Gone Forever (Jack Widow Book 1), page 2
The Glock 41 was a big step up from the old guns that this county had issued to its police force many years ago. Back when I lived here.
The Glock was a weapon that all military forces respected. You didn't have to like them, but they made fine handguns.
I kept my hands outward, palms open, and facing him. I stayed calm. Didn't want him to shoot me out of some sort of deep-down primal fear, like being afraid of the dark.
He said, "Step into the light."
I stepped forward, one big step.
He stepped back in conjunction, but a smaller step, staying out of my reach. He looked at my arms and surmised that I could swivel fast, with little effort, and grab the gun right out of his hand. Then he put more space between us, and he backed out of the doorway even farther into the hall.
A nurse stepped out from around a corner. Probably heard the commotion. She was a black woman, about forty, with a cheerful demeanor about her and a friendly face. She wore loose, blue scrubs with blue tennis shoes that looked new and more like they belonged on the feet of a teenager who cut lawns for a summer to buy them, which made me suspect they were a gift from a teenage son.
She said, "Wayne, what's going on?"
The deputy said, "Now, you stay back, Gloria."
Gloria said, "Who's this guy?"
"I don't know. But I'll find out. Now, who are ya?"
Gloria said, "Son, you can't be in here. There're no visitors in critical care."
She seemed to dismiss the sheriff's deputy and his Glock. Maybe she knew him on a more personal level than just the way small-town people knew each other.
The hospital was for the entire county, and that was the only reason that it was even big enough to have a critical care unit. The state must've funded the construction of this hospital. It wasn’t here sixteen years ago. And the equipment was relatively new, with new-looking rooms and hospital beds. Only some corners were cut. Accessories were better described as hand-me-downs or secondhand: the TV in the waiting room or the old furniture, like the sofa.
The deputy said, "Damnit! Gloria! Get back!"
The nurse shot a look of shock at the deputy named Wayne, which must've been his first name because his nameplate read LeBleu. I took a glance at it.
Wayne LeBleu was a funny-sounding American name, but not for Mississippi and especially not the deep parts far from major cities, like the northeast corner. Here, the nearest city on a map that mattered was Memphis or Atlanta.
I stayed quiet, just watched their back-and-forth. I don't think that they saw my eyes because my face was still in darkness.
LeBleu said, "Turn around, sir. Face away."
He wanted me to turn back to facing away from him. I knew what that meant. In my experience, it meant one of two things. Either a bullet in the back or handcuffs. Here, it meant handcuffs, which I dreaded. I had been in handcuffs before, and I had a feeling that I'd be in them again and again. I didn't want to reject his command because he had that Glock 41 pointed at me, and he was a cop. I was taught to obey the cops. I twisted, slowly, and pivoted on my right foot.
He said, "Slow now!"
I grinned because this was slow for me, but I did as he asked. I adjusted my speed to virtually standing still.
Finally, I faced away from the two of them, but I craned my neck and looked back over my shoulder at them. I was ready for the cuffs.
I grew up in Killian Crossing without a father but still lived a good childhood.
Killian Crossing is the stereotype of a small town—the back of beyond. It was rural but never dull, not under the surface. On the surface, things seemed quiet, but take a closer look. And small towns have their secrets, like shadows stalking them.
I never lived in a city until I was seventeen, but I'd never been country or rural or redneck, or however you want to describe someone from a rural area in the South. People from small towns don't grow up to be that way, not always and not mostly. Small-town life isn't like the movies.
Mine wasn't.
In a small town, there was plenty to do and plenty that needed doing. We had to do for ourselves. I fired guns, hunted animals, fished, built campfires, survived out on my own, and I learned survival in some of the most rugged terrain available. The United States Army used to have an elite training base out here for Army Rangers; the Seventy-Fifth used to send the best of the best here to train for a time, back when I was young and before. It was quite a big deal for us. This town was built up around the base. No other real economy to speak of. And it only got worse over the years since the base closed, and no major road passed through—no reason for anyone to stop.
The closing of the base almost killed the town, and it may yet be a slow death. Many southern towns are in a sad state of disrepair: crumbling roads, closed stores, sunken economies, abandoned high schools, wastelands of empty plazas, shopping malls, graveyards for old trains, and like Killian Crossing, forgotten military bases.
Parts of Mississippi are like the third world. It took leaving the state for me to see that, because like I said, I knew no better until after the day that I fought with Sheriff Deveraux and left.
I grew up to be a big guy. It was a genetic thing that was, in part, a mystery to me. My mother was my only family. My father, I had never known.
At six, I was tough—got into my first fistfight back then. Kids learned quickly not to mess with me. If they left me alone, then I left them alone. I wasn't a bully. I hated bullies, a viewpoint that I never lost. Some of the other kids would pay me for protection from bullies. My first enterprise was born and my first sense of capitalism. I made a good profit in elementary school protecting smaller kids from the bigger ones. They paid me part of their lunch money like a recovery fee—a fine enterprise for me. I didn't have many friends. Not really. I was like Frankenstein's monster—everyone was afraid of me, and I was misunderstood. Not to forget that I looked like him. I was much bigger than the other kids.
