Savages

4

JAKE RUNYON

He was down on all fours, crawling around in the dirt, trying to get up. At first he didn’t know where he was or what had happened. Then he did, in a disjointed, urgent way, but he couldn’t do anything about it because he couldn’t stand up. His legs and arms felt like bloated things made of rubber. Pain pulsed and hammered through his skull. He couldn’t see straight, couldn’t make his thoughts connect. He kept on trying to stand up and each time he fell down again.

His ears worked all right-they were the only part of him that seemed to be functioning. Sounds all around him, engulfing him. Footsteps running away, car engine, raised voices, footsteps running toward him. He fumbled for the Magnum, couldn’t find it. Tried to get up and fell down. He stayed down on all fours this time, shaking his head like a dog. His eyes were open, but all he could see was blurred images and flashes of light mixed with dark. Nausea boiled in his stomach. He never puked, he hated to puke-he leaned forward on his elbows and puked.

More voices, or the same voices, close by. Sudden stabbing light in his eyes, blinding him. He twisted his head away from it, and the motion brought a new eruption of pain. He flopped over on his side. Wetness ran along his cheek, trickled into the corner of his mouth. Blood.

“Who is he?”

“Never saw him before.”

“Oh, my Lord, look at his head!”

“Somebody must’ve hit him… board there’s got blood on it.”

“… Jerry?”

“His car’s not here.”

Words clogged in Runyon’s throat; he spit out some of them like gobs of phlegm. “… Dead man… police…”

“What’s he saying?”

“Can’t understand him.”

“John, look there, under his coat… he has a gun!”

“Christ! Here, hold the flashlight.”

Hands on him, fumbling at his waist. First rule of law enforcement: Never let anybody take your weapon. He fought the hands, or tried to. Too strong. His numb fingers scrabbled over the empty holster. Brains scrambled, unarmed, helpless.

“What’s he doing here? What happened to him?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“Don’t snap at me, John.”

More words came out of Runyon’s throat. “… Dead man… hanging…”

“Did you hear that? ‘Dead man’! Oh, my God-Jerry!”

“Jerry’s not here. You didn’t see his car, did you?”

“… Tack room…”

“John?”

“I heard it. Listen, he needs a doctor. You go in the house, call nine-eleven, tell them to send deputies and an ambulance. I’ll check the tack room.”

“You be careful.”

“Go on, Dora; hurry.”

The light went away. So did running steps in two directions. Runyon pulled one knee under him. The bloated, rubbery feeling was starting to go away. Tingling sensation in his hands now. He reached up to swab at the wetness on his cheek, probe along the side of his head. Soft spot on the temple, blood-wet. Puffed ear. All of that registered without meaning or implication.

He lifted his head and shook it again. When the bright pain subsided this time, he could see a little more clearly. Shapes swam through his vision, settled, and he was looking at one of the open barn doors. He crawled toward it, got both hands on the edge, found the strength to lift himself along the door edge until he was upright. He clung there, blinking, looking into the barn, waiting for the light to come back.

Whoever had blindsided him had been hiding near the doors, behind the stack of lumber. Long gone now. Whose voices? John and Dora-the Belsizes, Jerry’s parents, returned home. He could remember and reason that much. He tried to put more of it together. Nothing else would come. Pain pulsed up sharp again; his head felt like a firebox.

The flash beam reappeared, came bobbing toward him. Picked him out and held on him from a short distance away. He shut his eyes tight against the glare.

“You just stand there, mister. I still got that gun of yours.” Then, angrily, “Who did that to Manuel? You?”

He tried to say no. All that came out was a grunt.

“Who, then? Same one busted your head?”

Another grunt. Affirmative.

“Manuel… God Almighty, he never harmed nobody in his life. Who’d want to do a thing like that to him? It don’t make sense.”

Grunt. Grunt. Like a goddamn Neanderthal.

“Who are you, mister? What’re you doing on my farm?”

Runyon worked spit through his mouth, struggling to concentrate. He formed words in his mind, pushed one of them out. “Pocket.”

“What?”

And then the rest: “Inside… jacket… pocket.”

