STATE OF ANGER: A Virgil Jones Mystery Series (Detective Virgil Jones Mystery Series Book 1) (11 page)

“So get on the internet and look
him up. He’s good. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. He
does not
fuck around. He works for the Governor for fuck sake. And so on day one when he
shows up at my front door and starts asking questions, yeah, I’m nervous.”

“What did you say?”

Amanda flicked her cigarette into
the weeds next to the porch. “I didn’t say anything. He wanted to speak with
Samuel and me about Dugan, but Samuel was at the church.”

“That it?” Junior said.

“Yeah, except he went to the
church and spoke with Samuel.”

“Tell me about that.”

“I can’t,” Amanda said. “Samuel
didn’t say anything about it.”

“So don’t worry about it then. We
knew going in that they were going to look at Samuel. We want them to,
remember? So just relax. It’s all good.”

“But so soon, Sid? I mean, the
first day? And now this cop, I’m telling you baby, he’s bad news.

Junior thought about that for a
few minutes. “So maybe we move on the cop.”

“You think?”

“I don’t see why not,” Junior
said. “Might give us a little misdirection. Let me talk to the old man about
it.”

“Oh, god, he’s not here is he?”

“Yeah, so?”

“He doesn’t like me. Doesn’t like
us.”

“He doesn’t like anyone, Amanda. I
can handle him. Don’t get your panties in a wad over it, okay?”

Amanda spread her legs open far
enough that her knee touched Junior’s. “I can’t. I’m not wearing any panties.”

Junior ran her hand up the inside
of Amanda’s thigh, all the way to her bush. Felt the moisture and the warmth as
she slid first one finger inside her, then another. Amanda tipped her head back
and let out a little moan. “Maybe we should go inside.”

Junior leaned over and kissed her
hard, then said, “We’ll have to be quiet this time.”

“I can do quiet,” Amanda said.
“Might be fun.”

__________

When they were finished they
stayed in bed for a few minutes, neither of them saying much of anything. Sandy
gave him three quick kisses, one on the lips, one on the chest, and one on his
pecker. “Don’t go anywhere, handsome. I’ll be right back.”

Virgil told her he wouldn’t and
watched her walk from the bed to the bathroom, her ass moving with just the
right amount of jiggle. The jiggle factor was important. Too much was never a
good thing, and too little meant you didn’t have anything to work with. He had
his hands behind his head and listened to the sounds coming from the bathroom…the
toilet flush, the water running in the sink, the dowel on the holder creaking just
a bit as she hung a towel…and then the familiar stealthy squeak of the mirrored
medicine cabinet door.

And Virgil thought, ah…a snooper.

She came back out, took a running
start and jumped on the bed right next to him. Virgil instinctively covered his
crotch in case she missed the landing. “Relax, big guy. I won’t hurt you.”

“Mmm, we’ll see,” he said. “What
are you doing in there?”

“Girl stuff. Don’t you worry about
it. Maybe a little poking around, too.”

He rolled onto his side to face
her. She was on her back and the moonlight that spilled in from the bedroom
window bled across the swell of her breasts. “Find anything incriminating?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact I did,”
she said as she sat back up. She swung her legs to the opposite side of the
bed, away from him. “It’s good and bad.”

After he propped himself up on one
arm he reached over and placed his hand on her back. “What is it?”

“Well, the bad news is I found a
prescription bottle of unidentifiable pills, with no label on the bottle.”

“Yeah? That’s easily explainable. What’s
the good news?”

Sandy reached down to the floor
and pulled something out of her purse, then turned back toward him, an evil
grin on her face. “The good news is, I have handcuffs,” she said, as she
twirled the cuffs around her index finger. “And I know how to use them.”

__________

An hour later they were exhausted,
but wide-awake, so they moved from the bedroom out to the sofa in front of the
fireplace. Virgil pressed a button on a remote and the gas logs in the
fireplace lit up automatically, the glow of the flames dancing across the room.
He watched Sandy stare at the fire, then she looked at over toward his office,
squeezed Virgil’s hand and said, “Tell me about the turn-out helmet.”

Virgil blinked in surprise, then
let go of her hand and walked over to his office. A fireman’s helmet sat on the
credenza behind the desk. It was still stained with soot, the eye shield
cracked diagonally across its entire length. He picked up the helmet and
carried it to the sofa and handed it to her. “Hell of a story from a long time
ago.”

