In the Dead of Night (28 page)

I managed to hide my unease and soon it was business as usual. Or, at least business lately, headlined by our virtuoso front man on the violin. Sort of like having John Elway at quarterback…it automatically makes the team better.

Incredible energy filled the room, which made me completely forget all the bullshit going on in my life. An amazing experience as we moved toward the end of our planned format for the show. I began to fantasize what might await us this weekend.

Then the phone rang…my cell phone. I hadn’t paid any attention to it, being completely immersed in our music. It shocked me to see nearly a dozen missed calls, all from Fiona.

“Guys give me a moment…it must be important,” I told them. Mongo petitioned the others for a cigarette break, and Chris seconded the notion.

Good. It gave me the chance to find out what she wanted. She called me from her cell number, instead of Nan’s line. It had to be something bad. Otherwise, whatever it is could’ve waited until I returned to Stella’s place.

“Hey, babe, what’s up?”

“Jimmy??”

“Yeah—“

“He struck again!!”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Who?” I asked her

It came out really weak, my voice cracking.

“A-an-gie!”
she blurted out between sobs.

“Angie?!”

“Yes!!”

It suddenly hit me what she meant….the killer struck again.

“No! Oh, my
God!!”
I whispered in disbelief.
“She’s dead??”

“No, she’s alive,” she said, her voice suddenly more calm, but shaking still. “She’s beat up…and he
cut
her!”

She started crying again.

“Where are you?” I asked gently, though my voice trembled.

“Summit,” she said. “We’re all here…. Can you get away and meet us at the hospital?”

“Sure, I’ll be right there, babe. I love you.”

“I love you too, Jimmy.
Please
hurry!”

I must’ve stared at the phone for nearly a minute after she hung up. Yes, the killer
did
strike again. But this time, he’d grossly miscalculated the strength and feistiness of his prey. Now there was a living witness. One who could identify him.

I told my band mates what’d happened, and hurriedly packed up my gear. Under the circumstances, they completely understood. After confirming the gig start time for this Saturday, I said goodbye and ran out to my car. I didn’t even bother to check whether anyone watched me, or followed me out of the parking area. All I cared about was getting my ass to Summit Hospital as quickly as possible, to comfort my wife and our friends while we waited on the latest news regarding Angie.

Chapter Twenty-three

I arrived at Summit Hospital just after eleven o’clock. Fiona told me to meet her and everyone else in the waiting room outside the ICU wing.

“I got here just as fast as I could!” I told her, as she stood to greet me, running over and throwing her arms around my neck. My cue to hold on tight, she collapsed in my arms as she sobbed. A host of worried faces nearby made me wonder if Angie’s injuries were worse than my wife let on. Maybe she succumbed to them during the time it took me to get here from Madison.

“She’s going to be all right,” said Jackie, rising from her chair to join us where we stood. She chuckled sadly, perhaps in response to the perplexed look on my face. “Angie. Angie’s going to be okay. You just missed the doctor who gave us the latest update. They’re planning to move her upstairs to observe her overnight, and he said she’d likely get to go home tomorrow.”

“But she’s lucky she didn’t get hurt worse!” Fiona added, looking up into my face, her eyes darting back and forth as she sought reassurance that everything would work out…that we’d all be okay.

“True. She’s
very
lucky he didn’t kill her,” added Jackie. She looked like she might start crying as well. Ditto for her life partner, Michelle, sitting next to Justin.

I nodded to him and Tony and Tom, but then froze.

Mr. Ed?

It’d just figure that Dick Tracy would be there, too, tonight. Perhaps that ain’t all bad…as long as he’s making some serious progress in finding this sadistic killer. Hopefully, he’s got a bunch of new leads after what happened to Angie.

“I understand that Angie remembers enough from her attack where she might be able to I.D. the guy,” I said. Just testing the knowledge water. It didn’t matter if the answer came from a ghost hunter or an official homicide detective like Ed Silver. Justin replied first.

