Dearly Departed (34 page)

Now I was being encouraged to kill again.

And I was willing.

I stuck the .38 in the waistband of my jeans and pretended it wasn’t there, concentrating hard on the advice George Meade had given me my first day on the job: “Don’t think too far ahead.”

W
hen his deputies were in position, Orman cautioned them over the radio to play it safe and ordered them not to shoot unless Jimmy Johannson tried to break through.

“If there’s any shooting to do, I’ll tell you,” he said. “Remember, surprise is what we want. If we do this quick and clean, we won’t have anything to regret tomorrow.”

“Please, God,” Loushine prayed.

I wished I had said that. I believe in God as much as anyone who doesn’t make a living out of it, which is to say I believe in Him more at some times than others. It’s true we haven’t exactly been on speaking terms since my wife and daughter were killed. Still, one would hope He wouldn’t hold that against a guy. I found myself searching the quickly darkening sky for a sign that He approved of tonight’s activities. There was none. Just as well. A divine revelation right then would have been particularly disconcerting.

“Ready, Taylor?” the sheriff asked.

“Yeah,” I answered and squeezed into the back seat of his cruiser with another deputy. Orman and Loushine sat in front.

F
ear is the most transient of emotions. It cannot be sustained at a high pitch for more than a few minutes at a time. I was terrified as the sheriff pulled off the county blacktop onto the gravel road and drove the mile to Johannson’s place. Yet I was calm by the time his wheels hit the dirt driveway. I took in everything, seeing much more in that first instant than I had in several hours the day before. There were actually six wrecks cluttering the yard, not five—four on the left of the driveway and two on the right. The wreck closest to the house on the right was a rusted out pickup, the hood open to heaven like all the others. About ten yards in front of Johannson’s door was a shrine to the Virgin Mary. Her statue was perched on a large rock and surrounded by smaller rocks and brightly colored flowers. About twenty yards to the left of the shrine were three oil drums. A siphoning apparatus was attached to the middle drum. To the left of that was the large shed.

I was out the door and making a low run to the pickup before the sheriff’s cruiser came to a halt. When they got out, the sheriff motioned his deputy far to the left, near the shed. Then he and Loushine approached the front door. The lights above the door and the shed were burning, and the sheriff had left his headlights on. I was leaning across the pickup, the .38 trained on the front door. Yet even though I was watching it, I was unprepared to see it fly open and Jimmy Johannson dash out, squeezing off God knows how many rounds from the UZI as he ran to the oil drums. The sheriff and Loushine retreated to the cruiser. The other deputy found cover behind the shed. I stayed where I was. I didn’t fire.

At the first sound of shooting, two cars pulled into the yard from opposite directions with lights and sirens. Johannson pinned them down, giggling between bursts as his submachine gun turned the vehicles into scrap. I wondered how many magazines he had.

The sun was down now. The only light was man-made, all of it concentrated on the drums and the front of the house. I heard several handguns and a single shotgun blasting away from outside the circle of light as Kreel County’s finest returned fire. But I couldn’t see anybody except the deputy at the shed.

I crawled from the front of the pickup to the back. The sheriff was crouching behind his cruiser. He was in a bad spot and couldn’t get a shot at the man behind the drums without exposing himself to return fire. Loushine had a better line, but he, too, was exposed, on the ground behind a maple tree.

I returned to the front of the truck. Johannson was in a good position. The way the drums were arranged, he was protected from the front and the sides. To take him, I would have to maneuver behind. But there was no cover until I reached the shrine. Dammit, I knew this was going to be a mistake.

I caught the eye of the deputy at the shed and rotated my finger vigorously in the air, motioning for covering fire. He stared at me for a moment, probably wondering what kitchen appliance I had become. But he caught on quickly and raised his hand for me to wait. He reloaded his revolver and nodded.

I dashed away from the wreck, holding the .38 low. Several guns fired at once. I couldn’t see the deputies, but they could see me. I circled around the shrine, brought up the .38, and squeezed off two rounds.

Something punched me in the left shoulder so unexpectedly that I actually looked around to see what it could have been. Suddenly, a voice sang out loudly, “I’m hit!” I recognized it immediately. It was mine.

I crept back behind the junker. Nausea climbed into my throat, and trembling in my legs forced me to sit on the ground. My right hand went to my shoulder, and I realized for the first time that I was no longer holding the .38. Where the hell was it? I searched the ground as best I could in the darkness but didn’t find it. Wasn’t that the damnedest thing?

I felt warm; sweat beaded up on my forehead. Yet my teeth were chattering. I took my hand from the shoulder. It was wet and sticky. That’s when I fully realized I had been shot. I’d been shot before, so you’d think it wouldn’t have taken me all that long to catch on. But it did. Go figure.

I took my handkerchief and pressed it against the wound with the idea of stopping the bleeding, but I could tell by the warm dribble down my side that I was doing a poor job of it. Then the shoulder began to hurt. The pain actually cleared my head, and my trembling eased, and I didn’t feel so much like vomiting. I wondered how bad my wound was and tried to stand, as if that would make it all better. I couldn’t make it and I felt red hot tears of rage in my eyes. What a piss-poor turn of events this was!

The shooting had continued unabated, but I didn’t notice until a dark figure sidled up to me behind the truck. My first guess was wrong. It wasn’t God. It was Johnny Johannson.

