Twisted Justice

by Patricia Gussin

“Bad timing, Rob. Things here are about to pop.”

  “Greg, it’s about Celeste, and —”

  “Celeste? I don’t have time right now. I know she’s upset, but —” “She’s just been shot, Greg. At the condo on Amelia Island. All hell’s breaking loose. Some guy, a hired hitman looks like, apparently went after the Palmer girl.”

  “Celeste was shot? What are you talking about?”

  “The girl’s okay, but Celeste took a hit.”

  “Huh? How could this …” Greg stuttered. “Celeste at the condo? She didn’t even know the Palmers were there.”

  “The details are just coming in, but Greg, your fiancée was a real hero up there. Saved the kid. You know she packs a Beretta?”

  Greg was speechless.

  “Listen, don’t worry. She’s on her way to the hospital in Jacksonville. And Greg, they say she’s asking for you, so —”

  “She wants to see me? Is it serious?”

  “Touch and go, but they’re taking her to the operating room.”

  “Operating room? What —”

  “Apparently, Celeste went after this guy with her own piece. It misfired, or it wasn’t loaded, or something, and the hitter grabbed her. Chuck’s guy fired the shot that hit her, trying to stop the other guy.”

  “Good God, Celeste had her gun? She hates that thing so much she won’t even let me show her how to load it. Listen, I’ll be there, Rob. Tell her I’ll be there.”

  “Will do. What’s the situation there, anyway?”

  “Situation?” Greg repeated dully. All he could see was his beautiful Celeste, imagine her bleeding, hurt, needing him.

  “Has Nelson taken off with the boys?”

  “Uh, no, not yet. Look, Rob, get word to Celeste that I’m on the first flight out of here. Tell her I love her. Tell her —”

  It wasn’t until Greg heard shouting that he looked over and saw that Laura and Chuck were not where he’d left them. Still holding the phone, he craned his neck in an attempt to find the source of the commotion developing at the ticket line. Steve Nelson seemed to be in the center of some angry people. Where were Chuck and Laura? Looking here and there, Greg finally saw Laura running over toward Mike and Kevin. Chuck was walking purposefully in the opposite direction, toward Steve.

  Frank Santiago chose that moment. Dressed in nondescript khakis and a plain white tee shirt with a Detroit Tiger baseball cap pulled down over a longish blond wig and black sunglasses, he slowly approached the angry group just as a Northwest agent stepped in.

  “You just can’t cut the line,” said a stocky woman in a loud, angry voice.

  “We’ve been waiting longer than you,” said her husband.

  “Such a rude young man,” said someone behind Steve.

  “I have a sick child!” shouted Steve as he pushed away the hand of a burly man blocking him from reaching the ticket counter. “I’ve got to check in early so I can give him his medicine.”

  “Sir,” said the pleasant young gate agent as he made his way to the center of the controversy. “What’s the trouble here?”

  Literally dripping with sweat, Steve lied, “I gotta get through. My kid —”

  “Wait your turn, mister,” said the stocky woman as she planted herself directly in front of Steve.

  “Okay, okay.” Steve put up his hands in surrender and the young agent nodded affably, walking back toward the check-in podium.

  Feigning a look of curiosity, Frank Santiago nudged his way closer until he stood beside Steve. Quickly and carefully aiming his weapon to a spot just below Steve’s left rib cage at an upward angle, he pulled the trigger. There was a loud “pop,” like a champagne cork. Steve slumped and slid to the floor, falling against the husband of the loud, stocky woman. Everyone from the airline agent and clump of irate passengers to merely curious bystanders looked first at each other, then down at Steve. As the group’s gaze focused on the bright red blood seeping through Steve’s light blue polo shirt, all activity in the airport seemed strangely still before a few women began to scream.

  In less than a minute, Frank was in the waiting car. The clock registered 6:46 p.m. Hat, glasses, wig, and gun had all been tossed into the trash can outside the exit doors. Mission accomplished. He’d be on I-94 before the cops figured what the hell was going down and in Chicago in time to catch the Delta flight back to Florida. Another identity, another change of clothes for the flight, and no one would even suspect that he’d been anywhere near Detroit.

