Dear Irene (28 page)

W
E WERE SITTING
in the waiting room at St. Anne’s Emergency Room before I opened the thermos. Just breathing in the aroma of the hot coffee made me feel better. I took a sip and realized it was laced with brandy.

I offered some to Frank, who took a sip, then made a face. “Wasn’t expecting that. You go ahead and drink it. I’m driving.”

I drank a half a cup and felt myself steadying a bit. I got up and went over to a pay phone and called the paper. They had already picked up the first police calls on the scanner. I gave them what I could on the story; we were past deadline, so the nightside staff was busy rearranging the front page for the morning edition. “I’m at the hospital now,” I told the man on the City Desk. “I’ll call again if I hear anything more on Kincaid’s condition.”

I sat back down next to Frank and drank more coffee. The waiting room chairs were apparently designed by the set decorator for the Spanish Inquisition. I would get up every few minutes and walk by the reception desk, which made everyone at the desk get very busy with things that made them face the other way. They were getting tired of telling me that they’d let me know about Steven as soon as they heard anything from the doctor.

It was a busy night, and I became uneasy watching the incoming stream of the injured and their worried friends and relatives. Frank finally coaxed me into putting my head on his shoulder for a while, and I fell into a restless sleep.

A voice was calling to me, and I awoke with a start. It was Frank, whose tousled hair told me he had dozed off as well. A weary doctor stood in front of us and told us she would take us back to see Steven, but only for few minutes.

“Your friend is very, very lucky,” she said. Her manner was calm and sympathetic and I felt myself unwind a fraction as we followed her down the hallway. “He has a hairline fracture of the skull. The blow caused a concussion, but if it had been a little harder, it might have damaged brain tissue, or caused problems with fluid buildup. The CAT scan didn’t show anything like that. We will want to keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn’t have other problems. He’s conscious now, but groggy. He’s experiencing some pain, but when a patient has a head injury, it’s unwise to medicate him for pain relief.” She stopped outside the door to a room. “I realize you’ve been anxious about him and have waited out there a long time. But promise you’ll think of his best interests — don’t stay too long, all right?”

We agreed and walked into the room. It brought back all of my hospital memories, and Frank put a steadying arm around me. Steven was still ghostly pale, but they had cleaned him up. He had a white bandage around his head. He opened his eyes when we came up to the bed.

Steven could wake up and look at us. I felt a tremendous sense of relief just being able to see that for myself.

“Hi, Steven,” Frank said. “Good to see you’re still with us.”

“Yeah.”

“Frank speaks from experience,” I said. “He banged his head up about six months ago. You look better than he did. But you still scared the hell out of us.” I stopped. It occurred to me that I had been talking a mile a minute.

Faint smile.

“Did you see who hit you?” Frank asked.

“No. What happened?” His speech was thick.

“You were hit by a rock.”

“I don’t remember.” He closed his eyes.

“Remember being on the beach?”

“Sort of.”

He was tiring and it was obvious that questions were confusing to him. “Good night, Steven,” I said. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

He opened his eyes and said, “I heard you.”

“Heard me what?”

“Crying. Praying, I think.”

“Both. You apparently weren’t the only one who heard me. Get some sleep.”

He closed his eyes again and we left.

I
T HAD STARTED
to drizzle by the time we walked back out to the car. We sat in the front seat for a moment. I looked over at the man next to me, and something in me gave way. This happens every so often; some barrier within me suddenly crumbles, some barrier I haven’t even realized was there. I reached over and pulled him closer, stretching up to kiss him. He didn’t balk at it, and returned the kiss enthusiastically. “What was that for?” he asked.

“For — I don’t know — standing by me, I suppose.”

He smiled and kept his arm around me. We didn’t say anything more to one another that night, just crawled into bed when we got home and held on to each other. That said all that needed saying.

I
AWOKE WITH A START
in the middle of the night, scared. I had been having a nightmare, one in which I went to the hospital, only to be told that Steven had died unexpectedly during the night. I must have made a noise or something, because Frank woke up and pulled me closer, so that my head was on his chest. “You okay?” he asked in a drowsy voice.

