Chapter 42

We were about to head for the hospital when I remembered. "Jake! He hasn't heard yet about what happened. Gotta see if I can get to him before he hears it from someone else!"

Our girls had been loaded into ambulances, and they were all on the way to the hospital, to undergo all the routine things that follow accidents, and things that weren't accidents at all. Belinda and Laurel were primary on the triage list, Laurel having been shot and wounded, and Belinda with a concussion. Those two were a sure bet for at least an overnight stay, and they'd left over a half hour ago.

After them, the rest had various bumps and bruises, airbag burns, things like that that varied in painfulness, but still were extremely unpleasant. The EMT's had even warned Harland, George, and me, advising us to get checked out at the ER, to catch any mental or emotional trauma that we might be suffering from.

In all this, none of us knew much about what had really happened this afternoon to trigger such a heinous attack, and we were all wondering about Saralee Cunningham. She had lost her son to his own violence, and now her husband had gone off the deep end, causing carnage and mayhem, and ultimately costing him his own life. But none of us had ever imagined that it would be his wife who extracted the final payment.

"No, not the final payment," Hector said, after hearing that thought. "I am afraid he has yet another reckoning to be made, to account for the evil he has done." He had come up just in time to see and pray with Kaitlyn and Renee before the ambulances left with them. We were surprised to see him at first, until he said, "Your friend Gary called me, and said that I was needed here." Good old Gary! Heart's in the right place after all.

And in all this, we still had to catch up with Jake. The Hanfords had been here, now were headed to the hospital to watch over Renee and Laurel, but Jake was, as far as anyone knew, still unaware of what had happened. His dad had said, "We left a note asking him to call us if he came home, but were careful not to say anything that would alarm him." He turned to his wife, "But do you remember if he said he was going somewhere else before coming home this afternoon?" She shook her head, and said no, and Robert looked back at me, "So I don't know what to tell you, except that he's stayed a couple of hours after work this week, to make up for some time off he's planning to take next month. Wants to make sure his projects are caught up and ahead of schedule. Always was good that way, finishes what he starts."

I could tell that Mr. Hanford was struggling with his emotions. It had been as much of a shock to them as to anyone else, even more, perhaps. But why? Renee had only hurt her wrist; her injuries were not all that serious. Then I realized – Laurel! They were as much concerned about her as they were about their own children.

And Laurel had been under the misconception that nobody really cared about her, except for Kay and me, and Belinda. But here was an entirely different family who all had accepted and loved her. Makes one stop to think...

I knew that Jake worked at Tiny's R&R, the engine repair and rebuild shop that Gary had referred a couple of my other friends to, so we decided to swing over that way and see if we could find him. Got about a block away from the place when we heard the roar and saw the smoke from tires being spun, and Harland said, "We're watching for a red pickup?" I nodded, and he said, "I think he's heard about it."

Jake did have the presence of mind to keep it sane, so we were able to catch up with him, and we followed him to the hospital. Pulled in to the parking lot right behind him, and hailed him as he got out. "She's okay, Jake, hurt, but not as bad as it could be." He looked and saw who was calling to him, and waited for us to catch up.

The tremor in his voice echoed the alarm in his eyes as he asked, "What happened, Rob? First I heard she was in an accident, and then that somebody got shot, and that's all anybody knew."

I introduced him to Harland, and we filled him in as the three of us hurried into the ER waiting room. We found Jake's parents, waiting with the rest. Hector was already there talking to them, and they looked a lot more relieved when they saw us come in. Robert came over to us and said, "It's gonna be okay, son, she's already in surgery, and she's not hit as bad as they thought at first."

Jake was still shook up and pacing, couldn't have really tasted the cup of hot coffee that Hector had handed him, and when the ER doc came back out, it looked like he made it to the door in one step. He never even got the question out, before the doc raised his hands and said, "She's gonna be fine! It was nowhere near as bad as we thought at first. The one on the top of her shoulder was more of a graze, but it did bleed heavily. They told us that it was from a .38, and maybe it was, but they haven't found it yet. The other one looks like a much smaller caliber slug, maybe a .32, or even a .25, and it's just barely penetrated the skin. We're waiting for another surgeon to remove it. It looks like it had gotten slowed down, or had ricocheted off something else. We'll give it to the detectives for their ballistics tests." He waited as the PA system squawked out a page, calling for a Doctor Mullins to report to the ER, stat. Then he looked at the Hanfords, "So she'll be sore for a while, and she'll likely have a little scar, but nowhere near what it could have been." He turned back to Jake, "Someone was definitely looking out for her this afternoon!"

George had been on the phone with Mitch, and came up just in time to hear the part about the second slug, and what followed, and added, "And we know who!" Hector just smiled, as George continued. "Mitch said it looked like Leland was shooting high, and that shoulder graze was one of his shots. Found a couple more .38 slugs in the parking lot sign behind where the girls were standing." He accepted the cup of coffee that Richelle brought over, took a swig before continuing. "Saralee was carrying a .32, with target loads in it. Not real hot loads, and it was a perfect head shot that put him down, but she'd shot more than one round. When we checked him over we found a hole in the right shoulder of his coat, where we figure one of her rounds had gone through the cloth without hitting him. Makes sense now, that it must have been the second round that hit Laurel, and it had been slowed enough to where it didn't do as much damage as it could have." He looked at Hector and Jake, "Yes, someone was watching out for her."

We sat there for a while, waiting for the docs and PAs to finish checking us all over, and generally just being thankful that it wasn't any worse than it could have been. Then Mitch came back in. After asking about everyone, he told us, "Mrs. Cunningham waived her right to have an attorney present, and we talked. She said that he won't hurt anyone else now, including her. Showed us the bruises on the side of her face from the last time he hit her." He looked at George, "I remember you asking a while back if I thought Leland might have been beating on her, too, and it looks as if you were right on. Must have been where Todd got his possessive behavior from. And yes, Saralee was Todd's birth mother, not stepmother."

Harland and Robert had rejoined us in time to hear this, and Robert said, "I can't imagine how the woman could have survived all that she went through."

Mitch nodded, and continued, "She said they were driving toward the marina, she didn't know why, but he was out for blood. Then he spotted Kaitlyn and Laurel in the Expedition, and almost rolled his car in getting turned around to follow them. Kept screaming that he was going to make Rob hurt like he hurt." He looked at George, "Saralee said she tried to talk him into stopping, but he backhanded her across the face and knocked her up against the door. You saw that fresh bruise?"

George nodded, "Yeah, seems every time I saw her she had a fresh bruise. But I guess no more."