y Bible never leaves my side, yet I suffer immensely over the next couple of days. God is teaching me. He wants me to be still and listen for His voice. He wants me to trust Him.
We left Miss Cherry whimpering at the gate of her selfimposed drowsy purgatory, her doctor having been called to authorize a strong sedative. Marge McZilkie found me a bottle of Maalox, which I downed in four gulps. She also found the letter in Miss Cherry’s closet, neatly folded, tucked in a box filled with keepsakes, mostly pictures of Luke and me.
Prominent in the stack of snapshots was the photo the Sergeant had taken of Luke and me standing in front of Queenie all those years ago. A magenta lipstick kiss mark adorned the picture, a sadly conflicted woman’s seal of authenticity. The picture made me smile for a moment.
Marge had been right about the letter. It was very upsetting…
Dear Cherry,
I’m sorry it’s been so long, and that I have only bad news to give you. It’s been a hard trip through this life, lots of regrets, but none about you. You were my best gal, the only woman I ever loved. I only wish I had listened to you more.
I was a good cop. So were you. I know now that I wasn’t good enough. I know now how wrong I was. I know now…
The boys have a right to know, too. I’m at Saint Mary’s Hospital in Long Beach…CANCER. Please ask them to come right away. I’ve had the doctors cut way back on the morphine so I can make some sense when the boys come. I can’t hold out for long, though.
Except for seeing them, I’ve taken care of all my affairs. I’ve tried to set things right.
After I’m gone, my lawyer, Mr. Ronald Corsetti, will contact you.
I never stopped loving you,
Lyle
As always, Luke is philosophical, stronger than me. On the way to Long Beach, he does his best to mollify my fears, but he too is apprehensive. At one point he looks at me and we exchange nervous grins.
“We’re a long way from Billy Goat Hill, aren’t we, Wade?”
“Either light years or a week or two, I’m not sure. I’m glad we’re doing this together.”
“Trish wanted to come. I think she wanted to satisfy her curiosity about the Sergeant.”
“So did Melissa. They’ve probably earned the right to come, the way they’ve both put up with our stories all these years. But I thought it should be just the two of us.”
“I agree. Besides, this outing is too much of a walk into the unknown. Who knows where this is going to take us. We might be sailing right back into a black hole, never to be seen again.”
I look at Luke and wonder just how prophetic he might turn out to be.
While riding along on the freeway, listening to harp music, it occurs to me how fortunate Luke and I are to be married to women we trust, that we can talk to. After getting Miss Cherry settled, we had both called our wives. It was what we needed when we were kids, a close trusting relationship with someone who loved us, someone we could talk to no matter what difficulties we encountered. Deprived of that essential thing, when confronted with a very serious problem, we floundered.
We are born into an imperfect world, that’s for sure, but kids shouldn’t have to deal with stuff like that by themselves. Calling our wives and telling them about the earthshaking news and hearing their compassionate voices—that is about as perfect as the world can get.
Such a wonderful calming thought. I feel You near me. Thank You, God.
Luke interrupts my reverie. “Do you think we should talk about it before we see the Sergeant?”
“Talk about what, that he’s dying of cancer?”
“No, about what happened all those years ago. That’s what he wants to talk about, isn’t it?”
“I guess so.”
“Wade—it was an accident.”
A lump in my throat begins to swell. “Yes, but…”
“There is no but about it. It was as much my fault as it was yours. If I hadn’t been such a wimp about the mockingbirds, things would have been a lot different, maybe worse, who knows?”
“That’s not it. We should have told somebody. I should have told somebody.”
“Who could you have told?”
“Lucinda, Pastor Bonner, Jake the barber, maybe?”
Luke pretends to spend a moment in deep thought. “Hmm…you know something. If you really get serious about it, there was only one person who would have truly understood, and might even have known what to do.”
“Who?”
“He, he, he…Carl the baker, of course.”
We laugh for the next ten miles. My little brother has done his duty.
But when we finally leave the freeway and the hospital comes in sight, my stomach begins to twitch. I can’t do this without You, God.
I don’t like hospitals. They make me uncomfortable—the peculiar smells, the maze of unfriendly hallways, not knowing quite how to behave when face-to-face with someone injured or ill. Only once did I enter a hospital for a positive reason, when my daughter, Kate, was born.
How unusual it is that I have never been hospitalized—no diseases, no surgeries, no broken bones. What are the odds? A broken heart and a guilty conscience, my pestilence, never brought me under the purview of modern medicine, or I would have spent most of my childhood in the hospital.
Now, summoned by a ghost from the infinite past, I am about to enter Saint Mary’s Hospital in Long Beach. The irony is like a poorly told bad joke. I know, I know. I am trying, God.
Luke stands by me in the parking lot as I look up at the sterile hospital structure rising high above us. A man I once knew, the most important earthly man I ever knew, is dying inside this building, and for reasons I do not want to contemplate, he has petitioned me to appear at his deathbed. Nothing and everything fills me with apprehension as I try to brace against the emotional riptide swelling within me like a tsunami approaching landfall.
