Thunder In Her Body (46 page)

“Give me that,” Blaze spoke softly as he gently pried the gun from his wife’s hand and pulled the bed sheet and comforter down to cover her.  He was shaken and had blood on his hands.   On his shirt an enormous ruby stain began to grow, enlarging and moving down his jeans.

Lynette sat there, bleeding onto the tan carpet as Blaze dialed 911.  She heard him say that there were three injured people at Rancho Whitehall, and two dead ones.  Lynette just sat there.  She couldn’t comprehend what he said.  Three hurt, two dead.  Who were these people.  She was dazed and in shock.  Blaze pressed the sheet tightly across her bleeding breast, trying to slow the flow.  “I’ll be right back.  Oh, God, Lynn, I’ll be right back,” he said in anguish.  Blaze left her sitting on the floor stricken and numb, with her back leaning against the night table.  Something was wrong in the living room.  He had to help Aaron.

“What’s wrong with Aaron?” somebody said, and the words came from her mouth, but someone else said them.

Two ambulances, two sheriff’s deputies and a state trooper arrived at the scene.  The paramedics split up, one group tending to Aaron, and Blaze demanded that the others see to his wife.  They lifted her onto the gurney, covering her face with an oxygen mask and her body with sheets and a blanket. Hurridly, they wheeled her toward the front door, with Blaze walking beside her.  Blood from her mutilated breast soaked through the sheet and up into the blanket.  Blood ran from his side and soaked one side of his jeans as he kept telling her “everything’s gonna be all right.  You’re gonna be all right, Baby.  Oh, God, I’m so sorry…”

The paramedics tried to tend to his wound but he said no as he urged them to hurry and get her into the ambulance.

The emergency room at the
County Medical center was abuzz with staff.  There were trails of blood going in three directions.  Aaron was taken immediately into surgery.  The knife that Patrick plunged into his chest, when he answered the knock at the door, blew out a lung, but mercifully missed his heart and any major arteries.  Aaron was struggling to breathe, but Blaze heard the ER doctor say that he just needed a little patching up.  He’d be fine.

Lynette was a bloody mess.  The nurses cleaned away most of the blood on her body to see where all of it was coming from. She’d suffered several wounds to the neck, chest and arm, and the female doctor looked at her almost severed nipple.

“This is going to require surgery,” she said.  “There may be no deep major tissue damage but the wound is going to require some delicate stitches, to preserve nerves.  The hanging areola was almost completely detached,” she explained to Blaze, who refused to be sent away from his wife’s side.  The knife wound that went through her arm was cleaned, stitched and bandaged.  It had not punctured any major vessels, and in time, would heal with only a vertical scar.  Her left breast would be sore for a few weeks, but cocoa butter would eventually smooth out most of the scarring down her chest and the puncture on the side of her other breast.  The nipple on the right breast would be re-attached with Lynette under local anesthesia.  The doctor explained that of course she had to be admitted to the hospital after the surgery because, among other things, her blood pressure was already becoming unstable.  The medical team was afraid of a stroke or potential heart attack with this kind of trauma.

While Lynette was in surgery, Blaze was treated for a deep knife wound to his side. Patrick’s knife had entered between his rib cage and his waist, but his wound was more superficial, as the blade punctured a muscle but mercifully missed any internal organs.  His military training had saved his life.  Ordinarily, Patrick would have been no match for Blaze, even though he wielded the weapon.  Blaze tried to disarm him in the fray but, hopped up on methamphetamines, Patrick had the strength of three men and fought his father like a mad man, with both of them slipping in Lynette’s blood.  Blaze had to end it.  With one practiced twist, he snapped his son’s neck.  Patrick died instantly.  He knew he had to get to Lynette.  And then there were gun shots.

