Chapter 1: I Caught a Fleeting Glimpse

Oceano, California

October 15, 2000

It was getting harder and harder for Jake Kingsley to breathe. His mouth had blood in it, smearing all over his tongue, and with every exhalation he took, a little more would bubble up from his trachea. He coughed when a particularly large amount came up, spraying blood in front of him. Every breath hurt, especially the inhalation part, and it did not feel like those inhalations were providing enough oxygen to his body. He wanted to pant. And every time he took a breath in, a little blurb of blood and air would bubble out of the hole in his chest, the gunshot wound just above and to the right of his right nipple.

That fucking bitch shot me, he thought in numb wonder. Fucking shot me! With a gun!

That fucking bitch was Jenny Johansen, a crazy stalker who had been obsessed with Jake for well over ten years. She apparently still believed that she and Jake were meant to be together and viewed any woman Jake was involved with as a threat to be dealt with by using lethal force. There was a permanent restraining order against her in place, an order that forbid her from being within one hundred yards of Jake or any member of his family, but, as could plainly be seen by what just happened, a restraining order was nothing but a piece of paper when you came down to it.

Johansen had not been trying to shoot Jake, she had been trying to shoot Laura, his wife, but Jake had forced himself between Laura and the gun at the critical moment. And now he had a hole in his chest and was having trouble breathing and was starting to feel kind of dizzy and numb. The gunshot wound itself did not hurt much. It was just a minor throb in his chest, no worse than muscle strain from hitting the weights a little too much the day before, but there was this foreboding sense of impending doom about him, a strong, insistent sensation that he was not going to survive this. Am I going to die? he wondered, unsure how to feel about that. Am I living out the last few minutes of my life here? That seemed a very distinct possibility.

He was sitting on the floor of the feminine hygiene aisle of the Oceano Alpha Beta store. Laura was sitting next to him, her arms around him, holding his body in that position, keeping him from slumping over. She was crying and kept telling him to hang in there, that he was going to be all right. She had tears running down her face and blood stains on her pretty white blouse. It was not her blood, she had already reassured him, but his. The bullet that Johansen had fired, though it had passed all the way through his body and out the other side as evidenced by the hole in his right upper back (he could just see it by craning his head to the right and looking over his shoulder) had not struck Laura. He found satisfaction in that. He had done what he meant to do when he stepped between Johansen and his wife. He had kept her safe. Even if he died (and his mind insisted that dying was the most likely thing that was about to happen) Laura was uninjured. She would live and she would be able to raise Caydee without him. She would certainly not be lacking for money or support.

A groan came from across the aisle. It was Jenny Johansen, the crazy stalker that had shot him. She was crumpled on the floor, face down, blood running onto the fake wood tiles from a large cut on the left side of her scalp. That cut had been put there by Laura, who had brained her two times with a can of feminine hygiene spray she had picked up from one of the shelves.

“She’s waking up, Jake!” Laura said, her body tensing up even more than it already was. “Should I hit her again?”

Jake looked to his left for a moment. The gun that Johansen had shot him with was about thirty feet down the aisle toward the back of the store, sitting on the tile. Jake had kicked it there after it had dropped from Johansen’s hand after Laura had struck her for the second time. It was a ways away from the crazy bitch, but in plain sight, nonetheless.

“If ... if ... she ... starts to ... get up,” he panted, “keep her ... from doing ... it. Hit her ... kick her in ... the head ... but don’t let ... her get up ... and don’t ... try to fight her ... she’s ... really ... strong.”

“Who the fuck is she?” Laura asked. “She was trying to shoot me! What the fuck did I ever do to her?”

“She’s ... Jenny Johansen,” Jake said.

“Who the fuck is Jenny Johansen?” Laura knew the story about Johansen but did not recognize the face or the name. As far as she knew, this was just some random woman who decided to try to kill her.

“The one who ... tried to kidnap ... my ex-girlfriend ... Helen,” Jake explained.

Laura’s eyes got wide, even wider than they already had been. “Holy fucking shit,” she whispered.

“Yeah,” Jake said with a little nod. “Apparently ... still a bit ... obsessed.”

“Fuck me,” Laura whispered.

