Sand Sharks

CHAPTER

16

An obligation to do the impossible is null and void.

—Celsus (ca. AD 67–130)

We went back to Chelsea Ann’s room. Martha sent me up to hers for a bottle of bourbon while she filled the ice bucket, and Rosemary retreated to the bathroom to get control of her tears.

“I’m so sorry, sugar,” Martha said when Rosemary emerged with red-rimmed eyes. “Y’all looked so happy yesterday morning out there on his balcony. I can’t think why in the world he’d mess around with that idiot child when he has a beautiful smart wife like you. And right when you’d taken him back.”

“Oh, come on, Martha,” Rosemary said, taking a deep swallow of the drink I’d handed her. “A fresh firm young body over this forty-three-year-old wreck? You know exactly why.”

“Only because he’s a sex addict,” Chelsea Ann said loyally.

Rosemary clasped her sister’s hand. “Thanks for not saying you told me so.”

“Yeah, well, the afternoon’s still young, kid.”

Martha poured herself a drink, put her feet up, and leaned back against the pillows on one of the beds. “Make a note of the date and time, ladies. We’ll all come to court for you. Vacuum his assets, right?”

“Right!” we chorused and clinked our glasses in solidarity.

“Want me to have that little bitch fired?” asked Martha.

Rosemary shook her head. “It’s not her fault. If I could fall for his lies, if he could make me believe he was a changed man, what chance did that dumb kid have?”

Martha waved the bottle in my direction, but I had volunteered to drive her and Fitz to the reception later, so I passed. Not Rosemary, though.

After an hour, she was well on her way to being thoroughly sloshed when she handed her key card to Chelsea Ann. “Would you and Deborah mind going up and getting my things? I don’t think I can stand to see him again right now.”

We agreed, but when we got to Dave’s room, he didn’t respond to our knock. Chelsea Ann used the key card and cautiously cracked the door. “Dave?”

No answer.

We stepped inside and almost tripped over the wet towels that were flung on the floor. The Jacuzzi had been drained, although several long red hairs decorated the bottom. The closet doors were open, but nothing was inside except for two of Rosemary’s dresses. No masculine toiletries in the bathroom. No sign of his clothes in the dresser, no second suitcase.

“The bastard’s checked out,” Chelsea Ann said. “Good.”

A large vase of roses had begun to drop their crimson petals on the desktop. Probably bought on sale at a grocery store. I dumped them in the nearest wastebasket.

We carried Rosemary’s things back to Chelsea Ann’s room and Rosemary called down to the front desk to confirm what we suspected. Yes, ma’am. Judge Emerson had checked out twenty minutes ago. Did Mrs. Emerson want to keep the room? It was paid for till eleven the next morning.

“No, thank you,” Rosemary said.

Martha was determined to punish him every way possible. “Who’s his chief over there? Joe Turner? I shall make a point of telling him that Dave cannot claim credit for attending this conference,” she said magisterially, as she rose to go get ready for the evening reception.

“Could you give Fitz my regrets?” Rosemary asked plaintively. “I don’t think I feel like going out again this evening.”

“Of course, sugar,” Martha said. “Charge your room service to Dave’s tab, then you get a good night’s sleep and just think about all that lovely alimony you’re gonna collect.”

Because I had volunteered to drive the Fitzhumes, Chelsea Ann asked if she could hitch a ride as well, and we agreed to meet in the lobby at 6:30.

I called Dwight, who was on his way out to supper with some other deputies, then scribbled a few words on a note card so that I could remember the sequence of the funny story I wanted to tell on Fitz at his roast tonight. Fresh lipstick and I was good to go.

The sun was more than an hour from setting as we crossed the parking lot to my car. I had planned to pull up to the door, but the others trailed after me. I had just pressed my remote to unlock the door and turned back to see where Martha and Fitz were when a red car dug out from its parking spot several spaces over and hurtled toward us.

For one bewildering moment I felt as if I were back on last night’s sidewalk, watching them film the hit-and-run scene for Port City Blues. Same screeching tires, same noisy acceleration, same female scream, only this time I was the one screaming. The car’s right bumper hit Fitz and tossed him in the air like a sack of potatoes. He landed against Martha, who went sprawling to the pavement, too, her white suit suddenly splashed with blood.

Without touching the brakes, the driver careened down the drive and out onto the street that ran the length of the island, narrowly missing the gateposts.

Even as I ran to Martha and Fitz, cell phones were flipping open all around me, their frantic owners pushing the 911 buttons.

Martha was dazed and bleeding profusely from a scrape on her cheek and another on her hand. She tried to push herself upright, unaware that it was Fitz’s body that kept her pinned to the pavement. He was unconscious but breathing. I grabbed a roll of paper towels and a bottle of water from the trunk of my car and we made wet pads to ease Martha’s wounds and stanch the blood. We were afraid to move Fitz before medical help arrived but Chelsea Ann slipped off her jacket and made a cushion for Martha’s head. Between us, we managed to keep her calm.