  As he swung the Fairlane around the corner, only feet away from the airport exit, he heard the sound of sirens. They were coming from everywhere. Then, to his horror, the huge steel apparatus next to the exit gate came crashing down. Airport security vans came at him from every direction. He was trapped. Without a fucking gun. Trapped.

  Laura reached Mike and Kevin just before the scuffle by the ticket counter. Sitting on their luggage now, they were just staring apathetically ahead. Kevin saw her first and a huge smile broke out across his face. He nudged Mike. “Hey, it’s Mom!” It sounded like a cheer.

  “Shut up,” Mike groaned. “I’m not in the mood for your jokes.”

  But Kevin had already jumped up and ran to a beaming Laura, who grabbed him in her arms.

  “Mom, Mike said you’d find us!”

  Mike was suddenly standing as Laura reached out and embraced him, Kevin still clutching her waist.

  “I can’t believe you came!”

  “That’s right, and I’m taking you and Kevin home with me.” She glanced around, looking for Greg and Chuck. She just wanted to leave with the boys. She’d deal with any consequences later. But where were they? Steve was up there somewhere by the ticket counter, thankfully not even paying attention, but a crowd was gathering —

  “But Mom, Dad’s up there. He’s —”

  “I know what he wants, honey,” Laura said as she held her eldest son tightly. “I’m so relieved that you got through to Mrs. Whitman. Otherwise, I wouldn’t even have known —”

  “We told him we didn’t want to go to Alaska, didn’t we, Mike,” Kevin piped.

  “Yeah, but can we just leave now?” Mike gestured to their luggage. “What about all our stuff?”

  “We’ll leave it. But we’ve got to find Mr. Dimer first, he’s got the car. And before Dad sees me here.”

  “Look at all those people.” Kevin pointed toward the growing cluster where Steve was.

  Laura followed his gaze. She saw Chuck shout something into the ear of a dark-suited man with slick black hair — someone she recognized with a flash of terror. Detective Lopez? He was already talking into a walkie-talkie. What was he doing here? Was he here to arrest her?

  Chuck had bolted away from the growing crowd and ran right past her and the boys, charging out through the exit. What was going on? He should be with her now, not running off. This was her chance to get the boys out! She saw Greg run over toward the growing crowd. Lopez was nowhere in sight. Why all this confusion? Greg eventually glanced back at her with a strange, haunted look.

  “Where’s Dad? Something happened,” Mike said. Before Laura could stop him, he ran over and elbowed his way into the group. Near the ticket counter, everyone was looking down at the floor, down at the crumpled form that lay on the gray industrial carpet that was quickly staining red — with Steve Nelson’s blood.

  Laura heard screams. After momentarily holding him back, she suddenly grabbed Kevin by the hand and followed Mike. A sense of catastrophe, more acute than even the litany of disasters that had overtaken her life in these past weeks, filled her. Threading her way through the onlookers and clutching Kevin’s hand, she finally saw Mike, looking down and standing very still — too still. She pushed through to him, still clinging to Kevin’s hand. Greg grabbed her shoulder from behind and forcefully spun her around to face him.

  “Give me Kevin,” he said simply. The distress on his face telegraphed something terrible. “Go,” he instructed, “I’ll take Kevin. You go to Mike. We’ll wait by the exit.”


  “But Greg —”

  “Now, Laura,” he commanded, taking Kevin’s hand and turning away.

  Her heart hammered as she entered the throng of people. Then she saw him. Steve, crumpled on the ground, his face and hair wet with sweat. And the blood, everywhere, seeping out from under him. So much blood.

  She reached out for Mike, trying to pull him back, to shield him, but he wouldn’t budge. “Mom,” he shouted, “do something! Dad’s bleeding!”

  Laura sank to the carpet. “What happened?” she demanded from the crowd who had moved away just enough to give her some space when Mike announced in a loud voice that she was a doctor.

  “There was a pop. We heard a “pop,” a man close by reported in a quivering voice. “Was that a gun?”

  “I thought he fainted or had a seizure or something,” said the woman who’d challenged him in the line. “He said his kid was sick, not him. Do you really think he was shot?” she asked her husband.