“Most of us haven’t seen her yet, but she told Jackie that the dude who attacked her definitely has red hair,” he said, and then looked over at Ed, as if waiting for some confirmation from him.

I could’ve saved him the trouble. Despite being a philanderer, the man does stay along the straight and narrow as far as standard police protocol is concerned. No way in hell would Ed give a confirmation, one way or another, as to the killer’s identity or appearance. At least not to a black man who looks like he might’ve spent time behind bars. For that matter, I doubt he’d have shared anything in my presence if he didn’t regard Fiona with such high esteem. Same thing for Tony, I guess, on account of his ethnic background. That leaves just Tom…until he starts talking. I’d already witnessed Ed sizing him up, likely wondering if he’s queer or not.

True to my estimation, Detective Silver shook his head while tapping his pen on the small steno pad he likes to carry around with him. You’d think he’d have switched to a small recorder eons ago, but he’s still stuck in the twentieth century. Circa 1985, like I mentioned before.

“How did it happen?” I asked, this time looking directly at Ed before turning my attention to Jackie. My way of telling him I could’ve given a rat’s ass if the answer came from his ‘official’ point of view or not. “I guess I should also ask when it happened.”

“Tonight,” said Fiona, sniffling still. A fresh stream of tears grazed my hand as I gently stroked her cheek. “Jackie said she snuck away from Franklin to get some clothes from their apartment in Nashville.”

“That was around four o’clock this afternoon,” added Jackie, her eyes filled with tears as well. “I started to worry when she hadn’t returned by eight, so I called Fiona to see if she’d heard from her…. I guess we both felt something really bad had happened.”

I nodded thoughtfully, not sure what to say. Sure, I could say something along the lines of ‘there-there’ to infuse that male confidence the fairer sex seems to crave now and then. But not a chance of that in said male company—too clichéd and awkward—especially with Mr. Ed here on official police business.

“Apparently, the assailant was waiting inside Jackie and Angie’s apartment,” said Tom, picking up where the ladies left off after an awkward minute of silence. “He jumped her and tied her up, and then drove her SUV to a remote location with Angie bound and gagged in the rear storage compartment.”

“He took her all the way out to Mount Juliet,” added Justin, shaking his head in disbelief. “By the time he got there and pulled her out of the car, it was already getting dark. Jackie said the dude dragged her into a little shack where he had all kinds of knives and shit….like machetes, sickles, and sling blades.”

I must confess I couldn’t suppress the smirk that suddenly appeared on my face, thinking of some Billy Bob Thornton red-haired miscreant saying shit like ‘You need to sit on down here, lil’ girl, uum-hmm!… Gonna teach ya a lesson, I reckon. Sit still while I hit ya on the head with this here lawn mower blade. I sharpened it just this afternoon…uum-hmm! It’ll hurt a bit, I reckon, but y’all be okay once we’re through…uum-hmm!”

But then I looked over at Fiona and Jackie again...my smirk immediately disappeared. They now cried even harder. Angie damn near died, and who’s to say the next one among us would be so fortunate?

“How did she escape?” I asked, turning again to the males for an answer.

This time Ed did speak up, surprising me and from what I could tell, Fiona.

“Her assailant made a mistake by loosening her bonds just enough when she complained about needing to relieve her bladder. Excuse me, ladies,” he said. He paused while looking past me, to where he focused completely on one lady, my wife. “No doubt the perpetrator underestimated her strength. Once free from her bonds, Angie fought back, despite being hit several times with a blunt object and sliced up with a cleaver he carried in his suit.”

“Suit? Was it black?”

I hated sounding coy, but I didn’t want to carry my previous assumptions if they proved incorrect.

“Yes, it was,” he said, eyeing me seriously for a moment. I hoped to God he didn’t suddenly think the dude was me. “She described it as a fighting outfit…like the ninja get-up you told your wife about, Jimmy.”

