I looked around for O’Conner, but he was nowhere in sight. “Sounded like Jim was going to make himself scarce for awhile,” I said.
“Sounds like a good idea. Them Kitchingses don’t like me all that much, but they’s a whole lot less kindly disposed toward Jim.”
“You think they’ll find him?”
“Not if he don’t wanna be found. Hell, he was a Army Ranger, and he grew up in these hills. He could stay hid and live off the land for the rest of his life, if he wanted to.”
He was probably right. “Hey, Waylon?”
“Yeah, Doc?”
“I’m glad it wasn’t you up there shooting.”
A half-dozen expressions crossed his face in quick succession. “So am I, Doc. But then again, I ain’t, too. You know what I mean?”
I knew what he meant.
CHAPTER 35
Williams arrived just minutes after the emergency call, the strobes firing atop his black and white Cherokee. He skidded up to the front porch, then caught sight of the smoldering helicopter in the field below and careened down to where Waylon and I stood. He leapt out and stared at the wreckage, then whirled to face us. “What happened here?” he demanded. Without waiting for an answer, he drew his revolver and pointed it at Waylon. “Put your hands up and get over here to the vehicle.” Waylon blinked in surprise, but slowly raised his arms.
“He had nothing to do with it,” I said. “He was pulling up in his truck when the shooting started. He was running up the ridge toward the shooter when the helicopter came down.”
Williams wheeled on me. “And what the hell were you doing here? And what kind of secret operation is O’Conner running? And where the fuck is he?”
“I’ll be glad to tell you everything I know,” I said. “You willing to put down the gun? Makes it hard for me to concentrate, being afraid you might accidentally shoot an innocent bystander who also happens to be a witness.”
Williams glowered. “I’m not so sure he’s just a witness, I doubt very much that he’s a bystander, and I’m damn certain he ain’t all that innocent.” But he holstered the weapon anyway and allowed Waylon to lower his hands while he told what he’d seen when he reached the ridgetop. When Waylon told him he’d found the shell cases, Williams held out his hand. “Here; let me have them.”
“I ain’t got ’em no more. I give ’em to the Doc.”
Williams turned to me, his hand still extended. “Sure,” I said. “Why don’t you finish with Waylon first, and then you and I can discuss all this in private.”
After a few more questions, the deputy allowed Waylon to go. “Don’t even think about leaving town,” he warned as Waylon climbed into his truck. Waylon nodded. As he drove away, I breathed a sigh of relief.
I gave Williams my account of the events, starting with my tour of O’Conner’s camouflaged ginseng farm and ending with the crash. “Waylon did his best to catch the shooter,” I said. “Those shell cases could be important. And it might help to get some pictures or a cast of those footprints.” Williams looked thoughtful. “Here are the shell cases.” I removed the knotted bandanna from my shirt pocket. He reached for it, but I pulled it back. “Deputy, would you mind signing this receipt?” I fished out my handwritten note: “Received from Dr. Bill Brockton: Five brass cartridge cases in red bandanna, recovered from ridge above Orbin Kitchings murder scene.”
Williams reacted as if I’d spit in his face. “You think I’m gonna forget I’ve got shells from the gun that killed Orbin Kitchings? Think I’m gonna throw this ratty bandanna in the washing machine or the trash can?”
“No, not at all,” I said. “Things get intense anytime an officer is killed, and this is the sheriff’s own brother. An aggressive defense lawyer could completely destroy the value of those shell cases if we don’t document every link in the chain of evidence. I’d hate to see Orbin’s killer go free because we didn’t keep good records.”
Williams nodded curtly, snatched a pen from his pocket, and signed the receipt. I handed him the small bundle. “The TBI crime lab might be able to get some prints off those,” I said. “Maybe the guy forgot to wipe ’em clean as he loaded.”
He looked surprised. “Thanks, Doc — I’m not sure I’da thought of that. Much obliged.” He tucked the packet into the shirt pocket of his uniform and rebuttoned the flap. As he raised his eyes from his chest, I saw his gaze lock onto the end of the valley. A black Ford Expedition was rocketing up the gravel road. It swerved across the field, lurching to a stop beside us, and Tom Kitchings leapt out.
Before I could stop him, the sheriff rushed to the blackened cockpit. There he came face to face with the charred remains of his younger brother. Tom Kitchings let out a loud groan, and then another. Then he clutched his chest, sank to his knees, and toppled to the ground, unconscious.
I was no medical expert — I was the doctor who lost every single patient, after all — but I was pretty sure the sheriff had just suffered a coronary. That meant time was of the essence. We had only sixty minutes — the so-called “golden hour”—to prevent serious cardiac damage. After that, I knew, his blood-starved heart muscle would start to die. “We’ve got to get him to the hospital right away,” I said.
“I’ll call for an ambulance,” said Williams, reaching for his radio.
“Too slow,” I said. “We’re half an hour outside of town here. By the time they get here and get him back to town, he’ll suffer permanent damage. We’ve got to get him to a cardiologist within an hour.”
“Goddamnit, Doc,” he shouted, “we ain’t got a cardiologist out here.”
“No, but we can get him to one faster than we can get him back to town. Call your dispatcher; get ’em to patch us through to LifeStar.”
LifeStar — UT Medical Center’s air ambulance service — had two helicopters based behind the hospital, within sniffing distance of the Body Farm. It took less than a minute for the dispatcher to patch Williams through to LifeStar’s flight coordinator. The deputy described the sheriff’s symptoms and asked if they could send a chopper. “What’s your location?”
“We’re in a small valley six or eight miles southeast of Jonesport,” said Williams. “Brush Creek Mountain is directly to our west, and—”
“Wait wait wait,” said the coordinator. “Anybody there got a GPS unit?”
“Oh. Yeah. Affirmative,” said Williams. He pulled a handheld Global Positioning System receiver from a pouch on his belt and powered it up. The display showed signals from four orbiting satellites. “Stand by for coordinates,” said Williams. As he began rattling off numbers, I looked over his shoulder at the display. “Latitude three-five-point-niner-five-three-five degrees north. Longitude eight-two-point-seven-niner-six-eight degrees west.”
As the dispatcher read the coordinates back for confirmation, I realized something was wrong. I tapped his shoulder to get his attention, but he shrugged me off in annoyance. I tapped again, harder. “LifeStar, stand by,” he snapped, then whirled to confront me. “What the fuck?”
“You transposed two numbers in the longitude,” I said urgently, pointing at the display. “You said ‘point seven nine’; the display says ‘point nine seven.’” I did some quick math in my head. “That’s almost two-tenths of a degree. They’re going to land ten or twelve miles from here, somewhere over in North Carolina.”
Williams looked ready to explode. He radioed the flight coordinator to correct the number, and the coordinator read the revised longitude back. “Readback is correct,” said Williams. I reached to take the radio from him. He relinquished it with a look of supreme annoyance.