Johansen continued to moan and groan. She began to roll back and forth a little. Her hand went to the wound on her scalp and touched it, bloodying her fingers. Her eyes creaked open and she raised her head up. She began to look around, gazing from place to place. Her eyes tracked over Jake and Laura but did not lock on. There did not seem to be much comprehension in them.

“I ... think ... still down ... for count,” Jake muttered.

There was no one else in the aisle except for the three of them. Other people were crowded at both ends of it, staring at the three of them—one of them that manager chick who always put Jake’s nerves on edge—but none dared to venture in to help. Their eyes were scared but intensely curious at the same time. Jake knew that if Johansen rose and tried to resume her attack, they were on their own. And he was in no condition to perform any more interventions. Laura would have to handle the situation by herself until the cops got here.

And how long would that be? Jake felt like it had been an hour since the gun had gone off and Laura had brained the fucking psycho. Why was it taking so long for the cops to get here? He could hear their sirens approaching, getting louder by the second, but what was the fucking holdup here? Did they want to finish their fucking coffee first? Maybe take a nice shit before they rolled in? He would have been very surprised and possibly disbelieving had he been told that only four minutes had passed since the sound of the gunshot had blasted through the store and only three and a half minutes since 911 had been called.

Johansen was just starting to try to struggle to her feet and Laura was just about to let go of Jake and stand so she could kick her in the head a few times with her right Nike cross-trainer when there was a bustle from the crowd at the front end of the aisle. They parted almost reluctantly and finally a uniformed sheriff’s deputy appeared. Jake recognized him. It was Jeff Grimley, one of the regulars at Jake’s guitar and sing sessions at the Pine Cove, the local cop bar. Jake had been there with Laura just nine days ago and Grimley had been one of the off-duty deputies in attendance. He had requested that Jake sing Patience by G&R and Jake had obliged him. Grimley’s pistol was in his hand and being held against his right leg, his finger on the trigger guard. His eyes took in the scene and got wide as he saw Jake Kingsley sitting there with blood on his shirt and a pale face. Another deputy, an early forties woman that Jake did not recognize, came in just behind him, her gun in her hand as well.

“Hey ... Jeff,” Jake panted. “Thanks ... for ... coming.”

“Are you shot, Jake?” Grimley asked, still trying to make sense of what was going on here. “This went out as a shooting.”

“He’s shot in the chest,” Laura told him. She pointed at Jenny Johansen, who was groaning and still trying to get up to her knees but not really coordinated enough to do it just yet. “She’s the one that did it!”

“Where’s the gun?” the female deputy asked, now pointing her gun at Johansen, her finger still outside the trigger guard.

“Over there,” Laura said, pointing down the aisle. “Jake kicked it over there.”

Both cops looked over at the gun in the aisle and then back at Johansen. “What happened to her?” Grimley asked.

“I hit her with a can of cootchie spray,” Laura said.

“Cootchie spray?” Grimley asked. “What the hell is that?”

“Just what it sounds like,” the female deputy said. She then looked at Laura. “Did you hit her before or after she shot the gun?”

“After,” Laura said. “Trust me. That crazy bitch did not shoot Jake in self-defense. She was trying to shoot me.”

“How come?” the female deputy asked.

“Because she’s a crazy fucking bitch!” Laura barked. “Are you going to fucking arrest her or what?”

“Just trying to figure out what’s going on here,” the deputy said.

“She’s ... Jenny ... Johansen,” Jake told the deputies. “The woman that tried...” He couldn’t quite spit the whole sentence out.

“The crazy bitch that tried to kidnap and kill his last girlfriend,” Laura said. “She’s obsessed with Jake. She stalked us into this store and tried to shoot me. Jake stepped between me and the bullet. That’s how he got shot. After she shot him, I hit her on the head with the can of cootchie spray because that’s the only thing I had available in this aisle. Now, can we get some fucking medics in here before my husband dies right in front of me?”

“All right,” Grimley said. “I think I’ve heard enough for now. Callahan, cuff her up. I’ll cover.”

“Right,” the female deputy, now identified as Callahan, replied. She holstered her pistol and then stepped forward, careful to stay out of her partner’s line of fire. She used her foot to push Jenny Johansen back to the tile and then she kneeled down so her knee was in the center of Johansen’s back.

