Murder Mountain (4 page)

Now, he started screaming while he punched, “It wasn’t my fault! You think you can take me to jail, you fucking cunt! You ain’t takin’ me nowhere! I didn’t touch Lizzie Johnston! I didn’t touch her! You hear that, you fucking whore!”

I had no clue what he was shouting about, but he obviously thought I was there to arrest him, not to give his Dad a message about a fucking dog. I didn’t think I could take another punch when I realized I still had my pepper spray on my belt. With my consciousness rapidly fading, I clamped my right hand down over his left hand that was on my gun and grabbed my pepper spray out of its case with my left hand.

Bobby realized what I had just done, but didn’t have time to react before I hit the button on the top of the can. A thick stream of fiery liquid came bursting out of the can directly into Bobby’s face. It hit him right between the eyes, which is good because it splashed into both of his eyes at the same time, rendering them absolutely useless. I continued holding down on the button, spraying every part of his face that I could.

Not two seconds after the first burst, Bobby screamed, grabbed his face, and fell backward. When he screamed I took that golden opportunity to spray the pepper directly into his mouth. He started gurgling as he went down, let go of my gun, and stopped throwing punches. He was basically falling into hell.

Pepper spray is like taking the hottest Habanera pepper on earth, intensifying it two hundred times, and then touching it to an eyeball. The only problem with pepper spray is that it tends to overspray and splash. If the officer spraying is too close, as I was, she’s probably going to have it splash on her, and she’s definitely going to have to breathe the fumes.

As Bobby was going down, he held his face and flailed his arms about as if he were reaching for something. This got the pepper spray on his face onto his hands, which his flailing about flung off onto me. Some of it got into my left eye, the one I knew was seriously damaged, and that was it. The last memory I have was a black boot crushing the side of Bobby’s head as he lay on the ground screaming.

Then my lights went out.

When I opened my eyes, I could only assume that I was dead. All I saw was bright light. The only problem was that the stories I’ve heard of people with near-death experiences say the light doesn’t hurt their eyes when they look at it. This light hurt my eyes like hell.

That, on top of hearing a voice say, “Shut those goddamn curtains!” helped me finally understand that I was still among the living.

The voice was Eric’s, who rarely cursed except when he was stressed out or upset. The light dimmed and I started to see faint shapes and movements. Next came the pain. My whole body throbbed as if I had been run over by a truck. My head, thumping with blinding pain, was the worst. My left eye felt like it had some type of growth attached to it, living and breathing on its own. I heard beeps, long pulses, and a simulated heart beat. Now I knew I was in a hospital room, and that I was alive. I felt someone grab my right hand and give it a small squeeze.

“Hey baby, it’s me. You okay?” whispered Eric.

I couldn’t believe that I’d made it through that nightmare, but thanked God that I had. I have been hit, kicked, punched, spit on, thrown down, and had guns and knives pointed at me, but I don’t ever remember being as scared as I was right then. I wasn’t as scared during my melee with Bobby Delphy as I was right now, there in that hospital room. I could barely breathe. I felt Eric lay his head down on my chest.

“Shh, I’m here, CeeCee. You’re gonna be okay. You made it.” He lightly rubbed my arm.

Someone else grabbed my left hand then. “Cecelia, Eric’s right. You’re going to be fine,” said my Dad.

I started taking deep breaths and tried to focus on the room. Things began to get a little clearer except for the blurry vision in my left eye, and after a few minutes, I was able to see fairly well otherwise.

The room looked like a florist’s shop. Flowers and balloons were everywhere; there were even a couple of stuffed animals sitting by the window. A nurse came up and started adjusting something on my arm; she didn’t look too happy. I assumed she was the one Eric yelled at about closing the curtains. Whatever she had to do with my arm only took a couple of seconds, and then out the door she went. Since my eyes were adjusted and I had calmed down considerably and felt as if I could actually talk.

“Are the girls okay? Where are Selina and Isabelle?” My voice was scratchy and whispery.

“They’re fine. They miss their mommy and can’t wait for you to come home. They’re at my parents’ right now,” said Eric.

“How long have I been here?”