There was no need for a trial or even a grand jury investigation.  The sheriff’s office called the deaths complete and total self-defense.  Lynette had shot
Beverly after mutilation and threat of imminent death.  Blaze killed Patrick in defense of himself and his wife.  It was a clear case.  The perpetrators had committed, at a minimum, five assaults with deadly weapons, two attempted murders, unlawful detention, kidnapping, and attempted extortion among other things .  The incident at Whitehall Ranch was front page news for days in the local newspaper.  That was the most excitement the sleepy village had experienced in months.  Baskets of fruits and flowers  immediately arrived at the hospital while Lynette and Aaron were hospitalized and, thereafter, at the ranch from well-wishers and friends of both Blaze and Aaron  Few people had gotten to know Lynette well, but she was Blaze’s wife and in Aaron’s home, therefore, she was considered one of them.  Half of the flowers had her name on the cards.  A few simply read, “To Mr. Snowdown’s Wife.”

No one went into town for awhile.  Clare took a week off from her job in Austin and stayed at the ranch, nursing the three.  Blaze hovered around Lynette knowing how close he came to loosing his precious wife.  Sad though it was that he had to kill the only offspring that was his for sure, he and Lynette together, fighting for their lives, had rid themselves of years of trouble.  Blaze had the terrible task of telling Merrilynn and Trapper what had happened.  Trapper remarked that his mother and brother were better off dead, and he would not attend any services for them.  Merrilynn came home briefly, but it was to make sure that her Papa was handling things as well as possible, and to console Lynette.  As the closest living relative, it was Merrilynn’s decision as to the disposition of the bodies.  She and Blaze agreed to cremation with the ashes to be buried somewhere, far away.  They did not want those ashes scattered anywhere near Crystal Bend or Asombroso.  That was Lynette’s mountain!

While all three victims were still in the County hospital on that horrible night, Blaze and Aaron talked in hushed voices late into the night.

“How did you know to turn around and come back home?” Aaron asked, from his hospital bed.

“I don’t know,” Blaze answered pensively.  “A voice - something like a voice; a sound, told me that Lynette was calling me.  I heard it in my head, then there were words in front of me, in front of the truck,” he said. “Words written in the air.  I know that sounds crazy, but that was it,” he admitted, shaking his head.  He looked over at the other bed where his wife laid, under sedation, sleeping as if nothing had ever happened.

“I have no life without her, Aaron,” he said as he turned toward her.  Reaching down, he lifted her tiny hand and placed it into his.  From his shirt pocket he pulled out her simple gold wedding band which the nurse had cleaned and handed him before she went into surgery.  Gently, he slipped it slowly and lovingly back onto her ring finger with solemnity as he had done on their wedding day.

“I love you, my wife,” he bent and whispered close to her ear.

C
HAPTER 31

¤

The First Thanksgiving

B
laze and Lynette spent every waking moment together from that horrid night in October.  If she went to shop, he went with her.  If he went to take care of business, he insisted she go with him.  He was determined, in his own way, never to let her out of his sight; never to let anything bad happen to her again.  She tried to convince him that she would be all right; that she was resilient enough to bounce back from the trauma, and she was, in fact, doing remarkably well.  She had him to nurture, and the log cabin to finish and furnish.  All she wanted to do was get on with their life together.  What was done, was done.  In a sad kind of way, she was glad Beverly and Patrick were dead so they couldn’t hurt Blaze anymore.  For many years he’d lived with the torment of their miserable existence and how it imposed on his struggle for a decent life.

It was Blaze who was suffering more.  He had almost lost the most precious thing he possessed in this life – his wife. There was no one on this earth who understood how much she meant to him.  The thought of what almost happened tortured him, and for a short while, he woke up from nightmares, grabbing Lynette to make sure she was all right.  He would do anything to keep from loosing her.   And to prevent that, he had to kill his son.  And his wife had to kill the mother of his son.  He knew within his viscera that they needed to be eliminated from this earth; he just regretted the way it had to happen.

Lynette knew that this had to be a time for healing; they had to get the past terror up, and out of their systems.  Blaze especially needed to talk.  Unlike many men, he did not bottle up his feelings, he talked freely to Lynette.  His feelings came more slowly now, and they often sat on the floor in the living room, he with a strong, hot cup of coffee in hand and she with a hot cup of lemon tea resting in her lap, talking.  Lynette was good for him.  She knew how to listen; she knew how to wait for the next thoughts.  And her years as a social worker helped her, help him back to normalcy.  They prayed together, and he taught her some of the ancient Apache prayers.

