Book 3 - Part 6: Facing Evil - Chapter Thirty-Two
Smith County Memorial Hospital – 2:35 a.m.
Baker, Stevie, Satchell, Devon, Prescott, Andrews, and dozens of other men and women from the Twenty-Second were milling about the waiting room, waiting to hear news from both surgeon’s that worked on Ed, and J.W.
Almost four hours had gone by.
The waiting was almost as bad as watching Ed bleeding to near death.
A set of double doors swung open, and out walked a Dr. Ellen Monroe. She was the one who operated on J.W.
“He is a strong man. With some rest, he should be as good as new in about six to eight weeks. He is incredibly lucky. Another two inches to his left, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Baker’s eyes darted to another set of doors that hadn’t yet moved.
Something’s gone terribly wrong, she thought. No one wants to come out and tell me.
“It’ll be fine, Baker,” Satchell said, as he placed his arm around her shoulder. “Ed’s a tough cookie. He’ll pull through.”
She looked up at him and tried to smile.
“I so hope you’re right. I pray you’re right.”
Stevie touched his mom’s hand and pointed.
The doors opened, and out walked a heavyset man, nearing fifty, with a deep, booming voice.
“Mrs. Manning?”
That was a first.
Baker stood up and rushed toward the doctor.
He seemed hesitant to speak at first.
“What’s wrong? Tell me. I need to know, dammit!”
“Mrs. Manning, no need to upset yourself any further. For the most part, we were able to reattach his arm to the nerve endings that weren’t damaged by the cut made. He has, of course, lost a great deal of blood. We would like to keep him here several days to monitor his condition as he begins to regain his strength.”
“Then he has a chance of having full use of his arm, again?”
“That, I’m afraid, Mrs. Manning, I cannot guarantee. We have cleaned and sutured every viable muscle, nerve, and tendon back together that wasn’t damaged, but I’m afraid the arm may either be incapacitated, or he will be left with very minimal use. I can say that he will never be able to use his left hand properly again.”
“Can I see him?”
“Right now, he is sedated. I would ask that you come back in the ….”
Satchell stepped in between Baker and the doctor, who towered over him by a good six inches, and with a whispered, steely voice, said, “No, doc. She gets to see him, now.”
The doctor stepped back, slightly ruffled and said, “Very well, but please make it brief.”
Baker found out that Ed was taken out another set of doors and was transported to the fourth floor. When she arrived with Stevie, Ed was already wired for sound.
She walked over to him, patted his head lightly, kissed his forehead, and then both eyes, both cheeks, and then his lips.
“I know you can hear me, sweets, but you’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. We will all be fine. Thank you for coming back to me.” She looked over at Stevie. “To us.”
Stevie simply said, “We are family, Ed. Family.”
Silently, Baker said, “Thank you, God, for bringing him back to us.”
Room 212-A – 2:58 a.m.
Andre Devon sat in a hospital chair, in the dark, watching all the monitor lights either bleep on and off, or just keep a steady pulsing light going.
Satchell edged his way into the room.
“Hey, Cisco. I see your keeping an eye on Poncho, eh?”
“That I am. When he does wake up, I’m going to give him hell for not having backup with him. He didn’t even wait for me to be alongside him.”
“Big talk.”
Andre bolted from the chair next to J.W. Satchell walked to the end of the bed.
“Welcome back, Poncho. I see you made it back to us in one piece.”
“I feel like I’ve been sliced and diced.”
“That’s because you nearly were. Freddy’s Bowie knife ran clean through you. The doc’s sewed you up. Said you would be good as new in a few weeks.”
“Freddy. Oh shit, Freddy!” J.W. tried to rise from the bed, but Andre wouldn’t let him. Realizing he was still too weak to do much of anything, he looked at Satchell. “Captain, I think I got a round off in him, but….”
“Just relax for now, J.W. You did your job, and I’m proud of you. Now, if you two will excuse me, I’m going to find, Baker. J.W., get some rest, and you better damn well do what the doctors and nurses tell you in here. I want you back a hundred percent.”
He left two men, two partners, two friends, alone.
Ten minutes later, Satchell was about to open the door to 421-C, when it opened from the inside, and out stepped Baker and Stevie.
“How is he?”
“Breathing steadily, and out like a light, but thank God, he’s alive, Satchell.” Baker reached for Stevie and hugged him close to her. “I’m sorry you had to witness everything.”
He hugged her back, saying, “It’s okay, mom. I’m okay. We survived.”
“Look, Baker, I know you may not want to do this, but we need to get back to that house on Ochie Woods, first crack of dawn. I’ve called Carl and he has a team out there now, but in the morning, he’ll bring in another team to go over it with a fine-tooth comb; so nothing is left to chance. J.W. was awake for a little bit, and swears he shot Freddy. If that’s true, and we can find his blood, we’ll finally have something concrete on his ass we can file under his DNA.”
