Heads Will Roll – Chapter Twenty-Seven

NOT EDITED

While Bo had stayed behind at the lake to wait on the coroner, Dallas had driven Rick and the kids to Ellepath’s small clinic. In LA, he’d get reamed for leaving a shooting like that, but he had a feeling that in Ellepath, the logistics didn’t matter much. Rick certainly hadn’t put up a fight when Dallas had offered the idea.

It’d be so easy, Tex. They were all destined to die today anyway.

Dallas glanced up at the rearview mirror just long enough to confirm all three members of his little entourage were safe and alive. Rick sat in the middle of the backseat, Logan on his left and Bonnie on his right. Bonnie had pressed herself into the door, as far away from touching Rick as she possibly could. Logan, on the other hand, had practically burrowed himself into his father’s side.

You got what you wanted at the lake. You’re out of the driver’s seat now.

The voice, Ed, laughed. The driver’s seat’s always just a little push away, Tex. You know that.

Unfortunately, Dallas knew it all too well. Ed had been with him for as long as he could remember. A little whisper at first, words indiscernible, that grew a little louder every year until it finally convinced Dallas to let him take the wheel, so to speak. Dallas had set ground rules. Ed could only ‘steer’ toward people who deserved it. Criminals, killers. Monsters. Ed pushed him every step of the way. He’d been pushing much, much harder since they’d arrived in Ellepath. When they’d pulled up to the lake, when Gerry had raised the ax at Rick? Well, Dallas hadn’t even really had a say any more. His adrenaline had spiked and just like that, Dallas was riding shotgun, and Ed was at the wheel, gun in hand.

Dallas was just thankful it hadn’t been worse. Ed’s handiwork was usually far less… impersonal.

Was gonna let him kill the country bumpkin cop first. But what’s the fun in WATCHING an ax drop when you could be the one wielding the blade?

“Shut up,” Dallas whispered.

“You say something?” Rick asked.

Dallas cleared his throat. “No, sorry.” He shifted in his seat, cleared his throat again. “How’s your head there, Dep?”

“Fuzzy,” Rick said after a moment. “He’s… he’s dead, yeah?”

“Very. I don’t miss.”

“What… what about Jeff?”

“He was on his way to the hospital when Bo and I were dispatched to the lake.”

Rick lifted his head. “S-so he was alive? Jeff?”

“Last I knew, yeah. Bridget pulled up to the house within seconds of the shooting. As I understand it, Jeff was conscious and coherent enough to talk to dispatch over his radio with her there.” Dallas glanced up at the mirror again. “Biggs seems like a strong guy, Dep. He’ll pull through.”

“There was a lot of blood,” Bonnie said, her voice quiet. She sounded so much further away than just the backseat. “So much blood. Ran down the driveway after us like someone tossed a whole bucket of it down.”

“He, uh, he would’ve been amped up. His adrenaline would’ve been going, his heart probably racing. It makes the blood come out faster, no matter how bad the injury actually is.”

You know from personal experience, huh, Tex? So sweet that your expertise can help comfort this innocent little girl.

Dallas closed his eyes as he flipped on the blinker. God, if only his hands were capable of killing Ed too. “Biggs’ll be all right. He’s tough. Bridget only goes after strong guys.”

“God, I hope you’re right,” Rick whispered.

“Bridget knows how to spot the tough guys from a mile away, believe me. He’s got this.”

Once they’d made it to the hospital, while Bonnie threw herself into her mother’s arms and Heidi dropped to her knees to hug Logan, Dallas spoke to just about every damn person in the place to locate Bridget. Finally, he wound up at the door to the women’s bathroom nearest to the waiting room. He rapped two knuckles against the door. “Decker, you in there?”

“He’s at the lake still.” Dallas waited a moment. No response. “You alone in there?”

“Yeah.”

“You want a friend?”

“Okay.”

Dallas opened the door. Bridget was tucked under the sinks as much as she possibly could be, her back pressed against the wall. Dallas cleared his throat as he stepped into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. He crossed the room and sat down beside her, dropping his hands to his lap. “Sitting on a hospital bathroom floor seems like a brave choice.”