Entering the building, I am grateful to have Luke pacing alongside me, though his company only carries so much weight. Fear, my old companion, is trying to run me aground, and I feel about as far from my element as a sailor a thousand miles away from the sea. A bizarre, convoluted stream of antiquated images whirls like a dust devil in my head.
We are a solemn pair when a few minutes later we find ourselves standing outside the Sergeant’s sixth floor room.
“Look at that.” Luke points to the numbers above the door. The Sergeant is in room 6-060. We had lived at 6060 Ruby Place.
“Good sign or bad sign?”
“I don’t know. It’s kind of weird though, isn’t it?”
“Before we go in, I think we should take a moment to pray.”
“Good idea.”
In the hall outside the Sergeant’s hospital room, we bow our heads. “Father in heaven, You are the great Creator of the universe, and we believe all things are possible with You. We ask for Your guidance and protection as we come face-to-face with our old friend, the Sergeant. We ask for Your forgiveness for all of our wrongs, past and present. We ask that You bless the Sergeant in his time of illness. And most of all, Father, we pray that he be comforted in the knowledge that You are his Creator and Your Son Jesus came to the earth and lived among us, died for all of our sins, and rose from the grave to bring us the glorious gift of salvation. We ask that the Sergeant might know You and receive Your gift of salvation by accepting our Lord Jesus as his Savior. Please give us strength and wisdom as we visit our dear old friend. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.”
“Amen.”
I open my eyes, and a nurse down the hall smiles and nods at me.
I project far more confidence than I feel as together with Luke, I push the heavy hospital door open and step forward into the past.
I am not prepared for what I see—a mere ghost of a fading memory. To be here in his presence, under these circumstances, combines in a single moment the sum total of a lifetime of hope and fear. The mix of emotion is overwhelming.
A voice thick with cobwebs comes weakly from across the room. “I’m glad you came, boys.”
The voice leaves no doubt that it’s him, or, more accurately, what is left of him. Amplified by my memory, a trace of the sound of Scar still comes through. Staring at a skeleton, I realize his battle with cancer has wound down to the last salvo. A gaunt, yellow, translucent shell of the person I had once revered motions with a twitch of his sunken eyes for us to join him at his bedside. Two chairs have been purposefully positioned for the occasion. My heart pounds as we sit, Luke taking the chair closest to him.
Straight in front of me, a catheter bag hangs from a metal bed rung. It is half-full of urine tinged rust-brown with blood. Scabs that don’t look like normal scabs dot his skin like the spots of a leprous leopard. His once thick jet-black hair is gone, except for two strange gray clumps above one ear. The ear looks dry and shriveled, as though it could fall off at any time. I doubt that he weighs a hundred pounds. I wonder if he’ll even make it through the night.
His lips are dry and badly cracked, hard looking. They should be bleeding, but they aren’t. They part like the bill of a bird when he speak, his tongue dark and swollen. This is far more upsetting than I had anticipated.
“How is Cherry?”
“She’s not doing very well, sir.” I do not intend to be morose, but I am determined to make sure only the truth comes from my mouth. I have waited my entire life to tell this man the truth, and I must do my utmost to stay true to that purpose.
He nods, as if the negative report about Miss Cherry was expected. “I have no family. No children. My estate, including a sizeable amount of life insurance, is to be split between you boys and Miss Cherry.” It is an abrupt start. He wants that much on the table right up front.
I begin to say, “No, I don’t think that would be…” but he flips his hand dissuasively, the sudden movement obviously causing him pain.
“The money is yours to do with as you wish. Give it to charity if you like. No use for money where I’m going.”
Where are you going, sir? “Why would you want us…?”
“It’s what I want. I know you both have been subsidizing Cherry for quite some time. It’s an expensive world we live in. The money is yours.”
“Okay—sir.”
He nods that it is done. “Luke, I’m dry, would you give me a little squirt?”
A squeeze bottle marked Water sits on the bed stand. Luke puts the plastic tip to the Sergeant’s mouth and squeezes the bottle. A small amount of water trickles down the Sergeant’s chin onto his pale green hospital gown. He nods a thank-you to Luke.
Mesmerized, I watch him.
He looks at me, and his jaundiced eyes seem to sparkle faintly. “We had a great time at Dodger Stadium that day, didn’t we, boys?”
I smile. “Yes sir, we sure did.” Luke echoes me. “I still have the bat, sir.”
“I never could get you to stop calling me ‘Sir,’ could I?”
“No, sir.” I smile again. “It’s a matter of respect, I guess. I’ve always felt that way about you.”
His failing, desiccated body appears incapable of producing tears, but his once powerful eyes begin to spill over. He looks away from me, thankfully, for I am very close to losing it. It is killing me to see my former hero in this condition. The love I have always felt for this man rises like a geyser, charging up from the deepest holds of long-imprisoned memory. My emotional balance faltering fast, I glance at Luke, hoping to borrow some of his strength to steady myself, but I see he is already straining under the weight of his own emotion.
The Sergeant gathers himself. “I wanted…I needed you boys to come because I want to apologize to you for the thing I did that I regret more than anything in my life.”