Okay, I felt a little relieved, based on how he spoke my name just then. At least he didn’t say something like ‘Yes, it was a ninja suit, Senor Jimmy—
your
stinking ninja suit!’

“So, what happened next?” I asked, needing just a few more details to put together events and the most likely timeline for them. “Fiona told me how Jackie brought her here, but I’m sure there’s more to it than just that.”

“She called me from a cell phone belonging to a motorist she flagged down near I-40,” said Jackie, and Ed seemed quite comfortable letting her take over. “Luckily Interstate 840 got me there within an hour. But had I known about the bruises and cuts she had, I would’ve insisted she take an ambulance to the nearest hospital. She never let on how bad it was for her.”

“So, why did she want to come to this place?” I asked, unable to hide my disdain. This particular hospital proved fatal to several people close to me, including Fiona’s maternal grandmother. “That had to be her idea…right?”

“Yes,” she replied, grimacing in a way that let me know she didn’t think much more of Summit than I did. “She said they had done a good job setting an ankle sprain for her a year ago.”

We all nodded quietly, although Michelle rolled her eyes a little. It damn near made me laugh out loud. Not about Angie’s current physical state, but I’d say her mental state might not be in tip-top shape. Definitely not, if we considered her criteria for choosing a hospital.

“I picked her up around ten-fifteen, and then we arrived here in the emergency room about eleven,” said Jackie. “Angie seemed a little incoherent up until we got here, and then she got upset when they wanted to keep her overnight.”

“So, she’s ready to go home, huh?” I said, chuckling at that fiery personality of Angie’s—always bucking the system. “With all the conditioning she does, I imagine she’ll heal pretty fast from her injuries.”

“Other than one deep bruise on her left shoulder, she should be okay right away,” Ed added. “The biggest thing is the cuts that required stitches, which she’ll have for at least a week.”

“Well, since hands and arms can heal pretty fast, she’s lucky the killer missed her face,” Jackie observed, which told me more about how the attack played out. The wounds on Angie’s hands and arms were probably defense injuries. Good thing, again, that she escaped and ran away…. I now wondered where Angie’s SUV had been abandoned.

“Ed, has the Wilson County Sheriff found Angie’s truck yet?”

Fiona posed this question, which made me think she’d picked up on my silent musing just then.

“Not yet,” he advised, flipping through his steno pad as if the answer would suddenly appear there. He should really upgrade to a Blackberry or some other data device, since at this point an Etch-a-Sketch would do him more good. “We’ll need more concise information from her before I can pursue the manpower necessary to track it down,” he continued. “Hopefully I can get in to see her before they move her, or kick us out.”

I think Fiona said something about a relaxed curfew in this waiting room when I called her from the highway earlier. It just boils down to who wants to stay here on the slim chance of seeing Angie before daybreak.

“I’d like to see her too,” said Justin, to which Tom and Tony echoed similar desires.

Man, it didn’t take long for Ed to react, turning toward all three of them, scowling. Maybe Justin did this on purpose. One could only hope.

“Guys, I don’t think anyone is going to get past Attila the Hun over there tonight,” said Jackie, motioning to a fairly stout nurse wearing a blonde wig.

Manning the main reception desk on this floor like a Trojan sentry, the nurse looked unapproachable. Like she’d either bite a dude’s head off or castrate him—or both—if any of us guys dared to interrupt her relative solitude. She probably wasn’t a lot of fun for the ladies either.

“What’s Angie doing in the ICU anyway?” I asked, voicing one of the first questions that entered my mind once I found out that none of her injuries were life-threatening.

“It’s just precaution on the hospital’s part,” said Ed, straightening in his chair, perhaps ready to leave. “Your wife will tell you that Angie refused x-rays or even a standard full body exam. Nobody here wants to get sued.”

“Michelle and I will stay tonight, and we can let everyone know when more updates come and when they move her upstairs,” said Jackie. “So, why don’t the rest of you go home?”