Bridget laughed a little, offering a short nod. “I figured I was already covered in so much ick that it didn’t really matter what the uniform picks up from under the sink.”

“That’s fair, you do look pretty gross.”

She laughed again, wiping her cheek with her forearm. “I haven’t been able to bring myself to change yet. Or wash my hands. Or my face. I just…”

“It’s his blood,” Dallas said. He cleared his throat. “I know. I get it. When, uh, when my partner was shot, I sat in that uniform for… for hours. Stared at the dry blood on my hands until Jamal forced my hands under the water. I’m not sure I ever would’ve been able to make that call on my own.”

“It feels stupid to be so upset about it. I barely know him,” Bridget said, gaze focused on the wall nearest to the door. “But I’m here covered in his blood and feeling guilty for considering washing it off. Like I’m… like I’m washing his life away or something.”

“It doesn’t matter if you knew the guy for two damn seconds before you found him in that driveway. It’s fucking traumatic, Bridget. It’s trauma. Our brains aren’t made for witnessing that kind of shit and then just jumping on back into our normal lives, like it didn’t mean anything or like we don’t feel anything. Wearing a damn badge doesn’t make you immune to that.”

“Maybe,” she whispered. She let one of her legs stretch out, dropping her forehead to the knee still pulled to her chest. “You said Bo’s at the lake?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you…? Rick and the kids?”

“Safe and sound.”

“Good. So what’s Bo still doing at the scene?”

“Two bodies. Schutt and his partner.”

“Who did that? You or Rick?”

“Schutt took down his partner, according to Rick. The guy realized Schutt wasn’t who he said he was and threatened to shoot him if he didn’t let the kids go.”

“Who he was?”

Dallas shrugged. “I didn’t push him. I figured there wasn’t a point on my own.” He elbowed Bridget’s arm. “What do you say we get you cleaned up, see if the nurses have a pair of scrubs you can borrow, and go ask ourselves some questions?”

Bridget wiped her nose with the back of her hand before nodding. “Yeah. Let’s.”

***

Dallas rapped two knuckles on the open door of Bonnie’s hospital room. The girl’s shoulders lifted defensively, settling only slightly once her eyes had settled on Dallas and Bridget. Dallas offered a smile. “Sorry, kid. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s okay.” Bonnie shifted on the exam table, gaze flickering to her mother before shifting back to Dallas. “Did you find out anything on Mister Biggs?”

“He’s still in surgery.”

“So he’s alive?”

“He is,” Dallas confirmed, leaving out the, ‘for now’ Ed’s voice taunted him with.

Bonnie blew out a relieved breath, though the peace in her expression didn’t last long. “But you’re not here to talk about Mister Biggs.”

“Not entirely. He’ll come up, sure, but if you’re ready, we have a couple questions about the man who took you.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be ‘ready’ for that. But… but I can try.”

“Thank you. You’re a brave girl, Bonnie.” Dallas leaned back against the wall while Bridget sat down in the metal chair next to Bonnie’s mother. “What do you remember about Wednesday afternoon?”

“When he took me?” Bonnie asked. Dallas only nodded. “I… I don’t know. I remember walking to my car, I guess. I think I made it inside, into the driver’s seat. And then… there was a sound behind me. Like a shuffling. And before I could turn to look in the backseat, there was something sharp in my neck, and then I woke up blindfolded, and my wrists and ankles were tied up, and he had put tape over my mouth.” She closed her eyes, the fingers of one hand tugging on the fingers of the other. “He talked to me. I-I don’t remember what he said, but I recognized his voice. I couldn’t put a name to it, but I knew I… I knew him.

“He took the blindfold off. I was in the basement at the school, and he was wearing a mask, so I could really only see his eyes, and those were kind of familiar too, but I couldn’t figured out why. I didn’t know where I knew them from. He… I know he wanted me to walk with him to his car, and he said he’d untie me if I did. If I didn’t put up a fight, I-I guess. I tried to talk to him, but I stil had the tape on my mouth, and I-I remember him kind of smiling at that, like it was funny that he couldn’t understand me or that I couldn’t tell him what I wanted to. He yanked me away from the wall and my head hit the floor, and I tried to scream as loud as I could, b-but if anyone was still in the school and heard it, they didn’t come to help. I kicked him, I think, and he choked me and bashed my head into the floor a couple times. He said something about… teaching Rick a lesson, but I didn’t really understand what that meant until we got to the lake, umm… today. I’m still not really sure I totally get what it meant, honestly. It’s all so… clear and so foggy at the same time. I don’t know.”

