A Storied Man

 
Herein are several people whose lives at first do not seem connected. Their paths converge unexpectedly. This is Part Eleven.

Parts: 1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11

Part Eleven

Sitting in the surgery waiting room’s hard plastic chairs, Lori asked herself the question she knew her mother was thinking. Why did she care what happened to Doug? He barely had been a part of her life in the past, and after 10 years of forgetting him, suddenly she practically was forced into the strange world he inhabited. At least most of her friends who had given up their careers for men had fallen for relatively normal guys.

In a haze of determination she still did not understand, Lori had stood near the policeman who guarded Doug’s door, hoping to wear him down into letting her go inside. After her feet got sore without any hint of her plan working, she had given up the first round. Apparently her feminine wiles needed work, and she needed better shoes.

So, there she sat, waiting to see a man who it seemed needed more help than she could give.

A man with a slight, tight-lipped grin approached. He wore tan slacks, a brown and orange paisley tie with a burnt orange shirt, and stood more than six feet tall. He held a small spiral notepad in one hand and pushed dark brown hair from his forehead with the other.

The newcomer sat in the chair attached to the same end table as Lori’s. “Hello, I’m Detective Wallace Davies, Homicide. Is it okay if I ask you ladies a few questions?” He swept his dark brown hair off his forehead.

Nothing about him resembled the casually dressed detectives Lori sometimes assisted back in Ralston. That department didn’t have a separate homicide division, but she doubted that made a difference.

“You need to read us our rights,” said Lori’s mom.

Lori sighed. “Jesus H., Mom. He’s not arresting us.”

“Fine, then you do all the talking. This is your own deal, anyway. I’m not a part of it. And watch your language, young lady.”

“Excuse me, Mrs. Breden, but I believe the victim died in your vehicle,” the detective said.

Lori’s mom pursed her lips, turned her head away, and held out her hand, palm flat and fingers straight.

“That means she’s finished talking, Detective Wallace.”

“That’s Davies.”

“Davy’s what?”

“My name is Wallace Davies.”

“Oh, sorry. To answer your question, yes, it was Mom’s car, but she just came to pick me up at the DART station.”

“Why were you transporting one…” he referred to his notes. “Doug McGruder?”

“He had some kind of attack on the train.”

“So you two were traveling together?”

“No. We just happened to be on the same train. I used to know him back at UHD. I think he had passed out drunk or something.”

“UHD?”

“University of Houston Downtown.”

Wallace wrote in his notebook. His eyelids closed halfway and his mouth gaped open as he drew in two quick breaths. He turned his head quickly and sneezed into the fold of his arm.

“God Bless you,” Lori said.

“Don’t you mean, ‘Jesus H.?’” her mother said.

Lori growled and stood. Why didn’t her mother just leave if she was going to be so difficult? “Detective, can we please go somewhere else to talk?”

“Sure. You want to grab a coffee in the cafeteria?”

——-

Wallace “Wall” Davies sat in The Gourmet Bean, a coffee shop adjacent to the hospital’s cafeteria. A man wearing a blue hospital gown sat at a nearby table, a tube from his arm leading to an intravenous drug bag hanging from a wheeled stand.

“I guess some people just gotta have their coffee,” Wall said.

Across from Wall sat a young woman who looked equal parts frightened and uncertain. He had seen it before. A guy she’s interested in gets wrapped up in a possible murder charge and she’s torn between spilling what she knows or covering up to give him a second chance.

“Detective, I want to tell you everything I know about Doug, but without my mom around. Some of it’s kind of embarrassing.”

Sometimes his first guess was wrong.

“Oh. Okay, Lori. I’m here to hear you.” He almost cringed after he uttered the phrase that one of his superiors had used during interviews. Now that he was the lead, he was doing some of the things he had sworn he never would.

“He told me on the DART this morning that he didn’t have this sensitivity to sunlight when we knew each other, but now that I’ve had time to think about it, things are making sense. Really adding up, you know? I mean, I didn’t think anything about it back in school, and I hadn’t even seen him since then.” She stopped and took a slow sip from her latte, cradling the large mug in both hands.

“I was walking on the sidewalk in front of the student center one night and this guy pulls up in his car. Doug. Out of the blue he says, ‘You doing anything tonight?’ We had a night class together the semester before, and I always thought he was nice and funny, but he had a girlfriend.

“I got in the car with him. He drove us to his duplex and we made out. It was like all of this pent-up attraction came out at once. After we went as far as I would on a first date we just hung out and talked all night.

“Everything was going great, and then he looked at his watch and said it was time for him to take me back to my dorm. Said he didn’t do sunrise on a first date. Too special, or something. After that I didn’t see him again.” She looked down at her latte and swirled the mug, seemingly mesmerized by the taupe liquid’s movement. “I just figured he decided he didn’t like me.”

Wall took another sip of his plain, black coffee. “Did he ever show any signs of being violent? Like he’s capable of what happened this morning?” he said.

“No, not that I saw. But there’s something he said in the car that’s been bothering me. I laughed it off at first, but it’s like all these things I knew about him back then add up with what I know now.”

“What did he say?”

“That he’s a vampire.”

Wall gulped down the rest of his coffee and banged the mug back to the table.

(to be continued)

 
Herein are several people whose lives at first do not seem connected. Their paths converge unexpectedly. This is Part Ten.

Parts: 1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10

Part Ten

Cooper and Hunter ran between the few cars that had straggled into the intersection. Traffic sat still at all four lights. Some motorists honked their horns and yelled for others to get out of the way. “Haven’t you ever seen a wreck before, idiots?” a man shouted.

