Revenge is Sweet (A Samantha Church Mystery) (29 page)

“Wilson!” Howard grunted. “My ankle!”

Howard’s jeans had rolled up enough on his leg and Wilson saw the hunting knife strapped around his ankle. For the second time, he mustered all the strength he had in his weakened body, grabbed hold of Howard’s leg and yanked the knife from its holder. He rose to his knees.

From the corner of his eye, Howard saw Wilson had his knife. Using the wrestling moves that he had learned in the Navy, Howard, easily outweighing Juan, managed to maneuver out from beneath him. He flipped Juan over on his back so hard it knocked the breath out of him. Juan gasped, temporarily stunned.

Wilson saw his opportunity. He lunged toward Juan and plunged the hunting knife deeply into Juan’s thigh, severing the femoral artery. His cry was guttural.

David burst back into the room, his Glock positioned squarely in both hands, ready to fire. He stopped at the door just after Wilson stabbed Juan. He looked quickly about the room, relieved to see the others were dead.

“Is April okay?” Howard asked, out of breath.

David nodded. “She’s in the car. She’s okay. A little scared, but okay.”

David stared at Howard, amazed at how smooth everything had seemingly went. It was as if Howard could tell what he was thinking.
“You never forget what you learn as a Navy Seal,” he said.

The room was silent save for the sound of Howard’s labored breathing.
“Got your cell phone, David?” Howard asked when he finally caught his breath.

“It’s in the car.”

“Use it and call the police.” Howard directed.

“Yes, sir,” David nodded and left the room to follow his instructions.

No one moved to help Juan. In no time, he had bled out on the floor. At his last gurgle of breath, the room finally fell silent. For what seemed a long time, no one moved, no one said a word, no one blinked. Howard found his glasses, put them on and looked into the stoic faces of Wilson and Sam.

“We need to get you both to a hospital,” Howard said and got to his feet.

He shrugged himself off, tucked in his T-shirt and flannel shirt. He offered a hand to Wilson, who gladly accepted, careful to stand lightly on his foot when he finally got to his feet. They gingerly helped Sam to her feet, careful of her wounded arms. In the distance, they heard the shrill of police sirens. The sun was a pink mound on the cloudless horizon.

Sam insisted on walking out on her own and Howard walked beside her as they left the room. Before Wilson took his first steps to freedom, he looked down at Juan, his eyes open, his mouth slack, and shook his head in disgust. “So much for being long gone over the border,” he said and, ignoring the throbbing pain in his sore foot, stepped over Juan’s lifeless body and walked out of the room.

Two weeks had passed.

Fourteen
days since Wilson had walked from the small bedroom in a house on Chester Street to freedom. It was about to be his first day back at work. He was sitting outside the Grandview Perspective, his newspaper, in a rented Toyota Camry.

He stared at the trees, still without leaves, knowing that before long they would be crowned with new ones. Wilson enjoyed doing simple things during his
new-found freedom, albeit without his left hand. He shaved off his beard, first chance he was able to lift a razor. No more Santa Claus. As he shaved, he thought how different life would be from now on since soon he would be fitted with a prosthesis. He was told by his doctor that he was ‘lucky’ in a sense that so much of his arm remained following Juan’s crude amputation. “The more residual limb one has left to work with the better,” his doctor had said.

After
getting out of the hospital, he went to his favorite pub on West 38
th
Avenue, had a beef sausage sandwich, potato salad and an iced tea. Nothing would have tasted better with his sandwich than a cold Guinness, once his favorite beer, but that was a long, long time ago.

He slept long and late in his own bed. Took his time reading the morning paper. He went to his health club, not to exercise, his joints and
muscles were still too sore for that, but to sit in the steam room, lost in thought. There he remembered what April had said to him early the morning they left the house on Chester Street.

She tugged on his dirty white shirt. He bent down to give her a hug and heard what she had to say.
“I didn’t get to see which direction my ladybug flew off to,” April whispered.

“Don’t worry,” Wilson whispered back and hugged her a little harder. “Your wishes will come true from all directions.” And before he let her go, he whispered. “Remember what I told you and don’t forget our secret.”

“I promise,” April had said and crossed her heart.

He found that he didn’t much like being alone. When he wasn’t at the hospital visiting Sam or at the health club, he’d find himself at a shopping mall
. Sometimes he would look at watches in jewelry store windows, but mainly he went there just to be around people, to have a little human contact, watching people walk by. When he saw a pretty woman, he would smile at her and think of Sam.

Just as he was getting out of the Toyota, he met David.
Both men smiled and shook hands. “How’re you feeling, Wilson? How’s the hand?” David asked.

Wilson’s left arm was
wrapped in a bandage to just above the elbow and covered with a sling. Other than Sam, David and Nick, no one else at the office knew yet about his hand. “Doin’ a lot better, David, thanks. Going to take some getting used to living without a hand, though, but thank goodness, I’m right-handed. What about you?”

“I’m okay, too, thanks. Been doing a lot of thinking this past week,” he said and adjusted his gym bag over his shoulder and stuffed his hands deep in his pant pockets. “You know what strikes me the most about wh
at happened in that house. That…”

Wilson waited for him to find his voice. David looked toward the sky, blue as turquoise, filled here and there with long strands of paper-thin clouds, white and pure as fallen snow.
“It amazes me,” he continued slowly, “how easy it was for me to do the things I did. And hardly think twice about them as I was doing it. I never thought I’d be capable of something like that. Killing a man. It’s almost like it was in me, part of my nature.” David caught sight of the long contrails from the tail of a jet. He watched the white streak for a time extend across the sky before looking back to Wilson. “I just went into that house thinking about what Howard told me to do.”

“What was that, son?” Wilson asked and put a comforting hand on David’s shoulder.