“Yes,” I lied, wanting nothing more than to pick up the phone, to call the hospital to confirm that I wasn’t having some psychic experience, a prescient dream. Eventually, the sounds of rain falling outside and Frank’s breathing lulled me back to sleep.

Frank had already gone to work when I awoke the next morning. Bea was up and had hot coffee waiting for me. It was a gray day outside, and I had a gray mood to match it, but Bea was full of energy. I tried not to dampen her spirits. She had let the dogs in the house, and seeming to understand their luck, they were on their best behavior. Cody had started training them not to mess with him — each of them had felt the claws of Wild Bill.

Frank had filled his mother in on the news about Steven, and she asked me a few questions about what had happened out on the beach. “I’m so sorry all of this happened,” she said. “I was hoping we could have a belated Christmas together.”

“If you don’t mind hanging around in Las Piernas for another day, we can celebrate it tonight.”

“If you two don’t mind my being here—”

“Not at all. It was a nice surprise. You helped me cope with last night — I appreciate it.”

She was pleased by this, and I left her in a good mood.

I
MADE MY
way through Las Piernas’s rain-washed streets at an irritating snail’s pace. Traffic was at a crawl. I listened to the noisy staccato of rain pummeling the cloth top of my Karmann Ghia while my windows fogged up. I tightened my grip on the wheel in impatience.

As soon as I got to work, I called St. Anne’s to check up on Steven. Not wanting to wake him if he was sleeping, I asked for a friend of mine on the staff there, Sister Theresa. She was happy to hear from me. I explained why I was calling.

“Mr. Kincaid, is it? Well, he’s doing much better.”

“You already know who he is?”

She laughed. “There’s a constant stream of nurses in and out of that poor boy’s room. He’s quite handsome, you know. I only hope it doesn’t cause him to be denied his rest. Detective Harriman had a guard placed at his door, and I’m beginning to think it was to protect the young man from our staff. I have looked in on him, and I must say he does look like a sleeping angel.”

“Don’t go forgetting your vows, Sister. He likes older women.”

She found this highly amusing. She encouraged me to say hello to her if I stopped by to see him.

I worked on a follow-up story based on what Louisa Parker had told us. I called Pete Baird and found out that they were still waiting for a court order to look for adoption records.

“Sorry to hear about that kid getting hurt last night,” he said. “I like him.”

“Me too.”

“You know about the slingshot?”

“Slingshot?”

“Yeah, they found a hunter’s slingshot on the pier last night — the lab guys say it might have been used to launch that rock. They make these super-slingshots now — kids carry them around; they’re a real pain in the ass as far as we’re concerned. Lots of property damage. More accurate than the old-forked-twig-and-rubber-band routine we used when I was a kid. The lucky thing is, only a few places in town sell them, so if he bought it locally, we may be able to track down the buyer.”

“He left it on the pier?”

“He may not have left it. Probably dropped it when he ran off. There’s a partial print on it, but we can’t tie it to anyone with a sheet.”

“Somehow I get the feeling that this is Thanatos’ first and only crime spree.”

“For an amateur, he’s doing a bang-up job of it.”

“Yeah, well, he’s had almost fifty years to plan it.”

“So you’re convinced it’s this Grant kid?”

“Think about it,” I said. “Some bully picks on you every day. One day while he’s punching on you, your mom comes along and sends him flying into a wall. But what should be the most glorious day of your life becomes the beginning of hell on earth. The other kids, who’ve never treated you right, all point the finger at your mother. Your mother is taken from you, and after being bounced around like a bad check, you end up under the thumb of the bully’s mother. Maybe you wait around praying for your mother to be released from prison, to come and rescue you. But instead she’s murdered. You never see her again. She’s murdered serving a prison sentence for protecting you from a bully.”

“Yeah, I guess that isn’t so hard to buy. But why wait until now? Why not try this when you’re a younger man?”

“I don’t know, Pete. I don’t know.” I switched to a lighter subject. “What’s Rachel up to these days?”