“I don’t want to go back out there, but at the same time, I need to go back and face down the demon shadows, I suppose. Honestly, it’ll give me something to do so I don’t go stir-crazy worrying about Ed. I’ll be out there by six.”
“Baker, I am so terribly sorry for everything that’s happened, but, if like J.W. thinks, Freddy is hurt bad enough, his days may already be numbered, and maybe he’ll crawl in a hole and just bleed to death.”
“Satchell, have the sketch artist available for me, after we look around the crime scene. I know what Freddy really looks like. His real self is as horrifying as what he does.”
16593 Golden Row Circle
Brighton – 4:29 a.m.
The doorbell rang and rang.
The sound slowly filtered into her dreams. A dream of wild, unending, unyielding sex with Craig Murray. Her sheets were damp, her body twisting across sheets thrown helter-skelter, until finally, just when it reached the point of the most intense orgasm of her life was about to blow away the world; the ringing of her doorbell destroyed all hopes of the world being destroyed.
“Huh? Who? Who the hell is at my door at four-thirty in the damn morning! Go away whoever you are. I have a dream to finish.”
She didn’t realize she spoke so loudly, but she did hear the voice, and then recognized the name.
“Marie! Marie! Let me in, please. It’s an emergency. It’s Craig.”
She sat up in bed, fully naked and started to rush to the door, but stopped short to get her pink robe. After all, she didn’t want to frighten him at the door before she got him in bed.
Running to the door, she pulled back two dead bolt latches, and turned her security lock to the right; completely forgetting her phone call with the police, swung open her door with a short-lived smile.
She started to scream, but Freddy smashed her in the mouth with a powerful right hand, sending her sprawling backward on her living room floor, unconscious. He closed the door behind him and locked it.
Setting his bag down onto a chair to his left, he looked for her bathroom and found a medicine cabinet. Bandages, iodine, tape. Perfect.
He grabbed all of it, and went back to the front room, tore away his shirt, and looked, as blood was leaking from the right side of his chest.
No bones broken.
Good.
But the bullet was still lodged inside.
He poured half the bottle of iodine on the wound, then reached inside his bag and extracted another Bowie knife. With great care, he placed the tip of the blade into the wound, slowly twisting and digging inside until he could feel where the bullet rested.
Sweat oozed from his flesh like a hard rain, and he held back the grimace of pain he wanted to scream out. He should be used to this by now; after all, this is the sixth time he has been shot. Even the police in Europe were terrible shots. Although, had Roberts shot at him in the daylight, he might not be here trying to remove a slug from his chest.
Freddy thought aloud for a moment. "One day my good fortune will run out. Hell, no one lives forever but for now, I have too much to do."
He slipped the blade’s tip carefully under the slug, and with hands of a practiced surgeon, he eased back the blade, feeling the slug make the reverse trek as well.
Two minutes of painstaking, agonizing work before the piece of metal fell onto the floor. Reaching down for it, he picked it up and placed it in an ashtray on an end table next to where Marie lay unconscious.
Freddy emptied the remaining iodine, and grabbed a few layers of gauze, and inserted them into the open wound, and then placed more gauze over that, and began to wrap it with an ace bandage until he could wrap it even tighter with adhesive tape. It was all he had for now.
When he had finished, Marie Hampton was coming back around.
Freddy eyed her with a demon look.
"You aren't sweet Janis, but you'll do. For now."
Without forethought, without care, he grabbed her hair, wrenched her head backward and before his Bowie knife sliced through her neck, he saw the pitiful fear etched on her face and locked into her eyes. He released her hair, and her lifeless body fell back to the floor.
With all the hatred and anger he could focus into a single burst of driven energy; he slashed her chest into shreds. Cut away her arms and legs. He removed each breast and flung them across the room not caring where they landed.
He opened what remained of her chest, reached in, and ripped her heart out, and feasted. He ate half of it, then let it fall from his hand, only to bounce off Marie’s uncaring face and land but an inch from her dead, opened lips.
And as suddenly as he had been vile and disgusting, he quickly became calm and endearing, if that were really possible.
No longer feeling his own pain, he searched around Marie’s apartment for pen and paper.
As there was now a change of plans, he would take Marie’s car, and make his way to Canada where he knew he would be safe. He has accounts there, as he did in over two dozen places around the world. Freddy was never without resources.
He would purchase new ID’s, birth certificates, social security numbers, driver’s license, and more materials to create new looks for himself. Craig Murray would never reappear.
After he had written the note, he went to the kitchen to fix himself a meal. From there, he cleaned himself up as best as he could. Interestingly enough, he found some clothes in Marie’s closet that fit him easily (one lover, or more?) enough.
When it was time for him to leave, he would call the Brighton police, so they could find Marie’s flesh-torn body. They would also find the note he left for Baker.
Like always, it began: My dear, sweet Janis.