“Whu you doing?” Johansen protested.

“Detaining you for the moment,” Callahan told her, grabbing for her left hand. She twisted it up behind Johansen’s back, holding it firmly in place, and then pulled a set of handcuffs from her belt.

“Whu I do?” Johansen asked, puzzled, as the first bracelet was snapped on her wrist.

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out here,” Callahan said, now holding the cuffed wrist in place by the free cuff and the chain. She grabbed the other hand and brought it back behind Johansen’s back as well. A moment later, she was securely handcuffed.

“My head hurts!” Johansen complained.

“I’m sure it does,” Callahan told her, standing up for a moment and then bending over at the waist, so she was leaning over Johansen’s prone body. She quickly patted down the back of her waistline and the back of her legs. Once done with that, she grasped her by the bend of her elbow and rolled her up onto her side. Holding her there, she patted down the front, starting with the waistband and them moving to the pockets of her jeans, all the way down the front of her legs to her shoes, and then up her stomach and over her breasts. “Nothing else on her,” she told Grimley. “Just some keys in her front left pocket.”

“Copy,” Grimley said, lowering his pistol.

Callahan rolled Johansen back onto her stomach. “Stay there,” she told her. “We’ll get some medics in here to look you over.”

Grimley keyed up his radio mic. “Twenty-seven Bravo,” he said into it, “scene secure. One suspect detained, one victim with a GSW to the chest, awake and conscious currently. The suspect has a head injury. Send in EMS from the staging area.”

The dispatcher repeated back what he had said. Grimley holstered his weapon and then kneeled down next to Jake and Laura. “How you doing, Jake?” he asked.

“I’ve ... been ... better,” Jake replied.

That feeling that he was about to die really started to overwhelm Jake by the time the fire crew and the paramedic crew got to him. In addition, it was getting increasingly hard to breathe. The first thing the medics did when they came in was separate Laura from him and then lay him down on a plastic backboard. The EMT of the crew—a cute female of maybe twenty-five or so—used a pair of trauma scissors to cut his shirt away from his body, leaving him naked from the waist up.

“Get some occlusive dressings on those wounds,” the paramedic—he was a late thirties, overweight male whose name badge identified him as TROWER—ordered.

One of the firefighters started rummaging in one of the bags.

“Julie,” Trower said to the cute EMT, “get some oxygen on him. High-flow.”

“Right,” she said.

“This is Jake Kingsley,” Grimley told the paramedic.

Trower looked over at him for a moment and then back down at Jake. Recognition flared in his eyes. “Holy shit,” he whispered.

“Good ... to ... meet you,” Jake said. “Feel like ... I’m dying.”

“Not on my watch, Jake,” Grimley said, though his eyes told a different story. He then looked up at the fireman who was holding the clipboard. “Get us a helicopter. He’s gonna need to go to Cottage.”

“Right,” said the firefighter.

“What’s cottage?” asked Laura, who was now standing next to Grimley.

“Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital,” Trower told her, pulling a stethoscope off his neck and putting it to his ears. “It’s the nearest trauma center to SLO.”

“Santa Barbara?” Laura asked, appalled. “That’s eighty-one air miles away!”

Trower looked up at her for a moment, obviously wondering how she knew the exact air miles between Oceano and Santa Barbara off the top of her head while her husband was lying there shot. “That’s right,” he said, “but it’s the nearest place they can fix him. Cottage is a level two trauma center. The hospitals here aren’t equipped or staffed to deal with this, not even the ones in Santa Maria. The chopper can get him there in less than an hour.”

“Can I go with him?” she asked.

“No,” Julie the EMT told her. “Sorry. There’s not enough room in the helicopter for both of you and the crew.”

Laura began to cry again, tears running down her face.

“Let them do their jobs, Laura,” Grimley told her. “He’s in the best hands right now. I’ve worked with these two many times before. They know what they’re doing.”