I give Luke a confused look. This doesn’t feel at all like what I had been expecting. Why would he need to apologize to us? I killed the man, not him. “Apologize, sir?”
“Yes—apologize. This will take a while, so please hear me out. I don’t think I have enough left in me to go through it more than once.”
I nod tenuously, uncomfortable. Luke plainly would like to leave if it were at all possible. The Sergeant motions for more water. Luke gives him some.
“First, I want you both to know I am very sorry, especially to you, Wade.”
Sorry? I’m the one who is sorry. Out of habit from attending to Miss Cherry for so long, I take a tissue and stretch to dab the tears from his face, then catch myself and instead place the tissue in his hand. “Go ahead, sir.”
“Please try to bear with me; this isn’t going to be easy—for any of us.” He clears his throat and looks at the ceiling for a moment.
“Okay.”
“In the late 1950s, the Los Angeles Police Department went through a period of heightened paranoia about the increasing presence of east coast organized crime families in Southern California.”
What on earth is he talking about? “Organized crime—you mean like the mafia?”
“Yes, the mafia. The O.C.I.U., a small, elite group of prima donna detectives, including Miss Cherry and me, were running too fast and too loose with our tactics. An even smaller group within the O.C.L.U. had begun to carry out covert actions, many of which were never revealed to the mayor or any other elected official, making them extralegal, if not illegal. Most of the cops were good cops doing what they believed to be the right thing.”
He pauses to breathe and take another sip of water. I get the feeling he’s been working on this speech for a long time. I catch Luke’s eye, and he gives me an “I don’t have a clue what he’s talking about either” look.
“One cop in particular, Lieutenant Theodore Shunkman, took it upon himself to rid the city of all perceived scourges. Ted was a real piece of work. You guys might remember him from that night on Billy Goat Hill.”
“I remember him very well,” I say from an almost trancelike quarter.
“He tried to punch you that night,” Luke says.
The Sergeant might have smiled, perhaps inside, but outside it’s a wincing grimace, the cancer taking another bite of something still alive with nerves.
I try to scrounge for levity. “You were supposed to forget about that, Luke.”
“I forgot to forget.”
The Sergeant stares at us for a moment. “Lieutenant Shunkman was responsible for the murder of four reputed mobsters—all sent one after the other from Miami to set up a West Coast operation. Shunkman was sick, a cunning loose cannon with a conviction that he had been put on this earth to liquidate organized crime. He was assassinating these guys and making the murders look like they were done by a particular local gang of bikers whose death signature was a single bullet between the eyes. The gang was known to fiercely protect their turf, especially from any foreign competition. It took guts for the third and fourth explorers to take up the challenge.”
He pauses again to breathe. Speaking is difficult labor, each word like pressing three hundred pounds of dead weight.
Something ticks in the back of my brain, the germination of a vague but very unpleasant thought. I shift in the chair, fidgeting, crossing my legs, then recrossing them. Luke seems fascinated with the story, like when he listened to the Sergeant recite the amazing saga of Jakey Blume.
“Shunkman’s first two hits went like clockwork. He had the whole undercover unit crowing over the dumb goons killing each other off. Then he got a little overzealous and ran into some trouble on the third killing. And we caught him in the act of committing the fourth one.”
“What trouble did he run into on the third one?” Luke asks.
The Sergeant looks directly at me. “He made the mistake of dumping the body in the wrong place.”
Luke stiffens on the edge of his seat, suddenly agitated. “What? Wait a second. Where did he dump the body? You don’t mean at Three Ponds?”
“Yes—at Three Ponds.”
I nearly choke, feverish realization beading all over my face. Then instantly I get the whole picture.
Luke scrambles out of his chair, rage igniting his firecracker blood. “I don’t believe it! You mean you let my brother suffer his whole life thinking he killed that man?”
I am up beside him. “Luke! It’s okay. Take it easy.” I grab him by the shoulders. “It’s okay. Calm down.”
I haven’t seen him this angry since we were kids. I try to ease him back down in the chair, but he pushes me away. “What do you mean, it’s okay? It’s not okay. This poor excuse for a human being deserves to have cancer! You’re a child abuser, for crying out loud!” A fire rages in Luke’s eyes, his shock and anger fomenting, seething.
“Luke, stop!”
“The heck I’ll stop. Do you have any idea what Wade has been through all these years? Do you? You’re scum, Sergeant Cavendish! You hear me? Scum!”
A knock sounds at the door. A nurse, the one who smiled at me in the hallway, sheepishly steps into the room. “Just checking, is everything okay in here?”
The Sergeant waves her away.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. Just some understandable emotion is all. We’re fine. Aren’t we, Luke? We’re fine, ma’am. Thank you for checking on us.”
The nurse doesn’t seem satisfied, but she quietly backs out of the room. She does not close the door all the way, though.
Luke wants to hit something. He takes a deep breath and jams his hands in his pockets. Disgusted, he steps away from the bed and stares out the window at nothing. The Sergeant is no longer fit to look at.
I walk over to the window and stand by Luke. My thought has exploded into a thousand urgent questions, all of which seem inconsequential when compared to the weight of the mystery that has suddenly been lifted from my shoulders. I am in shock, too, my mind racing at the speed of light, struggling to fathom a lifetime of crisscrossed meaning.
