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Life, 2.0Chapter 9 free porn video
If any woman deserved a good man, it was Jackie. Sadly, her fling with Jimmy came to an abrupt end.
Cheyenne and I had just finished cleaning the rooms, and she wheeled the linens to the laundry room while I went back to the bar to help Jackie set up for lunch. Francis had called in sick.
We were chatting away as we laid out placemats and flatware, when I dropped a fork on the floor and bent down to pick it up. Just as I reached down, I heard a loud crash as the window behind me blew in, and my peripheral vision saw Jackie’s feet jerked up off the floor. Then I heard the shot. For a few seconds, all I felt was confusion. Then I looked up and saw Jackie lying on her back with her head resting against the brass foot rail of the bar, her chin on her chest. Blood was dripping off the rail and making a puddle on the floor.
Oh my god!
I dropped to my hands and knees and scrambled to her side. It didn’t take an expert to see that she was already dead; there was a hole in her left cheek, and her blue eyes stared at nothing, the left one bulging nearly out of its socket.
Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!
I crawled toward the phone by the cash register to call for help. As I grabbed the phone from off the counter, Leonard came through the kitchen doors to see what had made so much noise. He walked around the end of the bar and saw Jackie lying on the floor. His brain struggled to make sense of what he was looking at.
He put his fists on his hips and asked, “Jackie, why are you layin’ on the floor like that?”
I shouted at him to get down, but he just stood there looking at her and then me with no comprehension of what was going on.
“Leonard, you need to get down! Jackie’s been hurt and I’m calling for help!”
“Jackie got hurt?” When his eyes finally focused on the blood, he lost it. He ran to her and dropped to his knees taking her hand. He began screaming at her, “No Jackie, no Jackie, no Jackie, no Jackie!” When at last he understood she wasn’t going to answer him, he bent over her body clasping her hand and wept loudly.
When Cheyenne heard the shot, she hunkered down in the laundry room for a couple of minutes waiting to see what would happen. Just as I was hanging up from the 911 call, she dashed down the walkway to the bar and burst in the door. She just stood there taking in the scene; she saw Leonard sobbing over Jackie, she saw me crouching in front of the register, she saw the glass on the floor and then the blown-out window.
As she walked slowly toward her mother, I reached up and grabbed her hand, pulling her down into a hug. “Don’t look, baby! It’s not something you want to see.”
She pulled back and looked at me. “Is Mama dead?”
I just nodded and hugged her tight again.
“Why?”
I didn’t have an answer. I was pretty sure it was Moreno, and I was pretty sure he was shooting at me. My bending down to pick up the fork had probably saved my life and cost Jackie hers.
Jackie’s body was on the way to the morgue in the coroner’s van. Even though cause of death was obvious, deaths resulting from the commission of a crime require a post mortem.
Spencer Garrett sat at a table with Cheyenne and me trying to glean any information at all that might be helpful. His deputies were out in their four-wheel-drive Blazers combing the area for miles around. He’d even called in the state police chopper to do an aerial search, but without any luck so far.
I sat with my arm around Cheyenne’s shoulder. She hadn’t even cried yet, her numbness over her mother’s senseless death still suppressing her grief. But I knew it would come, and I intended to be at her side when it all soaked in.
Leonard’s grief was so all-consuming that the paramedics had to sedate him and drive him home to be with his mother. It would be days before we saw him again.
I managed to call Frank and Kasuma to let them know what had happened. They stepped in the door as Sheriff Garrett stood and leaned down to kiss Cheyenne’s forehead. “Sweetheart, I am so sorry about your mama. I wish there was something I could do to ease your pain, but I know there isn’t. You stick close to Bobby and your friends, and I promise I’ll get whoever did this terrible thing.”
He looked at Frank and Kasuma, shaking his head. “She didn’t suffer. She never saw it coming and she never knew what hit her.”
When Kasuma kneeled to hug Cheyenne, she finally let go and wept bitterly on the older woman’s shoulder. I looked up at Frank when he laid his hand on my shoulder and saw he had tears in his eyes. The old tough-as-nails rancher was too choked up to speak, so he just nodded at me and smiled with a trembling lip.
By late in the afternoon, the state forensics people had done all they needed to do and left. The deputies stretched yellow crime-scene tape around the bar and asked the only two motel guests to find another place to stay. I taped a ‘CLOSED’ sign on the door even though it was a totally superfluous act.
Kasuma and Frank insisted Cheyenne and I stay with them while the investigation and the manhunt went on. I decided to stay in the apartment to keep an eye on the place and intercept any customers, especially the regulars, and let them know why we’d be closed for the foreseeable future. Cheyenne took the Cawleys up on their offer and rode with them back to the ranch. She left me the keys to the Land Cruiser, and I said I’d be out the next day to bring her some clothes and to help with the funeral arrangements. A couple of hours later, Franky arrived with a sheet of plywood and tools in the bed of Frank’s pickup to board up the shattered window.
“Don’t do anything until I get Sheriff Garrett’s permission,” I told him as he lifted the plywood from the truck and leaned it against the outside wall. “This is still a crime scene, and we don’t want to be messing up any possible evidence.”
“Oh, yeah.” Franky agreed, “Why don’t you give him a call?”
The sheriff thanked me for calling first and said he’d send out a deputy to make sure we weren’t disturbing anything important, and to keep an eye out while we did the work. It was a pretty sure bet the shooter wasn’t anywhere close by, but it’s crazy to try and second-guess a crazy person.
Later that evening, I searched through Jackie’s refrigerator to find something to cook for the two of us. Franky said he planned to stay at the motel for as long as Cheyenne was at his dad’s place. I found some potato salad and all the fixings for BLTs.
As we sat at the table, I asked, “So, how come you want to stay here? Your dad’s house is plenty big enough to accommodate everybody isn’t it?”
Franky took a swig from his beer bottle and sat looking at his plate. When he looked up at me, I could see he was on the verge of tears. “I can’t face her, Bobby. I can’t look Cheyenne in the eye. If I hadn’t lied to those guys and taken their money, well, none of this would’ve have happened. It’s my fault Jackie’s dead!”
“GOD DAMN IT!” he cried as he slammed his fist on the table and stood up knocking his chair over. Then he ran out the front door, leaving his dinner untouched.
I wasn’t inclined to run after him and offer any consolation, because I thought he was right. In fact, I felt pretty sure that all of us held him responsible in some way. Even though he couldn’t have ever predicted the consequences of his actions, even though he carried no legal liability, what he did ultimately resulted in the death of one of the really good people in this world. He’d just have to live with that.
He came back about an hour later. “Can you give me a key to one of the rooms? I wouldn’t feel right stayin’ here in the apartment.”
After he left, I called Cheyenne to ask how she was doing and to say ‘good night’. She asked me to call Francis and tell her not to come in. And why.”
The next morning, the pickup was gone. I couldn’t guess where Franky might have taken off to and I didn’t really care, although in a way, I think I felt a little bit sorry for him because he was burdened with something that was going to weigh heavy on his mind for the rest of his life. Maybe I could empathize a little bit because I had some experience with what that felt like.
Before I left to drive out to Frank’s, I decided to clean the rooms and get the motel in good order. I couldn’t guess when we might be open for business again, but that was no reason to just let things go. I saw the bed in Franky’s room hadn’t been slept in.
I drove out to the ranch around noon. Cheyenne came out the front door and met me as I stepped out of the Land Cruiser. She kissed me on the cheek and hugged me tight for a long time – not crying or anything – just needing to be held.
Nadine
- 27.06.2020
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