STATE OF ANGER: A Virgil Jones Mystery Series (Detective Virgil Jones Mystery Series Book 1) (2 page)

2

__________

Present Day

A
s
far as the Sids were concerned, there really was no other way they could do it.
Their target, Franklin Dugan, CEO of Sunrise National Bank in Indianapolis was
simply too private, too protected, and too damn stubborn to vary his routine.
So in the end they said fuck it and did it the hard way.

At forty-two years old, Sidney
Wells Sr. had planned, waited, prepared, and dreamed of this moment for half
his life. He raised Sid Jr. in the same manner, which is to say he raised her
to hate. “Raised her right,” he’d say, if anyone ever asked him.

No one ever did.

Morning came, and the light of a
cloudless dawn filtered through the windshield of the Sid’s van. They were
parked a block and a half away on a side street that cornered the property line
of the Governor’s mansion. Sid Jr. was checking the time on the dashboard clock
while alternately looking through binoculars at the State Police cruiser parked
across the street from the mansion. Junior made sure the time on the dash
matched her wristwatch. It did. Twelve minutes to go.

“You ready?” Senior said.

“Yeah. Pull around the corner so I
can get out without Barney Fife up there seeing me. You sure you’re up for what
you have to do?”

“I’ve been waiting for this for
almost twenty-five years,” Senior said. “I’m more than ready. Just make sure
you do your part.”

“Don’t worry, Daddy-O. I’ve got
the easy part, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember,” Senior said.
He dropped the transmission into gear and they turned the corner and stopped
the van again so Sid Jr. could get out. “You sure the timing’s right?”

Junior shut the car door then
leaned down into the open window on the passenger side. “He’s never more than a
minute off. I’ll come in from the south and be able to adjust my pace and time
it just right. Just make sure you’ve got the angle on Barney over there. And
try not to miss. Missing would be bad.”

“I won’t miss, for Christ sake. I
never miss,” Senior said. Then he said something that both surprised and shamed
him, though he couldn’t explain why. “I love you, Sidney.”

Sidney Jr. smiled and tucked a
lock of red hair behind her ear and when she did, Senior thought for a moment
he was back in time and looking at his wife more than twenty years ago. Neither
one said anything else after that. Junior just turned and jogged away, a fanny
pack bouncing lightly on her hip.

__________

Indiana State Trooper Jerry Burns sat
in his police cruiser, his radio turned down low, his windows open. He yawned,
took the last sip of cold coffee from his thermos and checked his watch. This
was the best part of the day for him. It had been a long and boring night, but
now—just before seven in the morning—he’d be off shift in less than
thirty minutes. Better still, in less than five minutes or so, he’d get a
gander at the eye candy jogging up the street. She wore the same thing every
day…tight black shorts made of spandex or something like that, though he didn’t
think they called it spandex anymore, a black sports bra, and white Nikes with little
ankle socks. Her red hair was cut short and fell against her jaw line and every
time Burns watched her jog by he wished he were thirty years younger. Her
stomach was flat and firm, her ass was high and tight, and her tits had just
the right amount of bounce.

He checked his watch again, and
then looked out the window. He saw her come around the corner and jog in place
for a minute, checking the time on her watch, like she was taking her pulse,
trying to get a read on her heart rate or something. Burns didn’t know much
about physical fitness anymore, but he knew about heart rates. Age and all.

He watched her jog in place for a
few minutes, then surprisingly, she did something she’d not ever done before.
She waved at him. Jerry sat up a little straighter in his seat and gave her a
casual wave back, cool, a little detached. A fucking-A State Trooper, no matter
his age.

She tucked a lock of hair behind her
ear and started running again. Jerry Burns was so preoccupied with bouncing
boobs, tight ass cheeks and board-flat stomach muscles he never noticed the
cargo van behind him brake to a stop and park at the intersection a half block
away.

He did see the Governor’s neighbor
walking down the drive in his robe and slippers though to fetch the morning paper.
Right on time, he thought. Like maybe Red and the neighbor had a little
sumpin-sumpin going on behind someone’s back.

The thought of it sort of pissed
him off.

__________

Right on time, Sidney thought. She
picked up the pace just a bit. The timing would be critical. She got to the end
of the drive just as Franklin Dugan did. They smiled at each other and Sidney
stopped and bent over to retie her shoe.