I close my eyes and open my heart to the Lord, and God gives me the right words to speak. “Thank you for telling me, sir. My life is already on the right track. Now it’s even better.”
“There’s more to the story, Wade.” His voice is now barely above a whisper. “I need to get it all out. I need to tell you everything.”
I look at Luke and see his shoulders tighten, but he doesn’t turn around. I leave him standing at the window to sort through his thoughts. I return to the bedside and sit where Luke had been, in the chair closest to the Sergeant.
I give him some more water, noting he looks paler, weaker, closer to death. “Go ahead, sir. It’s okay—you can tell me everything.”
The Sergeant closes his eyes as he speaks, conserving energy. “Shunkman evidently dumped the body at Three Ponds sometime shortly after sunrise, because he met me for breakfast; we were together the rest of the morning and into the afternoon working on paperwork at the Highland Park station. He left the police station in the late afternoon to get ready for a dinner party he and his girlfriend were to attend that evening.”
“About fifteen minutes after he left, I got an anonymous phone tip that the body of Johnny” “Bloody John” Giacometti could be found near the middle pond of the area unofficially known as Three Ponds.
The face of Bloody John glares at me. I tremble as a chill whipsaws down my spine. Luke comes back to the bed and sits, his anger left to cool somewhere outside the window. I give the Sergeant more water.
“Although I was somewhat skeptical of the phone call, I decided to go out to Three Ponds and take a look by myself.” As I made the turn from York Boulevard onto San Pasqual Avenue, I saw Luke, barefoot and hatless, running for home like he was late for dinner. A few minutes later, I found his Dodgers cap floating in the water in the lower pond. I got worried when I heard Mac yowling farther up the draw.
“When I got up to the middle pond…” He opens his eyes and looks at me. “I saw the ball bearings…” My heart jumps. “…in the mud spelling out the word Mississippi.”
The ball bearing that has haunted me all my life is in my pocket and now back within two feet of the man who dropped it into my sweaty, trembling, guilty hand. I have never been able to let go of it.
“One ball bearing…was missing from the second s,” I say, the memory stark, vivid.
Cadaverous eyes, vestiges of his burned-out soul, burrow into me. “Yes-—from the second s.”
Luke huffs and squirms in his chair. “All these years and you…never mind.”
The Sergeant’s gaze flares then dulls as he works to focus his eyes on Luke. “I followed the sound of Mac and came upon Wade lying unconscious next to Shunkman’s third victim. Mac wouldn’t let me near your brother at first.”
Luke clenches his fists, his eyes watering at the mention of Mac. “Our dog was the best dog that ever lived. I always…” He chokes to a stop, his control poisoned by a flood of emotion. I put my hand on his shoulder and feel him trembling. He sighs deeply and hangs his head down. “I didn’t mean to run away. I was scared. I didn’t know what to do.” He looks up at me, his eyes pooled with long repressed regret.
“I know, I know. It’s okay.”
His mouth tightens in a pained smile. “That darn Mac didn’t run though, did he?”
I pat his shoulder. “No, he didn’t, Luke.”
The Sergeant, listless, degrading rapidly, focuses on me again. “You had a nasty bump on your forehead, but you were breathing normally. It didn’t take long to figure out what had happened—the slingshot floating in the pond, feathers strewn about, the hole in the cardboard, and victim number three leaning back against the rock with a shiny musket ball jammed between his eyes.”
My stomach tightens. Give me strength, Father.
The Sergeant closes his eyes again. Sorrowfully, he says, “I panicked just like you, Luke. I didn’t do the right thing. I didn’t think it out.”
Speckles of sympathy appear in Luke’s eyes, his face drained, haggard.
“I woke up out by San Pasqual Avenue with Mac standing over me, sir. How did I get there?”
“I carried you.”
“But why? Why did you leave me there like that?”
He opens his eyes wide and looks at me. The question causes him to rally slightly, fed by a ripple of new energy. “After the murder of the first bad guy from Miami,” they sent a replacement, a lowlife by the name of Carlo Puzzi. I had some nagging doubts about Shunkman when he supposedly “discovered” Puzzi’s body over by Franklin High School and called it in himself.
“The whole thing was too neat. He overplayed it, crowing on and on about how the stupid gangsters were killing each other off. But I had only a hunch, and no proof to back it up. And part of me felt like if it was Shunkman doing the killings, he was doing us all a big favor. Those were rotten guys he was bumping off.”
“Murder is murder, sir.”
“Yes it is.”
“But why leave me lying in the dirt with a knot on my head?”
“Like I said, I panicked. I just knew at that moment I had to get you away from the crime scene and make it look as if you guys had never been at Three Ponds.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to contain and cover up Shunkman’s madness, and I couldn’t have two young boys caught up in the middle of it all.” I had it in my head that I needed to protect the O.C.I.U. You see, there had been rumors that Chief Parker was thinking about shutting the unit down. I didn’t want that to happen.
