STATE OF ANGER: A Virgil Jones Mystery Series (Detective Virgil Jones Mystery Series Book 1) (16 page)

21

__________

O
ften,
with little care or attention, a seedling of a wish will take root and grow
across a windswept garden of unspoken dreams. It will set ever deeper into the
mind, its root structure wide and strong over the darkness of the psyche where
it dares to exist as a hushed and secret desire. The subconscious will nurture
this desire and feed it until it grows from a seedling of desire into a stalk
of hope. And when that happens, a flower of dark faith is born, its root base
entrenched deep into the hardpan of who we are where a dry and unfed hunger is
concealed from the killing frost of conscious thought.

Brian Goodwell lived in the light
of such darkness, his mind forced to conjure the images from his faded
memories. Were it not for his hearing, his sense of smell, his ability to
taste, or touch, Brian Goodwell thought he might go mad. Wondered sometimes if
he hadn’t already and no one had ever bothered to tell him.

Brian shared his life and his love
with his wife Tess whom he had not seen in over eleven years. They had been
married for only a year and a half when the doctor discovered Brian suffered
from Retinoblastoma, a cancer of the retina. Both eyes were affected. When Tess
came home from work that night Brian followed her around the house, trying to
memorize every curve of her body, the angle of her jaw, the slight gap in her
front teeth, the color of her hair, the shape of her hands, and the dimples in
her cheeks when she smiled. They made love that night before Brian shared the
news with Tess, and when he did, Tess took his face in her hands and studied it
as if it were her that was about to go blind.

The doctor had said that surgical
removal of both of Brian’s eyes would be the most effective treatment option. If
left untreated, the tumors would travel up the optic nerve to the brain and
death would soon follow. They sought a second, third, and fourth opinion. Tess
wanted to keep trying. She would have sought a ninety-ninth opinion had there
been time. It was her insurance from her employer that would cover the tests
and ultimately, the procedure to remove her husband’s eyes. Tess worked as a
hotel property district manager, her pay was good and the benefits, including
their insurance coverage were among the best available. From a financial
perspective, the procedure to remove Brian’s eyes would be painless. From a
physical and emotional perspective, the procedure would be devastating.

The night before the surgery Brian
and Tess stayed up all night. They turned on every light in the house, as if
the flow of electrons through copper wire could beat back the arrival of
Brian’s long and permanent night. With less than an hour before sunrise they
walked back through the house once again and one by one began to extinguish the
lights. “I want to go one more time from the darkness into the light,” he had
said to Tess.

They sat on lawn chairs in their
back yard and held hands in the false dawn of the day, and when the sun peaked
over the horizon, Brian looked around the back yard. “I was going to put our
garden right over there,” he said as he pointed with his chin. “Flowers and
vegetables, and both red and green peppers, tomatoes, green beans. It was going
to be beautiful.”

“It will be beautiful,” Tess had
said. “You can still do it. I’ll help you.”

“You’ll have to help me with
everything. Everything, Tess. I can’t ask that of you. I won’t.”

“Brian, don’t. Please don’t do
this now. We’ll figure everything out. One step at a time. I promise. It will
all be okay. You’ll see.”

Brian buried his face in his hands
for a moment, and then stood.

“Brian, I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t
mean that. It’s a figure of speech.”

“I don’t feel like I’m losing my
sight, Tess. I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

Now, a little over eleven years
later, Brian Goodwell grasped the handrail and walked down the three steps of
his back door and into the yard. Seven steps forward, then a ninety-degree turn
to the right, then nine steps more. The edge of his garden. He dropped down to
his knees, and then felt carefully on both sides to make sure he was lined up
properly with the neat rows of vegetables. His garden was getting better and
better each year. Tess had told him so.

The first few years had been a
disaster. He would sometimes pull the flowers and vegetables by mistake and
leave the weeds to grow and prosper. The first year, out of stubbornness, he
refused to allow Tess to help him, and the net result of his garden that year
had been six green beans, two smashed tomatoes, and one red pepper. But his
sense of touch and smell had gotten better over the years and he now knew his
way around the garden like the back of his hand.