A hand reached through the light, fumbled with his jacket. Found his ID case, yanked it out, flipped it open.

“Private investigator? What the hell?”

He wanted to say “subpoena,” but he couldn’t get his mouth around the word. He grunted again instead.

“Crazy,” Belsize said. “Just plain crazy. First the fires, now this. Chrissake, what’s going on around here?”

Runyon let go of the door, first one hand, then the other. He could stand all right, but he couldn’t walk yet. Two wobbly steps and his knees sagged; he would’ve collapsed if Belsize hadn’t grabbed him and held him up.

“Take it easy, mister. Just sit down here until the ambulance comes.”

“No. Walk.”

“Better not try it.”

“Walk. Move.”

“… All right then. Lean on me.”

Belsize slid a muscled arm around him and they walked, slow, across the yard. His first few steps were clumsy, but on the way the last of the bloated feeling left his legs and his equilibrium came back. As they neared the farmhouse, ablaze with light now, he felt he could walk on his own. He pushed out of Belsize’s grasp and tried it. A little stagger, but otherwise okay.

He made it as far as the porch steps, sat down on one of them. Belsize left him there and went inside the house. Voices drifted out to him that he didn’t try to listen to. Most of his senses were working again, but the disorientation wouldn’t right itself, wouldn’t let him think. The strain of trying made his head hurt even more.

Wait. Just sit here and wait.

H e was feeling better until the noisy parade started. Sirens, red and blue flashers, glaring headlights. Ambulance, sheriff’s department cruisers, other cars filling up the farmyard. People milling around, talking in loud voices. More confusion that rekindled the fire in the firebox.

The EMTs took one good look at him and made him lie down on a stretcher. They checked his vital signs, and one of them mopped up the blood and put something stinging on his head wound while the other asked the usual questions: What’s your name? What day is it? Do you know where you are? How many fingers am I holding up? He answered them all right, but the response time was slow-a mental delay between hearing them and processing and voicing the answers. He could talk well enough now, with only a little slur to the words, but his thoughts still wouldn’t connect. Scrambled him up good, whoever had clobbered him.

One of the sheriff’s deputies, or maybe the sheriff himself, came over and threw some hard questions at him about the dead man in the tack room. Officious type, jut-jawed, one hand resting on the butt of his service revolver. Runyon’s slow responses didn’t satisfy him; the questions came faster, overlapping what he was trying to say. It made him angry. He might have said something harsh if the EMTs hadn’t intervened. Talk to the man later, one of them said, after the ER docs get a look at him. Which hospital? Red Bluff General, where else?

He didn’t want to go to a hospital. Practically lived in hospitals during Colleen’s illness, hated the damn places. But the EMTs wouldn’t listen to any argument. One of them said, “You don’t have a choice, man. Head injury’s nothing to fool around with, not for you, not for us.” They loaded him into the ambulance, and away they went, bouncing over the uneven farm road.

Good thing they didn’t use the siren on this trip. The ride was long enough and bad enough without the scream of a siren to make it a rolling nightmare.

A t the hospital the first thing they did as they were wheeling him in was take his wallet. Sure, right-find out if he had any medical insurance. More questions from a woman in scrubs, one about notification. Was there anyone he wanted notified of his “accident” and where he was? No, he said. Joshua wouldn’t care, and why burden Bill or Tamara with a nonagency matter?

More poking and prodding in the ER, amid the hospital stink of medicine and sickness and death, the humming and chirping machines, and the sudden cries that made your skin crawl. Kill himself before he died like Colleen had, in a place like this. But that wasn’t going to happen. He wasn’t terminal yet, just fuzzy, confused. He managed to summon the will to shut himself down, just let it all happen. Heard somebody say, “Skull doesn’t appear to be fractured. Vitals are strong. Eyes seem mostly clear.” Heard somebody else say, “Let’s get him to X-ray,” and off he went to have his head examined.

After that, they put him in a ward room with three other beds, all of them occupied, and rolled a curtain around him. A nurse came in and hooked him up to an IV and fed in some kind of sedative. He didn’t mind. The sooner he was rid of tonight, the better…