Billy Goat Hill

by Mark Stanleigh Morris

  “Cherry and I thought we had figured out how to nail Shunkman. We took our story to our captain, and he went to the chief. A plan to trap him was quickly put in place.”

  “So the cover-up went all the way up to the chief of police?”

  “I believe so, but I still hadn’t told anyone about you boys finding the body. I was hoping you were scared enough to keep your mouths shut.”

  Luke expels a mouth full of invective. “We never told a soul, officer.”

  “I know you didn’t, Luke.”

  Luke rolls his eyes and shakes his head in disgust.

  I don’t want to know the answer but can’t keep myself from asking. “What would have happened if we had told?”

  Luke is heating up again. He slams his hands on his knees. “He had it all figured out, big brother.” He glares at the Sergeant. “Didn’t you, cop? No one would have believed us, would they? Just two little jerks making up a wild story. Two stupid little fatherless latchkey lunatics starved for attention, isn’t that about the way you figured it—Sergeant?”

  The Sergeant’s eyes flutter weakly. “That’s exactly the way I figured it. You are absolutely right.”

  “So you just left us swinging on our own rope then, didn’t your?”

  I feel sorry for Luke and wish there was some way to move beyond all this. “You said the whole story, right, sir?” The Sergeant nods. Than it spills out, the one thing I have never told Luke. “I was sure I killed that man. So sure, I almost committed suicide over it.”

  Luke is aghast. “What!”

  “That morning I found you on the bridge by the Rose Bowl?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  New tears spill down the Sergeant’s sallow cheeks. “That’s when I realized what a terrible mistake I’d made. But I couldn’t tell you anything. It was too late to turn back things that had already been put in motion.”

  “You almost jumped off a bridge?” Luke can’t believe it.

  I ignore him. “You could have told me anything, sir. I idolized you. I would have believed anything you said. I would have followed any instructions you might have given me.”

  A pain worse than the ravages of cancer shows in his eyes. “I turned to Rodney for advice.” More tears trace down the wet tracks on his face.

  Please, God, not Rodney, too. “You mean Rodney knew?”

  “I confided many things to Rodney—he was like a father to me.” But he did not approve of my activities with the O.C.I.U. He tried to convince me to transfer out of the unit. Rodney wasn’t an American citizen. He was French-born and had been a freedom fighter in the First World War. He also returned to France for several years to help the underground resistance against the German occupancy during World War Two. He felt the O.C.I.U. was dark and evil like the Nazi SS. He thought we were a dangerous threat to civil liberty, and he worried that my involvement in the O.C.I.U. would lead to my downfall as a police officer.

  “He was right, of course. I knew he would have considered my judgment at the time I found you lying by the body, and my decision to leave things as they were, to let you continue to believe you killed the guy, not only despicable, but Gestapo-like. I only told him you were a troubled kid—like me when I was your age.”

  “Rodney fell in love with you from the very start, Wade. You reminded him of me when I was a kid, the son he never had. I thought if he took you under his wing, you’d be able to work through your troubles. But I finally broke down and told him the whole story, the truth, just before he died.”

  I am in tears now, too. “You used Rodney?”

  The Sergeant winces. “Yes, in a way I did. I used him to be for you what I didn’t have the courage to be.”

  “Despicable,” Luke grumbles.

  “Rodney was outraged when I told him the whole story. He was ashamed that I could do such a thing. He even slapped my face, something he never once did when I was growing up.”

  Yes, the slap… I did see it! “Go on.”

  “He said he was going to tell you the whole story himself. I was scared, but I thought it was better for you to hear it from him anyway. I was sure he would talk to you about it that day you guys came to visit him at his house, the day he had—the heart attack.”

  “Geez, sir.” More tears come in a rush.

  “I think the stress killed him.”

  Luke shakes his head. “Man, this is only getting worse, Wade.”

  “The Sergeant saved my life, Luke. I’m pretty sure I would have jumped from the bridge if he hadn’t come along.”