“Just a little over a day. The doctor kept you sedated because you have a minor concussion, a couple bruised ribs, and a pretty nasty gash on your left eye, but he said you’ll be fine in a week or so, with the exception of a couple of black eyes and bruises.” He leaned forward, his face serious. “You scared the shit out of me, Cecelia; your Dad, too. When they came and got me at home, I didn’t think it was going to be good. Thank God you’re okay.”

I saw he had tears in his eyes, and I knew I would probably start bawling— something I almost never do—so I changed the subject and asked, “What room is Delphy in?”

I already knew he was in the hospital. I didn’t even have to ask that. The bottom line is that if you hurt a cop you’ll get hurt a thousand times worse, and I agree with every part of that theory. Even though I blacked out, I already knew that Bobby Delphy had suffered severely when the other deputies arrived. Plus, I’m a girl, and the guys will inflict a higher amount of pain on someone because they feel a little more protective of a sister deputy.

“He’s in the Intensive Care Unit. I guess he put up quite a fight when the cavalry got there, and they had to take care of some serious business,” Eric said, winking at the same time, confirming what I already knew. A serious beating had taken place.
Good,
I thought.
I hope he quits breathing.

“All right, I give up,” I said, waving a part of the hospital sheet around like a white flag.

“CeeCee, you already know what’s coming. Kincaid and the Chief have been in and out to see how you’re doing. Sheriff Stephens was here, too. Anyway, when you’re ready, you’ll have to give a statement and so forth. It’s pretty obvious what happened, but they need the extra details so the prosecutors can get the charges filed. They’re probably gonna go for felonious assault on the bastard.”

“He tried to take my gun,” I said helpfully.

Eric closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “If anything, they’ll charge him high, maybe attempted murder since you just said that, so he’ll plead to a felonious assault.”

“Anytime; I’m ready. When did the doctor say I could leave?” I hated hospitals, and hated being a patient in one even more.

“He said that, depending on how you’re feeling, maybe tomorrow. You’re gonna have to be off work for at least a week, though.”

“That’s fine. I can certainly use a week off. Can you go get Selina and Isabelle and bring them here? Please? I want to see them.”

Eric said he’d do that right away, and that he’d bring me some clothes to wear home.

Dad, who had been sitting more quietly than usual, waited until Eric left before he finally unloaded his Irish side, angry that I’d confronted Bobby Delphy on my own. Too tired to argue, I told him we could talk about it later. He took a deep breath and walked over to me and kissed my forehead.

“I’m sorry. I spoke before I thought. Like Eric said, you scared the living shit out of all of us. I know you had no control over what happened, and I’m just thankful you’re okay. If I could walk upstairs and put a pillow over that asshole’s face, I would. Maybe I will, but you’re alive, which means you were able to take care of yourself. Remember, you’re still my baby girl, and I’ll always worry about you. I was just spouting off and shouldn’t have.”

I promptly forgave my father, and for the next half hour or so, we talked calmly about what had happened. Dad said I was smart to grab the pepper spray. Ever since we began using Tasers, a lot of cops have forgotten that we have the pepper spray, and some have even taken it off their gun belt altogether. Legally, I would have been justified in using deadly force on Bobby Delphy since he was trying to take my gun. Had I carried a back-up gun on my ankle or somewhere else, I would have. Even Dad agreed, however, that the best thing I did was to keep my gun in its holster. If, for a split second, I’d been able to get it out, Delphy would’ve surely taken it from me, as close as he was, and as strong as he was.

I asked Dad if he had gotten hold of my brother, Tony, and if Tony had called my mom. He answered yes to both questions, then said that he’d told Tony that neither he nor my mom should bother coming until I was out of the hospital, and that my injuries were minor.

That was fine; I didn’t think I could have dealt with the drama of my mom just then.

Later on, after my Dad had left and before Eric got back, Captain Kincaid and Chief Raines came to see me. Kincaid was going out of her way to be nice, and it seemed she was actually sincere about it. I gave my statement on a tape recorder, exchanged pleasant small talk, and they left.

I was glad to be alone for a while. I buzzed the nurse for some more pain medication and dozed off after she’d given it to me. I then proceeded to have a horrible dream about the whole Delphy incident, except I was unable to fight back, as in the dream my whole body was paralyzed and I couldn’t scream. I probably slept for half of an hour, total.

