STATE OF ANGER: A Virgil Jones Mystery Series (Detective Virgil Jones Mystery Series Book 1) (19 page)

“So he’s with the G?”

“Something like that.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’ll let him explain it. Believe
me when I tell you though, Detective, he’s paid a tremendous price for his
country. I personally owe him a debt I’ll never be able to repay, but that’s
another story. From what I gather, that puts you and me in the same boat.”

“Where is he?”

“Out in the hall, waiting to come
in,” Gibson said.

__________

Murton walked into the room and
stood about halfway between the door and the bed. Virgil pushed the button on
the control panel attached to the rail and elevated the bed into a sitting
position. They stared at each other for a minute, neither one of them sure of
what to say. It might have been the pain medicine, or it might have been the
nervous tension, but Virgil felt the corner of his mouth turn upwards, then
before he knew it they were both smiling.

“You’re a fed?”

“Well, I was,” he said. “But not
anymore. I put in my papers this morning.”

“Why?”

He laughed without humor. “Which
why are you asking me about? The why did I disappear? Or the why didn’t I tell
you what was really happening in my life? Or the why I had to let everyone,
including you, your parents, and even my girlfriend think I was a criminal and
a complete fuck up?”

“I’m sorry about Amy.”

Murton stayed quiet for a long
time before he spoke. “We buried her yesterday. Her mom slapped me in the face
at the service. She thought her death was my fault. You know what? She was
right, but for all the wrong reasons. After the service I told her who I was,
who I really was and she didn’t believe me. So I pulled out my badge and handed
it to her and you know what she did? She fainted. Just like that. I thought I
killed her. I’ve been under too long Jonesy. I had to get out. I let my job get
in the way of my girlfriend’s well being and it cost her and my unborn child
their lives.”

Ah, Murt, I’m sorry. I don’t know
what else to say. Goddamn. I’ve been an asshole. I’m fucking sorry, man.”

They sat there with that for a
while, slowly coming to terms that they’d spent the first half of their lives
together as best friends and brothers, and the last half under a flag of
deception that drove them apart.

“Well, at least Pate got his,
huh?” Murton said.

“What? What do you mean?”

“You’re kidding, right? You mean
no one told you?”

“Told me what, Murt? No one’s told
me anything.”

“Ah, that’s beautiful, man. After
everything that’s happened, I get to tell you. Guess you haven’t been watching
the news. Pate’s dead, Jonesy. Yesterday morning at the taping of his show. Except
it wasn’t just a taping. Because of everything that’s happened, he convinced
the network to run a live special. The place was packed. He stood up there on
the pulpit and confessed all of it. He had tears running down his cheeks and
everything. It was like every other preacher you’ve ever seen on TV when they
bare their soul and confess their sins, except ol’ Sermon Sam out did them
all.”

“What do you mean?”

“After he confessed to burning his
church in Houston, and taking responsibility for the deaths of Franklin Dugan,
and Amy, and trafficking in child pornography, he stuck a gun in his mouth and
blew the back of his head all over the choir. All on live TV.”

“You said with everything that’s
been happening. What else did I miss?”

“Plenty. A city cop who now has
the unfortunate nickname of Cauliflower shot your sniper to death and saved the
Governor as well.”

“What?”

“Say, I don’t mean to change the
subject, but I’ve got to tell you something else,” he said. “When I was cutting
you down, I could hear your mom’s voice. In my head, I mean. It’s like she was telling
me exactly what to do. Can you believe that, man?”

__________

Virgil was still processing what
Murton had told him when a physical therapist came in the room and explained
that it was necessary to get up and move around. Murton said good-bye, explaining
that he had six or seven reams of paperwork to complete and would look in on
him later. Then, before he left, he walked over to the bed and kissed Virgil on
his forehead. “Never stopped lovin’ you, brother,” he said. Virgil’s lips
trembled, but he couldn’t get any words out. “You’re welcome,” he said, then
ruffled the top of Virgil’s head like they were kids again and walked out the
door.