  Laura tore at Steve’s bloody shirt. What else could it be? This massive, this quickly. There was a collective gasp as she exposed the gaping hole in Steve’s chest. She knew then that the bullet had destroyed the left ventricle of the heart. Carefully, deliberately, she placed her bare hand in the bloody wound, feeling for familiar structures. Laura herself gasped as she palpated the huge hole with its tattered edges. Irreparable. Covering it rapidly with her sweater, she leaned forward to check the carotid pulse that she knew would not be there. None. Respiration? No, how could there be?

  “They’re coming with an ambulance,” a voice called.

  “Here, here,” another voice rang out as the crowd silently parted. “Over here.”

  Emergency attendants rapidly moved Steve’s lifeless body onto the stretcher as Laura went through the useless motions of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. She had to, her sons would expect it of her. Because it was a chest wound, her specialty, they’d assume she could fix this. They’d never understand the futility, the nearly instant mortality as the bullet ripped apart the big muscle of the heart.

  Frantic, Laura looked around for Mike, praying that he hadn’t seen her reach into the hole in Steve’s chest. Finally she saw him, silent and stricken by the exit, standing beside Greg and Kevin.

  “We’ll meet you at the hospital,” Greg called to her when their eyes met.

  Her pink top was stained with the darkening red of Steve’s blood as was the front of her white pants, but Laura continued to lead the rescue team through the motions of resuscitation as they expertly loaded the ambulance and took off, sirens screaming.

  But none of it mattered. Steve was dead.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Steve Nelson was pronounced dead by the emergency room doctor on call at Henry Ford Hospital at 7:30 p.m. Any minute, Laura would have to go out into the waiting room and face her sons. How could she explain that there was nothing she could have done? Would they think she had not tried hard enough to save their dad? They had experienced the escalating animosity between her and Steve through the last several weeks. Would Mike and Kevin think that she just let him die? She closed her eyes for a few moments. Could this all just be a terrible nightmare?

  Laura asked for a few moments alone with Steve. She kissed him on the forehead and then slowly, tenderly, caressed each cheek. Tears flowed as she remembered the tall, handsome young man she’d met in college and married. How much in love they’d been. How could everything have gone so horribly wrong? Steve wasn’t a bad person, and neither was she. First they’d just drifted apart. They’d both made mistakes. But by the end, they’d become bitter enemies. What could she have done over the years to prevent it? She’d tried to talk to him, but he’d just never let her close enough, emotionally. And then there was Patrick. When Steve found out the truth, she knew he could never forgive her. She’d always known that. His manhood was affronted. How ridiculous of her to think she could hide it forever, that one night. Now she somehow had to face all five of her children. Tell them that their father was dead.

  Dressed in a clean, green scrub suit with a knee-length white lab coat, she approached her sons with red-rimmed eyes. They sat with Chuck Dimer away from the ER’s main waiting area, in a secluded room normally used for staff conferences.

  “Here’s your mom, guys,” Chuck said as she walked in. To her, “I thought it’d be quieter in here.”

  “Thanks, Chuck. Mike, Kevin,” she said gently.

  “How’s Dad?” asked Kevin.

  “He’s … he didn’t make it,” she said softly, more tears welling.

  “He’s gonna be okay, isn’t he?” continued the boy.

  “No,” Mike practically shouted as he glared at Kevin. “He’s not gonna be okay. Didn’t you hear what Mom just said? Dad’s dead!”

  “That’s not what she said,” Kevin challenged his older brother. Then his eyes searched Laura’s. “Is it, Mom?”

  “Kevin, Mike, your father is dead,” Laura said tenderly as she knelt between them, reaching for their hands.

  “Oh, no, Dad,” sobbed Kevin. Kevin had never faced death, Laura realized. None of her children had. To him, it was just something that happened on TV, some abstract fantasy. Something they talked about in religion class. Why you had to be a good person, so when you died, you went to heaven.

  “What happened, Mom?” Mike asked matter-of-factly.

  “A man made his way into the crowd and shot him,” Laura answered simply. She knew she had to be totally honest with her eldest son.

  “Why? Why would someone want to shoot Dad?” He looked at her through his own tears now.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Laura, boys, I think I know,” offered Chuck. “The man that shot your father,” he looked at each boy directly before going on, “was the same one, we think, that killed Kim Connor back in Tampa. Best guess is that he thought maybe your dad knew he did it.”

