by Glenn Ickler
Thirty-Seven
Lights On
When the lights came back on this time I was on my knees in the bottom of a boat with my chest resting on the middle seat and my head hanging face down. I was creating a pond in the bottom of the boat beneath my head by alternately coughing and vomiting up lake water. I heard Al say, “Hey look, Mitch, I think you swallowed a perch.” I tried to laugh and threw up more water from deep within my gut.
After another throat-searing coughing spell I was able to rasp out a question. “How’d I get here?”
“Deputy LeBlanc dove in after you,” said Sheriff Val Holmgren. “Lucky for you, he carries a hunting knife in his belt and was able to cut you loose from that cement necklace you were wearing and bring you up. I think in another minute you’d have been a goner.”
“Where is he? I should thank him.”
“He’s busy settling your boat driver and his lovely assistant into another boat for transportation to some waiting squad cars. That woman is strong as an ox and ornery as a mule, by the way.”
“I’m well aware of that,” I said. “She cold-cocked me with a kiddies’ stepstool.”
With the help of Al and the sheriff I was able to get myself upright on the seat. During this struggle I regained my awareness of the pain in my ribcage. “Thank God you got here,” I said to Holmgren.
“You can thank somebody closer to the ground than God that we found you,” he said. “We pulled into Crabtree’s and saw your car in front of the office so we stopped there, thinking you’d be waiting for us inside. Then we got a call from the Brainerd 911 operator that a woman had called and said she’d seen two people take you guys down to the lake and put you in a boat. She even gave 911 your first names. So we grabbed a couple of boats and went looking. We headed for the deep hole because we figured that’s where anybody dumping bodies would dump them and we saw the silhouette of your boat in what little moonlight there was. It was nip and tuck timing all the way around, let me tell you.”
“You say a woman who knew our names called 911 and said she saw us being hauled down to the boat by those two bastards?”
“That’s what the operator said.”
“But you didn’t get the woman’s name?”
“That I did not. Must have been a guest at Crabtree’s but I don’t know how she knew your names. You may never know who saved your butts tonight.”
At the Crabtree’s dock we were met by two sets of EMTs bearing gurneys. We both protested that we didn’t need an ambulance ride but they insisted because of my head injury and the pain and swelling in Al’s right foot from the dropped anchor.
Before I was loaded into the ambulance I called the sheriff over to my side. I pulled the wet mini-recorder out of my shirt pocket and handed it to him. “Play this tape and copy it if you want to, but I need it back before we leave Brainerd,” I said. “This makes me glad I spent the extra money and bought a waterproof unit.”
Holmgren took the recorder and said he would return it to me in the morning in the hospital. I said no way would I still be in the hospital in the morning. “We are heading for home tonight as soon as they say we’re clear. We’ll stop at your office and pick up the tape. Meanwhile, if you want to see some interesting pictures, take a look in the back seat of our car. We made a set of prints just for you.”
“We tried to look into your car when we got here but it’s locked,” Holmberg said. “Want to give me your key for a minute?”
“Oh, my god!” I said. “The key.”
* * *
The drummer in my head was still banging out a rhythm on a set of bongos when we arrived at the emergency room door. My exploring fingers had found a lump that felt at least as big as an ostrich egg on the back of my head, and they came away with small sample of my blood as well.
The sheriff had promised to call a locksmith to open the Ford so he could obtain the photos. Getting the car started so we could go home would require assistance of another sort. “We can cross that river when you come to the bridge,” he’d said.
I was wheeled into a cubicle surrounded by white curtains and Al was wheeled into another. I was lying on my left side in deference to the ostrich egg, contemplating the bland whiteness of the curtain, when a blonde, blue-eyed nurse about thirty years old with substantial boobs and a name tag that said “Amy” came in. She took my pulse and blood pressure, both of which surged upward just from having my arm pressed snug against her warm, soft body.
“How’d you get all wet?” Amy asked.
“Fell out of a boat,” I said. “With some assistance.”
“Somebody pushed you overboard?”
“‘Threw’ would be a more accurate verb than ‘pushed.’ It’s a long story.”
“Nasty lump on your head,” she said, pressing two fingers against it. I nearly rolled off the bed at the touch and she said, “Sorry. I guess it’s kind of tender, huh?”
“That would be an understatement,” I said.
“You got a headache?”
“Like a three-armed man pounding on a bass drum.”
“Yeah, you probably got a concussion. Dr. Hammersley will be in shortly to take a look at it.” Just hearing the word “hammer” gave my head an extra jolt. “Let me clean the blood off that bump.” She produced a soft cloth, wetted it with some sort of liquid fire and applied it to the ostrich egg. I could have used a bullet to bite on.
When she’d finished torturing me, Amy left the cubicle, assuring me again that Dr. Hammersley would be in shortly. I wondered what this hospital’s definition of ‘shortly’ was. In some hospitals that could be as long as half an hour if a wound wasn’t spurting blood directly from a severed artery. I wanted us both to be out of that hospital quickly so we could get back to our car and work on getting it started.