Trower went back to work. He listened to Jake’s lungs with the stethoscope and frowned at what he was hearing. He then took his gloved hands and felt along the right side of Jake’s neck for a moment. After that, he felt and looked at the front of Jake’s neck. “No lung sounds on the right,” he said. “Distended neck veins and the trachea is deviated to the left.” He then looked down at Jake’s face. “You’ve got a tension pneumothorax, Jake. That means there’s a hole in your right lung and the air is leaking out into your chest cavity and making the lung collapse around your heart and the vessels leading out of it. I need to decompress it.”

“Oh ... okay,” Jake grunted. Ever since being laid flat his breathing difficulty had increased considerably.

“I need to put a needle in your chest and let the air out.”

A needle in my chest, Jake thought. That seemed a counterintuitive thought for this situation, but this was one of those situations where you kind of had to let the experts do their job. “Okay,” he muttered. “Do ... it.”

“Get me a blood pressure and get him on the monitor,” Trower told Julie and the fire crew. “And someone start spiking a line for me. I want to get two large bores in him before the chopper gets here.”

Everyone went to work. Jake just laid there, concentrating on getting each breath in and out. One of the firefighters put a hissing oxygen mask on his face. This did not make it feel like it was easier to breathe but it seemed that each breath was now giving him a little more bang for his buck. Julie put a blood pressure cuff around his right arm and started to inflate it while listening to the crook of his elbow with a stethoscope. She let the pressure out and then barked out her reading for everyone to hear. “One-oh-two over fifty-eight. Pulse is trucking along at a hundred and sixteen.”

Trower, who was opening up a plastic bag that contained a bunch of medical looking stuff, was obviously concerned about this finding. “As soon as I get his chest popped, I need to start dumping some fluid in him,” he told everyone.

More cops arrived, more than Jake had thought even worked the area. He recognized about half of them from the Pine Cove visits. Absurdly, each one who knew him felt the need to greet him and ask him how he was doing before going about their assigned duties. Two of them knelt down next to Johansen, who was more awake by the moment and starting to yell about how Laura had to die. Others started talking to the crowd on either side of the aisle, asking if anyone had seen the incident go down. One of them found the manager chick and started asking her about security cameras.

“Yes,” Jake heard the manager chick say (it was amazing how many details his mind was focusing on at this moment—maybe because he was dying?), “the entire store is covered.”

“We’ll be needing those tapes,” the deputy told her. “Make sure nothing happens to them.”

“Right,” the manager said, “I’ll go check them as soon as...”

“Go secure them right now,” the deputy said firmly. “Don’t look at them yourself, just make sure no one can screw with them. I’ll have one of the deputies go with you.”

“Oh ... well ... okay,” the manager said slowly. “But don’t you need me to...”

“No,” the deputy told her. He looked up at another deputy. “Statler, take her to the office and make sure that footage is preserved.”

“Right,” Statler said.

Trower was now scrubbing the front of his chest, just above his nipple area, with a brown liquid. One of the fireman was putting an IV bag together. Another paramedic crew had entered and were now working on Johansen, who was still screaming about how “that fucking temptress” had to die. Two of the cops had to help hold her in position while they worked on cleaning and bandaging her head. At one point, Johansen looked over and saw Jake being worked on. “I’m sorry, my true love!” she yelled over at him. “I almost had her! Why did you get in the way? Does she have that much of a hold on you?”

Jake did not answer her.

Trower held up the largest needle Jake had ever seen in his life. The business end of it was about two inches long and the bore was large enough in diameter that one could probably look through it from one end to another and be able see through it. He was holding it with the gloved thumb and index fingers of his right hand. He was using the fingers of his left hand to probe the front of Jake’s chest, searching for a landmark. “Okay, Jake,” he said. “Here we go. I’m gonna put this right between your third and fourth rib. It’s gonna hurt.”

Jake, who did not think that he could speak loud enough to be heard over the oxygen mask on his face, only nodded. Trower put the tip of the needle right where the fingertip of his left index finger was resting. He removed the right hand and then pushed forward, driving the needle through the flesh. He was right, it hurt quite badly. As he continued to push it in, however, Jake felt the sensation of a pop from beneath his chest wall.

“All right, it’s in,” Trower said. “I’m pulling the needle out. Julie, get ready with the Heimlich valve.”

“I’m ready,” she said.