  “It was only luck,” the Sergeant counters, refusing undeserved clemency.

  “No, sir, I believe it was God reaching down and touching me through you.”

  The Sergeant looks at me, and I see deep in his eyes a desperate need to believe what I just said is true, that God does reach down to intercede in a life. At this moment, with all of my heart, I want more than anything for my fallen hero to know God’s forgiveness.

  Luke hisses, “Boy, it turns out Lucinda was right all along. Not letting us see the Sergeant anymore was the best thing she ever did. And poor Miss Cherry, he ruined her life, too.”

  “Take it easy, Luke.”

  “You’re right about me, Luke—but there’s more.”

  Luke stands up. “Great! What now? Are you going to confess that you were the one who broke into our house and shot Mac?”

  The Sergeant closes his eyes. “No, Luke. Lieutenant Shunkman did that.”

  Luke pales and slumps back down in the chair. I have begun to shake. My head is pounding. Father, in the name of Jesus, please give me strength.

  “We didn’t know Shunkman had found out you guys knew about the body. It wasn’t until much later that we were able to piece it together. One of Shunkman’s cohorts overheard Cherry’s end of an argument she and I had on the telephone. An argument like many we had over whether or not to tell you boys the truth. Part of Cherry’s spirit died when she found out she was the source of the leak that almost…”

  “Got us killed?”

  “Yes.” The irony is, Shunkman didn’t know you thought you killed Giacometti. But it spooked him when the body disappeared from Three Ponds. He became paranoid, obsessed. When he found out you boys knew about the body, I think he convinced himself that you had seen him dump the body there in the first place and had recognized him from that night on Billy Goat Hill. He lost it. Completely snapped.

  “And we didn’t know he’d started seeing your mom.”

  I rise out of my seat, my body rigid, my memory on fire, sucking like a vacuum back in time…

  She came in late…

  Mac awoke with a start…

  Laughter… ice tinkling… Fred? Ned? Ted!

  She called him Ted!

  Good grief, he was the man she brought home with her that night!

  “He came to kill—us?”

  “We had suspicions he’d recruited a few other officers into his cabal and that they were planning something. We had Shunkman and several others under surveillance and discovered he was dating Lucinda. That’s when I suspected he must have found out you knew about the body at Three Ponds. Cherry and I immediately went to your mother and told her everything.”

  “Your mother was amazing. She could have turned on us, gone to the district attorney, the FBI—but she didn’t. She believed in us and backed us all the way. We agreed on a plan to protect you boys, to give us time to discover all of the officers involved with Shunkman, and to keep it all quiet. Cherry and I gave Lucinda seven thousand dollars we had saved for our wedding. Your mother had a lot of emotional and personal problems, but through it all she tried her best to protect you.”

  “So that’s why we moved so suddenly, big brother. Another mystery solved.”

  “Not suddenly enough.”

  “Shunkman’s luck finally ran out. Your mom had tactfully broken off her relationship with him, and she was helping us by keeping silent, which gave us more time to make sure we roped in all of Shunkman’s clan.�
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  “But he’d already been in your house. He knew the layout, which was all he’d wanted in the first place. The night before you were to move to Glendora, he came to your home to shoot all three of you as you slept. He had a silencer. We found it later.”

  “Maybe God did save us,” Luke says.

  “I know He did.”

  “Shunkman came to your house at about three in the morning. He entered the front door with a key we figured he’d stolen from your mom.”

  “We never locked the doors in those days anyway.”

  “It was dark, of course, and once inside it would have taken a minute for his eyes to adjust. The inside of the house was in disarray, moving cartons strewn about, furniture shifted around from where he expected it to be; he must have tripped or bumped against something, who knows. The important thing is, the dog heard him. You know the rest.”

  “I remember, Wade. Mac started out for Billy Goat Hill with us, but he turned around and went back to the house. Maybe he sensed the evil that was coming our way. He probably got back to the house and found Shunkman already inside. He would have gone after him with a vengeance.”

