Murder at Willow Slough (38 page)

He didn’t want just sex; he wanted Jamie. If Kent was Gay, maybe he’d have let the beach bum blow him.

He wasn’t Gay.

But it didn’t seem likely that someone as smart as Jamie fell in with the wrong crowd. At any rate, the hospital didn’t call.

43  

Iota

When Kent got back with the smoking diskettes, nurses suggested that he try talking to Jamie, since Kent was on guard duty every night; some people believe the comatose can hear.

The coma dragged on three days, five days, longer. So Kent talked, said everything that came into his head, with no one else around. Did something else too; kissed little fingers, blessed them, begged God, before he left every morning. Found no response, just Jamie’s body imperceptibly curling into a fetal position.

***

Operation Pride was successful, with nine arrested and four dead, Kent told him; Jamie was fantastic. Kent talked about the patch when Jamie called home like it was the most brilliant idea in history. “You could have called direct, but by working it through us, we knew what to do.” He described the chain to the FBI, the ongoing investigation; he praised Jamie to the skies. He told all about Carson, the most evil of the bad guys, because he was a lawman. “We searched his vacation house and found child pornography, Jamie. Pictures of three-year-old girls with no clothes on. And adults doing things to their private parts. His own daughter! It makes you so mad to see them. I mean, little babies? Guys like that should be shot.”

Kent was the one who shot him, lurking in the trees. One flesh wound and Carson tumbled right out of a maple.

Kent talked about the press coverage; he babbled and didn’t care. “It’s a media zoo. We’ve been invited onto Larry King, Barbara Walters, that show with Jane Pauley—I always liked Jane Pauley, she’s a Hoosier girl. ‘60 Minutes,’ let’s see, who else? Letterman. I’ve talked to David Letterman’s mom, Jamie, can you believe that? She’s very nice, down to earth, like your aunt who always gives you a shirt for Christmas, the same shirt every year. Of course, I’m not going to do a show like that, even if he is from Indy. It wouldn’t be right, it’s an entertainment show and this ain’t for laughs. He’s off limits. But it’s kinda nice to be asked.

“The tabloid shows have all begged and begged, but I vetoed all of ’em, don’t want nobody talking to ’em. There’s a show called ‘Cops’ that wants to do a re-enactment, and we might do that someday; the major kinda likes that show and other officers watch it. All the morning shows, what else? Oh, ‘48 Hours’ with Dan Rather.”

He thought he saw Jamie twitch at the last one—he couldn’t be sure—so every night Kent watched Dan Rather and talked about him, but Jamie never woke up.

***

When he ran out of things to say, Kent confessed the other thing that happened that night. “I wasn’t there for you.” He cried; his tears were burning hot. “I let you down.” He screeched, he’d never hurt so bad in his life.

But it led to the ultimate confession, of his feelings for him.

Jamie slept right through it.
***

Afterward Kent felt a little better to finally admit the truth. He prayed that if Jamie woke up, Kent would say one-fourth of what was on his mind, even if he had to force himself. “You deserve to hear the truth, man. Even if you hate me, you deserve to hear.”

Major Slaughter brought him magazines to read during the slack time: Gay ones for Jamie called Out Is In, The Clarion, Into the Streets; plus People, Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, Time. The crime was on the cover of most of them. U.S. News got the whole team together. People trotted out an old shot from that time they named Kent the Sexiest Man in Baseball. SI had action photos from his playing days.

He read articles to Jamie, though he didn’t understand what he was reading with the Gay stuff. He described the pictures; his commentaries were more amusing than the stories. “You should see this guy, he’s got piercings and tattoos and I don’t know what. Wild spiky hair, a whole row of things up his ear. A ring in his nose, with chains that go up to his earlobes and down to where? The picture’s cut off below his waist. Good grief, you’d think he’d rust after awhile. Put him in a rainstorm and he couldn’t move. The Tin Man. Maybe he carries 3-in-1 Oil in his backpack.”

Over and over Kent spilled his guts to a silent snore. The situation was hopeless, though, every night the same.

But Jesse Jackson played in his head: “Keep hope alive.” Kent cried some, and got tough; and cried a little more, and talked, in case it helped. “It can’t hurt anything,” his mother told him. Martha Kessler visited her son every evening, and Kent always told Jamie what she wore, the food she brought, how things were going on the farm.

