The Right Side of Wrong (3 page)

Overcome with rage, hunger, and bloodlust when they couldn't get into the wrecked car, the excited pack turned on each other. They stumbled over Cody's body as the fight escalated beside the car.

Cody clenched his eyes again as the savage battle rolled over him. He knew their legs and bodies were on his own, but there was no pain with the sensation, only pressure and movement. Snow flew as they sought purchase in the white fluff.

A large toenail tore Cody's cheek open. He felt pain there, and wished he couldn't.

The battle raged until weaker members of the pack yelped in surrender and retreated. Three others tore a smaller shrieking dog apart only feet away from Cody's head. His panic took it all in, while peripherally seeing First dog standing in the driver's seat snarling his defiance at the intruders below.

Emotionally numb, he wished for a quick death.
God I hope they go for the throat so I'll die quicker.

The victorious alpha dogs of the pack stopped fighting. First dog growled down at them one final time and they feigned disinterest, examining the feast of their former member and the still man's body.

A German Shepherd stepped forward, sniffed at the fresh wound on Cody's cheek, and licked. Bolder, it licked again, and then opened its mouth.

The sharp crack of a rifle startled the pack. The German Shepherd was blown sideways. It kicked twice and was still. A second, almost instantaneous shot caught another dog behind the ear, flipping it end over end. At the third report, First dog leaped through the shattered passenger window and disappeared in the opposite direction. The remainder of the pack scattered and vanished into the gray morning.

Thank God.

Footsteps squeaked in the fresh snow and stopped beside the car.

A gravelly, time-worn voice was the sweetest thing Cody had ever heard.

“You alive, son?”

Chapter Three

Twenty-four hours later, Cody Parker lay in the stark light from a single ceiling fixture. Heavily bandaged and sleeping peacefully in the white enamel-painted, 1930s iron bedstead, his foot twitched.

“That's what we've been waiting for.” Dr. Ernie Patterson rubbed his large belly, sighing with relief. “He ain't paralyzed.”

Beside the porcelain sink hanging on the wall, Miss Becky Parker raised her right hand and breathed a soft exclamation. “Hallelujah! Praise Jesus!” The tight bun of gray hair she wore on the back of her neck was an outward example of her devotion to the Word clasped in her hands.

Norma Faye sat beside the bed where she'd been since they brought Cody into the hospital room. She laughed in relief, wiped tears from her eyes, then took her husband's limp hand again on top of the covers.

At the foot of the bed, Constable Ned Parker choked down the lump in his throat and stifled the sob that threatened to break through. He cleared his throat, blinked his blue eyes several times, and stared at the bare metal of the crank handle on the bed where many hands across the decades had worn away uncounted coats of paint.

Ned said a silent prayer of thanks.

Everything was monochromatic on that cold winter afternoon. Snow still coated Chisum under a smooth blanket beneath the slate-grey clouds. Inside the hospital room, the white walls were painted with glistening enamel. Tiny black-and-white tiles covered the floor and spread into the hallway where they echoed the quiet footsteps of nuns going about their nursing duties.

The only decorative color was the framed print of a bearded St. Joseph on the wall above Cody's bed.

Half leaning on her husband's bed, redheaded Norma Faye was a burst of color herself. She absently rubbed Cody's right hand which was barely healed from his near-death encounter in the Cotton Exchange two months earlier. He breathed slowly, deeply, from the drugs dripping into his arm.

Ned pondered the round, grey-haired doctor beside him. “That means he's gonna live, right?”

Dr. Patterson lifted the thin blanket to reveal Cody's feet. He took an instrument resembling a fountain pen from his pocket and pulled the dry nib along the sole of one foot, smiling at the tiny reaction.

“Well?” Ned had no patience with doctors, and Ernie Patterson had gotten on his nerves years earlier. Ned felt Patterson should have used some of the money he made as a doctor to straighten his mouth full of crooked teeth.

But it wasn't Ernie's appearance that truly annoyed Ned, or his slow response to the question. It was the place and the situation itself. Ned didn't like hospitals, period.

The nuns in their habits flowed down the halls holding steel trays full of things Ned didn't like the looks of, and didn't understand. He didn't like the glass bottle dangling from a chrome stand by Cody's head, or the tube leading into the crook of his left elbow.

Ned hated needles as much as he hated a crooked lawman.

“I believe he'll be fine, but he won't be hoeing any corn for a good long time.” Dr. Patterson replaced the blanket and slipped the pen into the pocket of his white coat. “I suspect most of the paralysis will be gone in a few days. His spine was bruised pretty badly in the wreck, but he's already getting the feeling back in his extremities. That little dab of movement is a good indication the damage to his spinal column was only slight, so yes, I think he'll make a full recovery.”

