just stood there talking to Cody, oblivious to the weather conditions.
Alicia said, “Maybe Cody and Jake could both keep each other company. They need each other. It’s the right thing to do.”
Terrell said, “You can go home and rest now, get out of this weather. Jake will stay with Cody all night if needed and will sleep on the wet grass next to him until sunrise if that’s what it takes. He’s what we call a dog man. He loves dogs and they love him. Cody is in good hands, there isn’t anyone who could take better care of him right now than Jake.”
The father nodded at Terrell and Alicia and he said, “Thank you both for coming today. Promise me that you’ll go on with your life and not feel the survivor’s guilt that Stuart’s therapists learned he was feeling. He was always asking, ‘Why me? Why did I live when so many of my friends died?’ Don’t let that get to you. Live your life and make the best of it. Do it for Stuart.”
“I will sir, I promise,” Terrell said.
Alicia squeezed Terrell’s hand and pressed her shoulder against his. The mother noticed it, and she looked around for Stuart’s grieving girlfriend who had lit the candle and walked off into the rain. The mother wiped her eyes with a tissue and said, “You two are very kind. We’ll talk to Jake about what you said. Thank you.”
The parents got into their car and slowly drove away. The mother leaned her head against the car window and continued looking back at her son’s burial place until it was out of sight. “Goodbye my sweet child.”
Toward the end of the landscaped grounds, their car came up beside Stuart’s girlfriend as she walked alone on the grass along the driveway, and they pulled over beside her. She stopped walking and just stood there in a daze, soaking wet from the rain, her eyes focused on something far away.
The mother got out of the car and hugged the girl and guided her into the back seat. She sat next to her and held onto the young woman who could have been her future daughter in law and have given her grandchildren. As the father drove the car, the young woman wept and cried out in pain for the love of her life that she had found and lost. If anyone could understand the wound in her heart that might never heal, it was these kind parents of her lost soul mate.
Chapter 35
Alicia and Terrell walked back to Alicia’s car and got inside. Alicia sat in the passenger seat because she’d decided to let Terrell drive her car. She knew he was stressed, and it would help to calm his nerves if he had something to do.
“I wish we had an umbrella to give to Jake,” Alicia said.
Terrell looked over at the gravesite. “He’ll be fine, he’s been through far worse things that you wouldn’t believe.”
Alicia nodded her head, and she knew that whatever Jake had been through, her man had been through it too, right by his side. Terrell started the car engine, but he just sat there looking at the gravesite for a while, not moving. The rain battered the car windows and roof, and an old song came on the car radio. It was Johnny Cash’s cover version of Hurt, recorded a few months before his death. Terrell listened to the lyrics and thought about how people hurt themselves. The pain and the needle. And how you tried not to remember things you wished would go away. His breathing became ragged, and he clenched his ha
nds tight on the steering wheel.
Alicia watched Terrell’s face, and she saw him display an emotion he rarely let her see… hate. She said softly, “What is it, babe?”
Terrell shook his head. “Why Stuart, why now? He makes it all the way through the fighting and everything, gets home alive and in one piece, and then he dies from a heroin overdose? I hate the people who sold it to him.”
Terrell cursed and pounded his fist on the steering wheel as he said things he usually kept private. Alicia had never heard her man swear so violently. He looked like he wanted to kill someone, and she knew he’d killed a number of people during his military service. This was a side of his personality he kept buried way down inside. It was a good thing that the drug dealer who had sold the heroin to Stuart was nowhere in sight at the moment, or Terrell might have beaten him half to death with his bare hands.
Alicia sat quietly and let Terrell vent his pent-up emotions. She wasn’t afraid of him. He’d never raised a hand to her and he never would. Finally, the sadness became too much for her tough-as-nails husband. He slumped forward and pressed his forehead against the steering wheel, gritting his teeth. She saw a rare teardrop roll down his cheek from behind his dark sunglasses.