“To trust my instincts.”

Wilson nodded. “He was right.”

“Well, welcome back,” David said, collecting himself, smiling shyly. “Good to have you back. What have you heard about Sam?”

“Her arm was broken in several places and the surgery to put a pin in it went well. She was in a lot of pain for a few days, but she went home
the day before yesterday. She was very happy to get to her grandmother’s ranch. Her shoulder had separated and her knee was twisted pretty badly. She’ll have some physical therapy to go through, but she’ll be fine.”

David nodded. “I told her I would help her.”

With that David and Wilson said their good-byes and parted ways. Wilson decided to enter the building through the back door and try to get to his office without being noticed. But the moment he opened the door, he almost bumped into Dee Schaffer, one of his best advertising reps. Her smile covered her face at the sight of him. “Wilson! I’m so happy you’re back! Finally, we’ve missed you!” she said, grabbing him lightly by the arm.

“Good to be back, Dee,” Wilson said, not being able to help his smile. He realized then how much he had missed his staff and how much he was looking forward to seeing everyone and getting back to work.

Dee took a moment to study Wilson. She frowned, expecting to see him looking deeply tanned, healthy and well rested. Instead his face looked pale and drawn. His shirt collar was loose around his neck. “You look a little worse for wear, Wilson. And what happened to your arm?!” Dee asked.

“Had to have some surgery on it when I got back, but it’ll be better in no time,” he told her.

“Did you lose some weight, too?” she asked, looking over his frame. “A little Montezuma’s Revenge?” Dee looked at Wilson playfully and chuckled, but before he had the chance to respond, she patted his arm lightly and said, “Did you have a fun and interesting vacation anyway?”

Wilson looked at her a moment, considering her words. He had told Nick Weeks to plan a staff meeting for noon the first day of his return, where he would tell his employees what had happened over the last three weeks and when Sam would be returning to work.

For now, though, he would simply answer Dee’s question. “Well,” he said managing a small smile. “You could say that.”

Nearly a month passed since Sam returned to Nona’s ranch from the hospital. Days passed in measured shades of sunlight. Spring pushed winter aside.

April went bac
k to her grandmother’s a week after Sam came to the ranch. When Esther called and pitched a fit that she needed to get back to school, Sam’s mind returned to that evening when she was packing to come back home to Colorado and April thought she was going with her. The wounded look in her daughter’s eyes when Sam told her that someday she could come, but not today, still haunted her.

Yet
Sam noticed in their short time together at the ranch that something in April seemingly had changed. Sam couldn’t say with certainty what, but something had. Something about her was different when Sam woke in that small room with her and Wilson at her side. Perhaps it was seeing her mother in such a state, bruised, battered and broken. April seemed as happy to see Sam then as, truly, she was to see her. In those first few fleeting moments in that small room Sam forgot being so injured.

April was happy
after they finally returned to the ranch. She spent as much time as she could with Howard in his workshop. They started another windmill. She was, as always, underfoot when Nona was baking bread, collecting the stray pieces of dough and rolling them into tiny little balls.

It hurt
them all when Howard and Sam loaded April up in the station wagon and took her to the airport. Nona said her goodbyes to April on the long front porch. A few hours before she left, Sam noticed that Howard had slipped away from the house. He went for a drive in the Scout somewhere on
the property. When he returned he stayed out in his shop a long time. Sam was in the kitchen when he finally came back in the house. They looked at each other. He nodded and quickly looked away from her. Sam knew he missed the pitter-patter of her little feet on the living room rug. Well. They all did.

April
went so willingly, not because she had a choice, but because, Sam knew, somewhere inside of her she knew she had to go. The only thing that helped Sam through the emptiness of her absence was remembering the time they had the night before April left for Washington State. Sam was in no position to help her pack, but she did what she could, lifted socks off the bed and put them in her suitcase. And she remembered this:

Sam and
April were sitting in front of the strong fire Howard built. They were drinking his hot cocoa and sitting so close to the fireplace that the heat could have melted their faces. For the first time Sam could remember in a long, long time, April asked for a hug. Sam gave April hugs every chance she could, but she had never asked for them in return. And, for that matter, had never much hugged Sam. Whenever Sam would wrap her arms around her daughter, she could feel the slight stiffness of resistance, her body never really coming close to Sam’s. No matter how hard she hugged her.

But
that night in front of fire was different. For the first time Sam wasn’t in the position to truly wrap her arms around April. Instead, she wrapped her arms around Sam, and pressed herself completely into her mother and squeezed. They stayed that way for what seemed a long, long time and Sam did not care about the pain. Those moments in front of the fire gave Sam hope. They were the ones that kept her going in the time that has passed.

Sam
had no choice but to let her go back to Esther’s and to Canal Island. For now. Despite her broken body and thinking of the long, long road she was going to have to recovery with the car accident and her problems with alcohol, Sam felt strangely content, the way she did when she pulled warm clothes out of the dryer on a cold winter afternoon.

Sam knew she had
a long way to go. She knew because she could still see cubist images of Picasso when she caught sight of her reflection in mirrors and in objects that could give it back to her, the door of the microwave oven, her computer screen before she turned it on. Most of the time she still saw fragments and she found herself looking at this image and that image before she couldn’t stand it any longer and had to turn away.

But every once in
awhile and more so since in the time that April had been gone, when Sam looked in a mirror, she saw images of Monet. Of shades of colors blending into one, settling into being, seeing only herself, all of her, looking back when she looked into anything that could give her image, her reflection back to her.

The road to recovery stoo
d before her, stretching so far off into the distance until it could do nothing more but fade into a gathering darkness. But no matter the distance, and despite her many limitations, Sam was determined.

She felt
ready to begin the journey. For she knew that what was left of her, the very, very last of what was left of her, was …

The best.

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