Jubilee's Journey (The Wyattsville Series) (42 page)

“No,” Gomez answered flatly. “And I’m not about to either. I’ve already had my ass handed to me once, so I ain’t looking to do it again.”

“But, if there’s a chance the boy’s innocent—”

“Innocence or guilt have nothing to do with it. This is about revenge!”

“Revenge? Why would you—”

“Not me, stupid! Carmella Klaussner!”

“The store owner’s wife?”

“Yeah. She’s sure the kid’s the shooter and wants him punished.”

“Even so, how does she figure into—”

“Connections! She’s got somebody at the newspaper.”

“But—”

“But nothing,” Gomez snapped. “She threatened it last time, and look what happened. I’m not messing with her again. If you do anything, it’s on your head.”

Mahoney hung up the telephone and checked his watch. It was three-forty. He’d promised Christine he’d be home in time for dinner. If he left now he could make it to the hospital and back before seven. Close enough. He called home, told the answering machine he might be a few minutes late, then left.

When he pulled out of the parking lot, he was certain Carmella Klaussner would be at the hospital. She was almost always there. Day after day she arrived early in the morning and stayed until long after the other visitors had gone home. She sat next to her comatose husband and seldom left his side.

Mahoney knew he’d find her there. What he didn’t know was that three days earlier Sidney Klaussner had opened his eyes and began to remember.

The Telling Story

C
armella Klaussner saw Mahoney when he stepped off the elevator. She’d seen him coming and going, visiting the shooter, consoling the kid, doing everything he could to set a guilty man free. “What now?” she wondered aloud.

Leaving Sidney to finish the pudding on his tray, Carmella rose, stepped outside the door, and confronted Mahoney before he got to the room.

“What do you want?” she said, her words clipped and short.

“I have a few questions I’d like to—”

“You have some nerve!” Carmella shouted. “Why, I wouldn’t give you the right time of day, let alone answer any questions!”

“It’s just that—”

“Just nothing! I know what you’re trying to do. You’re one of those bleeding hearts. You want me to feel sorry for the kid, but I don’t. He deserves whatever he gets!”

“What if he’s innocent?”

“Innocent?” Carmella’s voice grew so loud it ricocheted off the walls and bounced back as an echo. “He’s not innocent. My Sidney shot him! Sidney is a God-fearing man, never in million years would shoot someone unless—”

Mahoney interrupted. “What if Sidney was aiming at someone else, and the kid just got in the way?”

Carmella’s face turned as red as the inside of an overripe watermelon. “Get out of here!” she screamed. “Get out, and don’t come back. There ought to be a law protecting people from the likes of you!” Before Mahoney could get another word in, she whirled on her heel, stormed back into Sidney’s room, and closed the door behind her. By then Carmella’s heart was thumping with such force you could see her chest rising and falling.

Mahoney watched as she walked away. The light in Sidney’s room was on, and through the plate glass window he saw it. Sidney Klaussner was sitting up in the bed. Maybe Sidney had the answers; maybe not. It would depend on how much he remembered. With Carmella on the rampage, it would be impossible to try to question him right now, but if Mahoney waited...

Luckily Barbara Walsh was on duty. After letting Mahoney down last time, she owed him. He walked over to the nurses’ station and started up a conversation.

Sidney Klaussner had been married to Carmella for more than thirty years. He knew her moods as well as he knew the roundness of her body and the timbre of her laugh. She was a kind woman, a patient woman, a woman who didn’t anger easily—a woman whose behavior was uncharacteristic of what he’d seen outside his hospital room. He waited until she sat down and let go of a deep sigh; then he asked, “Who was that?”

Still tight lipped and red-faced, Carmella answered, “That detective from Northampton.”

“Northampton?” Sidney repeated curiously. “What did he want?”

Caught up in a burst of anger and forgetting she’d been told not to keep reminding Sidney of his experience, she answered, “He wants to get the kid who shot you off scot free. Can you imagine? The nerve—”

“What kid who shot me?”

“The robbery at the store. Remember?”

“Yeah, I remember the robbery. But I don’t remember any kid.”

“He was one of the robbers—tall, lanky, sixteen or seventeen years old.”

“One of the robbers?”

Carmella nodded. “You shot this one, but the other one got away.”

Since they’d already started talking about it, Carmella saw no harm in showing Sidney the newspaper. She reached down and pulled her copy of the
Wyattsville Daily
from the lower shelf of the bedside table. “This is the kid,” she said, thrusting the paper in front of him.

Sidney lifted the paper and stared at the picture below the headline.

