The Near Death Experience (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thriller Series Book 10)

by John Ellsworth

  At the house, the ambulance driver backed right up across the sprawling front grass and up to the deck that stretched the full width of the home. From there, it was an easy enough move to wheel the stretcher across the wood planks of the deck and up to the front entrance. They came into the entryway, rolled past the formal living room on the left where Katy had meticulously gathered together Southwestern artifacts and art pieces and made a place for Thad to meet the occasional client who stopped by. The first door on the right was a walk-in coat closet and the second door was a large study lined floor to ceiling with books and small sculptures, plus the mandatory big screen TV. Off the back was a bathroom. On the right was a huge stone fireplace with gas log—Katy’s requirement as she wanted something that would immediately put out heat after a long winter’s day in the outside world.

  They rolled her in here, the study, and carefully moved her onto the hospital bed against the far wall facing the door. She was heavily medicated and glassy-eyed and didn’t complain even one time. Immediately she was overrun with greetings from five-year-old Parkus, seven-year-old Sarai, and nine-year-old Celena. The kids had been allowed to stay home from school so that Mama could have a meet and greet with her greatest fans. The little ones hadn’t been allowed in her ICU suite and so the delight in again having their mother back was infectious. Nursing staff arrived and set about the task of preparing Katy’s tubes, hangers, and pumps, as well as preparing charts for her physical functions and medication history. In the midst of all this Katy felt like she was floating in a twilight state, responding to the kids and answering questions put to her by the nurses. Then the stable and ranch workers filed through and welcomed her home. Thaddeus watched all this from a leather recliner in which he sometimes read late into the night. He wondered how she found the energy and will to manage as he watched her ooh and ah over the kids and warmly greet the workers. Well, as warmly as possible, anyway, he thought. Given the circumstances, it was enough.

  An hour later, everyone was fed and the kids were back to their daytime play routines, scattered inside and out, and the nursing staff had dwindled down to one onsite nurse working the noon to ten shift. Meanwhile, Thaddeus hadn’t left the room and was hanging close by so that he could respond immediately to anything his wife had to say. He realized she was beckoning him closer and he stood and went to her bedside.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “You. It’s time for you to go to the office and work. We can’t pay for this unless you’re earning, brother.”

  He laughed.

  “No, I’ll be here with you until—well, until you’re well enough that I feel good about leaving you alone.”

  “Thaddeus, that time is never going to come. In the meantime, I need my household to be as regular as possible. You go to work; the kids go to school. The cook cooks, the nurse nurses, the outside people do their thing. I can’t have you all hovering around me. It’s not enjoyable and it doesn’t make me feel better, FYI. In fact, it makes me feel worse. So if you really want to help me feel good, go to your office and be a lawyer. Come home when all the other men go home to their wives.”

  “No. I’m here with you. If I’m crowding you too much I’ll go into my own office and hang out there. But I’m not leaving your side.”

  “Then take me back to the hospital. I’d be happier there.”

  “You were unhappy there! You made me promise to bring you home!”

  “But it’s not home with Mr. Gloom and Doom hanging around. Go the hell to work and leave me in peace. Now. Please!”

  Thaddeus stepped back from the bed.

  “It doesn’t feel right to leave you.”

  “Then deal with it. I’m not going to argue. Go now. Please.”

  Thaddeus stepped back to the bed and leaned down. He placed the side of his face against her lips. “Kiss me, then.”

  She did.

  “All right. I’ll be home around five.”

  “Good. Sue somebody. That’s always good for your soul.”

  “Please.”

  “Now, go!”

  He did as ordered. First a quick run upstairs to change and then back down and a quick look in at Katy, who was asleep and breathing deeply. Her sweet face crushed his heart and he thought for several moments that he was going to break down and cry and probably frighten her awake. He stifled a sharp cry, swallowing hard against it, and pressed his hands to his face. “Oh, my God!” he moaned.

  Then he forced himself to turn and leave.

  Driving east toward Flagstaff, he got the call from Christine. BAT had been murdered. The whereabouts of his body was unknown. But Christine had set her staff to work on recovering him and bring his body home for his wife’s instructions.

  “I should call her,” Thaddeus said. He was driving in stunned disbelief. First Katy; now this? His life was lurching way out of control and for the first time since he was very small he felt very lonely and afraid. “Yes, he repeated, I’ll call her.”

  “I already did,” Christine told him. “Marcy and I go way back. She used to help with the kids when BAT was working for me.”

  “Well, I’m calling anyway. It would be wrong of me not to.”

  “You’re right.”

  “First, bring me up to date. Have we found the son of a bitch?”

  “We have. In Termini, Sicily. Just west of Palermo.”

  “Under an assumed name, of course.”

  “Of course. At one point they made me and came on hard. I managed to evade them but I had tipped him off that we were looking for him. He searched the neighborhood around his house and I guess that’s how they spotted us. We were running automobile surveillance when BAT got fooled into rolling down his window. That’s all I can think of anyway.”

  “So how did he die?”