The next morning I felt much more alert and in much less pain. I finally broke down and looked at myself in a mirror, which ignited a moderate cry in my throat. I looked as if I had been in a car wreck—several car wrecks, to be exact. I got myself together emotionally, then I dressed and showered, which made me feel even better. A nurse came in after that and gave me a final look-over and I was free to leave. As I sat and waited for Eric to pick me up, the only thing I could think of was how much I craved a cigarette.

Eric finally arrived and we went home. I relaxed and visited with the girls, not thinking about anything but my family. That night, I took a long, hot bubble bath, and drank about a thousand beers. The hot water, beer, and pain medication put me into what might as well have been a coma for the night, and I slept for exactly thirteen hours. When I woke up, not only did I have to pee something awful, I also felt generally like shit. I decided I would forego the beer and pain medication for the remainder of my time off. The rest of the week, I spent with Eric and the girls, trying to keep my mind off Bobby Delphy.

Towards the end of the week, Coop and Cindy brought the kids over and we cooked out. Coop said Delphy was released from the hospital the day before, taken straight to the county jail, and booked in. He told us that he’d paid Delphy a little visit, and reported that Delphy’d done nothing but stare at his cell wall and rock back and forth. Except for muttering the name Lizzie once, he’d said nothing at all.

This hit my sensors and I sat up, alert. “What name did he say?”

“Lizzie. Why?”

“Because he said that name when he was kicking the shit out of me!”

At that point, everyone just stared at me like I was a lunatic. Deciding to switch subjects, I asked Coop what had been going on at work while I was gone. He told me he’d started the Samantha Johnston case for me, but nothing had really come of it.

“I got a hold of the last guy to supposedly see her, and he gave me a ridiculous story about her involvement with some corrupt hick sheriff’s department in Deliverance, West Virginia.” He shrugged and raised his eyebrows. “It was fucking absurd, but I typed it up for you anyway and put it on your desk.”

Then we started talking about vacations, and about how some people like to go up into the mountains for the wilderness on their vacations, and how weird we all thought that was, since to all of us natives of Ohio, a real vacation meant an ocean and a beach. We talked about various vacations, past and anticipated, for the rest of the night and had a really good time, but my mind stayed on work and the information Coop gave me about Delphy. For the past week, I’d been trying to put together in my mind the memory of something that Delphy had said during the fight. It had bothered me mightily, but my memory had only been able to dance around it until Coop had started talking.

After Coop and his family had gone and the girls were in bed, I went into my home office to find the Samantha Johnston file. It was on top of my desk, where Eric had told me he’d put it. Lizzie?
Did Delphy say Lizzy Johnson or Johnston?,
I thought to myself. Hell, he’d been so drunk it would’ve been impossible to tell the difference. Did he say he did not kill her? It was hard for me to remember. I grabbed the file, opened it, and there it was on the first page: Samantha Elizabeth Johnston, also known as, Lizzie.

This wasn’t good. How in the hell was Bobby Delphy connected to this missing girl? The horrible part about this was that I was going to have to go talk to Bobby Delphy face to face, and I was distinctly unhappy about it. The thought of having to see him again made my skin literally crawl. Also, from what Coop had said, Delphy wasn’t saying much, if anything at all, anyway. I’d be back at work on Monday, so I put the file back on my desk, deciding to deal with it then. Getting worked up before then wasn’t going to do anything but send me right over the edge.

When Monday eventually rolled around, I wasn’t exactly thrilled at the idea of going back to work, either. I’d enjoyed my time off; it had helped to heal me physically and emotionally, but I certainly could’ve used another week at home. My face looked human again, but I still had two black eyes and several fading bruises.

I arrived at work to the usual jokes: “Ay, Yo Rocky!”, “What’s the other guy look like?”, and “Hey Rocky, where’s your raccoon?” just to recall a few.

I took it all in stride and kept my sense of humor. When I finally was able to get to my office, I wasn’t really surprised to find my desk completely covered with paperwork. Being a detective and being gone for a week is like being gone for a month in the real world. I had sticky notes and phone messages, prosecutor request forms, and every possible other form, all requiring my signature, in piles so thick I couldn’t even find my phone. I wanted to cry. I’d expected no more than half of what lay out in front of me, but knew that’d been wishful thinking. This was definitely not what I’d wanted, or needed, to come back to. A sticky note telling me to see the sheriff immediately upon my return caught my eye. Obviously, that would have to come first if I liked being employed.