“And the other one?” Mulford said to the EMT, pointing to his left. I followed his finger to the pair of bare brown feet that poked out from the end of the aisle like the wicked witch’s from under Dorothy’s house.
“The station clerk?” the medic said with a shake of her head. “He took a long burst in his throat, looks like. Died instantly.”
I slowly nodded again at the new knowledge. There was a third victim?
I gaped at the blood-and-brain-splattered food racks, the brass shell casings, the broken glass. In the air was the strong hospital stench of voided bowels. I’d never been that close to so much violence and death. It was literally a bloodbath.
I stumbled behind Mulford back outside to get away from the smell and noticed that the crowd beyond the tape seemed to have doubled in size. A tall, shirtless middle-aged man in cutoff shorts and a panama hat suddenly reached under the crime scene tape and lifted a shell casing to his red-rimmed eyes.
“Hey! Put that down!” Mulford yelled, running toward him.
That’s when I noticed the gun.
On the fuel-stained asphalt, halfway between the first pump and the gas mart’s front door, beside a bright yellow police evidence cone sat a flat black pistol.
When I took a step forward to look at it more closely, I saw that I was mistaken. It wasn’t a normal pistol. It was a larger black submachine pistol with little holes around its barrel. It had gray duct tape around its grip and scuff marks beside the words “Intratec Miami 9mm.”
I stood there bent over, staring at the weapon. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, in fact.
Because it wasn’t just like the gun I’d seen on Peter’s boat. It was the gun from Peter’s boat.
“That’s a roger,” Mulford said into his radio as he arrived back beside me. “Get those detectives down here ASAP. It looks like the goddamn Valentine’s Day massacre. Tell them that Officer Cardenas has been killed in a robbery-homicide. See if that gets them moving.”
As I stood there, the white masts of the sailboats at the Palm Avenue marina across the street from the gas station suddenly became supervivid against the blue sky.
Peter’s gun? Why was Peter’s gun here? Was it really his?
“Come on, Jeanine. They took Peter to Lower Keys Medical. I’ll take you right there,” Mulford said.
We walked to his cruiser and got in. I jumped as the feisty little cop suddenly punched the steering wheel.
“Those fuckers,” he said. After a moment, I realized he was crying. He quickly wiped his face and got the car started.
“Sorry, Jeanine,” he said. “Elena was just awesome, you know? How can she be dead? At least they got Peter’s bleeding under control. We can thank God for that.”
“They what?” I said, sitting up as if Mulford had punched me instead of the steering wheel.
“What? No one told you?” Mulford said. “The EMTs got the bleeding under control. It looks like Peter’s going to make it.”
Chapter 26
THEY’D BROUGHT PETER to the Lower Keys Medical Center five minutes from Key West on Stock Island. I was told by a male ER nurse that Peter had been taken directly to surgery.
For the next couple of hours, I sat in a cop-filled waiting room on the hospital’s second floor.
After a while, the surrounding cops started drifting out into the hallway and stood in clusters speaking softly to one another.
From the cheap TV above the door, I watched a 7 News special report about the Jump Killer. A Filipina massage therapist from Marathon, Florida, had gone missing, and speculation was that the Jump Killer had struck again.
The special report had just been replaced by Family Feud when a tall, gray-haired uniformed cop entered the waiting room.
“Jeanine?” he said as he crossed the room in two quick strides. “I’m Chief John Morley. Peter’s boss. I can’t tell you how sorry I am about all of this.”
I shook his hand. I’d seen Morley’s picture in the local papers before, but this was the first time I’d actually met him.
“Thank you, Chief,” I said.
“Please call me John. How’s Peter?”
“Still in surgery,” I said.
He pulled over a chair.
“You must be going through hell,” the chief said with a sympathetic shake of his head. “It looks like Peter and Elena interrupted a holdup in progress, but when a police officer is shot, it could be anything. You mind if I ask you a few questions?”
“No, of course,” I said.