“You’re still in shock, Bonnie, and probably exhausted beyond belief. The clarity and the fogginess overlapping like that is totally normal,” Bridget assured. “You’re doing great.”

“You said he wanted you to his car? Not yours?” Dallas asked.

“I think so, yeah.”

“Do you remember getting into it?”

Bonnie shook her head, finally opening her eyes again. “No, I think he drugged me again. The next thing I remember is the basement. I-I mean a different… basement. His basement, not the school’s. “

“Okay. What do you remember about that?”

“I wasn’t blindfolded this time, and he’d switched out the tape over my mouth for a-a hankerchief or something. And I was handcuffed to a metal pole. Tall, floor to ceiling. When he came downstairs, he was still wearing the mask, but he’d changed clothes and he wasn’t wearing gloves anymore. He told me that I could scream if I wanted, but that no one would hear me a-and he couldn’t promise what he’d do to me if I did, s-so I didn’t. He took the gag off, and I just told him that I had no idea who he was, that I didn’t recognize him, that he could just let me go and I wouldn’t tell anyone. He told me that I was part of some plan he’d been cooking up for a while, so he couldn’t do that.

“The next time I saw him was… I don’t know. The next day, I guess. He’d left for several hours, and I screamed so much that I went hoarse,” Bonnie said, her voice breaking. “When he came back, he told me he’d left to… to test me. To remind me that I’d been told that I could scream as loud as I wanted but that he couldn’t promise how he’d react to it if I did. And then he threw Miss Jameson’s head down the stairs at me.” She covered her mouth. “I-I killed her. I’m the reason she’s dead.”

“Bonnnie, there’s no world in which you’re responsible for man’s actions,” Dallas said.

“But he said—”

“He would have found someone to kill no matter what you did. He’s a monster. He was a monster. He didn’t come to Ellepath not to harm anyone. He’d already killed his way through a slew of people before he got here for his continued ‘revenge’ plan. What he did or didn’t do isn’t because of you, and the blame for that woman’s death doesn’t fall on your shoulders. It falls on his.”

“A whole… whole slew?” Bonnie asked, hand falling back to her lap as her eyes lifted to Dallas’s face.

“Rick wasn’t exactly the only person he was seeking revenge on. He was just… one of the last names on the list.”

“Jesus Christ,” Bonnie’s mother whispered.

“When we were at the lake, before he shot that other man, ghe kept talking about the balance. Balance of the universe. And how he needed to reset it. He wanted to kill Rick, Bo, and maybe Pitman too. And once he did that, it would… restore the universe. A-and then he said he was going to kill Logan too, because he needed the blood of an innocent, and then his son would get to come back to earth.”

Dallas raised an eyebrow, glancing over at Bridget only to confirm he’d heard that right. The look on her face indicated he had. “Sorry, umm… like back from the dead?” Bridget asked.

“It sure seemed like it,” Bonnie confirmed. “That was, like, the final straw for the other guy. He stopped aiming his gun at Rick, and he pointed it at Gerry. And he kept calling him Zak? It didn’t seem like he knew who Gerry really was. I think Gerry had told him that he was the father of one of the kids killed at the same time as the other’ guy’s daughter, but he was actually… the father of the kid who killed them? And when he wouldn’t lower the gun, Gerry pulled Mister Biggs’s gun from his waistband and shot him.”

Dallas needed a moment to process that particular piece of information. “Did he, uh, ever say why he took you?” he asked.

“I don’t think so, no. Just all the stuff about teaching Rick a lesson.” I don’t even think he mentioned killing Rick until we got to the lake. Before that, I was just… part of the lesson. I don’t know.”

“That’s okay. You did great here, Bonnie. Thank you for talking with us. I know recalling all of that wasn’t easy. Thank you for doing it,” Dallas said.

Bonnie only offered a nod.

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