“Hi,” I said, like I had come across him unexpectedly while out on a stroll.

“This won’t do. I’m going to stop it.”

“Stop what?” I asked him, confused.

He reached next to the bumper and picked up the .38. So
that’s
where it was. He stood and walked slowly toward the drums. I used the truck to pull myself up and watched him. At about twenty feet he leveled the .38. At ten he squeezed the trigger three times. The bullets pounded Jimmy Johannson in the back. He threw up his arms, dropping the UZI; he spun off the drums and fell. The sheriff and Loushine closed in quickly, followed by a half dozen deputies. They circled Jimmy, all of them pointing their weapons at him except Loushine. He eased the .38 out of Johnny’s hand and moved him away. By the time I staggered to the circle, the sheriff was cradling Jimmy’s head and yelling at him.

“Why did you shoot Michael Bettich?”

“My … lawyer,” Jimmy sputtered, calling for his constitutional rights even at this late date.

“Your lawyer can’t help you now. Who were you working for? Tell me!”

“My lawyer,” he said.

And then his lights went out.

I
sat on the back seat of the sheriff’s cruiser while Loushine removed my jacket and shirt. He was gentle but too slow, prolonging the agony.

“I’ve been hurt worse,” I told him.

“I doubt it,” he said.

“No, really,” I insisted. “I was shot in the leg once.”

I would have told him more, but he wasn’t listening. Instead, Loushine was picking around the edge of the wound as I worked to keep from fainting. It was high on the shoulder, higher than I had first thought.

Other deputies offered to help, but we ignored them. Orman came to the car and said he was sorry I was hurt. We ignored him, too. The bleeding had stopped, but I couldn’t say whether it was because of Loushine’s efforts or because I had simply run out of blood—my clothes were soaked through.

When Loushine pronounced me ready for travel, he slid behind the steering wheel. I excused myself first, walked a few feet into the woods, and threw up. I was trembling again, and I had a difficult time getting back to the car. The deputies turned away, averting their eyes, apparently embarrassed by my show of weakness. Screw ’em. I sat in the back of the cruiser. Loushine buckled me in and shut the door because I couldn’t. It was a swell ride to the hospital.

twenty-eight

“Y
ou chipped the hell out of your collarbone,” the woman doctor told me. She seemed happy about it.

“Will I live?”

“Not if you keep going on like this. You have a lot of scars, my friend.”

She was right about that. And I was well past thinking of them as trophies: Say, did I ever show you my dueling scar? I’ve risked my life many times, certainly more times than I should have, and after each episode I was left with the same nagging question: Do I have more past than future?

The morning light was streaming through the half-closed blinds. I had slept some the night before after the doctor had attended my wound, but I could’ve used a lot more. I thanked the doctor for her consideration and settled in for a long nap. But she wasn’t inclined to leave. She replaced my chart in the plastic tray attached to the door and sat next to me.

“Michael Bettich is dead,” she said.

The news hit me so hard, I thought I had been shot again.

“Dead?”

“Four forty-two this morning. Duluth-General said respiratory failure, of all things.”

I heard her words, but I didn’t know what they meant.

“There were so many other things that could have killed her,” she added.

I still didn’t understand, and my face probably showed it.

“They said there was nothing that could be done.”

That last part got through. Only I didn’t know how to respond. My emotions concerning Alison were all ajumble. I knew too much of her history and not enough about her. So I stared blankly at the doctor, hoping she would tell me how to act.

“I told the sheriff. He didn’t take it very well. I guess he was in love with her.”

But I wasn’t. I didn’t love her. I was infatuated with the image I had created for her, that was all. And the image was incorrect, anyway. I didn’t really know Alison. We had spoken only a few words to each other.

“
What will make you go away?
”

“
Tell me why, that’s all. Tell me why you went to all the trouble.
”

“
It’s a long story, and quite frankly, I see no reason to share it with you.
”

“Who was she really?” I wondered aloud.

“Michael?” asked the doctor.

“Her name was Alison,” I told her.

“Who are you talking about?” the doctor asked, laying the palm of her hand against my forehead, determining if I was suddenly feverish.

“I guess it doesn’t really matter.”

I
was woken by the light that fell across my face when the hospital room door was opened. “Are you sleeping?” a voice asked. The voice belonged to Gretchen.

“No,” I told her.

She came in, limping on crutches, letting the door close behind her.

“Turn on a light,” I told her.

“No lights,” she said.

We sat in the dark without speaking for—I don’t know—it seemed like a long time. In the dark a minute can be an eternity. Finally I said, “I’m sorry about Alison.” I didn’t know what else to say. I still hadn’t been able to sort it out.

“We buried her this afternoon.”

“So soon?” It was only yesterday that I’d heard she had died.

“There wasn’t any reason to put it off.”

“Her parents?”

“We buried her under the name Michael Bettich. That’s the way she wanted it.”

“I see.”

We went a few more minutes without speaking until Gretchen announced, “Sheriff Orman resigned. He’s moving to Duluth. He said he was quitting to paint full time.”

“Good for him.”

“Yeah.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?” Gretchen asked in reply.

We fell silent again. I liked Gretchen in spite of everything. But not so much that I was willing to conduct long conversations with her in the dark.