  “I remember, Luke.”

  “Only twelve more hours and we would have been gone. Mac would have lived.”

  “Only twelve more hours.”

  The room is quiet except for the awful rasp of the Sergeant’s erratic gasping for air. He stares at the ceiling, empty, depleted, but looking strangely satisfied and relieved. I know exactly how he feels, burdens lifted, ready to move on.

  “What ever happened to Shunkman?” Luke asks.

  “He was shot and killed six days later when he and two other renegade cops attempted to kill Giacometti’s replacement at a warehouse in North Hollywood. We had them under surveillance, and we were able to interrupt the hit. But Shunkman and his boys refused to surrender, and there was a wild shoot-out. Cherry ended up shooting Shunkman just before he shot me. She probably saved my life.”

  “Cops killing cops…it really doesn’t get any worse than that. So the whole thing was covered up to protect the department. Officially, Shunkman died in the line of duty, shot by a known mafia operative during an attempted arrest. But it ended up costing us our careers.”

  “For what it’s worth, Shunkman had a hunk of meat missing from his neck and shoulder area. It was badly infected and wasn’t healing. It must have been terribly painful. Mac got him real good before Shunkman shot him. The injury was severe enough to run him off and foil his plan to kill you.”

  “Lord have mercy,” Luke says.

  An incredible peace washes over me as I feel the very presence of God surrounding me with the miracle of the Holy Spirit. For the first time, I truly experience the full and utter wholeness of our Father’s deep and abiding love. I understand the depth of His forgiveness for me and for the world. And in this moment of epiphany, I am so overcome by His love that my heart overflows with compassion and understanding for the Sergeant.

  “Sir?”

  “Yes, Wade?”

  “I want you to know something important.”

  “Yes?”

  “I want you to know God loves you. I want you to know I have always loved you, and I still do. I want you to know how much I appreciate knowing the truth. I want you to know you did the right thing in contacting us. And, with all my heart, I want you to know that I forgive you for everything.”

  His eyes show me such relief I can hardly breathe. “Thank you, son. I just wish Cherry could forgive me, too.”

  “Have you ever asked her?”

  “No. I have no right to ask her.”

  “Well, if God can forgive you, then so can Miss Cherry.”

  “That’s very kind, but you can’t really know that.”

  “If you believe in God as I do, you can know that.”

  “Believing and knowing are not the same things.”

  “In my heart, they are the same thing. If you believe, then you will know. The Bible is the record, the rule book, and the manual of life. It’s God’s holy message to the world. To me, it is the greatest love letter ever written, and it was written to each and every one of us. God loves you very much, sir.”

  “I know our lives came together for a purpose, a beautiful, incredible, miraculous purpose. I understand now that without you, including everything that has happened, I wouldn’t know what I know, and I wouldn’t value what I value. I understand now that my suffering was and is for a purpose, and I am filled with such excitement and anticipation that I can hardly wait to see what God has planned next.”

  “So, as difficult as it may be for you to accept, I can only say that God loves you. He wants you to accept His love as a gift. And there is a Way for you to accept it, and the Way is Jesus Christ.”

  The Sergeant is completely drained. I lean close to him and take his hand in mine. He squeezes my hand with a last bit of strength and speaks in my ear. “Thank you, Wade. I can’t tell you what you’ve done for me. You have become quite a man. Rodney would be proud.”

  “Sir, it isn’t me doing it. It is God doing it.”

  “Okay, son.”

  “Sir, would you like to see Rodney again?”

  “If I only could.”

  “May I come back tomorrow and talk with you some more?”

  “I’d like that very much.”

  Luke says, “Can I come, too?”

  “Yes, please do, son.”

  The Sergeant closes his eyes, and I watch the lids quiver strangely. We sit quietly for a little while, the undertow of emotion releasing us to rise back to the surface. Luke gets up and walks to the window. I follow him with my eyes, half expecting him to turn around and spout a fresh Lukeism to brighten the room. But he doesn’t turn around. My little brother is at a loss for words. The window holds him there, perhaps offering him a glimpse into his own past, a view full of ugliness now cleansed and sparkling with the shine of newfound truth.