He watched Jamie’s body melt away for lack of food. Every day beautiful muscles atrophied as the body devoured itself. It was heartbreaking, grotesque, terrifying, and there was nothing Kent could do to stop it.

He brought his chair close, studied the bruises on Jamie’s face, the backs of his hands where Ford stood on them. The wounds on Jamie’s side had no way to heal. The body can’t repair when it’s fighting for survival. Yet Kent loved those bruises, like he loved the footage of Jamie getting aggressive.

“You portray yourself like you’re not the fighting type. You’d rather talk about old movies. You have an aversion to guns you can’t even tell me about.

“But there you were, fighting for your life. Thirteen against one and you attacked! It took ’em five minutes to get you back down, it took seven guys to do it. Man, your arm strength was awesome. If Ford had-n’t had that knife you’d have beaten ’em!

“Jamie, I just wish I’d gotten there sooner. If it was you and me, I know we could have taken them. The guy with the little knife, the one who stabbed you, they did an autopsy. He’s the one you kneed and kicked. You broke his jaw, Jamie. If he hadn’t been killed on the scene, he’d have needed surgery after you got done with him.

“I’m sorry for the way it came down; but I’m proud of what you did. You were incredible! But you know what I’m proudest of? That after all that work for other people, you finally fought for yourself. Man oh man, that just fills my heart with pride. Sometimes in this world, it’s kill or be killed, Jamie. I know you don’t want to live that way, but sometimes that’s how it is. And when they tried to get you—you went for the kill.

“You hated those killers as much as I do. You hated, man. Hate’s not a great thing. But sometimes it is. Let loose! Hate them.

“And you did. You traded your life for some poor stupid guy you didn’t even know.

“That’s why you gotta stay alive now, Jamie. You gotta wake up. They’re dead, some of ’em, and now’s your time to live.”

It was bottom-of-the-heartfelt. But it didn’t help one iota.
***

Kent ran the whole gamut of emotions. “Jamie, I was so scared. Shakin’ in my boots. How could you do this to me? Man, I was terrified. I still am, damn you. Wake up!”

***

A nurse came, late one night, leaned into the doorway, watched Kent trim Jamie’s fingernails. His nails grew even as his body wasted away, and here was a state trooper giving personal care. She was pained by the intimacy of it.

Kent picked up a slice that went flying into the bed, lest Jamie roll onto it and feel discomfort. She said, “Care to talk?”

“I’m that bad, huh? Sure.” Kent pulled out the other chair for her.

“It’s so hard just to wait.”

“What can I expect if he wakes up? You’ve seen this before, I haven’t.”

“Well, on coming to, he won’t be able to function. It’s such a big step, regaining consciousness, that you can’t expect anything more than that. Everything is measured in steps. He won’t be able to talk at first. He’ll be in pain, extremely uncomfortable. You’ll want to communicate with him, but you won’t know whether he understands a word you say. Still, go ahead and try. Maybe all he’ll be able to do in reply is blink. Maybe he’ll be able to squeeze your hand. But realize, he won’t know you from Adam.”

“Why the heck not?”

“You met too recently. You’re not family, a friend he’s known for years. He’ll have no short-term memory. He won’t know what happened to him or why he’s here. He won’t be able to feed himself, he’ll have no eye-hand coordination, he’ll be like a baby who has to be taken care of.”

“Gee. Poor guy.” Kent trimmed Jamie’s little finger.

“Waking up is no guarantee, either. We could still lose him even after he wakes up.”

“Give me the good scenario. I already know the bad one.”

“He wakes up, and day by day he gets a little stronger. We’ll get him drinking full-nutrient liquids. His body starts to recognize that it’s getting more nutritional support, so it gradually improves systemically, cell by cell, organ by organ. The central nervous system begins to respond. Slowly he’ll regain the power of speech. We’ll test his vocabulary, help him relearn words. We’ll begin physical therapy, first in bed, later in a chair, simple things like pointing to body parts. All this improves his coordination. As his nutrition upgrades, so will his physical functioning and his mental alertness. We give him, while he’s unconscious, the best nutrition we have, but it’s so inadequate, all it really does is keep him alive. There’s no substitute for real food. And the lack of that, as well as the physical trauma, works against his waking up. The longer this goes on, the worse it is. If he stays under for more than a month, he’ll never completely recover.”