At the beginning of his second
season, Tess confessed to him that she had gone to the market and seeded his
garden with produce picked from the aisle instead of the ground. Brian
confessed to her that he knew she had done so because he liked to eat the
tomatoes raw and had, one afternoon, bitten into one that had a sticker on the
side.

But now Brian moved expertly
along, feeling first for the stalks and stems of his labor before he pulled any
weeds that tried to rise around the plants. When he worked in his garden, he
thought only of Tess. It was Tess who had helped him through the last eleven
years. It was Tess who remained true to him, who taught him how to be
self-sufficient, who did not pity him, who not only told him, but showed him
how much of a man he still was, blind or not. Brian loved Tess more than he
thought humanly possible.

He’d run his hands across her
face, his fingers barely touching the surface of her skin. Every night when she
came home from work he would greet her the same way. First a kiss, then he’d
get to look at her beauty with his hands. At first, right after the surgery,
this worked well for him. He would picture her face in his mind as he ran his
hands across her delicate features. But over the years, the picture of her
began to fade to what it was now, a dim shadow of a memory, like an
under-developed photograph, a ghost of an image. He sometimes thought he’d give
his own life to see his wife’s face just one more time. In death he could look down
upon her every day.

So Brian spent his days in the
garden of his mind with a secret wish that grew unchecked, rooted deep in an
unfulfilled desire that he cultivated into a depressive hope of death where he could
free himself and Tess from the burden he had placed on them both.

When the Sids pulled the trigger,
Brian got his wish.

__________

When consciousness came it was in
progressive, laborious steps. Virgil couldn’t see because of the blindfold, but
he knew he was naked.

Naked in every sense of the word. His
guns, badge, clothes, and boots were all somewhere, but they weren’t on him. His
shoulders ached from supporting the weight of his body and he could no longer
feel any sensation in his hands, the bindings on his wrists tight against the
cold steel. Virgil found that if he stood on his toes he could relieve the pain
in his shoulders for a short time, but then his legs would begin to tremble and
buckle under the strain and he’d once again fall against the weight of himself,
his body its own burden.

The footsteps echoed off the walls,
their sound drawing close until he could sense someone standing close. An odd
mixture of cigar smoke and just a hint of cologne…and Virgil thought,
money.
When he heard him start to move away, he said, “Who are you?”

The question stopped the man for
just a moment, but then he continued to walk away, his footsteps growing faint
until he could barely hear them. Virgil counted ten steps in all before he
heard a door open and a voice say, “He’s awake.”

Ten steps. Thirty feet to a door. Tied
to a steel beam and cross section in a wide-open space indoors. A warehouse? He
tried to think how to turn the situation around, but his options were limited,
if not downright non-existent. Two sets of footsteps approached this time, and
when they were near enough Virgil tried again.

“Listen to me. I’m a cop. I don’t
know what you’re doing, or what you’ve got planned here, but I want you to know
it’s not too late to throw it into park and just walk away.”

“You hear that,” a voice to his left
said. “It’s not too late. What do you think? Should we just walk away?”

A laugh came from the right. Virgil
felt himself swallow and hoped the two men did not notice.
Keep trying.
“Look,
sometimes things happen and before you know it you’re on a certain path and it
looks like there’s no room to turn around or go back so you just keep going
forward no matter how bad forward may seem, but I’m here to tell you, it’s not
too late. Listen to me when I tell you that. You had me out before I saw your
faces. I’m blindfolded now. That means I don’t know who you are or what your
agenda is, and I don’t care. Cut me loose and walk away. I can’t identify you,
so no harm will come to you, I guarantee it.”

“Take his blindfold off. He’s
supposed to see it coming.”

“You don’t want to do that,” Virgil
shouted. “Do not remove my blindfold.” But he felt a hand on the back of his
head and then the cloth that covered his eyes was removed. The two men who had
followed Murton into the bar the other night, the same two men who worked
security for Samuel Pate stood before him, their faces void of any emotion. “You
shouldn’t have done that,” Virgil said. “You’ve just complicated the
situation.”