It seemed hours before we heard ambulance and police sirens, although another glance at my watch showed that only twelve minutes had elapsed.

Two patrol cruisers got there first. One uniformed officer and a security guard from the hotel held back the onlookers while a second officer began questioning us for details on the car.

All I could say was that it was an older red car. A hatch-back.

“There was something about the wheels,” Chelsea Ann said.

“Yes!” I exclaimed, remembering now. “The hubcaps were spinners.”

My nephew Reese is crazy about his truck and one of the many chrome extras he’s bought for it is a set of hubcaps that keep spinning even after the truck stops.

An ambulance from the New Hanover Regional Medical Center swung into the parking lot and was directed over to us. The paramedics hopped out, checked Fitz’s vital signs, and immediately put a cervical collar on his neck, then lifted him onto a stretcher. I heard one of them mutter, “BP’s tanking and one lung’s collapsed.”

They fitted him with an oxygen mask before loading him into the ambulance—Martha, too.

Strong-willed, imperious Martha looked at me beseechingly. “Deborah?”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll be right behind you.”

“Ma’am, I’ll need your statement,” said one of the officers. “You can’t leave.”

“The hell I can’t,” I told him and slammed the car door on his protests.

As the ambulance rolled down the drive, I slid my key into the ignition, pausing only when Chelsea Ann yanked open the other door and jumped in. Flooring the gas pedal, I caught up with the ambulance and hung tight. Even after they turned the sirens back on and sped through red lights, I sailed through with them.

“Omigawd!” Chelsea Ann shrieked when I swerved around a pickup and almost T-boned a blue convertible full of white-faced college kids.

I saw that she had retrieved Martha’s purse. “Is her phone there?”

A moment of rummaging and she came up with it in her hand. “What’s their son’s name? Chad?”

“Sounds right,” I said.

Moments later, she had scrolled through Martha’s contact list and found the son’s number on speed dial.

Weaving in and out of the vacation traffic that clogged the island’s main two-lane street, I listened with only half an ear as Chelsea Ann explained who she was and what had happened.

By the time she finished, we had crossed the causeway and were streaking down the four-lane highway that was the quickest route to the hospital on 17th Street. Adrenaline was still pumping through my system when we finally turned into the appropriately named Ambulance Drive and pulled up at the emergency entrance.

I let Chelsea Ann off to stay with Martha and went to find a parking space.

Fitz was nowhere in sight when I got back to the emergency entrance, but I was told I could go back to where Martha’s cuts and scrapes were being treated. Either it was a slow Monday evening or the hospital was exceptionally well staffed for her to be seen so quickly.

Happily, her injuries seemed to be superficial. The gash on her hand needed only a few butterfly bandages to close it up. Her face would be red and bruised for several days, but she was quickly regaining her equilibrium. I hoped the nurses realized that it was only a matter of time before her polite requests to know what was happening with Fitz turned into a full-scale reminder of a patient’s legal rights and the rights of a spouse to be kept informed. Yet all they could tell her was that he had been taken directly to surgery.

Their son Chad called twice during his drive up from South Carolina. He had immediately phoned his sisters, which meant that Martha soon had one frantic daughter calling from California and another from Rome. Each clamored to know if she should catch the next flight out. Martha was usually so decisive that this not knowing what to tell them left her impatient and frustrated; but until he was out of the operating room, there was nothing she could do.

Friends from the conference came to sit with us in the ICU waiting room, and the judges from Fitz’s district brought pizza and milled about to lend support. Poor Fitz got his roast in absentia as we tried to keep our spirits up by remembering funny things he had said or done in his long career on the bench. It wasn’t a wake, but it was damn close to it. And through it all we kept circling back to why the accident had happened and why didn’t the driver stop?

Drugs? Alcohol? Or was it that someone had suddenly recognized that Fitz was the one who gave him jail time or ruled against him in court and impulsively decided to get even? Most defendants who come to district court wind up admitting sheepishly that yes, they are indeed guilty of the offenses with which they’ve been charged, and if they are angry, it’s usually toward their accusers or the police. Nevertheless, I have been threatened by an occasional belligerent, as have most judges. So far as I know, though, those threats have seldom been carried out. All the same, it’s been known to happen in other states.

“Fitz with an enemy? Nonsense!” Martha said firmly. “If it was deliberate—and mind you, I say if—then he must have mistaken Fitz for someone else.”

Nevertheless, a vengeful defendant was one of several theories that kept us going round and round like blind mice hunting for a way out of the maze.

I was almost grateful for the distraction when Detective Gary Edwards arrived shortly after seven with a Wrightsville police officer in tow for courtesy’s sake and asked to question us. Chelsea Ann and I were the only two there who had seen it happen.