“That detective was trying to get him off,” Carmella said, “so I spoke to Lucinda. She agreed such a thing wasn’t right and got Mike to do the story.”

Sidney looked up with a furrowed brow. “This isn’t the guy who shot me.”

“He’s the shooter’s accomplice and every bit as guilty.”

Sidney let the newspaper fall into his lap and placed his hands over his eyes. Behind his darkened eyelids he saw the day as it had happened. He saw the boy in the picture, not with a large white bandage taped to the side of his head, but with a full crop of dark unruly hair. Sidney’s mind flooded with memories. Before this he had only vague shadows of the shooter, but now he saw him clearly. He was older—not old but older than the boy. He walked with long strides and an angry stance. Without saying a word, he’d pulled a gun from his pocket and raised his arm to fire. The boy lunged. The gunman fired.

Sidney saw that split second. It was a moment frozen in time, a moment waiting to be rediscovered. But after that there was nothing. No image of either bullet hitting its mark, no image of falling, nothing but a big void of black nothingness. Tears came to Sidney’s eyes and he began to sob.

“Dear God,” he moaned. After several minutes had passed, he lifted his head and looked at Carmella.

“That kid saved my life,” he said.

Carmella shook her head vigorously. “No. It’s impossible. You shot him. The police said it was your bullet. You wouldn’t shoot an innocent—”

Barely able to speak because of the sorrow rising from his chest, Sidney held up his hand and motioned for Carmella to stop talking. “I wasn’t trying to shoot him,” he said, squeezing the words out. “I was aiming at the gunman.”

Carmella’s face twisted itself into a mask of fear. “But how…?”

Sidney couldn’t answer.

Jumping up so fast you’d think she’d been zapped by lightning, Carmella dashed out of the room and ran toward the nurse’s station screaming, “Wait, wait, there’s been a mistake!”

“A mistake?” Barbara Walsh and Mahoney replied simultaneously.

Now almost out of breath, Carmella nodded. “The boy didn’t do it.”

Taken aback, Mahoney said, “I don’t understand—”

“Don’t understand? What is there to not understand?” Carmella’s words came like the rapid fire of a machine gun, landing on top of each other and not leaving a millimeter of space in between. “The boy is innocent. He’s not the one. He saved my Sidney’s life!”

“Sidney said that?”

“Yes.” Carmella grabbed hold of Mahoney’s arm and tugged him toward the room. “Come ask him yourself!”

For the better part of an hour Mahoney sat and listened. Sidney sobbed, and Carmella sobbed with him. The memories were painful. They caused his hands to tremble and his heart to pound hard against his chest, but Sidney had to remember. He had to know. The locked vault of memories opened slowly, and he began to recall the bits and pieces of that day. In looking back he began to see even the smallest things: the key in his hand, unlocking the door, switching on the lights, Martha Tillinger asking for a cake mix. A few minutes later, a boy came in, a tall skinny boy carrying the “Help Wanted” sign he’d plucked from the window. Sidney recalled the overalls the boy was wearing, clean but frayed at the bottom.

“I’m ready for working,” the boy had said with a grin.

Before there was any further discussion, the bell above the door jingled and a second man walked in. The boy stepped to the side of the counter and said, “I can wait.”

“We’d been having a warm spell,” Sidney recalled, “and it struck me why that man would be wearing a heavy leather jacket on such a hot day.” He went on to tell how the man came at him, not looking left or right but with dark hooded eyes fixed straight ahead.

“There was early morning sun, and for a second, maybe less than a second, I saw the glimmer of it on the metal thing he was pulling from his pocket. That’s when I grabbed the Browning I keep under the counter.”

The encounter had come and gone in less than a minute, but in Sidney’s memory it stretched itself to an expanse where he could stop and look at each frame of action, each tiny movement. He could see the shooter’s boots, smell the anger he wore. He could detail every move the boy made—how his head swiveled, his arm shot out, and he slammed his shoulder into the shooter. The shooter had taken dead aim, but he was off balance when he fired. Sidney clenched his fist and once again felt the pressure of his finger pulling back on the trigger of the Browning. He closed his eyes and listened; then he heard it. A noise roared through his head, two shots so close together they had the sound of one.

Three times Sidney told the story, and each time he recalled another small piece of the puzzle—the time, the amount of money in the register, even the brand of cake mix Martha Tillinger had been looking for.

Once Sidney had told all there was to tell, Mahoney stepped out to the nurse’s station and telephoned the Wyattsville station house.  He asked to speak to Gomez.

“Not here,” the voice said. “Can someone else help you?”