“Good morning” Sidney said.

“It certainly is,” Dugan replied.
“You’ll forgive me for saying so, but I’ve noticed you’ve become somewhat of a
regular, jogging around here in the morning.”

“I hope that doesn’t bother you,”
Sidney said, looking up from her shoes.

“No, no, not at all,” Dugan said.
“Just making conversation with a beautiful young woman.” He smiled at her.
“Kind of a nice way to start the day.”

Sidney finished her shoe and
picked up the paper for Dugan. When she stood up she wobbled slightly on her
feet, dropped the paper back on the ground and said, “Whoa.” She stumbled away
from Dugan like she was about to fall and when she did he stepped in close and
grabbed her by the arms. “Hey, easy there. I think you stood up to fast.”

Sidney smiled and stayed close.
“Yeah, you’re probably right. But I’m okay. I think I just need a drink of
water.”

“I’d be happy to get you a glass
if you’d like to come up to the house,” Dugan said.

“Oh, no, but thanks. I’ve got a
bottle right here in my pack.”

Dugan smiled at her. It was the
sort of smile that said,
well, I’m not putting the moves on you or anything
like that, even though under the right set of circumstances...
Sid Jr.
smiled right back with her best,
bullshit, you are too and we both know it,
circumstances or not
smile. Dugan’s face reddened a bit. He bent down to
get his paper and when he did, Sid Jr. took half a step sideways and slid her
hand into her fanny pack like she was getting a bottle of water.

__________

Trooper Burns watched the entire
exchange. The whole thing made him sick. Sure, she was just a fantasy, but she
was
his
fantasy. But now the fat cat across the street was ruining
everything.

Fuckin’ with his mojo.

Jerry thought the guy was a banker
or something like that. Fucking bankers. Getting rich while the rest of the
country starved to death. Jerry was no bleeding heart leftie, but enough was
enough already. How much steak could one guy eat anyway?

He saw the fat cat bend over to
collect his newspaper—it had sort of scattered when the redheaded babe
dropped it. Jerry was secretly hoping she’d bend over and get it. Maybe give
him a little ass shot or something. Didn’t happen though. Instead, the babe
reached into her fanny pack. But she didn’t unzip it from the top. She pulled a
Velcro flap from the side. Had sort of a stance going, too. Feet planted
firmly, knees slightly bent, shoulders square. If Jerry didn’t know better, it
looked sort of like a shooter’s stance. He thought,
huh
.

Then he saw the redheaded babe
pull out a gun and thought,
Holy Shit
.

It was the last thought of his
career.

And his life.

__________

Sid Sr. had a perfect angle. He
was in the back of the van, a small tinted slider window open just enough for
the barrel of his scoped and silenced bolt-action rifle. He kept the cross
hairs of the scope tight on the spot just behind the left ear of the cop. But
he could also see Junior talking to the banker across the street. Their plan
was to fire as close together as possible. Didn’t want to hit the cop first and
have to chase the banker around in a panic, and didn’t want to hit the banker
first and deal with a trained cop and his radio.

When Junior reached into her fanny
pack, Senior tightened up on the cop. When she had the gun almost all the way
clear of her pack Senior saw the cop start to wiggle, the door coming open. It
was going to be close, but he had to do it. The cop saw what was happening.

Sid Sr. pulled the trigger.

__________

Dugan had his paper all bunched
back together and started to stand up and when he did he looked across the
street. He started to wave at the cop in the squad car, but before Dugan was
even half way straightened up he saw Trooper Jerry Burns’ head come apart. The
bullet struck with such force and accuracy that Trooper Burns’ arm, the same
fucking-A State Trooper arm he had used to wave at the beautiful young woman
only moments ago raised up as if he were waving once again. Then his body
slumped sideways and out of sight into the passenger side of his squad, his age
and heart rate no longer an issue.

That was the last thing Franklin
Dugan saw before Junior flipped his switch.