Shortly turned out to be about ten minutes. Dr. Hammersley, a tall, thin, forty-something man with a long nose and a moustache, appeared beside the bed. He introduced himself, pulled on a pair of blue rubber gloves and looked closely at the ostrich egg. “Got a lump there as big around as a quarter,” he said. Immediately I knew I couldn’t trust him. I was absolutely certain my lump was a hell of a lot bigger than a quarter.
The doctor bent down and peered into my eyes with the intensity of a lover about to propose. Next he pressed his first two fingers against the lump and I pulled away like a cat pouncing on a mouse. “A little tender, are we?” he asked.
“More than a little,” I said. “I was blind-sided with a kiddies’ stepstool.”
“Real good chance of a concussion,” he said. “I’ll have you sent down for a brain scan.”
“I don’t have time for that. My partner and I have to be on the road for St. Paul tonight.”
“Don’t set your heart on it. If the scan shows a concussion we’ll have to hold you overnight. I’ll see you after they’ve done the scan.”
Dr. Hammersley left me fuming, but before I could express myself to Al I heard a woman’s voice in the adjoining cubicle say, “We’ll have to send you to x-ray to make sure your foot isn’t broken.”
I desperately wanted to call Martha Todd but I’d left my cell phone in the car when we went to visit Aaron Ross. This had a positive side in that if the phone had been in my pocket it would have been dunked in the lake, but it left me without a means of communication.
From the next cubicle I heard, “I’ll get you scheduled for an x-ray shortly.”
When the nurse’s footsteps had faded away I said, “Hey, Al, do you have your cell phone on you?”
“Yeah, you want me to toss it over the curtain?” he said.
“You’d have to hit me square in the chest for me to catch it. I’m not what you’d call agile right now. Maybe we can get a nurse to bring it to me. I need to call Martha.”
“That could take forever. I’ll hobble over to
you.” I was still lying on my side when he limped into my field of vision with his cell phone in his hand. “Jeez, that’s a nasty bump on the back of your noggin,” he said. “It’s almost as a big as a quarter.”
“Your sore foot must have affected your eyesight,” I said. “It’s at least as big as an egg.”
“Well, maybe a pigeon egg. Here’s the phone. I hope Martha doesn’t burn it up when she hears where you are.”
Just as I took the phone it rang. Caller ID said it was Martha Todd calling so I answered. “Why are you answering Al’s phone but not your own?” she asked.
I explained the phone switch and told her where we were without telling her why were there. Naturally she asked for an explanation. I gave her a quick rundown, skipping the part about my express trip to the bottom of the lake, and told her that we’d be on the road as soon as the hospital completed its tests.
“What are they testing you for?” Martha asked.
“They’re checking to make sure I don’t have a concussion and that Al doesn’t have a broken foot. We’ll be starting for home right after the tests, however long they take. But don’t wait up for me; you know hospitals.”
“I also know you. I’m betting they keep you overnight.”
“Never happen. I’ll walk out.”
“Don’t you dare walk out of there with a concussion. I’d rather have you late for the wedding than coming home with brain damage. God knows you’re goofy enough as it is.”
“Hey, that’s verbal abuse,” I said. “Calling a guy names when he’s lying prostrate on a bed of pain.”
“I just want to see you standing beside me tomorrow with your brain in one piece. Did you say Al is hurt, too?”
“He has a boo-boo on his foot where a careless person dropped an . . . uh . . . something heavy.” I almost said “an anchor” but changed my mind because that might have provoked an unwanted question. This was not the time for details.
“Your mother and grandmother arrived a couple of hours ago,” Martha said. “They’re staying next door in Zhoumaya’s guest bedroom. She hasn’t turned hers into an office like we have, and she actually has a bed in there. What should I tell them about why you’re not on the way home?”
“Tell them we were covering breaking news: the arrest of the two people involved in the murder of Alex Gordon. That’s the truth.”
“Mitch Mitchell and Alan Jeffrey reporting live?”
“You got it. Now all I have to do is get hold of my laptop so I can write the story. We need to cut this chatter so I can call the city desk and let them know we’ve got a blockbuster coming.”
“All right, sweetie,” Martha said. “Please let them find nothing in your head.”
“That’s a given,” I said. We made kissy sounds and hung up.
Al took his phone back for a quick call to Carol. Then he shuttled the phone back to me and I called the Daily Dispatch to give Fred Donlin a rundown on what we had for a story and pix.
“That’s incredible. I’ll leave a note for Eddy Gambrell to save a large hole on page one,” Fred said. Eddy was the assistant city editor who took over for Don O’Rourke on Saturday. “Did you say you’re both in the hospital?” Fred asked.
“Just for tests,” I said. “We’ll be in St. Paul before midnight. The story will be waiting in Eddy’s inbox when he gets in.”
My brain scan was conducted fifteen minutes later. A young man in blue scrubs wheeled my bed to an elevator, took me down a floor and deposited me beside the machine. The constant pain in my head had eased somewhat, but moving from the bed to lie on the narrow slab of the machine brought back all the intra-cranial drums and sent fresh knife blades into my ribs. They ran my head in and out of a tunnel a couple of times and put me back on the bed so the young man could take me back to my little white tent. As I rolled past Al’s cubby hole I saw that it was empty. Good. Soon we’d both be in a cab on the way to Crabtree’s, where we’d face the problem of starting the Ford without a key.