“Would you tell me about it?”

Virgil nodded. “I will, but I’d
like to ask you something first.”

Sandy held the helmet in her lap,
tracing the outline of the crest above the visor, her fingers trembling as if
charged with an electrical current. “Okay.”

“You called it a turn-out helmet. That’s
a term firemen use.”

“My father was a fireman,” Sandy
said, staring at the flames. Her movements were almost imperceptible, but she
was rocking back and forth on the sofa, the helmet in her arms. “Tell me your
story, Jonesy.”

Virgil thought that he must have
held that helmet a thousand times over the years, and would probably hold it a
thousand more before he died. It was part of who he was, part of why he was
still alive today. “One of the worst days of my life,” he said.

Sandy nodded, still looking at the
fire, but she didn’t speak, so Virgil told her the story. Told her about the
time when he was just a boy, only five years old, and what happened that
fateful day on his birthday.

His mother had wanted carpet in
the kitchen. It seemed like such an extravagant thing at the time, but his
parents could afford it and everyone agreed just how neat it would be to have
wall-to-wall carpeting in the kitchen of all places. At first, Mason had tried
to talk Virgil’s mom into maybe just an area rug or two, but her mind was set. The
day the carpet was to be installed, the trucks pulled into the driveway and the
men all got out wearing identical green cover-all’s, as if their matching
uniforms could somehow make up for their inadequacies of procedural
forethought.

“I went inside to play, to smell
my cake baking in the oven, and to look at my presents that were wrapped and
sitting on the table in the family room. I was walking through the
kitchen—god, it was hot in there, I remember that—it was the middle
of August, no air conditioning, and the oven was on. I stood and watched as two
of the workmen began to pour the glue on the floor to hold the carpet in place.
No one ever thought about the pilot light on the stove.

“The glue was flammable. As it turns
out, the stuff was so volatile it wasn’t even legal in all fifty states. What I
remember most about the explosion is the way everything went white. So white
that things almost looked transparent, like some of the films you can watch of
atomic bomb blasts. That white. And quiet. No loud bang or anything like that. Just
the white.

“And then I couldn’t move. I’m not
sure how long I was out, though it couldn’t have been that long. I was in the
garage. The explosion had blown me through the screen door and a pile of rubble
had landed on top of me. I wasn’t hurt too bad, except for the cut on my face,
but I couldn’t move because I was trapped under the debris. I tried to call out
to someone, but the blast had knocked the wind out of me and I couldn’t catch
my breath. I’ll tell you something, I was five years old, I could smell the
smoke and feel the heat and I thought I was dying, Sandy. That’s not the kind
of thing that’s easy to forget.

“I heard my mom screaming my name,
but I couldn’t call back to her. I remember I kept thinking
the sirens are
coming, the sirens are coming
. Not the firemen, just the sirens, and I
remember thinking I wanted my mom to just please shut up so I could hear the
sirens, and then I did hear them, that long, slow wail as they wound their way
toward me, the smoke so thick I had to keep my eyes pinched shut.”

Virgil paused for a moment to
collect his thoughts. Sandy still had the helmet, but she’d turned it over and
held it crown down in her lap, her hands caressing the age-old sweat stains of
the liner inside the hard shell. Tears were running down her cheeks and they
dripped into the inside of the helmet with little plops that sounded like rain
falling on top of snowpack at winter’s end. “And they pulled you out.” She said
it softly, no louder than a whisper, her words thick and lonesome, but it was
what she said next that made Virgil wonder about the workings of fate and the
mystery of things unknown. “It took two of them to get you out,” she said. “They
always go in as a team. The debris was deep and heavy and they had to be
careful when they were pulling it off so it didn’t collapse down and crush you.
The other firemen were pouring water in to keep the flames back and when they
finally got to you it was just before the rest of the garage collapsed, wasn’t
it?”