“Has Peter had any disagreements with anyone that you know of? A neighbor? Anyone who might be holding a grudge against him? Strange phone calls? Can you think of an unusual reason why this happened?”
I thought about everything I’d seen last night, Peter’s bizarre behavior. I decided not to mention it until I spoke to Peter.
“I’m not really sure. I don’t think so,” I said with a shrug.
Morley kept eye contact as he patted me on the knee.
“It could be anything, Jeanine. Has Peter been acting strangely at all lately?”
I squinted at him. He seemed to be pressing me a little. Frantically wondering how to respond, I was relieved when an attractive Asian woman in green doctor’s scrubs came through the doorway a moment later.
“I’m Dr. Pyeng,” she said. “Your husband is out of surgery and in stable condition. Please come with me, Mrs. Fournier.
“We were able to retrieve the bullet intact,” Dr. Pyeng said as I quickly followed her out into the hall. “The gunshot tore up a lot of deep muscle tissue in his shoulder, but thankfully it missed bone. Also no major blood vessels or nerves were cut, so I’m confident there won’t be any permanent damage.”
Instead of heading into the elevator as I expected, we made a right through some automatic swinging doors. Dr. Pyeng stopped at the first room beyond an empty nurses’ station and opened a door.
The room inside was narrow and dim. Beside the bulky hospital bed, a glowing white heart monitor beeped softly next to a half-full IV drip. Peter was lying on the wheeled bed with his eyes closed. There was a thin, pink-tinged tube under his nose. There was also a huge bandage on his left shoulder and an IV inserted into his uninjured right forearm.
“His blood pressure is looking good, so I think we’re out of the woods in terms of shock,” Dr. Pyeng whispered as she led me inside and closed the door.
Peter’s eyes were glazed. I glanced at the IV bag.
DIAZEPAM SOLUTION, it said in bold red letters, and in smaller type, I spotted the word VALIUM.
He squeezed my hand. Then he stared at me, sighing as he broke into a wide, serene grin. “Mermaid,” he whispered.
There he was again, my big teddy bear, my drinking buddy. Even lying there in a hospital bed, he was handsome. He gave me his boyish Brett Favre winning-in-overtime smile.
I held my breath as I stared down into his groggy blue eyes. They were his best feature, as pale and soft as faded denim.
His eyes closed after a few seconds, and he started snoring.
“It’s the painkiller,” Dr. Pyeng whispered in my ear. “He should probably get some rest now. He’ll be more lucid tomorrow when you come back.”
Chapter 27
“YOU KNEW ELENA as well, didn’t you?” Chief Morley said as we pulled out of the medical center’s parking lot in his department Bronco.
Morley had been standing in the hallway directly outside of Peter’s room when I came out. He’d insisted on driving me home. Not being able to come up with a valid excuse, I’d finally reluctantly agreed.
“We worked together catering,” I said. “I can’t believe she’s gone.”
“None of us can,” Morley said as we turned south on the Overseas Bridge back to Key West. Then he nodded with a frown. “Don’t worry. We have an APB stretching from the Lower Keys all the way up to Miami. Catching these pieces of garbage is only a question of time.”
Morley cocked an ear as something garbled squawked over the dash-moun
ted police radio. He lifted the handset to say something but then seemed to reconsider and placed it down again. He gave me a weary smile. “How did you and Peter meet, if you don’t mind me asking? You seem, well, a little young.”
“I was down here on spring break two years ago,” I said. “I met Peter, and I never left.”
“Ah, love at first sight. That’s awesome. Was he off duty?” Morley said with a grin. “Or did you fall for the uniform?”
“It was all about the uniform,” I said with a weak smile. “I ran a stop sign with my rental scooter, he pulled me over, and the rest is history.”
It was the lie Peter and I had agreed on.
“Romance at the scene of the crime, huh?” Morley said with a nod. “That’s how it happens with cops. Occupational hazard. You slap the cuffs on somebody one night at the beach, and the next thing you know you’re letting them go and giving them a diamond ring.”