“Oh, God.” Kent wasn’t sure he could cry anymore, but inside he cried, as he trimmed Jamie’s thumb.

“Take heart, though. It’s only been a week. So far this isn’t too terrible.”

“I heard this is within range for people who do wake up.”

“So don’t lose hope. But do think about the time when you don’t stay here anymore.”

Kent sighed. When he thought about going back to the cabin, he thought about taking Jamie home with him; caring for him, every day if need be, till he was well.

His mother would say he shouldn’t. Taking care of a sick person for years? Only a madman would do such a thing.

But Jamie had done it for Rick; and caring for Jamie was exactly what Kent wanted to do. He worked on his guy’s index finger.

The nurse said softly, “I’m not religious, half the time I’m an atheist. But I can’t stop thinking about this Bible verse. Greater love hath no man than this…”

“…That a man lay down his life for his friends.” Kent flung aside his clippers. He and Jesus wept.

44  

Citizen

Kent took a call from Phil Blaney. “Commander, I’ve got someone here at the City-County Building you might want to meet. A citizen claims someone paid him to throw a drink on a certain blond patron at Chez Nous.”

“You think this citizen’s credible?”

“Halfway. You might want to take a listen.”

“Hold him.” Kent called the crime lab and ordered an investigation into what caused Jamie’s mic to go out. “Also the sweatshirt. Does it contain a foreign substance?”

“It reeks of beer,” the lab director replied. “Big investigation.”

“Then find out the make, model and serial number.”

***

Phil brought in the citizen, a scared-acting 22-year-old male White. “Commander, this is one William Franklin Gowdy. Lives with his parents in Brownsburg, claims he works at a bank in Castleton. No priors.”

Kent eyed him. “They let you wear all that jewelry at the bank, do they?”

“No,” Gowdy mumbled. “I work Saturdays, this is my day off.”

Phil said, “Tell the sergeant what you told me.”

“Well, um, I was at Chez’s last week, when the stabbing thing happened…”

Kent interrupted, “What were you doing there?”, just to intimidate the guy. He wasn’t in the mood for Good Cop today.

“Dancing. With my friends.”

“Do Mom and Dad know you’re hanging out at Gay bars on weeknights?”

“No. It’s none of their business.”

“Don’t make me play 20 Questions, say what you’ve got to say.”

“Well, we got to the bar late, Jimmy and me, and as we were going inside a security guard asked if I’d play a trick on a guy for twenty bucks.” Phil moved his hand in circles to speed the guy up. There weren’t any security guards at the bar that night. “To spill a drink on this blond guy in an IU sweatshirt.”

“Blonds in a Gay bar,” Phil said, “how original. Wearing an IU shirt. How would you recognize which one?”

“Bright blond hair, built, 5’10”, a face that’s pure Hollywood. I’d know him the minute I saw him, there wouldn’t be anyone else like him. If I wasn’t sure, it wasn’t the right guy, keep looking.”

Kent said, “What else?”

“To be sure to throw the drink on the chest area. Not the shoulder or the back, the middle of the chest.”

“Did they say why?”

“He’s this rabid IU fan, always going on about his precious Hoosiers. The sweatshirt was brand new and it’d screw with his head to have his shirt messed up. That way his Purdue friends could tease him all night.”

“So, you’re in the habit of taking $20 bribes to mess up someone’s outfit. A stranger who never did anything to you; a fellow Gay guy.”

“You must have been drunk already when you got there,” Phil said.

“I didn’t drive,” Gowdy said.

Kent said, “No, but your drunk friend Jimmy did. I’ll be sure to pick you out the next time you’re wearing new clothes.”

“I know it wasn’t right. But I was doing the guard a favor. For twenty bucks, why not?”

“Maybe I can pay you fifty bucks to slash this officer’s tires. Maybe for a hundred you’ll knock over a liquor store.”

Gowdy looked glum. “I said I’m sorry.”

“No, you didn’t. Why are you coming forward now?”