Virgil looked at her, his voice a
shadow of itself. “Yes, but how—”

She placed her hand on his forearm
to quiet him. “One of the firemen had to pick up a rafter that was directly
over you. It landed just inches from your head. He picked it up, straining
against its weight, the heat of the flames no longer being held back by the
water. They were losing the fight, but you were almost free. And then, when he
had the rafter up high enough, the other fireman picked you up and carried you
out. It was only a dozen steps or so to safety. The one holding the rafter let
it drop, but when he did it shifted and came down on top of him, crushing his
legs. He couldn’t move and just seconds later there was a secondary explosion
when the gas main went. But you and the other fireman made it out, isn’t that
right?”

Virgil couldn’t speak. When he
tried to swallow he discovered his throat was as dry as scattered ash. When he
opened his mouth to say something—he wasn’t sure what—his teeth clicked
together like marbles being rattled around in a glass jar. He finally just
nodded, letting her know she was right.

She took her hand from his arm and
unsnapped the liner inside the helmet. Written in permanent marker on the
inside of the hard shell was a name: S.C.A. Small. “S.C. stands for Station
Chief,” she said. “The A. stands for Andrew. Station Chief Andy Small was my
father, Jonesy. He died in that explosion while saving your life.”

He took the helmet from her lap
and pulled her close, his arms tight around her shuddering body. There were no
words to say in the moment so he just held her amidst the sound of the
crackling fire as it threw off a heat unmatched by the shame and responsibility
Virgil felt. He had just made love to a woman whose father had died to save his
own, and while Virgil had lived, it was at the expense of Sandy’s life-long
sorrow.

Virgil thought,
how do I
reconcile that?

15

__________

T
he
Sids. Up early. And grumpy. There was a schedule to keep, and now, it was time
again.

This one would be coincidence. The
Sids knew this. They had talked about it like everything else, tossed it around
for a while like a game of Hot Potato. Junior thought it might be a problem,
though by her own admission she couldn’t explain why, just that it might.
Senior pointed out that wasn’t much of an argument, and even though it pissed
her off, she knew he was right. “Besides,” he had said, “One way or another
we’re going to do her. Might as well create a little misdirection while we’re
at it.” Junior thought about it, and the more she did, the cooler the potato
got. “Yeah, I can see that,” she finally said, and so for the Sids, the
coincidence of another nurse was just that.

For Elle Richardson, third-shift
nurse supervisor on the maternity ward at Methodist Hospital, it was anything
but.

Elle Richardson thought she had
about the best gosh-danged job in the entire hospital. No one really liked
hospitals, she knew, but Elle (Ells to her husband Eugene and her close
friends) thought they were about the best place on earth. Sure there were a lot
of sick and dying, (nine gosh-danged floors of them if you were counting) but
her floor was where life was delivered, where little bundles of hope and
happiness slid out of the gate (Ells always giggled to herself when she thought
of it that way) and were swaddled up in loving arms, the balance between life
and death maintained for another day, or at least her eight hours of the
ten-till-six. Like most of her clothing (including her mouse pad and coffee
cups) Ells was reminded on a daily basis that Life is Good.

Her shift had been a busy one,
that was for sure. Three singles and a double, (Ells sometimes thought her
version of hospital speak sounded an awful lot like ordering at the
drive-thru….either that or the scorecard of a little-league baseball game) all
before her late morning break. But the rest of her shift remained quiet (all
gates temporarily closed for business, ha, ha) and when the big hand was on the
twelve and the little hand was on the six, Ells scrunched her shoulders at her
co-workers, squinted her eyes, and gave them a tootle-do before she scooted
down the hall and out to her car.

Gosh almighty, she felt happy. Her
life was everything she had always hoped it would be, and more. Her husband,
Eugene (Genes to her, Gene to his friends) was a police officer for the city of
Indianapolis, and even though he was a cop and she was a nurse, Ells always
thought she and Gene worked hand in hand to help bring goodness and life to the
city where they lived. They were, Ells thought, a match made in heaven. It even
said so on the matchbook covers at their wedding reception.

Gene worked the third shift as
well, except his went ninety minutes longer than hers, but the good news was
(and there’s always good news if people would just take their gosh-dang time
and look for it) today marked the beginning of Gene’s weekend. Plus, now that
Elle was a shift supervisor, she could make her own schedule so she and Hubby
had the same two days off each week. Could life be any better? Ells thought
not.

Problem was, Ells was wrong. She
just didn’t know it yet.