The physical therapist watched the
exchange in silence. She was a short sassy brunette who looked like she should
be working in an ice cream parlor or maybe a pet supply store.

“You can’t see it, but there’s a
rubber knob on the bottom of your cast, right under the heel of your foot. Like
the stopper on the end of these crutches,” she said, holding up one of the crutches.
“When you’re moving around, I want you to keep as much weight off of your leg
as possible. But, if you have to put any weight on it, keep it on the knob. That’s
what it’s for. That, and to make sure you don’t slip and fall. She tried a
smile on so Virgil tried one right back at her, and when his scar lit up, she
momentarily jerked the crutch across the front of her body, like a shield. “Uh,
anyway,” she said, “here, let me help you. Swing your legs off the side of the
bed, but don’t try to stand, yet.”

“Just give me a minute, will you?”
Virgil said. He gathered himself together and sat upright on the side of the
bed and with the therapist’s help managed to stand mostly on his good leg, the
broken one held at an odd angle at the knee to prevent it from touching the
floor.

“Good, good. That’s good,” she
said. “Now straighten your knee and let the knob on the bottom of your cast
rest on the floor, but don’t put any weight on it. I just want you to get a
feel for where it is down there.” Virgil did what she asked, but when he did,
the pain flared and the room spun. The therapist grabbed his arm and eased him
back down on the bed. “I said not to put any weight on it.”

Virgil nodded, his breath
whistling through his teeth. “I didn’t.”

“Well, maybe you did a little. Do
you want me to see about getting you a wheel chair?”

“No, I do not want a fucking wheel
chair.”

“All right, then, come on, let’s
try again. It only gets better from here.”

“I can believe that.” He gripped
the handle of the crutches, the therapist standing next to him like a
gymnastics spotter. He leaned forward, put the weight on his good leg and
pulled himself up.

“All right. Now, let’s try moving
around the room a little. You look like a pretty strong guy. Just remember, the
key to using crutches is in the forearms, not your armpits, okay? Keep your leg
bent, and use both crutches at the same time. Step with your good leg, then
follow with your arms, okay?”

“Okay, okay,” he said, hating her
already. But after a few minutes of her help and some painful practice, he had
to admit, she had him moving around fairly well.

She handed him some kind of waiver
stating that she had demonstrated the proper use of the crutches and asked him
to sign at the bottom. Her parting words were, “Remember, if you stumble and
think you’re going to fall, and you probably will, just let your body go limp. Don’t
try to save yourself. Just relax and go ahead and let yourself go. You’re more
likely to reinjure if you try to save yourself than if you just go ahead and
let it happen.”

For some reason, her statement
made Virgil think about his relationships with his dad, Murton, and Sandy.

__________

A few hours later, one of the
nurses came in and told him his ticket out would be to show the doctor he could
get around on his own, and that was all the motivation Virgil F. Jones
required. He picked up the crutches and made his way toward the door, leaning
against the jamb for a few minutes until the hall was mostly clear before
venturing out. It wasn’t too bad, the moving around, but the physical therapist
was right; the key was to keep the weight off the leg. He went up and down the
hall a few times, stopping to rest only once at the opposite end of the
corridor. The hardest part really was holding his leg in the air, bent at the
knee, and it didn’t take long before the burn in his thigh was a little too
much. There was a couch at the end of the hallway next to the elevators, so
Virgil decided to sit and watch the business end of the hospital for a while.

 As soon as he sat down he knew it
was a mistake. The couch was lower than he thought—going down was not too
bad—but once seated he knew he wouldn’t be able to get back up without
help. The nurses’ station was at the other end of the hall, so he’d have to
either yell for help or wait until someone happened by who could help him.

Smooth, Jonesy, he thought. He
closed his eyes for a while and when he opened them back up his dad was sitting
next to him and the look on Mason’s face told Virgil they were thinking the
same thing. “This place will kill you, you know that?” Mason said. “You
remember your Uncle Bob?”