“He'll be fine.” Miss Becky squeezed her Bible tightly and gave it a slight shake. “He's on the prayer list at church, and I know the good Lord will take care of him.”

Ned thought for a moment. “Well, why ain't he awake?”

“I still have him knocked out, Ned. He may look pretty good, but that wreck damn near killed him. Sorry Becky, I meant, it nearly killed him.”

Ned scowled. “He don't look good to me at all for a feller who flipped a car after he was shot at. His head must be a mess under all them bandages.”

A thick dressing made Cody's face look lopsided. Two stitches closed the toenail cut on his cheek and a small cut on his scalp. His broken nose was also taped. To Ned, it appeared there wasn't an inch of the young man's face that wasn't damaged.

“Something slapped him pretty hard and he has a little frostbite on that left ear, but it'll heal all right. I've checked his eyes, and we don't think there's any damage to his sight. We're lucky there. He'll look better when the swelling goes down.”

“He needs to rest now.” Norma Faye used her free hand to tuck a renegade curl of long red hair behind one ear. They'd been married for less than a year, but she'd settled into the family faster than anyone expected, despite the scandal she and Cody had created when they started seeing each other. “Where's James and Ida Belle?”

“Downstairs with the kids.” Miss Becky's thumbs unconsciously worried at the worn leather of the Bible's cover. “They'll be up directly, when we leave. Top and Pepper wanted to come up here in the worst way, but one of them nuns said kids weren't allowed on this floor.”

“I'll bring them up later if I want to.” Ned scowled and fiddled with the stained felt Stetson in his weathered hands. “Nuns or not.”

Norma Faye always wanted the kids close. “Where are they now?”

Ned shifted from one foot to the other to ease the ache in his knees. “Either in the waiting room, or outside throwing snowballs, I reckon.”

“Top had that case he's been carrying. They're probably playing secret agent, like on that television show they've been watching.”

The idle conversation was a relief valve, of no consequence, but it briefly took their minds off Cody's condition.

Worn out from sitting at the hospital since they brought Cody in, Norma Faye softly stroked Cody's hand with her painted fingernails. Miss Becky didn't like such vain foolishness one bit, though it was slightly less sinful than makeup, in her opinion, but she held her tongue.

“You need for me to do anything, sweetie?” Ned hated to stand around and do nothing. “I'll bring you some dinner if you want, later.”

Norma Faye smiled, the corners of her eyes crinkling. “I'm not a bit hungry. They have a little café in the basement if I need anything, but I want to be here when he wakes up.”

Patterson grunted and flipped a page on Cody's chart. “He ain't gonna wake up for a long while. I'm gonna keep him sedated until tomorrow at the earliest.”

“Hon, you go on home and get some rest. I'll sit with Cody tonight.” Miss Becky didn't intend for it to come out like an order, but it sounded like one just the same.

Norma Faye didn't take her eyes off her husband. “That's all right. I'd sit around the house and worry if I did, instead of sleeping. We'll stay here together, though, if you want to.”

Relief washed through Miss Becky at the offer, and the bond that had been a long time coming finally solidified. “I believe I'll do that.” She placed her Bible on the tiny counter beside the sink and removed her car coat and scarf. “Norma Faye, you go downstairs and get you a sandwich. Go on. Right now. I'm gonna sit right here with Cody while he sleeps and talk to the Lord for a bit.”

The redhead had never seen Miss Becky take charge with such authority and truthfully, she
was
hungry. She slipped quickly out of the chair to let Miss Becky sit beside Cody. “I'll go meet James and Ida Belle. I bet the kids want something, too.”

Miss Becky's hand lingered on Ned's coat sleeve for a moment as she and Norma Faye switched places. “Daddy, you said you wanted to see O.C. Why don't you run on over to the courthouse for a while and then come back by here before you go home. Cody's liable to be awake by then even though Ernie here said he'd sleep all night.”

Dr. Patterson frowned, though he didn't say a word. He'd known Becky Parker since they were kids. He was two years younger, and she'd always treated him like a baby brother.

Surprise registered on Ned's face. His full-blood Choctaw wife didn't usually order
him
around, and seldom in front of anyone else. But the idea was sound. Ned wanted to visit Judge O.C. Rains about the attack on Cody.

Norma Faye stopped beside him and took his arm to walk with him down the hall. Ned started to leave, and then paused. “All right then, but y'all call over to the courthouse if anything changes.”