“Let me buy y’all a cup of coffee or something,” Edwards said, and the four of us went down to the hospital cafeteria where they were still serving supper. Once we were seated with coffee that wasn’t as bad as I expected, Edwards tore open a packet of sugar, emptied it into his mug, and told us that one of the doormen had watched the whole thing. “He says it looked like the driver was deliberately aiming for the Fitzhumes. What was your impression?”

“Well, there was certainly enough room for him to have missed them if it wasn’t accidental,” I said, and Chelsea Ann agreed.

“He didn’t slow down at all. In fact, I think he was still accelerating. I feel like kicking myself though.”

“Why?” Edwards asked. “You couldn’t have stopped him.”

“No, but I could have gotten his license plate,” I fumed. “Last night, we watched them film a hit-and-run for that TV show.”

“Port City Blues,” Chelsea Ann murmured, daintily adding creamer to her coffee.

“The script called for someone to yell, ‘Did you get the license number?’ and nobody had. I thought that surely in real life someone would at least get the first few letters. But when Fitz and Martha went down, it drove everything else out of my head. Why—why—why didn’t I at least whip out my cell phone and take a picture?”

“Someone did,” Edwards said, “but it’s blurry and the car was too far away to get a good fix on it. Our computer techs are trying to enhance it enough to get a partial plate, but I’m not counting on it. Someone thought it was a two-door Geo Metro and at least ten years old. That sound about right to y’all?”

Chelsea Ann and I looked at each other and shrugged. Neither of us cares enough about cars to tell a Toyota from a Nissan.

I took a swallow of the coffee and tried to concentrate. “A hatchback for sure,” I said, at last, “and yes, just two doors. Bright red and shiny like it’d been waxed recently, but I sort of think it had some serious dings.”

“What about the driver?”

We both shook our heads. We had an impression that it was a man behind the wheel, yet couldn’t say for sure. We were both too focused on Fitz and Martha.

“I think he was wearing a ball cap,” Chelsea Ann said.

“I couldn’t see him at all,” I said. “He was driving into the sun when he came at us and it glinted off the windshield. Maybe he really didn’t see Fitz and then was too scared to stop.”

“Maybe,” Edwards said. “Or maybe somebody’s got it in for a bunch of you guys. Is there a connection between Fitzhume and Jeffreys?”

We couldn’t think of one. “They’re in totally different districts. Fitz has been on the bench for twenty-five years and Jeffreys only for a year or two.”

Edwards sighed and downed the rest of his coffee. “Well if you think of anything…”

We assured him we would.

Throughout the whole session, the Wrightsville officer had remained silent. Now he told Edwards that it looked to him as if the hit and run was related to the murder, so Wilmington could have it. “Just keeps us informed, okay?”

When he was gone, Edwards looked around the cafeteria. “You know, the food’s not half bad here. I think I might as well grab a bite to eat while I have a chance. What about y’all?”

Chelsea Ann looked torn and I realized that his ‘y’all’ was only for politeness. Even though there was a hollow space in my stomach, I stood up and told her to stay. “I won’t leave without you.”

“You sure? ’Cause I can wait.”

It only took one more “I’m sure” from me to convince her it was okay to do what she wanted, which was stay there and get to know Detective Edwards on a nonprofessional basis.

Nothing had changed in the ICU waiting room except that a dispirited lethargy seemed to have settled over those who remained. I picked the pepperoni off of a slice of cold pizza and ate part of it.

Martha’s son arrived just before nine. A few minutes later, a surgeon came to the waiting room in bloodstained scrubs and asked to speak to them privately.

“Whatever you have to say can be said before my friends,” Martha told him. She held herself erect as if braced for the worst. “Don’t sugarcoat it, Doctor. Is he going to be all right? Yes or no?”

“We don’t know. There was internal bleeding. A rib punctured his right lung and his hip was fractured. We had to remove his spleen. He took a serious blow to the head but luckily there doesn’t seem to be much swelling of his brain. We’ll monitor for blood clots, of course. He’ll probably be in and out of consciousness for the next couple of days. After that?” The surgeon shook his head. “We just don’t know. His age is against him, but if he makes it through the next few days, then his chances improve.”

She took it like the stoic she is. “Can we see him now?”

“It’ll take them another fifteen or twenty minutes to get him hooked up to the monitors, and we’ve put him on a ventilator to help with his breathing,” the surgeon said. “I’ll tell the nurses to call you when they’ve finished.”

Martha reached out and touched his arm. “We’ve been married forty-two years, Doctor. Thank you for giving him back to me.”

He started to say not to thank him yet, but Martha’s eyes held his in such fierce determination that he squeezed her hand. “I hope I have, ma’am. I hope I have.”