“No, not really. I might remember
the name, but that’s about it.”

Mason nodded. “Yeah, I’m not
surprised. You were pretty young when he died. He was your mother’s uncle, your
great uncle. He was a mortician. Had his own funeral home up in Kokomo. After
he passed, his family sold out to a conglomerate, but I was talking to him one
time, this was years ago, before you were even born I think, and you know what
he told me? He told me that in the funeral home industry, they call it death
care. I always thought that was the damnedest thing, death care.

“I’d sit up here with your mother,
just one floor above this one while they pumped that poison into her veins trying
to kill the cancer, and in the end all they did was make the last few months of
her life more miserable than they already were. Every time we’d come in here
I’d think about that conversation with Uncle Bob. They might call this health
care, Virg, but it’s really all the same thing sometimes.” Then, like the
concept of a segue was foreign to him, he finished with, “So, when they letting
you out?”

“Tomorrow, I think. Want to help
me back to my room?”

“You bet,” Mason said. “You bet I
do.”

They took their time going down
the hall. “Delroy and Robert are going back to Jamaica for a week, so I’m going
to close the bar to sand down and refinish the bar top.” When Virgil said he’d
stop by to help if he could, Mason laughed and told him not to worry about it.

When they finally made it back to
the room, they stood next to the bed for a moment, and Virgil looked at his dad
and said, “I can’t explain it Pops, but it was her. She was standing right
behind him and her hands were over the top of his. She helped him untie me and
get me down. She was smiling at me, Dad. What do you think of that?”

“You were bleeding out from the
inside, Virg. The doctors said you had about two and a half minutes left by the
time they got you here. The mind can play tricks on you when you’re in that
kind of shape.”

“I’ve been in that bad of shape
before, you know.”

“I know. You saw what you saw. Was
it real to you?”

“Yeah, it was.”

He opened his mouth to say
something, but no words came out. Then he did something he hadn’t done in
almost forty years, an act that brought tears to his eyes.

He helped his son to bed.

__________

A short while later the nurse came
in and Virgil thought the nature of the conversation that followed must have
made her think he might be suffering from brain damage.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” he
asked her.

She had her hand on his wrist,
checking his pulse. She held up a finger in a ‘wait a minutes’ gesture and then
said, “Sorry, I was counting. What was that you just asked me?”

“Never mind,” Virgil said, but
then he asked her something else. “I keep hearing this muffled little happy
birthday tune. Is anyone else hearing it, or is it just me?”

The nurse laughed. “That’s from
the maternity ward. It’s one floor below us. Every time a baby is born the new
father gets to push a button behind the nurse’s station and it plays the first
few notes of happy birthday over the loudspeaker on that floor. You can hear it
on this floor because they’re right below us.” She wrapped the blood pressure
cuff around his arm just above the elbow and pumped the bulb, the needle on the
indicator bouncing back and forth. He waited until she was done before he spoke
again.

“I was wondering. Is there any way
that I could move one floor up?”

“What?” the nurse asked. Why would
you want to do that? That’s the cancer ward.”

“I know,” Virgil said. She stared
at him, a look of confusion on her face, and then walked out of the room.

24

__________

T
he
next morning when he woke, Virgil wiggled his toes a little and the pain led
him from the clutches of sleep like a demented tour guide with a cruel agenda. His
mouth tasted like at some point in the night he’d sworn off hospital food and
eaten his pillow instead. And he had to pee.

Sandy showed up, said hello, then went
to check with the nurse’s station to see when the doctor might stop by to
release Virgil and when she came back into the room, she told him that the
nurse said the doctor was going to be delayed. “He got called into an emergency
surgery.”

“Ah man. Any idea how long?”

Sandy shook her head. “They didn’t
know. Listen, I talked to your dad this morning. I’m going to go pick him up
and we’re going to get your truck from the station and get it back to your
house. I’ll be back to take you home after I drop him off. That okay?”