__________

The Sids in their van. Junior had
the driver’s seat, Senior in the back, on his back and out of sight. They had
the fucking thing planned nine ways from Sunday, but it didn’t take long for
Senior to realize they’d forgotten at least one thing—something for him
to lie on. The floor of the van was like any other, ribbed, or corrugated, or
what-the-fuck-ever, and it was pressing into his spine like nobody’s business.
“How much longer?” he grumbled.

Junior looked at her watch. “How
the hell should I know? Just give it a few more minutes.”

“Few more minutes my ass. If I lay
here any longer I’m gonna be paralyzed. I’m sitting up.”

“Better not. Don’t want to be
seen.”

“Fuck that. I’m getting up.
Besides, the windows are tinted. No one saw me last time, did they? So no one
is going to see me now. We need a pad or some pillows or something back here to
lie on. What the fuck are you laughing at?”

“I was just thinking that after
this, they’ll probably change the name of this place.” Before Senior could say
anything, Junior stopped laughing and started the van. “Here she comes. Get
ready.”

__________

Elle pulled into the Safeway
Grocery and parked her car between a rust colored pickemup (that’s what daddy
always called them, pickemup trucks…gosh she missed him, fifteen years gone now
if you could believe that) and a cute little lime green VW Beetle-bug, (dang,
she wanted one of those sooo bad) one of the newer models that came with a
flower holder that stuck out of the column. She forced herself to look away
from the Bug when she walked by. She wanted to stop and look, but time was
short. Genes would be home soon and she wanted her shopping out of the way so
she could sit with her hubby and tell him all about her shift. The prospect of
regaling Genes of the fine work she did this day (three singles and a double!)
made her feel so good it caused her to put a little extra scoot in her step.
She even grabbed a stray cart that had rolled away from the corral and gave it
a shove back where it belonged. A good deed for a good day. Jake and Rocket
were right. Life is Good. So very, very gosh-danged good.

__________

Senior looked out the window. “We’re
gonna have to move. I don’t have an angle.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure, god damn it. Move
over a few rows. We’ll get her on the way out.”

Junior backed out of their spot
and moved the van a couple of rows over. “Take a quick peek. This should be
better.”

Senior did, and it was. Elle caught
a break.

A short one, anyway.

__________

Twenty minutes later, now
seriously behind schedule, Elle pushed her cart toward her car. The Bug was
gone, (thank gosh for small favors—she might have spent a few extra
minutes looking it over—minutes she didn’t have) but the rust colored
pickemup was still there. Somebody taking their sweet ol’, she thought. That
was another thing Daddy always used to say. He had all kinds of words and
sayings. They were his
isms
. Elle sighed.
Love you, Daddy.

__________

Senior watched through the scope
as the woman loaded the groceries into her trunk. They were parked four rows
over and one spot further away from the store, close for the scope’s powerful
optics. He clicked off the safety and kept the crosshairs centered on the space
between her eyes. From Senior’s perspective it looked like she was about a half
an inch away. He could make out every feature, every flaw on her face.

Bitch needed to tweeze.

__________

Elle put the last sack in the
trunk and shut the lid. She stood still for a moment—something was
bothering her, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what it was.
Genes had always told her to listen to her gut. That, and situational
awareness. Good gosh he was big on situational awareness. He had practically
drilled it into her over the years.

And that was the last thought Elle
ever had in her ‘Life is Good’ life. The bullet caught her in the center of her
brow, right where she needed to tweeze. It snapped her head backwards and blew
out the back of her skull just like it did to JFK on the day she was born. The
force of the bullet knocked her backwards, her arms pin-wheeling merrily along
after her. When her legs realized they were no longer receiving signals from
her brain they collapsed under her and what was left of the back of her head
made contact with the basket section of an empty shopping cart. The cart
flipped forward and came down on top of her and wouldn’t you know it, the next
person out of the store, the one who found her lying under the cart like a
discarded doll and stroller in someone’s back yard was just some guy taking his
sweet ol’ back to his pickemup. When he saw Elle’s body he dropped his bags and
spun around, twice. A white van turned a corner at the edge of the lot and was
lost to the early morning traffic. Mr. Pickemup never saw it.

__________

His cell phone rang and Virgil
tried to slide away from Sandy, but when he did she held tight to his arm. He
listened to the ringing, four, five, six times, then a little half ring, cut down
by the voice mail feature. A minute or so later, the phone rang again.