__________

She popped him right in the side
of his head from about a foot and a half with a silenced twenty-two-caliber
semi-auto. Dugan dropped on the spot, dead before he hit the ground, the bullet
bouncing around inside his head like a bumblebee in a blender. She put two into
his chest just to be sure, then bent over to grab her brass. They were hot, but
not overly so. Still, when she picked up the third casing—the last one
fired—it burned her finger and thumb and she lost her grasp. It hit the
pavement just right, did a little flip and a half moon roll then tinkled down
the storm drain between the curb and the street.

The van was rolling up close. She
swore silently, took a quick peek into the drain, didn’t see anything, swore
again, and then jumped into the van. She pulled the door shut and Senior drove
them away going no faster than the posted limit, like maybe they were going to
church or something. He zigzagged through a few side streets just to be sure
and a few minutes later they were on the loop, lost to the world.

Gone, just like that.

3

__________

O
utside
of the two years he served in Iraq One, Virgil Jones had worked in law
enforcement his entire adult life. His father, Mason Jones, had been the Marion
County sheriff until he retired a few years ago, but Virgil took the state
route and became a Trooper. He put in the time, got the job done and when the
Governor of Indiana appointed a black female cop by the name of Cora LaRue as
administrator of the newly sanctioned Major Crimes Unit she hired Virgil as her
lead detective. And as a political appointee, Virgil technically outranked even
the superintendent of the state police. In theory, he could go anywhere in the
state anytime he needed to investigate and arrest criminals who fell under the
state’s loosely defined rules of Cora’s Major Crimes Unit. With scant little
oversight, for a guy like Virgil, that was just about perfect. As long as he
produced and made a reasonable effort to stay between the lines—blurry
that they sometimes were—no one got in his way.

Usually.

The morning was clear and warm, the
temperature perfect and Virgil was just about to turn into his parking spot at
the State Police building behind the courthouse when his cell phone buzzed at
him. The caller I.D. showed the cell phone number of Sandy Small, one of his
team members. He grabbed the phone, fumbled it, and then caught it in the tips
of his fingers, upside down, almost clipping a parked car in the process. He
stopped in the middle of the street, threw the truck in park, turned the phone
over—which by now was on its last ring before it kicked over to voice
mail—hit the little green talk button and said “This is Jonesy.”

For a moment Virgil thought he’d
missed it. It didn’t sound like Sandy was there. Just the empty background
noise you get over a bad connection. But then, just like that, she was there.
He could hear her in the background, and then there was a noise so sharp Virgil
winced and pulled the phone away from his ear. It sounded like Sandy was
panting, breathing hard, and swearing all at the same time. She kept counting,
one through five, over and over.

As a new team member, Sandy had been
assigned to the governor’s protection detail for the past week as a way to get
to know the governor on a more personal level. A better understanding of who
she was really working for and all that. Today was her last day with the governor
before she started catching cases.

Virgil got that ‘pit of your stomach’
feeling that something was very wrong. He dropped the truck into gear, hit the
lights and burped the siren through the intersection. It was just past seven in
the morning. Sandy would still be at the governor’s mansion. He put the phone
on speaker so he could have both hands on the wheel to drive. “Sandy? Sandy,
can you hear me?” Virgil shouted into the phone but she didn’t respond. He heard
her though…a grunt of effort, then more swearing. He couldn’t quite make it
out, but it sounded like she was saying ‘shit’, over and over.

A few seconds later as Virgil slid
through a corner and turned north on Meridian Avenue he heard her loud and
clear, her voice coming through on the Motorola police radio mounted under the
dash of his truck. “Officer down. Shots fired. Officer needs assistance.
Governor’s Mansion. Repeat…Officer…Down. Officer…needs…” Then nothing.

Virgil dropped the hammer on the
truck and blew the intersection. He didn’t think about, just went and went
hard. A little quick math put him eight minutes out if he didn’t kill himself
on the way there.

__________

Sandy Small had a Bachelor’s
degree in education and a Master’s degree in psychology. She also ranked as an
expert in marksmanship on the shooting range. Translation: She could out think
and out shoot just about every cop in the state
and
could also teach
anyone how to do it if they wanted to put their bullshit on the back burner.
Most didn’t, but that wasn’t on her.

She was on the last day of her
protection rotation, covering the overnights at the governor’s mansion. Her new
boss, Virgil, had told her that they’d all had to do it, part of some getting
to know the big guy routine, or something. As far as Sandy was concerned,
protection was protection, simple as that. Getting to know someone in the
process was neither a pro nor a con. It was more of an inconvenience than
anything. But no matter…this was the last day and she was almost done.