A low growl came from deep inside Terrell and then he stopped himself with an effort. He took a deep breath and shook his head. “I’m sorry Alicia. Sorry to act like a violent animal.”
Alicia carefully placed her hand on his leg. “Let your grief out, just like you told me to. Don’t carry it inside you, It will eat you up. Please baby it’s just us here alone.”
Terrell just sat there in silence, so Alicia unbuckled her seat belt and moved closer to him. She turned off the engine and put her arms around him.
Terrell knew that he needed to grieve for his lost friend and for so many others like him. He had too many unshed tears that he’d held inside for so long and that needed to be released. It seemed like he either had to cry, or hunt down and kill that heroin-dealing criminal who really deserved to die right now. Yet he still refused to weep in front of Alicia. It wasn’t in his DNA.
He took several ragged breaths and looked at Jake and Cody. He saw Jake still petting the dog on the back and talking to him. His friend was so loyal, they both were. Alicia was too. Loyalty was why sometimes pain could run so deep. But if you didn’t care very much, life wouldn’t hurt very much. People who didn’t have deep feelings never experienced deep joy or deep pain. They lived in a trivial, pale shadow of life where nothing was ever a big deal, and all that mattered was pretending to be popular.
“Just another day and another dead friend,” Terrell said. “When are they going to legalize and regulate that drug like they do all the rest of them?” His eyes were dark, and his voice was thick with suppressed emotion.
Alicia secretly admired his stoicism. Before they’d met she’d been dating a sweet, sensitive man and she hadn’t really liked it as much as she’d thought she would. She’d told her friends that she wanted a more confident man, a leader, someone who could take charge when needed. When she’d met Terrell, a military veteran and police officer, she’d fallen hard for his strong personality. Not all women felt that way of course, but Alicia was one that did. Lately though, she wished her man would show at least some sensitivity too and balance things out.
Terrell was glad he hadn’t wept. Men are not supposed to cry. Everyone says that to boys when they are growing up. Big boys don’t cry. Never show any weakness, or else nobody will respect you. You’ll be bullied, beat up, cast out and ostracized. Girls will think you are weak. Women will not want you. Do. Not. Cry. Ever. Bury it inside and drink it away with alcohol. In fact, a strong drink or two sounded real good to Terrell right about now.
The two of them drove slowly away from the cemetery and took a last look at Jake and Cody. Terrell began to talk, slowly and in a low voice, and he explained to Alicia about Stuart. Alicia just listened and let him talk and get it off his chest. This was something he almost never did.
“Stuart had been wrestling with some kind of death wish, doing reckless things that could have caused him harm,” Terrell said. “Lately, he’d been driving like a crazy man. As if he was invincible. Everyone had been worried that he was going to die in a fiery car accident some dark, rainy night. And that he’d have his dog Cody in the car with him when he did it.”
“What bothered Stuart the most was that when he’d helped set up an old chow hall tent as a school for the kids in that poor village overseas, the terrorists had tried to stop the girls from getting an education. They hate girls for some reason. It’s really sad. One morning when a father was walking his daughter to our school, the terrorists shot and killed them both. The other girls continued to go to school with armed escorts. But Stuart felt that the death of the one child and her father was his fault. The guilt stayed with him like a weight on his heart.”
“Stuart suffered from back pain due to a piece of bomb shrapnel that was lodged near his spine. The doctors gave him prescriptions for OxyContin or Oxycodone or oxy-something-or-other. Stuart said it was the only thing that could ease his pain, but he quickly became addicted to the prescription opiate. The medicine was overpriced, and that led him to using an illegal but far more affordable opiate that is basically the same thing… heroin. The cruel irony was that the heroin comes from poppies grown in Afghanistan, and it brings in money to buy AK-47s for terrorists all over the Middle East. Stuart was aware of that fact, and it caused him to suffer from additional guilt and shame every time he used the drug. In the end, he either had an accidental overdose, or else his physical and mental pain was just too much for him to bear and he purposely killed himself.”
