I got a few awkward stares as I ran out to my truck. Nothing to be bothered by. I beebed the door open, and hastily buckled myself in. The truck roared towards Comstock.
Now was his chance. For two years, Ranger had been waiting for Joe to hurry up and finish up with Stephanie. Ranger was a patient man, I had to give that to him. And Steph hell, she is a smart kid. Joe was out of the picture. I could never imagine Bombshell letting him back in. She shot him, for God's sake.
Smart kid that she is, she just might be able to free Ranger. I swung around a corner, and saw the charred remains of the Bronco. We both had forgotten the building burned. A few forensics still hung around.
"Excuse me, sir, what do you think you're doing?" One of them asked.
"Thomas Greene, V.P. of Rangeman."
The cops nodded and let me rummage through the debris. "Mr. uh... Kingsley," I read off the name tag. "I don't suppose you found any tapes did you?"
"Tapes?" He asked, and climed over the charred wall to join me. "What kind of tape?"
"One that came out of a video camera or a VCR. I have a suspicion that something was said on a tape that just might free one man out of jail, and put the right man in it."
"Not sure how much of use it would be to you, but yeah, we have." Kingsley walked over to his unmarked truck and tossed me a plastic bag with a little cassette in it.
I turned the tape in the air, looking at every aspect of it. The edge was a little charred, and the inside was coated in a layer of ash. "Thank you Detective."
"Say, you would know anything about all of this would you?" Kingsley pointed to the building.
"I found Stephanie Pulm, brutalised and chained to a wall, here last night. Norman Carver was in the back of my Bronco, before it got charred. He didn't make it out."
"Anything else that might help us?"
"Other than the hospital report on Bombshell's wounds, not really. I was the rescue guy. In and out."
The detective dismissed me with a two-fingered hand wave, and crawled back into the soot.
That was easier than I thought it should have been. Judging by the size of the tape, there was probably one or two more. This might not have been the right tape. I called Bobby, and told him to get the video editing equipment to the door by the time I got there. I pulled up and rolled down the passenger window. He ambled over, and reached in with one hand and poped the door lock. He climed in and dumped the equipment in the middle seat.
"Where the hell do you think you're going?" I asked him.
"If you're saving the world, so will I." He said, and turned up my radio.
Country muisc blared through the speakers, before Bobby quickly switched it to Rock. "How the hell do you listen to that crap?" He joked.
"I can actually hear what their saying." I said, and we both fell silent, listening to the screaming going on over the radio.
Pino's was out of the way from the trip from the office building to the hospital, but I believed Bombshell deserved it. "I was going to get Bombshell a sub, do you want anything?" I asked Bobby.
"Mushroom and Sausage Pizza. With the little peppers." He said.
"Deal, but you need to run over there and get a can of compressed air." I said and pointed across the street to the Walgreens.
"Compressed Air?" He questioned and I locked the car.
"Just go." I barked and pushed open the door to Pinos.
I placed out orders, and leaned against the conter waiting for them.
"Did you hear? Morelli shot himself in the hand. What kind of idiot shoots themself in the hand?" One cop said to another.
"He's a moron." The other one said back.
"Yeah. He just lost the best thing he had." I said under my breath, and took the pizza box and the bag with the sub.
Bobby was leaned against the car with a green bag hanging off his finger. I beeped the truck open from the curb. The drive over was silent, and Bobby stuffed all the video equipment in a duffle bag to carry inside. Nurses tended to have a no-no policy on things like that.
She was asleep when we piled in. I closed the door, and Bobby quickly went to work pluging in all the hardware. I looked at Stephanie. She was one hell of a woman. And Ranger would kill me if he caught me, so I quickly came back to the real world and begain to air dust the cassette.
Ash blew everywhere. Finally, once I was satisfied, I gave the tape to Bobby. He expertly placed it into video system, and the screen popped up. An excellent piece of machinery, I must say. Top of the line, like Ranger would settle for anything less.
Bobby began to play the tape. Carver slipped into her room. He unchained her and threw Bombshell onto the bed kicking and clawing her way free. I watched her give up. Then he lit a match, and a puff of smoke filtered through his teeth. "Can we get more sound?" I asked.
Bobby nodded, and with a few keystrokes the volume went up. Not lound enough for the entire ICU to hear, but loud enough for me to catch anything important. "Anything you'd like to brown bag to Ranger?" Carver asked.