I shot a look over at the police chief. For the second time, I got the impression that he was prying, trying to rattle me in some strange way. But his eyes were on the road. There was no trace of irony or accusation.
Still, I held my breath as the words slap the cuffs on somebody one night at the beach kept looping through my mind. Was the phrasing just coincidental, or did he actually know my secret?
The inside of the police SUV suddenly seemed hot, airless. Drops of sweat started to bead on my neck and underarms, along my lower back. I tried to zip down the electric window. Nothing happened. Morley must have had the child lock on.
Who was Morley really, anyway? I wondered dizzily. Who was he to Peter? Just a boss? Or was he a friend? An enemy like Elena? An accomplice?
We suddenly slowed and stopped. I looked out the window. We were in front of my house now.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said, getting out.
“Any time, Jeanine,” Morley said. “Sorry we had to meet under such bad circumstances. Remember, anything at all you can think of that might help us understand why Peter and Elena were shot, don’t hesitate to call. Day or night.”
“Will do,” I said.
The cool trade breezes that make Key West bearable felt ice-cold as I resisted running to my front door. Once inside, I locked the door behind me and went to the living room window.
Morley was still sitting there, idling in the street in front of my driveway. After a gut-churning three or four minutes, he slowly pulled out. I’d never been so relieved in my life.
I continued to stand there for the next few minutes, scanning out the window up and down the street. I looked out across our sandy little lane at the palm fronds waving in the wind for another five minutes before I turned to go.
I stopped as something inched into my peripheral vision. Outside the window down on the corner of the block, Morley’s PD Bronco slowed and stopped.
My face began to tingle, pins and needles in my cheeks, my lips.
What the hell was this?! Morley was watching the house now? Watching me?
I backed away from the window in disbelief, fighting for breath. My back hit a chair, and I collapsed onto the Mexican tile.
Chapter 28
IT WAS SUNSET when the sound of seagulls woke me from the living room couch. Two of them were fighting over something along the backyard seawall. I watched them with horrific fascination as they cawed and hacked at each other with their beaks.
I gulped down a glass of water at the sink. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. I was opening the fridge when I heard a car and the crunch of wheels in our crushed-shell driveway.
I ran to the living room window in a full-blown panic. Morley’s black-and-white Bronco was gone, but instead, there was a police cruiser pulling into the driveway.
The cruiser’s passenger door opened, and I almost passed out.
The cruiser backed out of the driveway as Peter, his left arm stiff, walked to the door.
Peter?
Why was he here? Wasn’t he supposed to be in a frigging hospital bed!? Why the hell would they let him come home so soon? He’d been shot!
I backed away from the window, swallowing hard as his keys jingled at the door.
The lock clicked open as the knob turned.
Peter stopped like a kid playing freeze tag when he spotted me from the doorway.
I was frozen as well. Everything was strange, slightly off kilter. Even the light was wrong. It didn’t feel like sunset. It felt like the morning.
Peter closed the door behind him. Then his keys dropped from his hand as his blue eyes beaded with tears. He squatted and then collapsed onto the front hall tile.
“Those assholes at the hospital told me to stay, but no way,” he said, squinting up at the ceiling. “Soon as I woke up, I pulled that shit out of my arm and left. Fuck them and fuck those assholes who tried to kill me. I made it. I win. They lose. I’m home, Jeanine.”
I thought about everything then. All the strange things I’d seen. Everything Peter had been keeping from me. I knew that what Peter was up to probably wasn’t by the book, but I also knew that whatever it was, there had to be a good reason behind it.
Maybe he was in over his head, I thought suddenly. He did the finances. Maybe he’d made a bad investment and was trying to make up for it by doing something not exactly legal. Couldn’t his nocturnal activity be his way of trying to protect us?
After all, I, of all people, knew he wasn’t exactly a by-the-book sort of guy. Peter was a risk taker. He’d certainly taken a risk on me. If I didn’t like it, I shouldn’t have married him, right?