Not one quite like that, Cooper guessed. At least not the way he and his friend had seen it, anyway.

“That was totally messed up, Coop! That just ain’t right.” Hunter yelled, a frightened edge in his voice that Cooper didn’t recognize coming from him. He stopped in the corner convenience store’s parking lot and leaned over to vomit between his shoes. Rainwater carried it away.

Cooper, unsure whether he was short of breath from exertion or terror, took a moment to slow his breathing. “I know, man.”

“That guy is some kind of monster,” Hunter said and spit repeatedly to clear his mouth. “He ripped his neck apart with his teeth.”

“I’m never going joyriding again. This proves we shouldn’t have done it.”

“So, you think that was some kind of punishment?”

“First we have a crash, then a guy with a gun takes us hostage. But, and this is the kicker, we’re saved by a vampire or whatever the hell that was,” Cooper said.

The boys sat on a curb near a bright yellow, coin-operated machine. On it was a coiled black hose and large black letters spelling, “AIR.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s God’s retribution.”

“You know what that word means?”

“Shut up, Coop. This is no time to be a superior prick.”

“Fine.”

As quickly as it had begun, the rain stopped.

Cooper turned his head and took in the scene. The man who had killed the gunman still lay still under the afghan, but the ladies with him kept their distance. The family from the minivan sat on the sidewalk across the way, caddycorner, and watched what was happening. The hurt guy with them was talking, but he didn’t look so good. The kid wasn’t crying anymore. That helped a little.

A police cruiser pulled into the lot and screeched to a stop so close that Cooper felt the heat from its engine. The officer from the driver’s side bobbled a bullhorn and held it up to his mouth. Squealing feedback echoed off the surrounding buildings. He fiddled with a knob on the device and tried again. “Please, all those involved in the accident, stay where you are. Everybody else, please clear the area.”

His partner, the heavier of the two, lumbered from the passenger’s side and shot the boys a severe look. “Damn, Bennet, try not to hurt yourself with that thing. You already almost ran over these kids.” He then strode stiffly to the center of the intersection, where he directed traffic around the accident victims and damaged cars.

Sirens approached from the left and from behind. Fire trucks, ambulances. Cooper didn’t know. Things that rescue people.

——-

Doug was in pain, but he had felt worse. The storm clouds had moved in at just the right time, so he most likely would survive, but now that his secret was out he wasn’t sure how much of a life that would be. He opened his eyes.

He was in a stark white room without windows, tucked into crisp white sheets on a bed with metal rails. A television, turned off, hung from a hinged metallic arm on the wall. He smelled disinfectants and latex. “Hospital. Shit.”

Doug found and depressed the call button. A nurse skittered in moments later. With a professional yet warm demeanor she wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his left arm and pulled her stethoscope up to her ears. She placed the other end of the stethoscope against the inside of his arm just below the cuff and gave a black rubber bulb several quick squeezes. The cuff tightened.

“Could you please tell me what’s going on?” Doug said.

She held up her index finger indicating for him to wait. The cuff gradually loosened while she concentrated. When it went completely slack she noisily opened it and pulled it off his arm.

“I only know that you were brought here by EMT’s earlier today. We couldn’t make out your blood type so it’s a good thing you didn’t need any. Strangest thing, though. Usually that’s so easy to tell,” she said.

“I’m pretty much a universal recipient.”

Doug considered again her words. “I was injured?” he said. “In the crash?”

“I don’t think so. Turned out we didn’t find any open wounds, so that blood on you wasn’t yours. It’s amazing how fast your skin healed from the burns.”

“What else do you know?” What did any of them know?

“About what happened? Nothing. But, there’s a policeman standing watch outside your door. Probably on account of that blood not being yours. And, a young lady has been asking to see you, but he won’t let her.”

Doug suspected the nurse wasn’t telling him everything. The doctors probably found his blood very unusual and it would be only a matter of time before he was being poked and prodded in ways he preferred not to imagine. If not by doctors, then certainly by the inmates wherever he ended up after his inevitable murder conviction. He hoped maybe he could avoid the latter by claiming his actions were heroic. That would leave him battling only the doctors.

——-

Detective Wallace Davies sat on an orange plastic chair in the surgery waiting room, next to two frightened parents and their toddler son. It was his first homicide case as the lead investigator, and it had started out weird.

“So, Mr. and Mrs. Cody, you don’t know why the victim was allegedly chasing your friend, Blake Leftkowitz?”

“Neighbor,” Mrs. Cody said. “He was just our neighbor. And, please, call me Liz.” She pointed to her husband, who was pinching their son’s nose. “He’s Alex.”

They were sitting in a hospital waiting for him, but he wasn’t a friend? “Okay, your neighbor. Any ideas why someone might come after him?” Davies said.

Alex spoke up. “He demanded that we take him to Defensor. Said Blake could get him inside.”

“Were you aware of the sensitive nature of Mr. Leftkowitz’s job?”

“No. We knew where he worked, but last I heard from him he didn’t have any security clearance yet. Like Liz said, though, we barely knew him,” Alex said.

“But you opened his vehicle door and turned off the headlights and the ignition?”

“I’m a good neighbor and I didn’t want his battery to go dead.”

“But you left the keys in the vehicle?”

“I feel awful about that.”

“Well, if the stories I’ve heard are true, that was the best thing you did all day.”

(to be continued)