At seven in the morning Sandy
stepped out of the back door of the governor’s mansion, walked across the deck,
down the steps and headed outside. Monday morning, last time of the last day to
walk the wall. The Governor’s mansion was situated on a full acre of property
at the northern edge of the city of Indianapolis. An entire acre, Sandy had
discovered, covered
43,650 square feet, and in this case, said
acre was surrounded by a nine-foot high brick wall on all four sides. At about
three feet per walking step around the perimeter, it was safe to say that doing
one circuit per hour every eight hours over the last week had been a lot of
walking. Good for the heart and lungs.

Not to mention the ass.

She varied her
routine—sometimes clockwise, sometimes counter-clockwise. She always
paused at the gate at the front of the drive though, stepped out and waved to the
uniformed duty cop who had the overnight street-side patrol before continuing back
to the house. This last trip was no different. Jerry Burns, the old coot,
whistled at her every time she went by.

Sandy was about fifteen steps from
the front entrance—in the middle of pulling her long blond hair into a
ponytail—when she heard the sounds, three in all. Or was it four? A
pop
,
like a car backfiring. She stopped and listened. Heard another noise, then a
short pause, before two more. The sound was distinct, especially if you knew
what you were listening for—a ratcheting sound almost like the cycling
action of a semi-auto. Then she thought,
no, exactly like the cycling action
of a semi-auto
. Muffled pops after the ratcheting sound. It took her a few
seconds to process, but when she did, Sandy took off full tilt toward the gate.

__________

By the time she got there it was
over. She tried to push the gate open, then remembered she had to input a code
into the box, a wait that made her blood boil. She ran to the street and tried
to process what she saw: A white panel van as it turned the corner a half block
away. Couldn’t get the plate. No more than a glimpse of the vehicle itself. A
man across the street on his back, his limbs jutted outward at difficult
angles, his paisley robe askew, a leather slipper missing from his foot, a pool
of blood that seemed to grow darker the closer she got, glassy eyes staring at
nothing. Gone.

A banker, she thought? Where did
that come from? She let it go.

A look to her left. The squad car.
Windows down. Engine off. Seat empty. Reddish tint on the front windshield.

She ran to the car. Pulled her
cell out along the way, and hit Virgil’s number from the speed dial. At the
first ring she was almost there. At the second ring she looked inside the
squad. At the third ring she had the phone pinched between her shoulder and her
ear. At the fourth ring she had the door open and pulled the trooper out of his
vehicle, her hands wrapped under his armpits. She lost the phone as it
clattered to the ground, but she thought she heard Virgil answer.

Sandy pulled hard until she got Jerry
clear of the vehicle and flat on his back. No pulse. Not breathing. She began
CPR, counting with each chest compression, and then pausing to breathe into his
lungs. Her hair hung in a ponytail over the front of her shoulder and every
time she bent forward to give Burns mouth-to-mouth the ends of her hair landed
in the pool of blood next to Jerry’s head, like a paintbrush. Eventually she
gave up on the counting and began to swear as she compressed his chest….“shit
shit shit.” Five shits then a breath. Every time she compressed his chest a few
drops of blood seeped out of the hole in the side of his head.

When that didn’t work, she crawled
to the cruiser and grabbed the microphone and started transmitting. “Officer
down. Shots fired. Officer needs assistance. Governor’s Mansion.
Repeat…Officer…Down. Officer…needs…” Out of breath. She dropped the microphone
and started back in on Jerry. She tried to remember something personal about
him. Wife? Kids? She didn’t know. Couldn’t think. The microphone she’d just
used dangled from Jerry’s squad car, hung out over the edge of the bottom of
the doorjamb, smeared with blood. Sandy watched it sway back and forth as she
worked on Jerry. Somewhere in the back of her mind it registered as one of the
saddest things she’d ever seen—Jerry’s microphone hanging upside down
from the door of his squad car.

He was gone—she knew
it—but she kept at it anyway. Didn’t know what else to do. Heard the
sirens. They sounded far away. The blood on her hair painted her shirt as she
worked on Jerry.

Five shits, then a breath.