“Sure,” Virgil said. “Grab my case
notes off my desk will you?”

“Virgil…”

“What? I’m just going to be
sitting around. Might as well do the paperwork. By the way, how’d my truck get
back to the station?”

“Rosie drove it over there and put
it in the lot.”

“Oh man, you let Rosie drive my
truck?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Have you ever seen his car?”

“You worry to much, Jonesy. Hey,
you’re going home today. Treat me right and maybe I’ll dress up in a little nurses’
uniform for you, make you forget all about the paperwork. You know, show you
what a real sponge bath is like.” She winked at him. “See you in an hour or so,
boyfriend.”

Boyfriend. He liked that.

__________

Later that same afternoon Sandy
was back and the doctor came in with a list of instructions for his release. The
nurse who was with him scheduled an appointment for a follow-up visit the next
week and after another hour and a half of preparations and paperwork, Virgil
was informed he was free to go. Forty-five minutes later they were back at
Virgil’s place.

Sandy turned on the lights and generally
woke the place up while he settled onto the couch and tried to get comfortable.
“What can I get you?” she asked.

The time had gotten away from him
and the ride from the hospital had taken its toll. “I’m getting behind on the
pain. I could use a couple of pills.”

She brought him the medicine then
slipped her hand into mine and said, “So, what’s next?”

“Is that a big question, or a
little one?”

“What do you think?” she said.

“I think it’s a big one.”

“You’d probably be right,” Sandy
said. “If it were a little one, I say something like, ‘how about a pizza.’ And
then you’d say, ‘sure, what do you like?’ And I’d say—”

“Okay, I get it. The truth of it
is, I don’t know what’s next. But you know what?”

“What?”

“I don’t want to know. I know
where we’ve been, I know where we are, and I know what I want. You’re
here…we’re here, and we’re together. That’s what matters to me right now.”

Sandy pulled her feet up under her
and laid her head on Virgil’s shoulder. After a few minutes, she lifted her
head and said, “You know, for a while, you’re going to need someone here to
help you.”

“Yeah, I was kind of thinking the
same thing.”

They sat there with that for a
little while, then Sandy said, “You could ask Donatti.”

“That won’t work. He’s married,
remember? His wife won’t let him come over anymore.”

“Well, what about Rosie?”

“Naw, he’d just drink all my beer.
Plus, he’s kind of a slob. I’ve got a certain standard I like to maintain
around here.”

“Hmm. Guess you’re out of luck,
then,” Sandy said.

“Yeah. I guess so. Too bad there
isn’t someone, you know, that could sort of move in for a while and keep an eye
on me. Help me around. Like that.”

“Yeah, that is too bad,” Sandy
said.

“Just about anyone would do,
really.”

“You know, I’m pretty busy and
everything,” Sandy said. “But if I moved some stuff around on my schedule, I
bet I could do it. And look, I don’t want to seem too forward or anything,
because I’m not really that kind of girl, but I went ahead and put a bag
together thinking you might want me to stay for a few days or something.”

“You put a bag together, huh?”

“Yep.”

“Is it a big bag?”

“Well, it’s big enough that I’ve
got options.”

“A girl’s gotta have options.”

“Yep, options are good.”

Virgil tried to look serious. “Well,
the closet is pretty full. I guess I could give you a drawer, though.”

“Really? A drawer? You mean I’d
get my very own drawer?”

“Well sure. That’s just the kind
of guy I am.”

Sandy grabbed his pants at the top
by his waist and bunched them up in her fist. “I’ve got your drawers, mister.”

And with that, Virgil forgot all
about his past, both the distant and the recent and for a while, even the pain
in his leg. It all melted away against the warmth of a place where no one is
judged, where the mind, body, spirit, and soul are all one and the same.

