STATE OF ANGER: A Virgil Jones Mystery Series (Detective Virgil Jones Mystery Series Book 1) (21 page)

They sat with that for a minute
and during the silence Sandy came back out and stood next to Virgil. Then, as
if she could sense the conversation: “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

Neither of the men had a chance to
answer. The front door of the bar opened and someone stepped inside, just past the
entryway. Mason looked up and said, “Bar’s closed for renovations. Be open
again next week.”

Virgil heard his father say they
were closed, but when he turned to look at whoever was at the door his foot slipped
a little on the brass railing and got caught there between the rail and the
bar. He cursed, then gently tried to twist his leg back into position. Just as
he did, he heard his father say the last words that would ever come out of his
mouth.

“Gun!”

Virgil turned his head toward the
sound of his father’s voice, saw Sandy reach for her weapon, then felt himself
being pulled to the floor.

__________

Sandy grabbed the back of Virgil’s
shirt collar and pulled him to the ground. She yelled something, the words lost
over the sounds of gunfire. Sandy fired twice, but Amanda Pate managed to get
one shot off.

And one was enough.

__________

Virgil couldn’t hear anything, the
sound of the gunshots booming in his ears. The cordite from the spent shells
assaulted his nostrils like someone had stuffed fire ants in his nose. He
turned on the ground and the pain in his leg made the room swim out of focus
for a moment, but he saw Sandy kick a gun from Amanda’s dead hand. She was
yelling something—Virgil didn’t know what—but when their eyes
locked and she saw he was okay, she ran right past him to the other side of the
bar. Virgil tried to get up, but his leg was caught in the railing, the cast
wedged in tight. He finally managed to pull it free and when he did, he felt
something pull loose and a wave of pain turned everything gray, like an old
black and white film.

Virgil could hear Sandy on the
other side of the bar. She kept shouting, ‘no, no, no,’ over and over.

“Sandy?”

“Virgil, I need you back here. You
better hurry.”

Virgil hopped and slid along the
bar, trailing his bad leg behind him. When he turned the corner he saw Sandy
covered in Mason’s blood, his head in her lap. The bullet had caught him
squarely in the chest at the bottom of his rib cage. The color had drained from
his face, and blood ran from both corners of his mouth. Sandy had one arm
wrapped around his body, holding him in place, her other hand pressed tight
over the gaping wound in his chest. His blood burst between her fingers with
every beat of his heart, and from the time it took Virgil to move from the end of
the bar to where they lay, Mason had lost more blood than Virgil thought the
human body capable of containing.

He already had his cell phone out.
He punched in 9-1-1, shouted their location into the phone then let it slip
from his hand. He got down by his father’s side and put his hand on top of the
wound as well. “Hang in there, Dad. You’re going to be all right. You’re going
to make it. Help’s on the way, you hear me?”

Mason reached out and grabbed his
son’s wrist. He tried to say something, but when he did, he choked on the blood
that ran from his mouth and no words ever came. He took Virgil’s hand and held
it to his heart, then placed Sandy’s hand there as well. Virgil watched him
stare at Sandy, then saw his eyes go out of focus and felt the silence in his
chest.

Virgil looked at Sandy and knew
she grieved in ways he could not know. For her, it was summer again from a time
long ago and this was yet another goodbye of a father figure she would never
have the chance to know or love.

After a while, Virgil slid
sideways and sat down next to her and ran his fingers through his father’s
hair. They stayed there like that until the police and the medics arrived,
neither of them saying a word.

Epilogue

__________

T
he
sun was out, suspended high in the miracle of another day and everything felt
fresh and destined to live forever. Virgil walked with a cane, a handmade hickory
stick Sandy bought for him after the doctor had removed his cast and said he
could go without the crutches. As they walked across the still-wet grass of an
overnight rain, the tip of the cane sank into the ground in various spots and Sandy
had to hold Virgil’s arm to help steady him along.

It had been eight weeks since
Mason died.

In the end, Virgil had decided
that his father’s death could only be attributed to a certain sense of bad luck
and a failure of imagination on his part. Amanda Pate had pulled the strings on
her husband for years as she lived with and hid from his desires, all while she
served an agenda of her own. The police were able to piece together certain
facts, Amanda Pate and Sidney Wells, Jr. being lovers, chief among them. When
that fell into place, eventually the rest did too.

The fire that killed Amy Frechette,
Murton’s girlfriend, was traced back to Collins and Hicks by forensics and the
hard work of the Arson squad. It was ultimately decided that it was nothing
more than a way to draw Murton out into the open and it probably worked better
than either Collins or Hicks would have liked. It took a number of weeks, but
Virgil was finally able to put the final piece of the puzzle in place, and when
he did, he almost wished he’d left it alone.

He called the governor on a Sunday
morning at home and asked to meet him at his office.

The governor resisted the idea of
a meeting.

Virgil insisted.

When he walked into his office the
governor was seated at his desk, a glass of scotch in his hand. It was only
ten-thirty in the morning. Virgil limped in and sat down in one of the chairs
in front of his desk without speaking.