Trower pulled the needle out, leaving a large plastic catheter behind, which he then pushed down all the way to the hub. As soon as the needle was free, there was a large hissing of air that blasted out from the end of the catheter. Some blood sprayed out with it. Jake instantly began to feel less pressure in his chest. It suddenly became easier to breathe.

“That’s it!” Trower barked. “Get the valve on it!”

Julie connected a length of tubing to the end of the catheter (which was still secured only by Trower’s fingers) and screwed it into place. The valve was connected to a length of tubing that fed into a small canister.

“Does that feel better, Jake?” Trower asked.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding his head. “Can breathe now.”

“That’s good,” Trower said. “I got most of the air out of your chest cavity. The thoracentesis needle will let the air you inhale that leaks from the lung out of your body so it won’t collapse your lung down. When you breathe in, the Heimlich valve and the occlusive dressings on the wounds will keep air from entering the chest cavity that way. That’ll keep you breathing until we can get you to the trauma center.”

“What about bleeding?” Laura asked.

“Well ... there’s not much we can do about that until you get to surgery. We’ll dump fluid into you to keep your pressure up, but we’ll just have to hope that any bleeding is not bad enough to kill you before you get there. The fact that you’re still conscious and talking to me is a good sign though. Usually if someone is going to bleed out due to a gunshot wound, they do it fast.”

Laura nodded but said no further on the subject.

Over the next ten minutes, Trower started two IVs on him, one in each arm. A firefighter held up the two IV bags so they could drain into his veins by gravity feed. Julie and Trower then secured him to the backboard with straps, cinching them down tightly. Jake was constantly asked how he was doing.

“Okay,” he replied each time. And this was true. That impending doom sensation was still there, but it had faded considerably since Trower had stabbed him in the chest with that needle. Soon, he heard the distinctive sound of a helicopter in flight. The sound grew louder and louder until the actual windows of the store began to shake a little. It would be the Life-Flight helicopter. Jake was familiar with it as it was based out of San Luis Obispo Regional Airport, the same airport Jake’s Avanti 180 was based out of, and he had seen it there many times, usually just sitting on its dedicated pad, but occasionally leaving on or returning from a mission. It was a Eurocopter EC135, one of the latest and greatest twin-engine utility helicopters that had come out in the last decade.

The sound of the engines wound down outside and about two minutes later, two flight nurses wearing bright blue jumpsuits, both of them short, petite and probably weighing about the same as Laura, were allowed into the aisle where Jake was strapped to the backboard. By this point, both ends of the aisle were being guarded by deputies to keep any unauthorized people out of it. Someone had placed a cone over the gun that Johansen had used. Another cone had been placed over the broken can of cootchie spray. Johansen herself had been helped to her feet and taken out of the aisle while Trower had been starting his IV lines. She had been shouting how much she loved Jake as she was led away.

Trower gave a report to the flight nurses, starting with the fact that he was Jake Kingsley (both sets of eye widened when they recognized him) and then working his way through the mechanism of injury, his findings, and what he had done to stabilize the patient the best he could. Only then did the lead nurse of the crew introduce herself to him. Her name was Mindy, which did not make Jake feel better.

“I know you fly out of our airport, Jake,” Mindy said, “but have you ever flown on a helicopter before?”

“Yeah,” he told her over the noise of the oxygen mask. “A few times.”

“It’ll be about a forty minute flight to Cottage in Santa Barbara,” Mindy said. “Are you claustrophobic at all?”

“No,” Jake said, wondering why she was asking that.

“Are you sure?” she asked. “I can give you a little valium in your IV if you need it.”

“Not claustrophobic,” Jake insisted. “And not afraid to fly. Let’s do this.”

They did it. Trower and one of the firefighters picked up the backboard he was on and put it on their gurney. They strapped him to that. Laura leaned down and kissed him on the side of his face.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can, sweetie,” she told him, tears still running down her face. “I love you. Don’t you dare fucking die on me.”

“I’ll do the best I can,” he promised. “I love you.”

They wheeled him out of the aisle. By this point, the deputies had dispersed all of the crowd that had been gawking at the scene. They were all gathered over in a corner of the store now, well away from the doors, and three deputies were talking to them, trying to see if anyone had seen the actual shooting go down. Jake didn’t think that any of them had. He distinctly remembered being alone in the aisle with Laura and Johansen when the gun went off.