  “But why?” Mike blurted. “Dad really thought Mom did it. Kev and I kept telling him that there’s no way that she would do that, but he wouldn’t listen.”

  “I know,” Laura said slowly. “Chuck, do you really think it’s him?”

  He nodded. “I was suspicious when I saw someone walk directly toward Steve when tempers were flaring in the ticket line. Good disguise, phony hairpiece, but the same build. When he fled the scene, Detective Lopez called airport security to get those exit gates down. Well, you know the rest. And the Tampa cops finally got their killer.”

  Laura looked at him quizzically. “But how did Detective Lopez know that Santiago would be in Detroit?”

  “Mom, why couldn’t you save Dad?” Mike challenged in a shaky voice. “Even though you hated each other, you should have tried.”

  There it was: the dreaded question. Laura looked into his eyes. “Mike, we didn’t hate each other. Listen, you have to believe me. As soon as the bullet hit, it tore open the large chamber of the heart. The man who did this knew just where to aim the bullet. You know when I knelt down to try to find out what happened? The hole I found was too big, much too big to ever repair. Your dad was dead the instant the bullet hit him.”

  “Then why did you do mouth-to-mouth? Why did you go with him in the ambulance?”

  “Because I was working on reflex,” Laura said shakily. “Maybe hoping for a miracle. Maybe just not wanting to believe it myself.”

  “Oh, Mom,” Mike finally sobbed, “I know he did some mean things to you, but he was our dad.”

  Laura and her sons embraced.

  “Laura,” Chuck said softly, “I have a car outside. I’ll take you to the airport to meet your flight back to Philly. I’ve got tickets for the boys too.”

  “Yes, we should go. Get back to Patrick.” Laura finally broke down. “How will I tell him, and the twins?”

  “Mom, it’ll be okay,” said Mike, holding Laura’s hand. “I’ll help you tell them.”

  “Come on, Mom,” urged Kevin.

  “Let’s go,” Chuck said softly. “I’ll stay and take care of
everything here. The police will want to question you, but with Patrick in the shape he’s in, they’ll wait. And, Laura,” Chuck went on, “about Greg. It was urgent that he get back to Tampa tonight. I’ll tell you what happened later on.”

  “Oh,” was all Laura said. Then, “Oh, no, Chuck. Steve’s father. Has anybody told him? Am I supposed to do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Chuck answered. “But it’s gotta be soon, before it’s all over the news.”

  Laura nodded. “I should do it.”

  She asked Chuck to stay with the boys while she called Jim Nelson.

  Steve’s death had occurred too late to be announced on the six o’clock news, so Laura hoped she’d reach Jim before anyone else did. Jim Nelson may not have been the ideal father, but he had loved Steve in his own restrained, passive way. Laura wondered, as she had so often before, if the Nelsons had been a normal, happy family before Steve’s twin, Philip, died so tragically. Maybe if Jim and Helen had been able to talk about it. Maybe if they’d taken Steve for therapy, things would have been different. Maybe the rift that had grown between her and Steve and Steve and the twins…

  “Hullo?” Jim Nelson answered on the second ring.

  “Jim, this is Laura,” she could feel her voice falter. “I have something terrible to tell you. I hate to be —”

  “What’s the matter? Is it Patrick? Oh no, Laura, I’m so sorry —”

  “No, Jim, it’s Steve. He’s dead.”

  “What?” Jim gasped. “Did you — no, of course not.”

  He thinks I did it, Laura realized with a start, and then she explained what happened as best she could though sobs emanating from both sides of the line.

  “So many mistakes,” he kept sobbing.

  “I know, Jim,” she said each time.

  Then she heard a loud snort. Jim blowing his nose. “You know, Laura, whoever did this to Steve had nothing to do with you. Something to do with Kim Connor, apparently, but not you. You know, I still think that you and Steve would have eventually got your lives back together. You and Steve and all the children. Steve was just hurting and he can be stubborn. Know what he said just before he left? Said he had one big regret — that you two never make it out to Elvis’s show in Las Vegas.”