“She’s getting ready to move here. Can you believe it? She’s actually going to be here all the time. I’m a lucky bastard.”

I agreed with him. We said good-bye and I went back to work. I wrote up what I could, filling out some of the details and providing follow-up to previous stories. I spent a lot of time staring at the computer screen. I stopped by Mark Baker’s desk for a couple of minutes and filled him in on the slingshot development. He had heard of them, having already done a story on some kids being injured by them.

The rain was still coming down at noon, so I was reluctant to go out anywhere to eat. I didn’t want to endure the long lines in the cafeteria, so I bought a crummy lunch from a vending machine down in the basement. At least I got a chance to watch them run the presses and to shoot the breeze with Danny Coburn for a while. He pulled out a new assortment of pictures of his grandchildren. “Suzanne’s going to have to buy a bigger wallet for you, Danny,” I told him. He grinned. Talking to him was a pleasant distraction from all that had happened in the last few days.

That afternoon, scratching a mental itch I had about things that had been said to me over the last few days, I started doing some double-checking. I verified that Don Edgerton was an instructor at Las Piernas College, gathered the dates of his employment there, and asked about his teaching schedule. I called the Dodgers and verified what he had told us about being with the team.

I called Las Piernas School District, and was told that Howard Parker did indeed retire after teaching for more than thirty years. “He taught math,” the woman on the other end of the phone said. “He won awards for teaching. We were very disappointed when he left, but he said that after his wife died, his heart wasn’t in it. She taught for us, also — computer science. Lovely woman.”

Justin Davis, I learned, had designed security systems of one type or another for almost every government entity and major business in Las Piernas, including Mercury Aircraft itself. His company was highly regarded, and he had a reputation for personally following up on any job they took on, making certain his customers remained satisfied.

I called Fielding’s Nursing Home, where Peggy Davis was indeed a patient. The lady who answered the phone had a honeyed voice that made me want to ask if she had ever considered a career in radio. She gave me polite attention, which is more than you can say for a lot of people who answer business phones.

“Let’s see, Peggy Davis — here she is. Mrs. Margaret Davis. She’s fairly new here. That would be in Mrs. Madison’s group. Would you mind holding for a moment?”

My God,
asked
if I would hold the line — and she waited for my answer! “Not at all,” I said, finding myself lowering the pitch of my own voice to match hers.

Mrs. Madison’s voice and manner provided a stark contrast. “Yeah, Madison,” she answered. “Who is this?”

“Irene Kelly with the
Las Piernas News Express.
I was wondering if I could arrange to talk to Mrs. Davis.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. Look lady, Mrs. Davis is a vacant lot, if you know what I mean. These old birds in here can’t hold a conversation, unless you count being asked the same question ninety times an hour a conversation. Old Mrs. Davis doesn’t even know who she is. She doesn’t recognize her own son. And she doesn’t hear so good, either. So no way is she going to talk to some newspaper reporter.”

There was a click. “Thank you so very much,” I said to the dial tone.

“S
TORM
D
AMAGE
”
WAS
likely to bump the Thanatos stories out of the lead position on A-1 by the time I was signing off the computer for the day. We had been getting calls on accidents, a roof collapsing, and road closures. Flood control channels, Southern California’s deep and wide concrete-lined river beds, were filling up. The nearly stagnant trickles one usually found in them changed into shallow but dangerous rapids within a matter of minutes whenever it rained hard. Every year, it seems we write at least one story about someone who decides to go rafting in a channel and drowns. Amateurs misjudge the speed of the water and the amount of debris that comes rocketing along with it.

As evening fell, I decided I’d better hurry up and get over to the hospital to see Steven. I wanted to get home to Bea, also. I felt a twinge of guilt about leaving her alone.

I was packing up when Mark Baker hurried over. “Guess what! They’ve taken Don Edgerton in for questioning.”

“Why?”

“They asked around at the sporting goods stores. Figured the clerks might remember someone older buying a slingshot. Turns out one clerk remembered him.”