Alicia listened and nodded her head and cried. She wept for Stuart and also for her husband Terrell and their friend Jake, and the grieving dog Cody. She wept for every person who had ever been in a war, and she prayed that someday there would be no more fighting, and people could finally live in peace.
Terrell knew that some war veterans engaged in risky behaviors, but he hadn’t done that. Not yet anyway. His love for this woman kept him grounded and it gave purpose to his life. Alicia was his lighthouse and his touchstone and his reason for living. She was his everything. What would he do without her? His daily headache was throbbing with pain worse than usual. He needed a few ibuprofen pills or a shot of Jack Daniels. Preferably both. But he just stared straight ahead and drove the car with his jaws clenched.
As the couple made their way home, any concerns about their arguments and fights of the recent weeks were forgotten. They held hands as they drove, without either of them consciously doing it. After a while, Alicia noticed it. She realized that Terrell was quietly showing a sensitive side here after all, as he held hands with her. He just wasn’t aware he was doing it instinctively in the privacy of her car. She smiled through her tears and held her man’s hand tighter.
Chapter 36
Ivan Zhukov drove away from the cemetery and cursed at the policeman named Terrell Hayes. He’d been so close to killing Wolfe, but then the bothersome police friend had noticed Zhukov’s car and had come straight at him like he was ready for a fight. The fearless look on Terrell’s face had made it clear that the man had prior experience in deadly fights, and he’d survived them all. Zhukov knew a killer when he saw one and Terrell was obviously a hardened military veteran.
He was irritated by this interference in his plans but he told himself it was only a minor delay. He would still kill Jake Wolfe today. Right now however he had to focus on the business of killing the next lawyer target. Business before pleasure.
Zhukov drove across the Golden Gate Bridge and arrived in the wealthy small town of Mill Valley. He bought a to-go cup of black tea from a trendy little coffee shop and then sat in his vehicle in the parking lot. As he poured a packet of sugar into the tea, he studied a file on the tablet computer in front of him. The screen displayed a photo of his next target to be killed, along with all of the relevant information he would need to
complete the assignment.
According to the detailed background report, an attorney named Maxwell “Max” Vidallen was making a fortune suing doctors for dubious malpractice claims. He was bankrupting many small family physician offices and causing everyone else’s insurance costs to skyrocket through the roof.
It didn’t matter to Vidallen if the claim seemed to be a fake or if the victim had been too lazy to follow the doctor’s orders. He was only interested in the insurance companies and how much money he could extract from them. He was a modern day pirate who pillaged and plundered. The insurance company lawyers would often settle for an undisclosed sum rather than go to court and risk some unpredictable and astronomical award from a potentially gullible and easily swayed jury that knew nothing about medicine or the law. It was blackmail and extortion, pure and simple, and Vidallen loved every minute of it.
Vidallen’s latest lawsuit was against a veterinarian named Sarah Chance. She’d been driving home from work, had seen a terrible car accident and had stopped to help. The brakes on a bus had failed and the bus had hit a car that was crossing an intersection. Sarah saw the collision and instead of driving past and gawking like everybody else was doing, she parked her car on the sidewalk and called 911. Next she stood in a pothole full of water and leaned in the shattered window of the car to render first aid to a young woman who had a serious bruise on her forehead.
Sarah took off her coat and gently placed it around the young woman’s head and neck to hold her immobile so she wouldn’t move. She stayed there by the woman’s side, holding her hand and giving her an endless pep talk to help her avoid going deeper into shock. Sarah asked the woman her name, and she mumbled in reply that her name was Hailey. People stared at the accident like it was a TV show. They used their phones to take pictures and video of Sarah as she shivered in the cold without her coat, and spoke reassuringly to the injured woman. Nobody made any move to help. Hailey’s breathing became weaker and then stopped.