“I will.” Miss Becky studied the doctor. “Ernie Patterson, I've knowed you since we were kids. You put down that chart and tell me every little thing that's wrong with this boy, and don't give me any of them ten-dollar words when you're-a-doin' it.”

“Well, Becky, there isn't much more than I've already told you.”

“Tell me again what you know and what you think. I'll sort it all out in my mind in a little bit.”

Dr. Patterson sighed. “Well, we dug out a couple of buckshot pellets in his left shoulder that didn't do much damage except to the tissue. The wreck threw him around in the car and his spine got hurt. It's like it's bruised, or stunned. These things can be temporary, or they can be permanent. I was pretty worried at first, and thought he'd be paralyzed, but now it looks like his body is coming to. I think he'll be all right, but it'll take time and we'll have to watch him. Now, that's all I know and I can't tell you anything else.”

Ned put on his hat. “He's lucky he ain't dead. I intend to find out who did this and bring them in. Patterson, you be sure to call the courthouse if anything goes wrong.”

Miss Becky'd had enough. “Ned, you go on. Norma Faye'll feed the kids and James and Ida Belle will be up here directly.”

Constable Ned Parker took one more look at Cody and gladly escaped the room. He intended to get to the bottom of what had happened out on that country road.

His wife's voice chased him down the hallway.

“Now, Ernie, I believe you're leaving something out and I want to hear it. How bad are them holes in his shoulder and don't you lie to me…”

Chapter Four

Bitter cold and Ned Parker blew together into the Lamar County courthouse through the glass and brass doors. The foyer smelled of law books, wood polish, and bleach. He had a clear line of sight down the tiled hallway and into the open courtroom. Judge O.C. Rains scowled down at a sullen defendant from his high perch behind the bench. Ned's footsteps echoed on the hard walls as he approached the judge's court.

Ahead, a slouching young deputy, J.T. Boone, straightened up and faced outward toward the approaching constable. Ned unbuttoned his barn coat as he neared the courtroom door. Inside, Judge O.C. glanced out to see his old friend coming down the hall.

“Your Honor?”

O.C.'s attention shifted from Ned back to the attorney and his sullen defendant standing below. “Hum?”

“My client pleads not guilty.”

“And he wants a trial, I assume?”

“Yessir.”

The judge glared down at the disheveled man slouched in front of the bench. Badly in need of a haircut and shave, the defendant wiped his enormous nose with the back of a cuffed hand and frowned at his worn-out brogans.

“Carl, you want twelve people in this town to hear your little wife tell how you beat her with…,” he glanced at the charges through a pair or reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. “…a
singletree
? Good god, man, I wouldn't hit a
mule
with a singletree.”

The wooden crossbar of a horse harness was the equivalent of using a two-by-four.

“You don't know what that woman's like, O.C. She'll
provoke
you.”

“You'll address me as Judge or Your Honor, Carl, or I'll slap a contempt of court on you so fast it'll make your head swim. I don't care if you
are
a fourth cousin. Tamara don't weigh much more than a sack of flour and she ain't no bigger than a minute. Now, if there'd been a
hame
close by, the charges might not be…”

The conversation drifted over Ned when he was no more than four feet away from the courtroom. He paid little attention to the discussion, even though the mention of a much smaller piece of curved wooden horse collar was wildly out of place in a courthouse. He nodded hello to the soft-looking deputy who frowned and partially blocked the door.

“You'll have to remove your hat to enter the courtroom, Buddy.”

The experienced constable stopped and immediately felt his face flush as heat exploded throughout his body. Ned's icy-blue eyes settled on the stubborn and quite possibly slow-thinking young man standing in his way. “
What'd
you say?”

Though the constable's voice was low, it obviously reached the judge's ears. O.C. held up a hand to silence the two men before him.

Annoyed by the elderly farmer standing before him in overalls and a stained, well-used canvas barn coat, Deputy Boone pointed a finger. “I said take your hat off. You can't enter the judge's courtroom with your hat on, Buddy.”

It was almost too much for Ned to take. He drew a deep sigh to gather himself. “Son, I don't know who you are, but you're still too wet behind the ears to tell me my manners. Now first off, my name ain't
Buddy
, and if you call me that again, I'll slap you so hard you'll see stars.”

When the deputy's face hardened, Ned pointed a finger right between his eyes. “Now, about my hat, young'un. I been in and out of this courtroom since your
daddy
was draggin' at the tit, and I knew what to do way back before then.”