“It was politics pure and simple. We were engaged in some very important work, national security stuff, and some internal matters involving corruption within the Los Angeles Police Department. A scandal involving an O.C.I.U. officer committing vigilante-style murders would have devastated our operation for sure.”
“I still don’t get the leaving me lying there part. And you talk as if you already knew it was Lieutenant Shunkman. How could you have been so sure it was him?”
“It was him.” When I received the phone call at the Highland Park station tipping me to the body at Three Ponds, some things pointed to Shunkman being the caller. The call came from outside to the Highland Park station, through the switchboard, not to the O.C.I.U. at headquarters downtown, where I would normally be reached at that time. I was pretty sure only three people knew I was at the Highland Park station that afternoon—Cherry, Rodney Bernanos, and Shunkman.
The caller asked for me by name. He also made a mistake. He referred to Johnny Giacometti as “mutt number three,” a label a few of us put on Giacometti when he first arrived from Miami. “I had spent time in Miami working under cover and knew a little about Giacometti before his bosses picked him for the assignment.”
“I remember how tan you were. Your note with the Dodgers tickets mentioned Miami, and I thought that was strange.”
His eyelids drift down. “I shouldn’t have written that. It was a stupid slip.”
Luke has been listening quietly. Now he speaks up. “There’s a lot you shouldn’t have done, Sergeant.”
“And a lot I should have done, too. But there’s more to this story, and I want you both to know all of it.” He raises his hand to his mouth and coughs.
I cringe when he trails his fingers on the bed sheet leaving a streak of bright red blood. “Do you need the nurse, sir?”
“No.” You were out cold, and I couldn’t rouse you by the pond. I had to get you away from there, so I carried you out to the road and made sure you were still breathing. I ordered Mac to stay with you. Then I went to a phone booth and made an anonymous call to the police station reporting that someone was lying by the road.
“I quickly drove back to where I left you, arriving just as you and Mac came up onto the road. You looked pretty good, from a distance anyway. I watched you start walking up San Pasqual Road and saw the patrol officer stop and talk to you.”
A full-color memory plays in my head as he slowly recounts the most horrifying day of my life. “Yes?”
“Are you telling me Miss Cherry knew about the whole thing?”
“No, Wade. Absolutely not. She didn’t know about you boys, about you discovering Giacometti’s body until much later.”
“Luke’s Dodgers hat, two pairs of tennis shoes, a slingshot, and the ball bearings were in my car under the seat before she arrived at Three Ponds.” He coughs again, grimacing, and wipes more blood on the sheet.
“Let me get the nurse.”
“No!”
“Let him talk, Wade.”
He looks straight into my eyes. “I got rid of the cardboard, too, and I dug the ball bearing out of Giacometti’s head.”
Shuddering, I grip the chair arm. In my pocket the ball bearing squirms. “So, Miss Cherry didn’t know about us encountering the dead man?”
“No, not then. Cherry and I removed and disposed of the body and set out to trap Shunkman. But even at that point I had badly underestimated just how crazy and dangerous he really was.”
“I think you all were crazy,” Luke says.
Again, the Sergeant nods. “Cherry and I were in love.” But, both of you guys, please believe me—I swear she had nothing whatsoever to do with the early decisions. She trusted me as her senior officer in the chain of command. She was an excellent cop, doing her job, following orders.
“Cherry and I thought we had figured out how to nail Shunkman. We took our story to our captain, and he went to the chief. A plan to trap him was quickly put in place.”
“So the cover-up went all the way up to the chief of police?”
“I believe so, but I still hadn’t told anyone about you boys finding the body. I was hoping you were scared enough to keep your mouths shut.”
Luke expels a mouth full of invective. “We never told a soul, officer.”
“I know you didn’t, Luke.”
Luke rolls his eyes and shakes his head in disgust.
I don’t want to know the answer but can’t keep myself from asking. “What would have happened if we had told?”
Luke is heating up again. He slams his hands on his knees. “He had it all figured out, big brother.” He glares at the Sergeant. “Didn’t you, cop? No one would have believed us, would they? Just two little jerks making up a wild story. Two stupid little fatherless latchkey lunatics starved for attention, isn’t that about the way you figured it—Sergeant?”
The Sergeant’s eyes flutter weakly. “That’s exactly the way I figured it. You are absolutely right.”
“So you just left us swinging on our own rope then, didn’t your?”
I feel sorry for Luke and wish there was some way to move beyond all this. “You said the whole story, right, sir?” The Sergeant nods. Than it spills out, the one thing I have never told Luke. “I was sure I killed that man. So sure, I almost committed suicide over it.”
Luke is aghast. “What!”
“That morning I found you on the bridge by the Rose Bowl?”
“Yes, sir.”
New tears spill down the Sergeant’s sallow cheeks. “That’s when I realized what a terrible mistake I’d made. But I couldn’t tell you anything. It was too late to turn back things that had already been put in motion.”
“You almost jumped off a bridge?” Luke can’t believe it.
I ignore him. “You could have told me anything, sir. I idolized you. I would have believed anything you said. I would have followed any instructions you might have given me.”
