STATE OF ANGER: A Virgil Jones Mystery Series (Detective Virgil Jones Mystery Series Book 1) (7 page)

Pate stood, but before he did he
affixed the metal bands of his arm crutches around his forearms, grasped the
handles, then pulled himself out of his chair. He came around to the front of
his desk, pointed to the chair with the end of one of the crutches and said,
“Welcome Detective. Please, have a seat.”

They shook hands and when Pate
squeezed his fingers harder and longer than necessary, Virgil said, “That’s an
impressive grip, Mr. Pate. Please release my hand.”

Pate chuckled as if caught in a
polite fib, the kind one might tell to save another of an unnecessary
embarrassment. “I prefer Reverend, if you please,” he said. “And I hope you’ll
forgive me. I’ve spent years moving around with the aid of these crutches. It
tends to build up one’s musculature, wouldn’t you agree? I often forget my own
strength. How exactly may I help you, Detective? My wife said you wanted to speak
with me about Franklin’s unfortunate passing.”

Virgil noticed two things right
away: Like his wife, Pate had referred to the victim by his first name, which
was indicative of a certain level of familiarity beyond a business
relationship, and two, he had referred to Dugan’s murder as an ‘unfortunate
passing.’ Virgil decided to go for some shock value.

“The victim was shot to death in
his own driveway, Reverend. The top of his head was blown off and you could use
what’s left of his skull for a gravy boat. I’d hardly call that an unfortunate passing.”

Pate ignored the statement in its
entirety and said, “There is a war going on out there, Detective. I witness it
every day. The book of Revelation speaks of what is to come and the fate that
will befall those who choose to ignore the word of God. The script is already
written, the players already cast. The outcome for those who follow the
teachings of the bible is a foregone conclusion. The only real question left to
ponder, the only real way to fight the war, is to ask yourself, where do you
stand in the eyes of the Lord, Detective? Do you stand in the light of God, or
in the darkness like those who would murder a man in his own home? You come to
my office with intentions of questioning me over something I know nothing about
regarding I man I knew as a professional, a friend, and a member of this
church. I find your behavior and your demeanor not only questionable but
repulsive.”

Virgil pointed a finger at him. “Save
the shuck for the misinformed you preach to on TV, Reverend. I’m not here to be
your witness. When was the last time you saw Franklin Dugan?”

When Pate answered the fire had
gone out of his voice and his eyes seemed dull. “I saw him last week, at the
taping of the show. He was here, as he always was.”

“When was the last time you were
at his home?”

“I have never been to his home,
Detective. Ever. Let me ask you something, if I may. Franklin was one of our
biggest benefactors. Why in the world would I or anyone from this church for
that matter want to see him harmed?”

“That’s a fine question, sir. It’s
also one that I don’t have the answer to. But here’s an even better one; Why do
you think, Reverend, that the man who was personally responsible for the
approval of a five million dollar loan to your church was murdered just days
after you got the money? Better yet, how is it sir, that you were able to
obtain that kind of credit using an all but condemned building as collateral? Is
any of this starting to make sense to you, Reverend? Would you care to enlighten
me as to the nature of the investigation currently being conducted by the Texas
Department of Insurance regarding your former ministry in Houston?”

Virgil thought he might try to
defend himself, but what Pate said next surprised him and left him momentarily
unable to speak. “My wife tells me of her past relationship with you when you
were schoolmates. She’s an interesting woman, is she not? We’re having a
viewing party this Saturday, here at our facility. We watch the broadcast with
a select few members of the congregation to try to get a feel for how well our
message will be received the next day. She’s asked me to invite you to attend. Would
ten a.m. work for you, Detective?”

__________

When he left the Pate Ministry complex
Virgil realized he had more questions than answers. As he headed downtown for a
court appearance on a previous case he spoke with both Rosencrantz and Donatti
to get a feel for any information they might have gathered from their canvass
of the double murder. Rosie’s voice crackled over a bad cell signal. “Found a
paperboy who says he might have seen the van. He’s just a kid. Sort of a punk,
little bit of smartass in him, but just a kid nonetheless. Or hell, maybe he’s
completely normal and I’m just getting old. Either way, he didn’t see anything
of value. No plate, no make. Says he forgot one of the houses along his route
and had to double back. That’s when he saw the van. But there’s nothing there.”

“You sure?”

“Positive, Jones man. On the plus
side, techs found some brass.”

“No shit?”

“I shit thee not.”

“Prints?”

“Yep. Probably a thumb from
pressing a shell into the clip.”

“All right, that’s something.
Let’s get it going through NCIS.”

“Already on it.”

“Okay. What else?”

“Just spec if you want it.”

“Let’s have it,” Virgil said.

“If you go with the theory that
the banker, uh, Dugan, was the target, they probably shot Burns first then
Dugan.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I talked with Becky back at the
shop and she pulled everything, and I mean everything that Burns had been
involved with for the past three years. It’s all basic, no bullshit kind of
stuff. Hell Jonesy, he’s been on third shift protection for the last two years
and there’s been nothing going on there. He hasn’t even written a traffic
ticket in over thirty-six months. No one’s got any reason to be pissed at Jerry,
so that leaves the banker, right?”