“You still have to remove your hat to enter the judge's courtroom, old timer. You ought to know something like that,” Boone continued, as if he hadn't heard Ned's response.

This time Ned's eyes flashed, and from across the courtroom O.C. watched as something bad was about to happen to his new bailiff. Instead of intervening, O.C. expected the young man to learn a lesson about people.

Ned reached for the leather sap in his back pocket, but realized what he was doing. The stress and worry over Cody and his brutal attack weighed on him more than he realized, and he didn't need to be whacking on a discourteous deputy with the leather-covered chunk of lead. Taking a deep, calming breath, he moved closer to the deputy and opened his canvas barn coat to reveal the tiny constable's badge pinned on his shirt, right beside the wrinkled gallus of his overalls.

“Now you listen real good, son. My name is Ned Parker, not old timer, nor Buddy, nor Mr. Sonofabitch! I've been constable of Precinct Three since nineteen and thirty, which means I was raised by folks who taught me manners, something I can tell
you
don't have.”

With mounting fury, he stabbed a stiff finger in the bailiff's chest and pushed close enough that he stepped back. Ned's presence suddenly filled the deputy's view as if a mad brahma bull had just charged into the courthouse.

“I had already intended to take my hat off, when I go through there and not one second sooner, because my manners tell me a man can wear a hat indoors in the hallway of a public building, if he wants to. Now, you got exactly one second to get out of my way or I'll walk right over your prissy little ass.”

The bailiff squinted at the badge and he found himself afraid to meet Ned's flashing eyes. He flushed and stepped to the side. Ned brushed past, nearly knocking the bailiff off balance with his shoulder, and removed his hat as he entered the courtroom.

O.C. held out a hand to stop Ned from sitting in the galley, and addressed the prisoner standing below. “All right, Carl, you get your wish. Trial is set thirty days from today at nine in the morning, so you get to tell your side of the story. Until then, you can post bail or sit in jail. That's up to you.”

“What's my bail?”

“One thousand dollars. Now, we'll take a twenty-minute recess.”

“Damn, O.C., that's too much!”

“Watch your language. Now it's two thousand.”

“Oscar! We're kinfolk!”

“You pronounce that name one more time and I'll make it three thousand!” O.C. rapped his gavel, threw it down with a clatter, and stood to leave the courtroom.

“All rise!” Boone called from over Ned's shoulder.

O.C. pointed at Ned. “My office.” He disappeared through the back door into the hallway.

Ned passed the bench, glared at Carl for fighting with his little wife, and tailed O.C. into the hallway. The judge was already standing in front of the courthouse's only elevator when Ned joined him.

“I thought you were fixin' to shoot Boone.” O.C. pushed the button and the bell dinged almost immediately.

“Who?”

“That new deputy out there.”

“So that's his name. Yeah, I thought about caving in his damn fool head,
Oscar
.”

Before O.C. had time to scold Ned for using his Christian name, the elevator creaked to a stop and Jules the elevator man opened the doors. Old Jules, as he was known, had served as the elevator operator since before anyone could remember. He once told Ned that his mama was born a slave on a plantation in southern Mississippi.

He waved a greeting from his perch on his wooden stool beside the control panel. “Mr. Ned, Judge O.C.”

They stepped aboard and waited for Jules to close the doors, then the accordion safety gate. He pushed the button with an arthritic thumb and for once stepped beyond his own self-established boundaries. They usually talked of his eleventh wife, Lily, but there was sadness in his watery eyes. “Mr. Ned, I'm worried plumb sick about Mr. Cody.”

“He's gonna be fine, Jules.” Ned gave him a familiar pat on the shoulder. “And you can call him Cody. He'll earn a Mister when he grows up some more.”

“Nawsir, Mr. Cody's jus' fine by me, if that's all right. You let me know if there's anythang I can do for him. I'll send him a mincemeat pie if it'll make him feel any better.”

“I'll check with him and see what he's hungry for, when he wakes up. The doctor says he'll be fine.”

The shaky elevator vibrated to a stop and Jules opened the gate and door. “You want me here in twenty minutes, Judge?”

Without wondering how Jules knew he'd called a recess, O.C. nodded. “Twenty it is.”

“All right then.”

For the first time in several months, Judge O.C. Rains didn't have a wire flyswatter on his desk when Ned followed him through the office door.

O.C. scowled and threw his robe over the back of a quarter-sawn oak chair piled with papers. “Close the damn door. Were you raised in a barn? That outside office is colder than a well-digger's ass.” He stretched back in his matching wooden desk chair and folded his fingers across an almost flat stomach.