A pain worse than the ravages of cancer shows in his eyes. “I turned to Rodney for advice.” More tears trace down the wet tracks on his face.
Please, God, not Rodney, too. “You mean Rodney knew?”
“I confided many things to Rodney—he was like a father to me.” But he did not approve of my activities with the O.C.I.U. He tried to convince me to transfer out of the unit. Rodney wasn’t an American citizen. He was French-born and had been a freedom fighter in the First World War. He also returned to France for several years to help the underground resistance against the German occupancy during World War Two. He felt the O.C.I.U. was dark and evil like the Nazi SS. He thought we were a dangerous threat to civil liberty, and he worried that my involvement in the O.C.I.U. would lead to my downfall as a police officer.
“He was right, of course. I knew he would have considered my judgment at the time I found you lying by the body, and my decision to leave things as they were, to let you continue to believe you killed the guy, not only despicable, but Gestapo-like. I only told him you were a troubled kid—like me when I was your age.”
“Rodney fell in love with you from the very start, Wade. You reminded him of me when I was a kid, the son he never had. I thought if he took you under his wing, you’d be able to work through your troubles. But I finally broke down and told him the whole story, the truth, just before he died.”
I am in tears now, too. “You used Rodney?”
The Sergeant winces. “Yes, in a way I did. I used him to be for you what I didn’t have the courage to be.”
“Despicable,” Luke grumbles.
“Rodney was outraged when I told him the whole story. He was ashamed that I could do such a thing. He even slapped my face, something he never once did when I was growing up.”
Yes, the slap… I did see it! “Go on.”
“He said he was going to tell you the whole story himself. I was scared, but I thought it was better for you to hear it from him anyway. I was sure he would talk to you about it that day you guys came to visit him at his house, the day he had—the heart attack.”
“Geez, sir.” More tears come in a rush.
“I think the stress killed him.”
Luke shakes his head. “Man, this is only getting worse, Wade.”
“The Sergeant saved my life, Luke. I’m pretty sure I would have jumped from the bridge if he hadn’t come along.”
“It was only luck,” the Sergeant counters, refusing undeserved clemency.
“No, sir, I believe it was God reaching down and touching me through you.”
The Sergeant looks at me, and I see deep in his eyes a desperate need to believe what I just said is true, that God does reach down to intercede in a life. At this moment, with all of my heart, I want more than anything for my fallen hero to know God’s forgiveness.
Luke hisses, “Boy, it turns out Lucinda was right all along. Not letting us see the Sergeant anymore was the best thing she ever did. And poor Miss Cherry, he ruined her life, too.”
“Take it easy, Luke.”
“You’re right about me, Luke—but there’s more.”
Luke stands up. “Great! What now? Are you going to confess that you were the one who broke into our house and shot Mac?”
The Sergeant closes his eyes. “No, Luke. Lieutenant Shunkman did that.”
Luke pales and slumps back down in the chair. I have begun to shake. My head is pounding. Father, in the name of Jesus, please give me strength.
“We didn’t know Shunkman had found out you guys knew about the body. It wasn’t until much later that we were able to piece it together. One of Shunkman’s cohorts overheard Cherry’s end of an argument she and I had on the telephone. An argument like many we had over whether or not to tell you boys the truth. Part of Cherry’s spirit died when she found out she was the source of the leak that almost…”
“Got us killed?”
“Yes.” The irony is, Shunkman didn’t know you thought you killed Giacometti. But it spooked him when the body disappeared from Three Ponds. He became paranoid, obsessed. When he found out you boys knew about the body, I think he convinced himself that you had seen him dump the body there in the first place and had recognized him from that night on Billy Goat Hill. He lost it. Completely snapped.
“And we didn’t know he’d started seeing your mom.”
I rise out of my seat, my body rigid, my memory on fire, sucking like a vacuum back in time…
She came in late…
Mac awoke with a start…
Laughter… ice tinkling… Fred? Ned? Ted!
She called him Ted!
Good grief, he was the man she brought home with her that night!
“He came to kill—us?”
“We had suspicions he’d recruited a few other officers into his cabal and that they were planning something. We had Shunkman and several others under surveillance and discovered he was dating Lucinda. That’s when I suspected he must have found out you knew about the body at Three Ponds. Cherry and I immediately went to your mother and told her everything.”
“Your mother was amazing. She could have turned on us, gone to the district attorney, the FBI—but she didn’t. She believed in us and backed us all the way. We agreed on a plan to protect you boys, to give us time to discover all of the officers involved with Shunkman, and to keep it all quiet. Cherry and I gave Lucinda seven thousand dollars we had saved for our wedding. Your mother had a lot of emotional and personal problems, but through it all she tried her best to protect you.”
“So that’s why we moved so suddenly, big brother. Another mystery solved.”
“Not suddenly enough.”
“Shunkman’s luck finally ran out. Your mom had tactfully broken off her relationship with him, and she was helping us by keeping silent, which gave us more time to make sure we roped in all of Shunkman’s clan.”
“But he’d already been in your house. He knew the layout, which was all he’d wanted in the first place. The night before you were to move to Glendora, he came to your home to shoot all three of you as you slept. He had a silencer. We found it later.”