“Yeah, probably.”

“Plus,” Rosencrantz went on,
“Somebody’s always pissed at their banker about something. I mean hell, just
last week I was at my bank—”

“Stay with me here, Rosie.”

“Yeah, yeah, sorry. Anyway, I know
Jerry was close to retirement, but he was still sharp, you know? Well I don’t
know if you noticed or not, but crime scene said his weapon was still
holstered.”

Virgil thought about that for a
few seconds. Rosie’s theory could fit. So too could about ten others. “All right,
stay on the canvass and let me know what you get.”

“You got it Jonesy. Are you headed
over here?”

“No, I’ve got this fucking court
thing. I’m just pulling in now. Probably be here the rest of the day. Meet me
tonight at the bar and we’ll cover everything there.” Virgil killed the phone,
parked the truck and headed into court. He was fifteen minutes late. If the court
were running on time, the judge would not be pleased.

11

__________

F
rom
the moment of birth, the hunger of death feeds from an army of life. Day by day
it creeps ever closer, a silent, merciless hunter, its endurance without end,
its clemency non-existent. It chews on the mind, feeds on the body, digests the
spirit, and regurgitates the soul. It is the single, inescapable, inevitable
end of everyone, and no one knew that better than Rhonda Rhodes.

Rhonda worked six days a week as a
home Hospice nurse where she currently served nineteen patients, all of them in
their final battle with the Big C. It was a gut-wrenching way to make a living,
but Rhonda knew, just knew, down to what she called her ever-lasting soul, that
what she did for a living was the reason she was ever set down on God’s green
earth.

Rhonda and her ever-lasting husband,
Tom, had been married for twenty-seven good years. Tom, a career fireman for
the city of Indianapolis had retired only three months ago, and already the
spare time was all but eating him alive. He wanted Rhonda to retire as well,
but Rhonda was a Hospice nurse when they met, and, as she so often told anyone
who might ask, ‘probably will be till the day I die.’

Her days tended to start late and
run later, a sore spot for Tom that just didn’t want to heal. “The Big C works
on its own schedule,” she always told him, just as she did now. Tom was on his
hands and knees in the middle of their driveway, pulling the weeds out of the
cracks in the aging cement, the sleeves of his t-shirt damp from the sweat he
wiped from his forehead.

“Won’t be long and we’re gonna
have to replace the drive,” he said to her without turning around. She stood
just behind him in the driveway, ready to leave for work. Rhonda still wore the
traditional nurse’s uniform—white skirt and blouse, white hose, and white
leather shoes. It may have been a throwback from years past, but she refused to
dress in those silly scrubs everyone else was wearing these days. It seemed
every week one of the other nurses was going on about this new print or that
new design. It was as if somewhere along the way nursing had become secondary
to making a fashion statement, and a bad one at that. Rhonda would keep her
whites, thank you very much. Besides, she thought the patients always seemed to
appreciate her attire. More than a few had told her so over the years, and if
it worked for them, bless their ever-lasting hearts, it worked for her.

“The Wimberley’s down the street
had theirs done a couple of weeks ago,” Tom said. Rhonda realized she’d drifted
a bit. Tom was talking about something the Wimberley’s had bought. A new car?
“Got a deal from Bill. You remember Bill? From over at the three-two?”

“I’m sorry dear, what was that?
The Wimberley’s bought a car from Bill?”

Tom dug at a particularly stout
weed that did not want to give its ground, and when it did finally let loose,
he scraped his knuckles across the jagged edge of a crack in the cement and
tore the skin off the tops of three fingers. He yelled loud enough that the
next-door neighbor’s dog began to bark. Tom stuck the back of his fingers in
his mouth, sucked off the blood, and then pressed them into the side of his
jeans. “No, they didn’t buy a car from Bill. He poured their new drive for
them.”

“Let me see your hand,” she said.

“Are you listening to me?” Tom
said. “I’m trying to tell you we need a new driveway.” His knees popped when he
stood.

“Tom, you’re bleeding. Let me
see.”

“I’m fine. It’s nothing. You going
to work?”

“Yes. I’ve got four patients
today. One of them is new, that little girl I was telling you about last night,
God bless her. She’s first, and I’ll probably be there for most of the
ever-lasting day, then I’ve got follow-ups on the other three. We can have left
over’s or I can stop and get us something on the way home.”

Tom pulled his hand from the side
of his pants and inspected his knuckles. “Either way,” he said. Then he
softened his voice. “It wasn’t so bad when we were both working, but I miss you
not being here with me.”

“I miss you too darling, I do. But
my patients need me.” Rhonda watched the blood fill the cracks in the broken skin
of Tom’s fingers and saw that her husband needed her too. “Tom, really, let me
see your hand. I’ve got bandages in the trunk. Let me patch that up for you.”

“Go on to work, Rhonda,” he said.
“I’m fine. I think I’ll live.”

Tom was right.

He lived.