Ned always thought O.C. was poor as a snake. Most people said the cantankerous old judge was slim, but to Ned's eye, he was too skinny to be in good health. “I reckon it's because there's over two feet of snow on the ground and the temperature is still in the teens.”

“Yep. Haven't seen weather like this since before the war.” O.C. pondered the snowdrift on the granite windowsill.

“Who's that little pissant you got working for you out there?”

“Aw, don't be too hard on the kid, Ned. J.T. Boone's so green the sap's running out of his ears, but I figured to let him help me out here for a while until he gets some experience.”

“If he lives long enough.”

O.C. sighed. “Ain't it the truth? One of these days he'll learn how to stay out of the way of irritable constables. I believe Sheriff Griffin will have him out of my court room and in a car purty soon. How's Cody?”

Ned pitched his felt hat on O.C.'s cluttered desk and sat in the only chair that wasn't full of stacked papers. His eyes burned for a moment in the presence of his lifelong friend. It was the only emotion he allowed himself, other than a barely-corralled temper.

He cleared his throat to relieve the ache. “He…” Ned paused when his voice broke, swallowed, and tried again. “He ain't worth a fiddler's fang-dang right now, but Doc Patterson says he'll be fine after a while. His arms and legs are starting to work, but he still ain't awake.”

Choking down a lump in his own throat, O.C. unconsciously twisted back and forth in his swivel chair. “He's tough. I went by to set with him this morning before I came in.” O.C.'s speech pattern wandered without conscious thought or restraint between his college education and country roots. “That redheaded wife of his was sitting beside the bed, holding his hand and talking quiet to him. I don't think she even knew I was standing in the door. She'd been there since they brought him in, but I'god that little gal was fresh as a morning shower.”

They sat in silence for several long moments. Ned took off his coat as the temperature in O.C.'s office burned away the chill. Resting both elbows on his knees, he laced his fingers and studied the purple thumbnail he'd injured when he slammed a garden gate on it.

The judge twiddled his thumbs and rocked in nervous habit. “It was an ambush. Some of the boys came in after they investigated the scene and towed what was left of the kids' Plymouth out of the creek bed.”

“The boys” were O.C.'s constables and the few highway patrol officers he trusted. One or two Chisum sheriff deputies were thrown in the mix the judge relied on, but he was cautious with them since they answered to Sheriff Griffin. Neither man in the chilly, cluttered office had any use for the sheriff, who was more politician than lawman.

O.C. continued to rock in the creaking chair. “They found what was left of the car tracks in the snow.”

“How'd they do that?”

“The ground wasn't completely froze when the car drove over the snow, and it packed the tracks down into ice. The falling snow didn't completely cover the tire marks. In the daylight you could still barely see the ruts. So they used a broom and swept the loose snow away to where it melted under the exhaust pipe and then refroze when they left.”

“I'll be damned.”

“Yep. It sat in the road for a
while
, waiting for Cody to come by. When he did, somebody put a load of buckshot through the side glass, then drove away as pretty as you please.”

“How'd they know it was Cody in the Plymouth? I'd imagine anyone after him was probably lookin' for that half-breed car of his instead of a red four-door sedan.”

“Jack Smalls is the best investigator in Lamar County, and he was helped by W.B. Graves who's a good man from the Texas Rangers. They decided that the shot came almost too late. Jack figured he was waiting for the El Camino and didn't recognize Cody until he was almost past.”

“Prob'ly the only reason he lived.”

“I'm sure of it. It's a miracle most of the pellets missed, but it was enough to do the job. Cody's a lucky man.”

Ned's face reddened. Someone had nearly killed a member of his family and his dander was up. “He wasn't found by no highway patrol. I heard it was somebody we don't know.”

“Yep. Feller old as Methuselah named Tom Bell happened along while a pack of wild dogs was fightin' over what they reckoned was Cody's dead body. The story I got was that Tom came across a set of half-covered tracks skidding off down into the creek. They was fairly fresh, so he stopped and went down to check.”

“What makes you think he didn't do the shootin' hisself?”

“Cause Tom carries a beat-up Winchester carbine, killed two of them dogs that was about to eat Cody, then drug him up the bank to his truck. I don't see how he did it at his age, but he's tough as boot leather. Drove him into town, too, straight to the hospital door like he knew what he was a-doin.'”

“I don't recognize the name.”

“You won't. He only moved out there to Center Springs a week or so ago. I doubt you've seen him yet. I hear he's bought the Buchanan place not far from your house and intends to fix it up.”