  “Burned up. They set his car on fire. I saw him slumped and burning as I went by.”

  “Holy Mother.”

  “Terrible way to go. Poor BAT. And how I’m gonna miss him. Marcy was inconsolable. She even wound up cursing me.”

  “We’ve got to take care of her,” Thaddeus said. “I’ll make that arrangement this afternoon yet. She needs money and she needs financial security right now, with the kids and all.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I’ll take her a check. And I’ll make good on BAT’s piece of the action when we get my money back.”

  “About that.”

  “Yes?”

  “I know some guys.”

  “Isn’t it always that way? I know some guys who know some guys who know some guys? All right, what do you have?”

  “These guys are good. They’re European and there isn’t a firewall in the world that hasn’t warmly welcomed them inside.”

  “Have you paid them yet?

  “No, I wanted to run it past you.”

  “Do it, Chris. I want my money back now more than ever. And Marcy gets a piece of it, BAT’s share. And you know what else? I want five minutes alone with Mascari. For Sarai and for BAT. Just five minutes.”

  “I don’t know how that’s gonna happen. He’s heavily fortified, his car travels with three or four others in two separate groups. It’s going to be very difficult, Thaddeus.”

  “But not impossible?”

  “No, not impossible.”

  “When you get back, let’s get together and you give me a rendering of his layout. A map. Street names, Google pictures, the whole nine yards.”

  “We have our own pictures. Remember who you’re dealing with, Thaddeus.”

  “That would include pictures of the new and improved Lincoln Mascari?”

  “You’ll be glad you have them. He’s even lightened his facial skin.”

  “No way!”

  “Way. It’s pretty damn shocking. You’ll see.”

  “Okay. Are you coming to Arizona?”

  “Got to hit Chicago first, deal with the kids, let them know they still have a mother. Then I’ll be out. How’s she doing anyway?”

 
“Shit, Chris, she’s dying.”

  “I know that, asshole. I’m asking if she’s in pain.”

  “No, they’re keeping her full of strong drugs.”

  “Good. Bless her heart.”

  “Yes, bless her heart.”

  “Well okay, good buddy, I’m signing off now.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Goodbye.”

  Thaddeus clicked off and hit the speed dial for BAT’s home.

  “Marcy? Thaddeus. I just heard, Chris told me. I am so so sorry. And I need to see you.”

  They talked for several minutes then hung up.

  He pressed his head back against the RAM’s headrest and continued on toward town. Stinging tears filled his eyes and he swept them away with a backhand. They came on again and he rubbed them away again. “My God,” he cried out in the silent cab, “have you completely forgotten me?”

  35

  For three days the dark driver had reclined on the mountainside and glassed the route he would take, memorizing the structures and impediments that might interfere with his coming and going. Now, with its lights killed, the SUV nosed across the two acres separating the Murfee’s ranch house from the main highway. Moonlight helped define the passage. The ingress was quiet and sure, dodging around ranch and farm implements and outbuildings with ease.

  Lightning snapped just beyond the two-story ranch house. A drizzling rain moved in and within minutes, it was pouring with more on the way. Behind him in the forest, the lightning was flashing and snapping. The rain storm seemed to follow him across the field; a minute later the windshield wipers were running full tilt and the moon was now obscured. But it was good, in a way, for the crash and boom of the storm masked any sound the SUV made as it came on directly at the ranch house.

  He peered ahead through the gloom. Lights were burning brightly on all three floors; he would have his pick of windows to take out with the shotgun.

  On he came until a lightning flash suddenly illuminated the vehicle against the black backdrop of the mountains and the man knew he might have been made in that brief instant. If anyone was watching.

  * * *

  Inside the house, Thaddeus and Katy were in the study, Katy alternating between a comfortable, pain-killer drowse, and The Voice, which Turquoise was watching from the couch. Thaddeus was bent forward at the desk, inspecting client files on his law firm’s network. His partner Albert Hightower still had a staggering caseload being tended to in Chicago and the hunt was on for a third trial lawyer to come in and ease the burden. Thaddeus shifted his attention to Flagstaff cases and was relieved to see their files numbered less than fifty. So far.

  Katy’s eyes opened.

  “Do I hear the kids running upstairs?”

  Thaddeus looked up.

  “Thunder. Storming.”

  “Hush, mom! I want to hear this girl’s voice!” Turquoise cried from the couch. Her voice was half-teasing; she was spending as much time with her mother as possible as her time was finite and Turquoise was well aware of this. The smaller kids weren’t tuned in at all to Katy’s predicament and so their childhood raced on, willy-nilly, with wild nights on the second and third floors of the sprawling house. Both Parkus and Sarai had playrooms attached to their bedrooms: places they could romp and run and laugh their happy laughs. Celena, nine, was at the other end of the hallway on the third floor, where she had her electronics and texting open for business with her girlfriends from sunup to bedtime.

  “Don’t hush me,” said Katy. “Someone needs to pay attention to the little ones. You two aren’t. What are you going to do when—”

  “Katy, we’ve got it,” Thaddeus said gently from the desk side of the room. “You can relax about that.”