The two men looked at each other. “Get
a load of this guy,” the taller one said. “We’ve just complicated the
situation.” He turned and looked at Virgil. “It’s your situation that’s
complicated, Hoss. It’s about to get worse, too.”

Virgil saw he was in a large room that
looked like an abandoned warehouse. A solitary light fixture hung low on its
cord over a small card table with two chairs. On top of the table were a rubber
mallet, a roll of duct tape, a handheld stun gun, a pair of tin snips, an
electric chain saw, and a small digital camera. The shorter of the two men saw
him looking at the table and said, “We’re supposed to get pictures along the
way. Seems a little excessive to me, but people like this, you gotta do what
you’re told. Nothing personal, you understand.”

A quiver ran through Virgil’s jaw
and he was surprised and ashamed at his inability to control its movement. But
something else was happening along the way, and when it did, his breathing
became more regular and his heart began to slow. If he was at his end, if this
was his time, Virgil vowed to himself that he would go with as much courage as
he could muster. His regrets were few, though significant. When he closed his
eyes he saw Sandy and how they were just beginning their journey, a journey she
would have to continue without him. He saw a faceless child and though he could
not tell if it were a boy or a girl, he knew it was his and Sandy’s. The
thought of how he would never know a child’s love or the joys of being a grandparent
in the later season of his life filled Virgil with a sense of loss greater than
he’d ever known. Then he saw his dad and Virgil suddenly realized that any pain
he was about to endure would be immeasurable compared to the pain his father
would suffer at the loss of his only son. When he spoke again his voice was
strong, and for a moment  showed no fear.

“No matter what happens to me
here, I’ve got people in my life that won’t rest until this is squared. Do you
hear me? Whatever you think would happen to you if you walk away now is nothing
compared to what it will be if you don’t. You won’t be caught and convicted. You’ll
be hunted like animals and someone, somewhere will flip your switch. You won’t
even see it coming. Samuel Pate isn’t worth what you’re doing here, don’t you
see that?”

The taller of the two men walked
over and picked up the roll of duct tape from the table. He took the cloth they
had used to blindfold him and forced it into Virgil’s mouth, then tore a
foot-long piece of tape from the roll and placed it over the cloth. “Samuel
Pate? You think this is about Ol’ Sermon Sam?” He looked at the shorter man and
said, “You hear that?”

The shorter man shook his head. “Come
on, let’s get going, already,” he said. “I don’t want to be here all night.” He
then stepped closer and pressed the stun gun against the side of Virgil’s
ribcage and pulled the trigger.

__________

The shock of the stun gun locked
his body in a ridged arc against the restraints and caused Virgil’s bowels and
bladder to let go, the air rife with the odor of waste. He felt his heart
stammer in his chest and the shock roared through his body like a double-header
locomotive steaming through an electrical storm in the middle of the night. Both
men jumped back away from Virgil’s incontinence and the short man said, “Ah,
fuck me, look at that. Why don’t we just park one in his squash and be done
with it?”

“You know why,” the tall man said.
“We’re supposed to do it slow, make it last. He’s supposed to suffer before he
gets it. Now grab that hose over by the wall and rinse him down. I ain’t gonna
work standing in his shit.”

Virgil was numb from the shock
they had just given him and when the water hit he couldn’t tell if it was hot
or cold. The short man sprayed the fecal matter and urine from the floor while
the tall man took pictures, the flash of the camera momentarily lighting the
darkened corners of the room.

The short man dropped the hose then
picked up the mallet and beat Virgil repeatedly across both thighs, his stomach
and chest. One of the blows struck him square on the shin of his leg and the
bone cracked like a dead twig yanked from the branch of a tree. He tried to cry
out but the rag held in his mouth by the duct tape prevented all but the smallest
of sounds from escaping his throat. The tall man shocked him repeatedly with
the stun gun and it took no time at all before Virgil lost all control of his
body. His heart beat in an irregular fashion from the electrical charge and he
was unable to draw even the most ragged of breaths through his nose. His
nostrils flared wide as he tried to find his dying purchase of air.