A pang of love and sympathy for him went through me then. I didn’t want him to go to work ever again. I wanted him to stay here in our house, where it was safe. To stay here in our sanctuary, where bad things were kept away and all mistakes were forgotten.
I walked over and sat down beside him. I held his hand as he buried his face in my hair and cried.
“I was so afraid, Peter,” I said. “I thought I lost you.”
Chapter 29
ELENA’S WAKE was the following evening at the Dean-Lopez Funeral Home on Simonton Street. Peter and I were instantly swamped by the block-long line of dress-uniformed law enforcement on the sidewalk.
Peter, too, was wearing his crisply ironed uniform, his hat pulled low over his eyes, his dress blue coat draped over his wounded shoulder like a cape. I walked beside him in my somber black dress, holding on to his good arm.
Hundreds of hands patted Peter softly on the back as we walked through the parted crowd.
“We’ll catch those bastards, man,” a bald state trooper with a twirly circus-strongman mustache said.
“Hang in there, buddy,” said a short black female cop in a Marathon PD uniform.
Down the other side of the block, a crowd of saddened black people were also filing into the funeral home. I spotted young black boys in starched white shirts and bow ties, young girls in what looked like Communion dresses. There was even a Creole band playing for the mourners from the flatbed of a parked pickup.
They were there for the store clerk who had been killed, a fifty-three-year-old Haitian immigrant by the name of Paul Phillip Baptiste, who was being waked tonight as well. It seemed like the entire island had turned out.
Peter nodded with solemn concern as the gathered mourners embraced him and gave him their condolences.
“I couldn’t get through this without you at my side, Mermaid,” Peter whispered to me as we finally entered the funeral home.
I gave his hand a squeeze. “Where else would I be, Peter?” I said as we waited in line to sign the viewing room book.
Yesterday had actually been wonderful. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d spent so much unbroken time together. We ate in, and when we weren’t in bed, we were watching the sunset. A couple of times it seemed as if he wanted to tell me what was going on, but then he changed his mind and the subject. I didn’t press him. I don’t think I wanted to know. I just wanted us to be together. The world be damned.
&nbs
p; Besides, I knew he would tell me everything eventually. We were best friends.
There was one odd moment this morning. As I returned to the kitchen after drinking my morning coffee in the yard, Peter was standing with his back to me, speaking softly on the phone. I stopped, frozen in the doorway, when he suddenly raised his voice.
“Fuck your plans, Morley,” Peter barked in a tone that managed to be fierce and cold at the same time. I’d heard Peter speak that way only once before. The night he’d arrested me.
“You just be there,” I heard him say very distinctly as I went back outside. “I won’t tell you twice.”
It seemed odd that Peter would speak that way to his boss. I remembered Morley watching the house. It was hard to understand.
When it was our turn to pray, Peter and I walked together over to Elena’s closed, flower-covered casket and knelt down. There was a hush in the room behind us as people realized what was going on. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Peter remove his hat. After a moment, his face crumpled as if buckling under an unbearable interior torment, and I took his hat from him.
Peter and I became separated as he stayed and spoke with Michael Cardenas, Elena’s husband.
I shook hands with the priest beside him and some more people I didn’t know.
“Jeanine, there you are,” Gary, the chef from work, said as he scooped me up in a painful hug. “Can you believe any of this?”
“No, Gary. It’s just horrible,” I said looking around. “I don’t see Teo. Is he taking this very hard?”
“He’s gone,” Gary said, shaking his head. “It’s the craziest thing. Teo called me the night after the shooting. He said that he got a hotel job in the Dominican Republic and that he was leaving immediately. Elena’s death must have been too much for him to take. You had to hear him on the phone. I felt so bad for the guy. I went by his apartment with his check the next day, but the landlord said he was already gone. Left his clothes and everything.”
Peter’s hat dropped from my hand as I remembered the last time I’d seen Teo. It was the night I had tailed Peter. Teo had been behind the wheel of the Mazda with Elena.