__________

The Sids batted the idea back and
forth—this was a week ago—right before what they called ‘Go Time.’
Junior wanted to be creative. Senior wanted to be practical. Junior argued that
creativity could be useful and work to their advantage. If they varied their
methods enough, the fucking cops would be running around chasing their tails
and probably wouldn’t put two and two together right away, if ever. It would
give them all the cover they’d need.

Senior argued that creativity
could, and probably would lead to mistakes and missed opportunities. “Besides,”
he’d said, “With this many killings, you’re talking about a lot of creativity.
Be better if we keep it simple. We’ve got the guns and the silencers, and the
van is ready. Let’s just take our shots and be done with it.”

“Those fucking silencers are
pretty cool,” Junior said. “Gotta love Indiana…legal silencers and all.”

“That might end up changing,”
Senior said.

“Yeah, probably will,” Junior
said. “Too late now though.”

So they’d settled on the practical
and that had landed them across the street from Beans Coffee shop with Junior
at the wheel and Senior at the trigger. They watched as Rhonda Rhodes pulled to
the curb and walked inside, the glare of Rhonda’s stark white nurse’s uniform
almost too bright for Senior’s scope. He had to squint to keep from being
temporarily blinded by the whiteness of the damned thing. He followed her track
into the store, but didn’t pull the trigger. He’d catch her on the way out.
That was the plan.

Go time, baby.

__________

Rhonda Rhodes parked her car in
front of her favorite stop off, Beans Coffee Shop, gathered her paperwork, then
walked inside and took a seat at a table by the window. Beans was usually busy
during the morning rush, but later in the day slowed just enough that Rhonda
could sit in peace for thirty minutes or so and tend to her paperwork. The
dying, bless their ever-lasting hearts, created a lot of paper.

Beans was unique not for their
quaint name, but because instead of counter service, they employed actual wait
staff who would come to your table and take your order. Plus, their prices were
right—two bucks a cup with free refills—unlike those newer
fancy-schmancy places that were popping up on every blessed corner that made
you wait in line for a paper cup with different sizes, the names of which no
one ever really understood. Her favorite waiter approached the table with his
usual smile in place.

“Good morning, Rhonda,” the waiter
said. “Get you your usual?”

 “Yes, please,” she said as she
spread her paperwork across the table. “I’ve got quite the schedule today.”

“I’ll bet you do a lot of good for
a lot of people,” he said, and when he did, Rhonda felt like he meant it.

“I do what I can. I’ll probably be
doing this until the day I die.”

“Well, our coffee will keep you
going until then, that’s for sure. Be right back.”

The waiter returned a few minutes
later with a large mug full of brew and a muffin wrapped in cellophane.
“Muffin’s on the house today, Rhonda. Enjoy.”

She smiled and said thank you, but
the waiter remained in place. “Mind if I ask you something, Rhonda?”

“Sure.”

“How do you do it? I mean, don’t
get me wrong, I’m glad you do, you and others like you, but to serve the dying
like that, day after day, I just don’t think I could do it, you know?”

Rhonda set her pen down, took a
sip of coffee and looked the young man in the eyes. “Everyone in here is dying.
The difference is, some know it, and others don’t. The ones I serve, the ones
with the Big C, they know it. I just help them during the final part of their
lives. I’ll tell you this though, the suffering I’ve seen. My land, sometimes
it’s almost too much. I pray to the lord every night that when my time comes I
go quickly. I sometimes think I’d rather take a bullet than to suffer through
even half of what I’ve seen.”

The waiter glanced at his other
tables. One of his other customers held a cup in the air, eyebrows raised.
“Hey, I better get back to work. I wouldn’t worry, Rhonda. The work you’re
doing, you’ll probably live forever.”

“Well, I hope you’re right,” she
said.

Thirty minutes later, when Rhonda
Rhodes stepped out of the coffee shop, the Sids got busy. Junior had the engine
running already—nothing screamed get-away vehicle like an engine start
after a gunshot, silenced or not. Senior had been lying on his back on the
floor of the van, the rifle held at port arms. When Junior said “Good to go,”
Senior sat up and put the business end of the barrel through the custom hole in
the side of the van, just under the windows in the back. He squinted through
the scope, drew a bead on his target, exhaled, and squeezed the trigger. When
he did, the silenced bullet smashed through Rhonda Rhodes’ sternum and chewed
through her chest organs like the Big C on speed.

The waiter had gone behind the
counter to put Rhonda’s cash in the till and brew another pot of their house
blend. As he turned back around he saw Rhonda walk out the door and down the
sidewalk toward her car. When the bullet hit her chest it lifted her from the
pavement and tossed her back, her arms and legs flying forward. The waiter
would later tell the police it looked like—at least for a
moment—that her body hung in the air in the shape of a big C, and wasn’t
that ironic because that what she always called it, the big C. But the cops
didn’t care about irony so the waiter decided he would not tell them of his
comment to Rhonda about her living forever, because as anyone will tell you,
with the cops, you just never really know.

So, as it went, the waiter was
wrong, but Rhonda’s prayers were answered. She went quick, dead before she hit
the ever-lasting pavement. The hole in her chest left a red stain on her
throwback whites that looked like a rose petal on a blanket of snow in the
middle of an otherwise fine summer day.