The school's coaches loved me. All the way through school, they tried to get me to play football, and eventually, I did. I played for one season until I broke another kid's jaw, not intentionally. The coach instructed me to tackle him—no holding back.
All season, the coach had been riding me, accusing me of not giving it my "full potential." He said that I had feral eyes. I'll never forget that. Feral. I'd never heard that word before to describe another human being. It's a great word. Feral.
It described that experience better than any other word because, for a few seconds, I lost control of myself. I went into a rage. I ran straight at this kid. He stood cocked down low on the line of scrimmage, in the ready position, less than a second after the center snapped ball—less than half a second.
No one was blocking him, and our quarterback stayed wide open, baiting him, but instead of charging the quarterback like the coaches had trained him to do, he simply stood there, frozen, with his feet still firmly planted in the dried dirt. He had a clear shot. He lined up the quarterback in his mind's reticle, and he knew it—but something that he saw in his peripheral stopped him dead in his tracks. Something feral.
He had seen me. The sight of me running him down had frozen him solid. In his quivering eyes, I could see the sheer terror that overcame him as he stared at a hulking goliath running him down like a freight train.
I ran behind the quarterback from the opposite side of the line. I ran past the other players and ran right at the kid. Headed straight for him. I was a fifteen-year-old freshman, and he was a seventeen-year-old senior, but he was right to be terrified of me. I suppose that was the natural order of things.
The kid had no time to retreat, and he knew it. In that split second, he had time for only one thing—which was to fear for his life.
For the first time in my life, I performed an action that I'd never even thought of before. I achieved a feat that eighteen years later would save my life. Never had I trained to do this move, not then and not now. And now I had learned a lot of combat moves. But this was all genetic, some kind of ancient warrior gene that lay dormant in my bones until that second. I ran at the kid, full speed, with no intent of braking, no flinching, and no hesitation. At the last microsecond, I reared my head back, contracted my neck muscles and shoulder muscles like a snapping turtle coiling his head back into his shell, and then I catapulted. My head whipped forward in a violent slingshot motion like a cannonball, and I felt my skull lunge forward, and my helmet whipped and crashed into the kid's face, straight through the open-faced part of his helmet, and shattered the bones in his nose and jaw. If his helmet hadn't had the hard plastic faceguard on the front, the adults might've been cleaning up that kid's face with a bucket and a shovel.
I delivered a colossal headbutt.
The force behind my blow had sent broken parts of his helmet flying off his head. His face mask broke into pieces, and I had broken more than that. The kid's nose splintered and cracked, his front teeth sprayed out of his mouth: two white incisors and three broken canines. His chinbone had pierced through his skin, and his jaw snapped and split, everything broken.
Parents and school officials rushed the field to the kid's side as he lay crying and wailing like a dying animal. Paramedics had to rush the kid off in an ambulance.
Two things happened after that: I never played football again, not in high school, not in college, not in the Navy, and that kid never looked right again. I never meant to hurt him seriously. Later, I heard he had to wear a steel wire for six months. I heard he never breathed right after that. I learned a serious lesson about my strength, and I could never bring myself to play a full-contact sport again. But I learned the headbutt was a powerful weapon to have in my arsenal.
Standing there, in Deveraux's hospital room, it was no mystery to me why Deputy LeBleu and Nurse Gloria had that look of fear I was so used to on their faces when they saw me in the light.
I stayed quiet and waited for them to speak.
Gloria muttered something that was like, "Wayne, who is he?"
"Gloria. Get back! I'm tryin' to find dat out. Now, what are ya doin' standing over the Chief like dat?"
I said, "Relax. I'm not here to hurt her."
He asked again, "Why are ya here? Who are ya?"
I cleared my throat, not as a response or a comment, just because I needed to. I said, "I wanted to see her."
"Turn around and face me. Hands where I can see 'em."
He never put handcuffs on me. Not yet. I guess he wanted to get a look at me first.
I turned, slow, and faced their direction. I moved slowly enough so that he would feel reassured that I would not make a move, which I could have. Easy as anything. I could've sidestepped into the hospital room, grabbed the big, heavy hospital door, and waited for the deputy to follow with his Glock. Once he was in the doorway, I could've slammed the hospital door right into his gun hand. I could've broken his fingers at the knuckles with one good heave of the door, cracking bones in between the door and the frame, but I would not do any of that.
I moved my hands slowly up by my head, the surrender position.
"What the hell are ya doing here? Why you standing over the Chief?"
"Visiting her."
"Why?"
"She's my mother."
Gloria asked, "That's your ma?"
I swiveled my head and looked at her with my hands still up. I said, "Yes, ma'am."
The deputy asked, "Chief has a son?"
I didn't answer.
LeBleu kept his Glock out, but he lowered it to a safe, pointing position at the ground. His finger stayed near the trigger. He said, "Lower your hands."
I lowered my hands back down to my sides, but I left my palms out so he could see them.
"Step out into the hall. In the light."
I stepped farther into the hall.
Gloria said, "You look just like her. Look at his face."
The deputy took a good long stare at my face and then my eyes and back down my torso. He said nothing.
Gloria said, "No offense. But you must get your size from your daddy. Because your ma is tiny."