I was almost dozing despite the bongos in my brain when Sheriff Val Holmberg appeared beside the bed. “The locksmith got your car open and we might be able to get it started if we connect with the right computer,” he said after inquiring about the state of my head. “We also found the woman who told 911 that you were being taken to the lake.”
“Who was it?” I said. “Do I know her?”
“I believe you do. Would you like to see her?”
“I’d like to hug her and kiss her if my head didn’t hurt so much. Is she here?”
“She is. Come on in, miss. He’s ready to see you.”
“Hi, Mitch,” said Roxie Robideaux. “How are you feeling? You look like you got hit by a truck.”
Thirty-Eight
Saved by the Belle
I did hug Roxie. I sat up so abruptly that the lights faded and almost went black, but as they slowly returned to normal I opened my arms and said, “Come here, you gorgeous creature.” We had a long, long hug before I asked her how in hell she happened to see Al and me being led to the slaughter.
“It was all because I forgot my hairspray,” Roxie said. “Remember we told you we spent a couple of nights in the cabin next door to the cigar smoker and the blonde? Well, I took a shower just before dinner tonight and when I went to fix my hair I couldn’t find my hairspray. I looked all over everywhere and finally decided I’d left it in that cabin at Crabtree’s, so I went back to look. I had turned in my key but I talked the desk clerk into giving me another one so I could get in just for a few minutes. Sure enough, my hairspray was still there in the bathroom. When I opened the door to come out, I saw you guys with your hands behind your back being pushed along by the stinky cigar guy and his blonde.
“You went past me close enough that I saw that you had tape over your mouths. Anyhow, I followed you down the hill as quiet as a mouse long enough to see that they were going to put you in a boat. Then I ran back up the hill to where those two couldn’t hear me and called 911 on my cell phone.”
“My god, saved by a whore with a can of hairspray,” I said.
“You could make that the headline for your story,” Roxie said. “It’s like those books you read where the good guy gets saved by the bad woman with a heart of gold.”
“You’re not a bad woman, but you surely do have a heart of gold. And guts of platinum to follow us down the hill with those two killers. If they’d heard you they could have grabbed you, too.”
“I thought about that. In fact I started to run back down and make a fuss so they knew they’d been seen but then I thought, what if they come after me? There wouldn’t be anybody to show the cops which way the boat went.”
Al came hobbling into the cubicle. “Do I hear the voice of Roxie?” he asked.
“You heard the voice of the woman who saved our asses tonight,” I said.
“Roxie made the call to 911?”
“I did,” she said. This got her another long, grateful hug.
Next to join the crowd surrounding my bed was Dr. Hammersley. He shooed everybody out and stationed himself in front of me with his arms folded as I remained sitting on the edge of the bed. “Sorry to tell you this, Mr. Mitchell, but you do have a concussion, just as I suspected,” he said. “I know you’re in a hurry to get on the road but I’m sorry to say we’ll have to keep you overnight for observation.”
This was like being hit with the stepstool again. “You can’t keep me,” I said. “I have to get married tomorrow.”
“We’d be guilty of malpractice if we didn’t keep you,” he said. “And you’d be guilty of stupidity if you didn’t stay. You could have any number of unpleasant complications on the way home. I’m sure your bride-to-be would rather have you arrive alive and conscious rather than any of the possible alternatives. Hopefully you’ll be well enough to ride home in time for the wedding. And n
otice that I said ride—you are not to try driving a car until your doctor in St. Paul clears you. Now, I’ve ordered a room for you and your friend. I’ll have them take you up immediately and your friend will be joining you as soon as they put a cast on his foot.”
Another blow. “They’re putting a cast on his foot?”
“It’s broken in three places—three separate bones. He’ll be in a cast for six weeks.”
After Dr. Hammersley shook my hand, said he’d see me in the morning and departed, I ran our situation through my mind. We had one man not able to drive because of a concussion. We had one man not able to drive because his right foot would be in a cast. We had one car with zero ignition keys. Adding one and one and one and zero, I came up with a negative three. I tried to imagine what I was going to say to Martha. Nothing coherent came to mind.
The sheriff returned to say good night and brightened my night a wee bit by handing me my laptop. “I grabbed this out of your car when we opened it,” he said. “Thought you might could use it while you’re in here.” At least I could write my story and communicate with the Daily Dispatch. I almost gave him a hug.
Next in to say good night was Roxie. I did give her another hug. “You’re the best,” I said. “Al and I will be grateful forever.”
“You guys are the best, too,” Roxie said. “Nobody was as nice to Angie and me as you two were.”
“So do us a favor and try to find another, safer line of work, okay?”
“We will as soon as we make enough money to pay for grad school. There’s no decent paying jobs out there right now and we can make a hell of a lot more money flipping dicks than flipping hamburgers, if you know what I mean.”
I laughed, pulled my soggy wallet out of my back pocket, tugged out a wet business card and handed it to Roxie. “Call me in about a week and maybe I can help you gals find something in the city.”
