Split Black /#Wattys 2021

Chapter Four

He couldn't open his eyes. He tried to swallow. Ice wedged itself down his throat, impossibly tight. He reached up to claw at it, trying to pull it out. Voices echoed in his ears, but he couldn't understand them, and then a wave of dizziness sent him spiraling back into the black.

He woke up to the sound of sniffles. He saw his girlfriend Lizzie's beautiful face, tears streaming down her cheeks. Then Mike was there. "I'm so sorry, buddy. I didn't see him."

Then he couldn't open his eyes anymore, but he heard his mother somewhere close, sobbing hysterically. "I hate this job!" she screamed. "He never should have been a policeman!"

Every so often pain shot across his body, and he opened his eyes to find a woman in a neon short-sleeved shirt pushing him over as if she were looking for bugs under a boulder. He looked down to see a plastic tube snaking out of his abdomen into a clear plastic football. The woman poured viscous red stuff out of the football into a basin, and covered his stomach up in white bandages.

He opened his eyes once and saw Ma sitting beside him with a neighbor of hers. He knew the woman's face, but he couldn't remember her name. "It was the worst, Johnny," Ma was saying. "We looked for our car for an hour last time we were here! Finally this parking attendant rode by on a golf cart, and he gave us a ride to look for our car. You know what? We were in the wrong building! We didn't get home until midnight, and we were so tired!"

Last time? But John had never seen her here before.

***

One day the world just popped into focus again, and he understood he'd been in the hospital for quite some time. He sat up and watched TV; he ate hospital meals off a tray. He could get his arms up to hug Ma when she came in without being too sore, and joked with Mike and the guys over O'Doul's they brought over. Everybody had their bullet-proof vests on.

Lizzie came by. "Cindy moved to New York finally, so I got it all worked out. When you get out of rehab, you can stay with me. Your mother didn't like it, but you'll be walking when you get out of rehab. You won't need a twenty-four-hour nurse."

Arlene and their squad captain came by to ask him what he remembered, and to explain to him what happened: A shooter armed with a hunting crossbow had been waiting on the elevated railroad trestle that stretched over the parking lots on Dock Street. When John reached the parking lot, the shooter had let fly with a bolt that went straight through his torso, from his right side to just above his pelvis in front. Two surgeries had managed to stop the bleeding, repair his bladder, and remove perforated bowel, but he'd gone septic from infection and almost died. The shooter had run down the train track, almost to Main Street Station, and had been picked up by a waiting car. Patrol had found a rope ladder dangling from the tracks to the ground.

Captain Joe McKibben was a former Marine who, twenty years after the Marines, still didn't have an ounce of fat on him. His ice blue gaze drilled straight through John. "Detective, did you see who shot you?"

John blinked. This entire experience bewildered him. His head felt dizzy and sleepy. What he'd just heard held a sort of detached curiosity for him, as if he were hearing it about someone else. But when you're the one sitting in the hospital bed, you know it must have been you.

He tried to think. "The last thing I remember is sitting out on the patio at Siné. I don't even remember anyone rolling up the surveillance." Then something came back to him. "Wait. Yeah, I do. I remember being out on the sidewalk with Arlene, and what she said about Pride." He shook his head. "I still don't believe that."

Arlene and the captain exchanged a wordless glance. "Nothing after that?" said Captain McKibben.

John prodded his memory, cautiously, like probing a sore tooth. "No." He shook his head. "After that, it's all blank."

Arlene leaned forward. "Is there anything in your case load that might shine a light on this, here? Any threats? Anything unusual that you can remember?"

John looked back and forth between their two concerned faces. He felt weird sitting in front of Captain McKibben in a hospital gown. Naked. "Anything that might make me think some perp was about to take a shot at me? Nothing I can remember."

"What were you working on just prior to that? Besides the Pride murder," said Captain McKibben.

John sat up abruptly and had to grab his side. "Ow. Wait a minute, there is something I was working on that's not in the daily reports." He told them about finding "Cabbage" Clay in the phone records, about his drive to Hampton, and what he'd discovered. "I thought it was worth pursuing further," he said. "I've got the notes in my notepad, but we spent a lot of time that day planning the stakeout at Siné and I didn't get it written up."

Captain McKibben glanced at Arlene. "That may not have anything to do with anything."

"On the other hand," said Arlene, "we've spent almost three weeks shaking Hispanic names, and that isn't going anywhere. Your notepad wasn't in your personal effects or in your desk, John. Where'd you leave it? I'm going to get somebody on this."

***

John waited for Mike to visit by himself. He came over one evening to share some illicit refreshments for a Redskins game. "Don't drink too much of the O'Doul's, man. I spiked it with real beer. Don't let the nurses smell it, either."

John wanted to know things he couldn't ask the brass. "So, I'm off the list of suspects, I hope?"

"I think you're safe there, Bud." Mike handed him a bottle. "They've got bigger things to worry about." He gestured to the newspaper on the adjustable tray, where a headline blared, "No New Progress On Police Attacks." And, below that, "Mayor Offers Ten Thousand Dollar Reward For Information."

"What about my lead? We getting anything on that?"

"Nothing new on that. You can't get prints off of that rope, and nobody who saw the guy jump down off the tracks has any better description of him or the car."

"No, not that. I'm talking about the phone list, the one I was talking about before, with Pride's CI."

"Oh, that. Solly is working it. I was going to work it with him, but we're up to our armpits in fresh murders, going over all your old cases, and Hispanic names from Pride's old cases. Plus somebody figured out that 'ja ja ja' could also be German, so now we have to check his old cases for anybody German or who speaks German. Clay seems to have vanished into thin air. Everybody's got their ear to the ground, it's just ..." Mike shrugged his shoulders. "Damn frustrating. I'm chalking it up to the 'Mike Little curse.'"

"I gotta get out of here. I gotta get back to work and—"

Mike held up a hand and squinted at him. "What about your own shooting? Aren't you even a little worried about that?"

"Mike." John caught his eye. "I'm still here."