For his birthday, Lynette arranged for a surprise couple’s retreat at a very private and very special spa in Sedona, Arizona.  Another of those places she loved.  Magical and mystical, Sedona was known around the world as one of the four energy vortexes; a metaphysical destination.  He was titillated by all the professional
hands-on
activities.  Facials, hot stone massages, herbal wraps, languid soaks in aromatic waters, soft music, foot rubs, healthy food prepared to delight the eye and heal the body, a special blend of coffee he had never tasted – which he made sure to get the name and source.  It was a quiet, rejuvenating four days and as they flew back to Albuquerque, the balance of life between them, and around them, seemed restored.

The log cabin was ready before Thanksgiving and the couple filled it with good quality, southwestern furniture they’d been selecting over the months since they returned from Alaska.  Only once did they venture up to Santa Fe for some special pieces, which were shipped to them when the time was right.  They tried to patronize as many local stores as possible, and did find most of the furnishings in and around Crystal Bend. They bought gorgeous art with Native themes from Mountain Ray Arts Studio on Main Road.  On one side of the Great Room, they hung six paintings of Native children; the same six that Janette had in her town home back in Austin.  They laid and hung a variety of authentic Native rugs, some with a Navajo pattern, others from First and Second Mesa, Hopi patterns.  There were Mandelas in the hallways and Dream Catchers somewhere in each bedroom.  For sure, there were no dead animals mounted on the walls!

The owner’s suite was done in a very traditional style with heavy, cherry wood, massive four-poster bed, triple dresser and a tall armoire within which sat the large television and the bedroom controls for the home stereo system and security program.  The lower part had shelves and three drawers for some of Blaze’s things.  These furnishings were not in keeping with the white stucco Kiva fireplace, but they were what both Blaze and Lynette favored, so that’s what they bought.  The large bed gave them a prime view through the enormous curved bay windows and their mountain was the first vision they saw as they woke each morning.  At any time of the day they could watch Sierra Asombroso change her colors from their personal sanctuary.

Lynette chose to decorate the two guest bedrooms completely different.  One should reflect a feminine taste; the other a more masculine effect.  Balance – always they tried to find harmony and balance in everything she and Blaze did.  The walls in the more feminine bedroom were plastered and tinted in the beige adobe, Santa Fe-style.  The queen-size bed she covered in a pink floral Queen Anne ruffled bedspread with double dust ruffles of pink and pale green glancing the floor.  The upholstered window chair and matching hassock were covered in the same fabric.  Pink and green striped chintze curtains hung in both windows and puddled onto the hardwood floor.  The bed sat on a cream-colored rug with a twelve-inch wide pale green border which only covered the center of the hardwood floors.   She found an old, worn chest of drawers with vertical doors, and painted it off-white herself, adding appliqués for interest. It was a strikingly beautiful room, definitely for a girl or woman.

The other guest room was done in a wilderness/forest theme with greens and blacks – elk and animal motifs, rustic ponderosa pine bed and a massive dark, soft leather chair with matching ottoman.  Three of the walls and one-third of the fourth wall were made of honey-colored, D-cut half logs, tightly fitted with only a minimum of chinking.  That created the “cabin feel” of the room.  The lamps were made of a golden, translucent glass with wrought iron forest designs and the flat screen television hung on a wall that was partially covered in the same limestone rocks as the towering fireplace in the Great Room.  Though there was an adequate walk-in closet in the room, Lynette put a Mexican armoire in there also to hold blankets and other comfort items. It was a comfortable room for anyone, but especially for a male person.   In the original plans, that room would have French doors to the outside deck, but after what happened in October, Blaze decided that the fewer entrances to the house, the better.  So they decided to use the same size double-pane windows as in the other guest room for external symmetry. Each of the guest bathrooms had double sinks, a princess tub and glass enclosed shower.  Lynette had toyed with putting an individual bidet next to the toilets, but both she and Blaze laughed at the trouble it could make if there were children visiting on that side of the house!