Sick. "Go to hell." She called back to him.
"Been there, done that." He said, and pressed the blade of the knife into the palm of her hand.
I turned to sit down in the chair by Stephanie. I wasn't squeemish, but I could see the damages in the palm or her hand. I traced the "J", knowing full well what it stood for.
Bobby had paused the tape. "You ok?" He asked.
I looked at Bombshell again, and nodded. Nothing in the army had prepared me for this. "We don't really need to watch all this do we?" Bobby asked.
"The only way to free Ric."
"Tank, there's over 24 hours on this damn tape." Bobby punched some more keyes, and a little sound wave bar appeared. There were long periods of silence. I get what he was saying now.
"Anything with even a trace of noise gets played." I demanded.
Bobby highlighted one, from the beginning to the end, and hit the 1 button on his number pad. Carver advanced on Bombshell, who was asleep on the bed. They did some talking, none of which was important. He stabbed the bed, the knife too close for confort by Stephanie's ear. Joe had appeared too. Stephanie was bound, like a hog with a heavy rope, and she was begging for Ranger.
I closed my eyes. That was too much. Then it quieted. Bobby was back onto the wave screen.
"There's a dead body Steph. Ranger gun matches." Carver said.
"Bobby, rewind it for a second." I said, and Bobby rewound it. "Can you tape this onto a separate tape?"
"It's not too clear, Tank." He replied.
The fire had essentually melted the tape. The screen kept skipping, and lond breaks in the sound made it nearly impossible to understand. "I don't care. We need to keep a copy, and one needs to get Ric out of there. This is all the evidence we need."
I rewatched the scene from the point where Carver started his little speach to the moment I barged in. Bobby cleaned up a copy, and handed it to me.
"You save the world. Ric told me to stay here, and I'll already be in trouble for going and getting the tape." I said, and Bobby hauled ass out of the room with the tape.
I flipped out my cell and quickly dialed Ranger's lawer and arranged for him to get the tape and free Ranger. When I hung up, Bombshell started to stirr. I lifted the lid on the pizza box, which we had left untouched. I could hear Steph sniffing the air.
"It lives." I said quietly and pulled the food tray in front of her.
"Be nice." She grumbled and rearranged the sheets so she could sit up.
I placed the sub infront of her, and she hastilly picked it up and stuffed a good portion of it in her mouth. She chewed, and I started to smile. She looked like Rex. She finished her sub in no more than five minutes and began to eye my pizza. "What is that stuff?" She asked and picked a sausage off one of the slices.
"Mushroom and sausage, why?" I turned so that the pizza was relatively safe. Bobby still hadn't eaten.
"What is with you guys and vegetable crap. It's on EVERYTHING!" She rubbed her head with her hand.
"Ric's the health nut."
"But what's with the mushrooms?" She peeked into the box again, and shuttered.
"It's Bobby's pizza too."
She clearly hadn't been through MY pantry. I had every childrens cereal you could name, and from there up, anything and everything was loaded with sugar. I closed the box up and slid it under the bed. Nurses didn't like pizza in their hospitals. My cell phone began to ring in my pocket. I answered it, and didn't bother with the ID.
"Yo." I answered in Rangeman style
"HOW IS SHE?" I could tell that Ranger had been in a hurry to get out of there.
"Took you long enough." I muttered.
"Shut up." He said, and I could feel him smiling. "How the hell'd ya find the tape?"
"Ask Bombshell." I said, and handed Steph the phone.
"Yo." She answered. God, if she had to learn anything from Ric, why that?
"RANGER!" Her voice got all high and squeaky, and the smile on her face nearly broke her jaw.
"I know. I'm fine." Her smile was replaced buy the I'm-about-to-cry look, and I took the opportunity to need the bathroom. One thing worse than seeing a woman hurt is seeing them cry. The army taught us to leap from burning buildings, shoot people from yards away, but not how to get a woman to stop crying.
I took my time. I really didn't have to pee, so I just stood there with my ear against the door and listened in.
"Hurry up, ok?" I could hear the smile in her voice now, and felt it safe to venture back into the room.
She said her good-bye and closed the phone. She set it in her lap, and whiped her eye with the collar of the gown. "You ok?"
"I dunno. I don't ever cry. But I'm crying." She shighed.
"Blame it on the drugs." I tapped a finger on her head, and cleaned up what was left of the meatball sup wrappers.