__________

When he woke the next morning,
Virgil was alone in bed, the throbbing of his leg in time with the beat of his
heart. Sandy came in a few minutes later carrying a tray with coffee and juice,
her robe open in front of her body, its edges barely covering the swell of her
breasts.

“How you feeling, cowboy?” She set
the tray down on the night table next to the bed and leaned over and kissed him
good morning.

Virgil looked at her in the robe,
the curve of her hips, the little space between the tops of her thighs when she
stood with her legs together, the dangled jewel of her belly ring, her hair
tangled from sleep. He took her hand and guided it to his stomach, then gently
pushed her further down. “This is how I’m feeling,” he said. “Since you asked,
and all.”

“You know, the doctor said you are
supposed to take it easy for a while.”

“Fuck the doctor,” Virgil said.

And then the morning was mostly
gone too.

__________

Later, after they’d both gotten
cleaned up and dressed for the day, they sat across from each other at the
kitchen table, Virgil’s leg propped up under a pillow on the chair next to him.
It felt good to have it elevated for a while, but then it’d start to bark at
him and he’d have to set it down on the floor. Then that would become
uncomfortable too, so he’d prop it back up again. The back and forth was already
driving him nuts.

 “Wait till it starts itching,” Sandy
said. “That’ll drive you mad. Listen, I need to talk to you about something.”

Uh-oh.

“Yesterday, when I went to your
office to get the case notes you wanted I ran into Cora. We had an interesting
conversation.”

“Is this about us?”

“Yeah, it is,” Sandy said. “I know
we didn’t have a chance to talk about it—what she said to you a few days
ago on the phone, but she laid it out pretty clear for me. We have to choose.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll talk to her.”

She reached across the table and
took his hand. “Let me finish, okay. It’s not all bad. You probably don’t know
this, but about six years ago, and every year since, I’ve been trying to get on
with the Indiana law Enforcement Academy over in Plainville.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah. And guess who greased the
wheels for me.”

“Who?”

“The governor.”

“What? You asked the governor to
help you?”

“Well, I sort of mentioned it in
passing.”

“Sandy, this is a pretty powerful
guy. Are you sure you want to get in bed with him?”

“You’re the only one I’m getting
into bed with, Virgil.”

“You know what I mean. So I take
it there’s an opening at the Academy?”

“Yep. Director of Training. He
says it’s mine if I want it.”

“Just like that?”

“Well, he said they’d have to keep
the posting up, let others apply, all that business, but other than maintaining
appearances, yeah, it’s mine. I just have to say the word.”

“What kind of timeline are we
talking about?”

“The current director leaves in
thirty days. They’d want me in time for that.”

Virgil took his leg from the chair
and placed it back on the floor. Things were moving faster than he thought they
would. He and Sandy had something though. Something strong. Still, could he ask
her to leave her current position for something completely new and different
just so they could be together as a couple? It didn’t seem fair.

Then, as if she could read his
mind, she said, “It’s just a job, Virgil. I know it might feel like things are
moving pretty quick right now, but you and I both know that’s nobody’s business
but our own. If I have to take this job so we can be together without the
headache of hiding our relationship or dealing with someone else’s bullshit
bureaucracy, then that’s what I think I should do. I won’t do it unless you say
you want me to though. But I hope you do.”

Virgil nodded, and the words were
out of his mouth almost before he realized it. “I do.”

“Say that again, would you?”

He smiled at her. “I do.”

“I like the way that sounds. Big
words though for a guy that only gives a girl one drawer.”

“Yeah, well, about that. I was
kidding about the closet. It’s mostly empty you know.”

“Yeah, I know. I looked.”

“So there’s probably something I
should tell you,” Virgil said. “I knew you applied for the job.”

“What? How?”

“Well, I know quite a few people
over at the Academy, and when they saw your paperwork come through one of them
called me. I think you wasted a favor with the governor. From what they told
me, unless you blew the interview or something, they were going to hire you
anyway.”

“Virgil…”