“I think it was the guy who got stabbed.”

Kent and Phil exchanged looks.Kent said,“Pictures of him have been all over TV for a week. Newsweek, Time, the BBC. And you just now recognized him? Lieutenant, you got yourself a real citizen here. Yeah, this is the kind of solid citizen we know we can count on to help us catch criminals, to provide us with information we need to know. And to do it so timely, ya know? Making sure we’ve got all the facts we need to apprehend the bad guys. Lieutenant, I think you got a candidate for a special citation here.”

“Citation?” Gowdy asked.

Phil snarled, “Accessory before the fact.”

“Oh no! I didn’t know what they were going to do to him.”

“You little punk,” Kent said. “You spill your drink on a perfect stranger, find out he’s an incredible hero saving the lives of…”

Phil supplied, “Faggots like you…”

“…Then you wait a week to come forward with the news that Fact A is connected to Fact B!”

Kent turned away. Didn’t want to browbeat the guy, just wanted to make sure he was properly scared and 100% honest. “What drink was it?”

“Huh?”

Phil demanded, “What did you spill on him?”

“Beer.”

Kent sighed, “Bottle, can, draft? Miller, Budweiser, Pabst, Coors? What was it, Mr. Helpful Citizen?”

“Bud draft. In a plastic cup.”

“Tell me about the guard. Did you ever see him before? What was he wearing? How did you know he was a guard?”

“Well, a uniform, patches, a nightstick, no gun, at least I didn’t see one. A baseball cap, I remember that, Pioneer Hi-Bred. No one I’d ever seen before. But it wasn’t a he, it was a she.”

“How could you tell? It was dark outside.”

“I may be Gay, but even I can tell she was a woman. She had tits, a high woman’s voice.”

“A woman guard at a Gay men’s bar? Wearing a baseball cap? Gee, a guard like that’d intimidate me real quick.”

Phil said, “Was she big? For want of a better word, dykey-like?”

“No, average size, petite almost. But she was a real guard, I could tell. We were going to ignore her and just go inside, but she made us stop.”

“Would you recognize her if you saw her again?”

“I don’t think so. She kept her cap real low, I couldn’t really see her face. Plus it was dark, like you said.”

“What else?”

“That’s all.”

“Why did you wait so long?”

“I was scared.”

“Of what? We arrested 13 people. Someone’s going to retaliate when they’re behind bars?”

“I didn’t want to get involved.”

That really ticked Kent off. “Tell it to Davey Shuey, you son of a bitch. Tell it to Glenn Ferguson and a dozen previous victims. Tell it to Mr. Ferguson’s lover, how you didn’t want to get involved. Tell it to the Gay undercover informant who’s lying in a hospital bed right now thanks to you!”

Phil said,“When you find yourself the victim of crime,maybe I won’t want to get involved either.”

Kent told Phil, “Get his information, his employer and his next of kin, then get him out of my sight.”

“Was what I did so wrong? Are you going to charge me?”

Kent walked out, left him to Phil to deal with. Phil said, “I don’t have to tell you this, but I will. For twenty bucks you destroyed the communication system of an undercover informant investigating the murders of 13 Gay men. Under his sweatshirt was a microphone, which is why the chest area was so damn important. Because our informant lost his backup, he got stabbed. He’s now in a coma. You tell me how wrong it was, you slime-sucking dickhead.”

A tear ran down Mr. Gowdy’s face. Phil wasn’t impressed. Five minutes later, after the paperwork, he mumbled thanks for coming forward, better late than never.
***

He made calls; the Chez Nous did employ two female security guards, but they weren’t on duty on a weeknight. Both denied being present and had solid alibis; one was a sheriff ’s deputy and mother of two small kids, the other was an IPD reserve officer who spent half the night with a Gay guy and four women friends, trying to get her lover pregnant with a turkey baster. Both willingly let their closets, laundry baskets and vehicles be searched for baseball caps; no Hi-Bred, no seed corn of any kind.

The lab reported finding beer in the sweatshirt fibers, with a 99.7% likelihood it was regular Budweiser draft.

As advertised, Mr. Citizen was halfway credible, but his story didn’t add up. Phil shrugged and forgot about it.