“Maybe God did save us,” Luke says.
“Shunkman came to your house at about three in the morning. He entered the front door with a key we figured he’d stolen from your mom.”
“We never locked the doors in those days anyway.”
“It was dark, of course, and once inside it would have taken a minute for his eyes to adjust. The inside of the house was in disarray, moving cartons strewn about, furniture shifted around from where he expected it to be; he must have tripped or bumped against something, who knows. The important thing is, the dog heard him. You know the rest.”
“I remember, Wade. Mac started out for Billy Goat Hill with us, but he turned around and went back to the house. Maybe he sensed the evil that was coming our way. He probably got back to the house and found Shunkman already inside. He would have gone after him with a vengeance.”
“I remember, Luke.”
“Only twelve more hours and we would have been gone. Mac would have lived.”
“Only twelve more hours.”
The room is quiet except for the awful rasp of the Sergeant’s erratic gasping for air. He stares at the ceiling, empty, depleted, but looking strangely satisfied and relieved. I know exactly how he feels, burdens lifted, ready to move on.
“What ever happened to Shunkman?” Luke asks.
“He was shot and killed six days later when he and two other renegade cops attempted to kill Giacometti’s replacement at a warehouse in North Hollywood. We had them under surveillance, and we were able to interrupt the hit. But Shunkman and his boys refused to surrender, and there was a wild shoot-out. Cherry ended up shooting Shunkman just before he shot me. She probably saved my life.”
“Cops killing cops…it really doesn’t get any worse than that. So the whole thing was covered up to protect the department. Officially, Shunkman died in the line of duty, shot by a known mafia operative during an attempted arrest. But it ended up costing us our careers.”
“For what it’s worth, Shunkman had a hunk of meat missing from his neck and shoulder area. It was badly infected and wasn’t healing. It must have been terribly painful. Mac got him real good before Shunkman shot him. The injury was severe enough to run him off and foil his plan to kill you.”
“Lord have mercy,” Luke says.
An incredible peace washes over me as I feel the very presence of God surrounding me with the miracle of the Holy Spirit. For the first time, I truly experience the full and utter wholeness of our Father’s deep and abiding love. I understand the depth of His forgiveness for me and for the world. And in this moment of epiphany, I am so overcome by His love that my heart overflows with compassion and understanding for the Sergeant.
“Sir?”
“Yes, Wade?”
“I want you to know something important.”
“Yes?”
“I want you to know God loves you. I want you to know I have always loved you, and I still do. I want you to know how much I appreciate knowing the truth. I want you to know you did the right thing in contacting us. And, with all my heart, I want you to know that I forgive you for everything.”
His eyes show me such relief I can hardly breathe. “Thank you, son. I just wish Cherry could forgive me, too.”
“Have you ever asked her?”
“No. I have no right to ask her.”
“Well, if God can forgive you, then so can Miss Cherry.”
“That’s very kind, but you can’t really know that.”
“If you believe in God as I do, you can know that.”
“Believing and knowing are not the same things.”
“In my heart, they are the same thing. If you believe, then you will know. The Bible is the record, the rule book, and the manual of life. It’s God’s holy message to the world. To me, it is the greatest love letter ever written, and it was written to each and every one of us. God loves you very much, sir.”
“I know our lives came together for a purpose, a beautiful, incredible, miraculous purpose. I understand now that without you, including everything that has happened, I wouldn’t know what I know, and I wouldn’t value what I value. I understand now that my suffering was and is for a purpose, and I am filled with such excitement and anticipation that I can hardly wait to see what God has planned next.”
“So, as difficult as it may be for you to accept, I can only say that God loves you. He wants you to accept His love as a gift. And there is a Way for you to accept it, and the Way is Jesus Christ.”
The Sergeant is completely drained. I lean close to him and take his hand in mine. He squeezes my hand with a last bit of strength and speaks in my ear. “Thank you, Wade. I can’t tell you what you’ve done for me. You have become quite a man. Rodney would be proud.”
“Sir, it isn’t me doing it. It is God doing it.”
“Okay, son.”
“Sir, would you like to see Rodney again?”
“If I only could.”
“May I come back tomorrow and talk with you some more?”
“I’d like that very much.”
Luke says, “Can I come, too?”
“Yes, please do, son.”
The Sergeant closes his eyes, and I watch the lids quiver strangely. We sit quietly for a little while, the undertow of emotion releasing us to rise back to the surface. Luke gets up and walks to the window. I follow him with my eyes, half expecting him to turn around and spout a fresh Lukeism to brighten the room. But he doesn’t turn around. My little brother is at a loss for words. The window holds him there, perhaps offering him a glimpse into his own past, a view full of ugliness now cleansed and sparkling with the shine of newfound truth.
I get up and walk over next to him.
He turns to me, tears running down his face. “See down there in the parking lot, the blue pickup.”
I look and find the truck. In the bed of the pickup are two little boys, one blond and one redhead. They are carbon copies of the man sitting between them. The man has his arms around their shoulders.
Looking out the window, Luke says, “That was amazing, what you said to him. I felt like you were speaking for me and to me at the same time.”