I smiled and said, "I never met him, ma'am, but you're probably right about that."
She nodded and looked back at the deputy.
He said, "Let me see some ID."
I kept one hand out extended as a gesture of submission, and with my other, I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a slightly bent and extremely used, dark-blue US passport. I reached it out slowly and handed it to him. He stepped closer and took it. Again, I could've swiped that Glock right out of his hand, easily. But I wasn't here to cause problems.
He sifted through the pages and studied them. His face turned to curiosity. He was glossing over all the foreign stamps that I had on my passport. There was a lot. Every page was drenched in faded stamps from foreign countries. The thing was practically filled up. I had traveled to a lot of places, and most were on there, but some weren't. Some places that I had been to were classified, and I wasn't supposed to be in them. It was a need-to-know sort of deal.
He said, "Tehran? Where da hell is dat?"
I smiled and said, "Iran."
"What da hell are ya doing there? Isn't that our enemy?"
"Not right now. They haven't been our enemy in decades. Not really. It's more of a PR problem than an actual enemy."
"What you mean? An enemy is an enemy."
"No. Not really. Just because some of them don't like us doesn't mean they are our enemies."
He didn't respond to that. He asked, "What you doing with these stamps? Are you military or something?"
"Something like that."
"Well, what exactly?"
"Navy."
"What? Like a seaman?" he said and chuckled. He had said "seaman," but he had meant "semen," or he had said "semen," and he had meant "seamen." I wasn't sure. I never was, but it was a joke that I had heard a lot, and so did every other Navy guy in the world.
He said, "I was in the National Guard."
"Then we're brothers," I said, but I didn't consider us that, not even close. But it's good to add that kind of kinship to a conversation when you're face-to-face with a redneck deputy pointing a gun at you. We weren't family. I didn't consider the National Guard the same as the Navy. My only real family was dying twelve feet behind me.
The deputy flipped to my ID and stared at it, and then read my name out loud. "Jack Widow."
I nodded.
He waited a beat and then was about to say something, only Gloria interrupted and said, "I need to check her vitals. You boys want to move this conversation down the hallway? Let me do my job and let her have some quiet?"
The deputy flipped my passport shut and holstered his weapon. He returned my passport back to me, and I slid it back into my pocket.
He said, "Let's head down to the cafeteria. Grab some coffee."
I said, "Sure."
He led me down the corridor, and we looped around a couple of corners and made our way to the cafeteria.
I went over to the soda machine, reached into my pocket, and pulled out a five-dollar bill, wrinkly. I force-fed it to the cash reader and waited for a second for the machine to take it. Then I pressed the button for bottled water. A brand owned by the Coca-Cola Company came tumbling out.
I picked it up, twisted off the cap, and sucked down a long swig from it like it was a canteen out in the field after a long day of humping my gear, which was one reason I was grateful to have it. I had packed nothing for this trip. Literally, the brass pulled me right out of my assignment and told me about my mother being shot, and I left straight away. No packing anything. No planning what to wear. I'd have to think about that later.
Having nothing to carry, I had to admit, felt good. It felt liberating.
LeBleu motioned for me to follow him over to the cafeteria, which was closed, but the lights to the dining room were still on. And I heard shuffling from back in the kitchen. The early morning workers were preparing breakfast.
We sat at a table near the window. I sat with my back to the wall, an old habit that I'd formed long ago.
Beyond the bright dining room, the area with the checkout windows was completely dark. Way back in the kitchen, I heard sounds of clinking silverware and clattering plates and banging pots and pans like the kitchen crew were here, prepping for the morning breakfast crowd.
LeBleu drank coffee. For a while, there were no sounds between us, except for the slurping sounds he made when he drank his coffee.
Finally, he broke the silence and said, "My name is Wayne LeBleu. I'm your ma's number two. There used to be another guy, but he retired years ago and picked up and moved to Florida. No one has heard from him since."
I nodded. I remembered the other guy. I said, "Tell me about what happened to my mom."
He sat back in the chair and stared out of the window. It was still dark, but the sunrise was only around the corner. He said, "Ya ever heard of a place called Jarvis Lake?"
I shook my head.
"Well, the town is called Black Rock, but the lake is Jarvis. The whole town is built up on it. But the lake is what people know best. It's a tourist spot. Sportfishing once a year. That sorta thing."
"Yeah?"
"Well, yer ma is friends with the sheriff there. And one of our girls, who went off to college, drove that way last winter. She never made it to the school, and she never came home."
He drank from his coffee and said, "And the girl's mother got all up in arms about it and hounded yer ma for weeks. Yer ma had gone through all the proper channels for this sorta thing, but no one was helping us. She decided to look more into it. On her own. She called the sheriff there. You know, to check up. He said to call the FBI. So, she did. They gave her the runaround. Turns out girls have gone missing passing through that county for years. It's the weirdest thing. They just vanish without a trace. Yer ma hounded the FBI about it, but they said their investigation went to a dead end and that the girls who've been missing over the last five years are all of age. The FBI swears they are just runaways. Nothing they can do about grown women who leave Mississippi and never return. Nothing they can do without evidence."