They wheeled him out the door of the Alpha Beta. Jake saw at least ten patrol cars, two ambulances, and two fire engines out there, all of them with their emergency lights flashing and their engines running. Crime scene tape had been strung up around the entire perimeter of the lot. There were two deputies and a few firefighters inside the perimeter, but no one else. Outside the tape, a large crowd had gathered to watch the show. Jake looked to his right as they bumped and bounced over the poorly maintained pavement and got a glimpse of his BMW. Something occurred to him.

“Hey!” he said. “Hold up a second.”

“We have to get you in the air, Jake,” said Mindy, who was walking next to the gurney.

Jake reached down with his right hand and put it in the pocket of his jeans. His keyring was in there. He pulled them out after a bit of a struggle and then held them up. “My keys!” he said. “Somebody give them to my wife.”

Trower took them from him. “I’ll make sure she gets them, Jake,” he said.

“Thanks,” Jake said. “And thanks for saving my ass too.”

Trower nodded. “It’s what we do, my friend,” he told him.

They wheeled him across the street to a small park. Another fire engine was parked here and the helicopter, its rotors still turning at idle, its pilot standing near the tail rotor to keep anyone from blundering into it, was sitting on the grass of the soccer field. All of the soccer players and their parents had been pushed back a considerable distance by a couple of highway patrol officers and a San Luis Obispo police officer. Several other SLO PD cops were helping the firefighters keep the landing zone secure on the other side. There were even a few state park rangers on the other side.

Christ, Jake thought in wonder. Every on-duty cop in the county is here. I hope nothing’s going down anywhere else.

He was loaded into the helicopter by sliding the backboard he was on through an access door in the rear of the aircraft, just under the tail. The smell of burning jet fuel was very strong and the noise of the engines made conversation almost impossible. They slid him in feet first and he quickly found out why they had asked him about claustrophobia. The helicopter looked much larger from the outside than it did from the inside. They space he had to travel in was very small. The foot end of the backboard was nestled up against the right side cockpit seat. The ceiling of the aircraft was only about a foot above his nose. The two flight nurses climbed into the spot on his left where two side-facing seats were crammed together. The rear door was closed, sealing them in together. There was nowhere Jake could see out a window or get any sort of outside reference. Not even looking forward provided any information. All he could see were the two cockpit seats and a narrow band on the top of the windscreen.

The nurses strapped him in and then hung his two IV bags as high as they could hang them. They hooked him up to an automatic blood pressure cuff and put a pulse oximeter probe on his right index finger. They put a cardiac monitor on his chest. Once this was all done, they put headsets on. The pilot, meanwhile, was now sitting in the left hand seat and preparing for takeoff.

A few minutes later, the engine noise wound up making it flat out impossible for Jake to talk to the nurses or for them to hear him. He felt a shudder as they lifted into the sky, felt the sensation of the aircraft rotating to the left as they rose. And then they began to move forward, continuing to climb. After perhaps five minutes, he sensed they were in straight and level flight. Was that high enough? How many feet per minute did this thing climb?

You have to climb to at least forty-five hundred to make it over the Santa Ynez Mountains, Jake wanted to tell the pilot. After all, he flew this route every time he made the commute to LA and was very familiar with the minimums on this stretch. He was forced to assume that the pilot knew this and hope that he did not have the Kid Rock or the Beastie Boys version of helicopter pilot flying him on this mission.

The oxygen mask stayed on his face and the blood pressure cuff tightened up on his arm every five minutes during the journey. His breathing continued to be quite painful, but he did not feel hypoxic as he had before his chest was popped. He could see the two nurses talking to each other through their headsets, but could not hear what they were saying. This reminded him of one of the chorus lines from the Pink Floyd song Comfortably Numb, though Jake was far from comfortable or numb. He sang the line out a few times, smiling as he did so. The nurses looked at his lips moving but could not hear what he was saying either. That feeling of impending doom stayed in the back of his brain. He still had no idea if he was going to die from this or not. He rated his chances at about fifty-fifty at this moment.