  I get up and walk over next to him.

  He turns to me, tears running down his face. “See down there in the parking lot, the blue pickup.”

  I look and find the truck. In the bed of the pickup are two little boys, one blond and one redhead. They are carbon copies of the man sitting between them. The man has his arms around their shoulders.

  Looking out the window, Luke says, “That was amazing, what you said to him. I felt like you were speaking for me and to me at the same time.”

  “It wasn’t me—it was God.”

  We stay by the window for a few minutes while the Sergeant rests. With my arm across Luke’s shoulders, my mind floats in a supernatural drift, shifting between images of the past and visions of the future. God shows me Lucinda, and I know loss and courage. Next I see Rodney, and I know caring and humor. Then I see Esther and I know patience and kindness. Last I see Miss Cherry, and I know faith and action.

  We, all of us, were in it together, but not together in it. If only there had been more trust, better communication, more love—such is the condition of the world. And I thank God that I finally know who I am and the reason I am here in this world.

  From across the room, my gaze still fixed on the parking lot below, I notice the Sergeant’s breathing is less labored and more even.

  The nurse reappears, her stockings swishing quietly behind us. A long moment passes while she checks over the Sergeant.

  Quietly, she says, “I haven’t seen him sleep this peacefully in weeks. I was a little worried for a while there, but it seems your visit has done him some good. When I saw you boys praying in the hall, I just knew your visit would be a blessing for that troubled man. I’ve been praying for him every day. I don’t know his personal story, but I do know people. The weight on that man’s soul was so heavy. I could feel it.”

  “Thank you for your prayers, ma’am—and sorry about the ruckus earlier. We’ll be back to visit him again tomorrow.”

  “Praise God, because Mr. Cavendish surely loves you Parker brothers.”

  “Oh, you
know who we are?”

  “My Lord, yes, I most certainly do. That man talks about you two all of the time. I heard all about Billy Goat Hill, and I’ll tell you this much—God surely must have been watching over you boys.”

  “Yes, ma’am. He surely was.”

  “My name is Naomi. Please feel free to ask for me, and I’ll be glad to help you in any way I can.”

  “Thank you, Naomi.”

  “You’re welcome and God bless you boys.”

  “God bless you too, ma’am.”

  Out in the hallway, I am suddenly aware of a feeling of unfinished business. And then it hits me, and I am looking forward to tomorrow’s visit with more anticipation than a kid slipping out the window for a late-night outing on Billy Goat Hill.

  “I haven’t seen that look in your eye since Highland Park,” Luke says. “Uh oh. What are you thinking?”

  “Let’s go check on Miss Cherry. I’ll tell you on the way, while we listen to some more of your harp music.”

  It’s late afternoon when we arrive at Rosewood Manor. The lobby is filled with the wonderful aroma of raspberry cobbler.

  Marge McZilkie calls to us from the adjoining dining room. “Cobbler day. I figured I’d see you right around dinnertime.”

  I am naturally drawn toward the source of the aroma as we both step into the dining room. “How is she today?”

  “Tired, but she’s definitely on the upswing. She said she feels like a lifelong fever has finally broken.”

  “Is she in her room?”

  “No, she’s with Emma. They’re getting some sun on the west patio.”

  “Thanks, Marge.”

  “Are you boys staying for dinner, or would you like me to box up some cobbler to go?”

  “To go, please.”

  “You got it.”

  “Be careful with that stuff,” Luke whispers. “You do have addiction tendencies, you know.”

  Emma notices us as we approach. “Yo angels is here, Miss Cherry.”

  Miss Cherry has sunglasses on, and her face is framed in a beautiful yellow silk kerchief. She looks like a classy movie star on hiatus at her favorite spa resort.

  Luke and I greet her with a hug. “How’s our best girl feeling today?”