“I should probably get that,”
Virgil said. “Could be something happening.”

Sandy untangled herself, sat up
and then leaned forward, her forearms resting on her thighs. She turned her
head and looked back over her shoulder. “Could be something happening
here
,
Jonesy.” A little edge in her voice.

He stood, looked toward the
kitchen where his cell phone lay, then back at Sandy. He took a step toward the
other room, but when the ringing stopped, so did Virgil. Sandy was right. Something
was happening and it was right here. He sat down on the bed next to her. “Whatever
it is, it can wait.”

“I’m not talking about the sex,
you know,” she said.

“Hey, give a guy a little credit,
will you?” Virgil took in a deep breath then puffed his cheeks as he let it
out. Then he said the only thing he knew to say on the heels of the most
complex discovery he’d ever made. “I’m sorry.”

They sat there for a few minutes
with that and when Sandy raised her head and looked at him, he started to say
something else but ended up repeating himself. “I’m sorry, Sandy. I’m so very
sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize,
Jonesy. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“No. It wasn’t. You were a victim
of something that happened a long time ago, just like I was. In a different
way, but a victim just the same. I accept your apology, but know this: I don’t
ever want to hear you say those words again with regard to the fire. I can’t
build the rest of my life on an apology.”

“What did you just say?”

“Tell me you don’t feel it. Tell
me we don’t belong together. Tell me you have some logical, even mystical
explanation as to how we came together thirty years later as friends,
co-workers, and now as lovers.” She reached out and took Virgil’s hands in her
own. “What I’m asking you, Virgil, is to tell me it means something. Tell me
I’ve found what I’ve been looking for since I was five years old. Tell me you
haven’t been searching for something all these years without really knowing
what it is, either. Tell me that what we did last night, what we just had isn’t
the reason I lost my childhood, it’s the reward. Tell me that the part of me I
thought I lost didn’t die in that fire with my father, but has been waiting for
this one single moment where it’s safe to say that this is who I am, that this
is where I’m supposed to be, that this is my life, right here, right now, with
you. Tell me that my father not only gave you the gift of saving your life, but
in some mysterious way that gift belongs to me too. Tell me I’m wrong, Virgil.”

“I can’t.”

“Tell me.”

“I can’t.”

Sandy leaned forward and kissed
him. “Tell me.”

When he looked at her face Virgil
felt something inside let go in a way he’d never experienced. It was in that
moment that he discovered something he’d known all along. “I love you.”

When Sandy crawled into his lap
and wrapped her arms around him she sounded childlike, but her words were those
of a woman and lover undivided, freed from something by a gift Virgil knew only
he could give.

“Tell me.”

“I love you.”

“Tell me…”

__________

 “I was there you know,” Virgil
said, the ringing of his phone now forgotten. They were back on the couch, her
feet tucked in Virgil’s lap. “At your dad’s funeral. My mom and me. My dad
didn’t go. He said he was sick, but I don’t think he was. It wasn’t a happy
time for us. It feels sort of ridiculous to say that now—it was just a
fucking house—but I’ll tell you, we lost something that day—as a
family—and we never got it back.

“But I remember the funeral. The sea
of red trucks that stretched for block after block from the cemetery. All the
firemen in their dress uniforms. The flag over your dad’s coffin. The way they
folded the damn thing and handed it to your mom like, like—”

“Like it was some sort of
substitute,” Sandy said. “Like that flag would somehow put food on the table,
or keep my mom safe, or tuck me in bed at night. I wasn’t very old, but I
remember thinking it was a joke. I remember thinking it might make everyone
else feel good, except for the ones who really mattered.”

“We don’t have to talk about this
right now, you know. It’s sort of a lot to process.”

“It’ll always be with us. It’s
part of who we are.”

 “I want to say I remember seeing
you there, and I think maybe I do, but it might just be wishful thinking, you
know, like when you want to remember something so bad you end up making part of
it up and then that becomes the reality. I remember the line of trucks, I
remember your mom, and I remember the sadness. I remember thinking for the
longest time how I wished it had been me that died that day. I remember
thinking about how there wouldn’t be all those fire trucks there at the
cemetery, how there wouldn’t be as many people, how there wouldn’t be a flag
over my coffin.