The governor watched him for a few
minutes, then unlocked the center drawer of his desk and pulled out a brown
expandable file folder. He removed the elastic string from the flap and pulled
out a number of different photographs and arranged them on his desk. Virgil
couldn’t see the person in the photos, but then again, he didn’t need to. “I
should have known you would figure it out,” the governor said. “Who else
knows?”

“Sandy, and probably Murton
Wheeler, though he hasn’t come right out and said so. But no one else that I’m
aware of. My gut tells me you’ve probably confided in Bradley Pearson though.”

“Your gut tells you true. That
makes five people in the entire world who know, Jonesy. You, Sandy, Murton, me,
and my aid, Bradley Pearson.”

“Your wife doesn’t even know?”

The governor took a sip of scotch
then shook his head. “No, she does not. We were never able to conceive and I
thought the cruelty of it all, the fact that I had a child by another woman, would
break us apart. So no, I never told her. How did you put it together?”

“Murton had a lot to do with it.”
Virgil reached into his pocket and pulled out a copy of the birth certificate
that had been in the safe deposit box and handed it to the governor. “He gave
me this. Amanda Pate had the original before Murton got hold of it. How she got
it, I don’t know. I guess we’ll never know.”

The governor passed a stack of
pictures over and Virgil leafed through them. They were all pictures of Sidney
Wells, Jr. at various ages in her life. And then he told his story.

“Her name was Sara Wells. One
night I stayed at the hotel where she worked. It was as simple as that. She was
stuck in a bad marriage, I was stuck in a bad hotel, and when we met in the
bar, I’m telling you, Jonesy, it was magic. She stayed with me that night and
we met every chance we got for the next year and a half.”

“And when you found out she was
pregnant?”

“I’m not sure I understand your
question. Is it my honor you’re asking about?”

“I’m asking you what happened
next.”

The governor looked at nothing. “She
told me she knew the baby was mine. She said she knew it to be true because Sid
had been to the doctor. He had a low count or something. I asked her to divorce
Sid so she could marry me, and she told me she would. My God, Jonesy, we were
happy. That’s where we were when everything changed.

“My call sign that day was Voodoo.
You know what’s funny? I remember almost every single detail of that day except
the one that matters. The one where I picked up the phone and filed my flight
plan. I had the option of going to Indy or Ft. Wayne first. For some reason I
picked Indy. If I’d have picked Ft. Wayne…” He let it hang there.

“She might still be alive today?”

The governor pointed his finger at
me. “Wrong. She
would
still be alive. I’d probably be flying for the
airlines and we’d have a ton of kids. Instead, the woman I loved and my only
child are dead because of me.”

“Governor…”

He held up his hand. What he said
next didn’t surprise him, but it made Virgil’s stomach turn just the same. “I’m
sorry about your father, Jonesy. I really am. But what’s done is done. I see no
criminal involvement on my part in this matter. The Pate’s and the Wells’ are
gone. I’ll consider the matter closed as soon as I have my daughter Sidney’s original
birth certificate. You do have that, don’t you?”

Virgil did indeed have it. It was
in his pocket.

He had two choices.

One, give the birth certificate to
the governor and be complicit in hiding his secret, one that would all but destroy
his political career if it ever came out, or two, include the birth certificate
in the official file, and let the governor fend for himself.

Virgil stared at him for a long
time.

The governor stared right back.

“You put me on Pate right out of
the gate,” Virgil said. “Why?”

“That was Bradley’s doing, though
I agreed to it. We knew he was being looked at by the FBI, but they were
dragging their feet.”

“I don’t think that’s entirely
accurate. In fact, with all due respect, it’s flat out wrong.”

“It’s neither right or wrong,
Jonesy. It’s politics. How long do you think I would have lasted in my campaign
against Sermon Sam once everyone found out that the woman I was sleeping with,
the woman who just happened to be married to that idiot Wells was at work and
in the hotel the morning I punched out of that plane? Not very long, I can tell
you that.”

“And what about the shootings?”

The governor took another drink of
his scotch. “What about them? Sidney Wells was a psychopath. He was trying to
destroy me by murdering family members of anyone and everyone he thought was
even remotely responsible for the crash that day. He knew all along I was
Sidney, Jr.’s  father. If Pate’s wife and my daughter were having some sort of
illicit affair as you allege, then they must have put the plan together. Who
knows?”

Virgil picked up a few more of the
pictures and looked through them, but he didn’t try too hard to hide the
contempt in his voice. “And who cares, right?” After a few minutes he reached
into his pocket and gave the governor the document.

When he used his formal title,
Virgil knew he’d made the wrong choice.

“Thank you, Detective Jones. That
will be all.”

Virgil gave the governor a chance
to correct himself. “Are you sure about that, Sir?”

When he looked away and didn’t
answer, Virgil pulled himself from the chair and walked out of his office.

__________

Sandy touched his arm and pulled
Virgil out of his thoughts. “Hey, you with me, big guy?” she said. They were next
to the edge of the pond behind the house and when Virgil looked out across the
water he saw it wrinkle in spots, the bluegill hungry, nicking at the surface.

“Why did you want to come out
here?”