“It wasn’t me—it was God.”
We stay by the window for a few minutes while the Sergeant rests. With my arm across Luke’s shoulders, my mind floats in a supernatural drift, shifting between images of the past and visions of the future. God shows me Lucinda, and I know loss and courage. Next I see Rodney, and I know caring and humor. Then I see Esther and I know patience and kindness. Last I see Miss Cherry, and I know faith and action.
We, all of us, were in it together, but not together in it. If only there had been more trust, better communication, more love—such is the condition of the world. And I thank God that I finally know who I am and the reason I am here in this world.
From across the room, my gaze still fixed on the parking lot below, I notice the Sergeant’s breathing is less labored and more even.
The nurse reappears, her stockings swishing quietly behind us. A long moment passes while she checks over the Sergeant.
Quietly, she says, “I haven’t seen him sleep this peacefully in weeks. I was a little worried for a while there, but it seems your visit has done him some good. When I saw you boys praying in the hall, I just knew your visit would be a blessing for that troubled man. I’ve been praying for him every day. I don’t know his personal story, but I do know people. The weight on that man’s soul was so heavy. I could feel it.”
“Thank you for your prayers, ma’am—and sorry about the ruckus earlier. We’ll be back to visit him again tomorrow.”
“Praise God, because Mr. Cavendish surely loves you Parker brothers.”
“Oh, you know who we are?”
“My Lord, yes, I most certainly do. That man talks about you two all of the time. I heard all about Billy Goat Hill, and I’ll tell you this much—God surely must have been watching over you boys.”
“Yes, ma’am. He surely was.”
“My name is Naomi. Please feel free to ask for me, and I’ll be glad to help you in any way I can.”
“Thank you, Naomi.”
“You’re welcome and God bless you boys.”
“God bless you too, ma’am.”
Out in the hallway, I am suddenly aware of a feeling of unfinished business. And then it hits me, and I am looking forward to tomorrow’s visit with more anticipation than a kid slipping out the window for a late-night outing on Billy Goat Hill.
“I haven’t seen that look in your eye since Highland Park,” Luke says. “Uh oh. What are you thinking?”
“Let’s go check on Miss Cherry. I’ll tell you on the way, while we listen to some more of your harp music.”
It’s late afternoon when we arrive at Rosewood Manor. The lobby is filled with the wonderful aroma of raspberry cobbler.
Marge McZilkie calls to us from the adjoining dining room. “Cobbler day. I figured I’d see you right around dinnertime.”
I am naturally drawn toward the source of the aroma as we both step into the dining room. “How is she today?”
“Tired, but she’s definitely on the upswing. She said she feels like a lifelong fever has finally broken.”
“Is she in her room?”
“No, she’s with Emma. They’re getting some sun on the west patio.”
“Thanks, Marge.”
“Are you boys staying for dinner, or would you like me to box up some cobbler to go?”
“To go, please.”
“You got it.”
“Be careful with that stuff,” Luke whispers. “You do have addiction tendencies, you know.”
Emma notices us as we approach. “Yo angels is here, Miss Cherry.”
Miss Cherry has sunglasses on, and her face is framed in a beautiful yellow silk kerchief. She looks like a classy movie star on hiatus at her favorite spa resort.
Luke and I greet her with a hug. “How’s our best girl feeling today?”
“Pretty good, I think. I’ll know for sure once I hear how things went with Lyle.”
“Well, for starters, let me just say God is good.”
“Speak it, brother!” Emma chimes. “Dat’s what I’m talk’n ’bout!”
“Emma’s been giving me quite a pep talk this morning.”
Emma grins. “I done told Miss Cherry you boys have nuttin’ but the love of Jesus in your hearts.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“No need to thank me. It’s a blessin’ and a half to know boaf of ya’ll. I reckon ya’ll got some unfinished bidness. I’ll get out the way so’s you can tidy things up.”
“Thank you, Emma.”
“Later, ya’ll.”
Luke chuckles as Emma rides off into the sunset.
“You were able to see him?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How is he?”
“He doesn’t have much time left, but he’s in God’s hands now.”
“I was thinking about him this morning, how different things might have been if we had gotten married, had children. I still love him.”
“He still loves you, too. He said in his letter that he has always loved you.”
“I wish we all could go back and rewrite the story. Lord knows I’ve tried, but I can’t seem to forget the past.”
“I don’t think the past is meant to be forgotten, but there are things that are meant to be forgiven.”
“I forgave Lyle a long time ago.”
“He doesn’t seem to know that.”
She looks at me, and then at Luke. We are both smiling. “Luke and I have an idea about something.”
“You do?”
“Yes, ma’am. We do.”
“Does it involve sliding on cardboard?”
“Funny you should put it that way.”
“What?”
“Well, why don’t we take a moment to pray together, ask God for His wisdom and guidance, and then we’ll see what you think about our idea?”
“Okay,” Miss Cherry says, bowing her head.
“Father in heaven, in the spirit of forgiveness…”
A little while later, Luke and I head for home with God’s blessing, two raspberry cobblers to go, and some very special arrangements to make.