  Katy nodded and turned her head away.

  Thaddeus stood and crossed to her bedside. He reached and took her hand.

  “Let’s just let them romp and run while they’re little. In a year or two, we can do more officiating. But for now, they’re not really hurting anything.”

  Katy’s head turned back.

  At just that moment, the lightning flash outside the window where Thaddeus was standing illuminated in silhouette the oncoming SUV. He blinked. Had he actually seen something there? He waited, wishing for more lightning. What in the hell? He thought. Then he decided it was his imagination. No one would be driving across the front pasture. Would they? He returned to his desk and the computer screen.

  Two minutes later he stood up from the desk. Something was niggling at him. Something wasn’t quite right. He didn’t just see things; there had been a vehicle out there. He was sure of it, the more he ran it through his mind.

  “Please remain seated,” he told Turquoise as he left the room.

  Ignoring her father, as was her general first response to either parent, Turquoise kept her eyes on the flat screen. Blake Shelton had just scored a new member for his team.

  Thaddeus went outside through the back door. It was pouring, but he didn’t mind. He reached back inside, around the corner, up above the door, and unsnapped the AR-15 from its mount. He worked the charging mechanism, loading a round into the gun’s chamber. Then he moved to the corner of the house.

  He was soaking and shivering when he came around the corner. Lightning strikes were bouncing and jagging across the front pasture. Just as he made the first downspout beyond the corner, he heard a loud roar and knew instantly: shotgun!

  His first instinct was to rush back inside and check on his family. Tearing for the back deck, he was up and running inside in four steps. Back through the mud room and kitchen he dashed, crashing down the hall and back inside the study. Turquoise was still seated on the couch, her comforter pulled up around her neck, her face sheet white. Her large eyes were frozen on the missing front window that had extended across the width of the study. All right, Thaddeus thought, and he ran for Katy’s hospital bed. The first thing he saw was blood spreading across her sheets. He ripped off the top sheet and immediately was sprayed with arterial blood from his wife’s lower leg.

  “Katy!” he cried. “Talk to me.”

  “Can’t feel it! Can you believe it? I’m paralyzed, Thad, so I can’t feel the wound!”

  “All right, just be still.”

  He immediately whipped off his belt and cinched just above the blood flow. For a moment, the blood lessened, then suddenly increased again. He pulled the belt another hole tighter and this time the flow was staunched. For the most part. When he turned to bark orders at Turquoise, he saw she was already on her cell phone.

  “I need to report a shooting at Thaddeus Murfee’s home. Yes out on one-eighty. Yes, just past the restaurant turnoff. First road south.”

  “Good,” said Thaddeus, and he pulled Katy’s hospital gown up to her shoulders, checking for other damage. Seeing none, he ran for the stairs. Just as he went around the corner, the three younger children came pell-mell down the stairs, running for their dad. The two little ones wrapped around his legs and Celena fell into his arms. Cries and wails filled the vestibule.

  “Everyone okay?” he asked, checking them over.

  Cries wailed on, cries terrified at the gun shot and the frightening shouts from their mother as she called at them to get on the floor.

  “Okay, everyone in the study.”

  Once they were secure in the study, Thaddeus picked up the gun and ran for the front door.

  Without hesitation he ran to the center of the front deck and let his eyes roam over the pasture, looking for any movement. His ears prickled when he heard tires squeal a quarter mile away on the main road. A minute later, headlights flared far to the right as the driver switched on his lights and sped away.

  Thaddeus considered giving chase but thought better of it. Right now his family needed him.

  He ran back inside to check on Katy’s leg.

  She was still astonished she’d been shot. She felt nothing and had only heard the blast shattering the window. There had been no warning, she told Thaddeus as her eyes
suddenly filled with tears. Nothing.

  The kids were surrounding her bed and she was counting noses and feeling each child’s arms and torso for wounds.

  Then she lay back against her pillows and forced herself to steady down. The last thing the children needed right then was to see their mother crying and losing control. They were frightened enough without that kind of display.

  In a strong, steady voice, she said to Thaddeus, “See anything?”

  He shook his head. He was bent down examining her leg.

  “Ambulance is on the way, with the cops,” Turquoise whispered across the room. “Hold on, Mom.”

  Katy shrugged and gave a half-laugh. “The crazy thing is, I don’t feel it. I have no feeling waist down.”

  “It’s just as well,” Thaddeus said. “I’ve pretty much got the blood stopped. I’m going to loosen my belt for a minute.”

  He did that, and the blood erupted again from the wound in her leg. But it was much less plentiful. He decided she’d probably been hit by one shotgun pellet. However, that one foreign object had obviously nicked an artery as the flow of blood increased until he again tightened the belt. Then it subsided again.

  Sirens could be heard at last.

  Katy’s look caught Thaddeus. She demanded safety for the kids, her face said.

  He nodded.

  It was time to get XFBI back on the job. These were bodyguards he had ceased using when they had left Illinois.

  It was time to call for reinforcements.