Just then, a landscape truck
pulling a backhoe on a lowboy trailer turned off the road and came up the
drive. They lost sight of it for a moment when it went around the side of the
house, then reappeared and stopped next to the out building where Virgil kept
his lawn equipment.

“You’re about to find out,” Sandy
said. “We wanted to do something for you…Murton, Delroy, and me. ”

Murton hopped out of the truck, backed
the tractor from the trailer and drove over to where they stood, about ten
yards from the edge of the pond. He lowered the bucket on the backhoe and
scooped out a pile of soil then placed it carefully in a mound a few feet away
from the hole. He repeated the process two more times, then turned the tractor
around, winked at Virgil like he may have just noticed his presence and drove
back to the truck. When he returned the next time Delroy rode along with him. There
was a Weeping Willow tree in the bucket of the tractor, its root ball enclosed
with burlap and twine. Murton lowered the bucket next to the hole opposite the
pile of dirt, shut down the engine and climbed from the operator’s seat, a
small package in his hands.

“Hey Jonesy. Sandy,” he said, as
he handed Virgil the package. It was wrapped in plain white paper, the kind a
butcher would use at a meat market, and tied across both ends with brown string
that knotted in the middle. The paper wrapping was stiff, but the contents of
the package soft and pliable. Virgil let a question form on his face. “It’s the
shirt your dad was wearing at the bar when he was shot,” Murton said. “I’m
sorry I wasn’t there for you, Virg. I spent a year undercover with the Pate’s
and never once looked at Amanda. I could have prevented the whole damn thing.”

Sandy walked over and wrapped her
arms around Murton.

“It’s all right,” Virgil said. “It’s
time to let go of the past, Murt.”

Virgil held the package against
his chest, his father’s blood wasted and dry under a wrap of string and paper. He
looked at Sandy. “He was telling me he loved me,” Virgil said. “In the bar,
when you came out of the bathroom. He didn’t say the words, but that’s what he
was telling me.”

Murton walked over to the tractor
and pulled a shovel from the side rack and stood next to the hole. Virgil got
down on his knees and placed his father’s bloodied shirt at the bottom of the
pit, then stood back and watched as Sandy and Murton and Delroy wrestled the
willow tree into the hole and filled the remaining space from the pile of dirt.

“Willow trees use more water than
just about any other tree,” Murton said to no one. “I don’t know how I know
that.”

Delroy put his hand on Virgil’s
chest. “The ground water will soak tru the paper and into dat shirt, mon. Your
father’s blood, it will flow tru dat tree just like it do your own heart,
Virgil Jones.” It was the first time Virgil had ever heard Delroy say his full
name.

“It might not be much, but we had
to do something,” Murton said.

Sandy sat down in the grass next
to the tree, and after a few minutes, the rest of them did too. Sandy took
Virgil’s hand. “I’m sorry, baby,” she said. If I had been just a little
quicker….”

He cut her off. “We agreed we
weren’t going to have this discussion anymore.”

The shine in her eyes sparkled a
turquoise blue, the un-felled tears caught in her lashes. “I can’t help it,
Virgil. I can’t get these thoughts out of my head. My father died saving your
life, and I keep thinking that surely there must be some reason things turned
out this way. I was supposed to save your dad, Virgil. But I didn’t. Don’t you
see that?”

“No, I don’t. Amanda was after me.
When dad yelled out, he took a bullet that was meant for me, and one that
probably would have hit you. He not only saved my life, but he saved yours as
well.”

“And how am I supposed to live
with that, Virgil?”

“The same way I have all these
years. The same way I’m still learning how to.”

“I don’t know how to do that.”

“I’ll teach you,” he said. “We’ll
do it together.”

__________

That night, after Sandy was
asleep, Virgil walked outside and stood on his back deck and wondered if maybe
their roles weren’t reversed, if maybe he was the one being taught and led, not
just by Sandy, but by those people who’d held a place in his life and still
rented pieces of his heart as tenants in perpetuity.

Sleep did not come easy. His leg
was hurting more at a time when it should have been getting better. He took a
couple of pain pills then watched the moon journey across the sky, its
reflection set deep in the sheen of the black-watered pond at the back of his
house. The sound of the wind as it hissed through the leaves of his father’s
willow tree and the dull echo of semi tires as they snapped over the expansion joints
out on the four-lane surrounded and comforted him, grounded him in some way.

A pair of headlights swung through
the side yard and for a moment Virgil could have sworn he saw someone standing
beneath his father’s willow tree. But the lights swept past then abruptly cut
off. Someone in the drive. Virgil looked out at the tree for a long moment,
then limped around to the front of his house and found Rosencrantz leaning
against the side of his car. “It’s a little late, Rosie. Everything okay?”

Rosencrantz had a toe-in-the-dirt
look on his face and a piece of paper in his hand. “Yeah. I’m sorry about this,
Jonesy, I really am. Never mind. I’ll just go. I shouldn’t have come out here.”

“It’s okay. I’m not sleeping much
these days anyway. What is it?”

“I know we’re already short-handed
with your medical leave and all, but something’s come up and I was sort of
hoping you’d sign off on some vacation time for me.”

“Ah, man. Now really isn’t the
best time, Rosie. You know that.”