Ask the Parrot

7

They got back to Lindahl’s house a little before two. The vehicle parked in front of it was not the Dennisons’ Dodge Ram, but a black Taurus that Parker recognized as Fred Thiemann’s. Then its driver’s door opened, and a woman in her fifties climbed out, dressed in jeans and a windbreaker. She must have been waiting for them to get back.

Parker said, “The wife?”

“Jane,” Lindahl said, and looked worried. “What’s gone wrong?”

“She’ll tell us.”

Lindahl parked next to the Taurus as Jane Thiemann went over to stand by the door to the house, waiting for them, frowning. Looking at her through the windshield, Parker saw a woman who was weighed down by something. Not angry, not frightened, but distracted enough not to care what kind of appearance she made. She was simply out in the world, braced for whatever the bad news would turn out to be.

Parker and Lindahl got out of the SUV, and Lindahl said, “Jane. How’s Fred?”

“Coming apart at the seams.” She turned bleak eyes toward Parker. “You’re Ed Smith, I guess.”

“That’s right.”

“Fred’s afraid of you,” she said. “I’m not sure why.”

Parker shrugged. “Neither am I.”

Lindahl said, “You want to come in?”

“Fred sent me for his rifle.”

“Oh, sure. I have it locked in the rack in the bedroom. Come on in.”

They stepped into the living room, and the parrot bent its head at Jane Thiemann in deep interest. She looked at the television set. “You keep that on all the time?”

“It’s something moving. I’ll be right back.”

Lindahl went into the bedroom, and Parker said, “What was the urgency? Fred doesn’t figure to use it, does he?”

She gave him a sharp look. “On himself, you mean?”

“On anything. He isn’t hunting deer today.”

Coming back from the bedroom, carrying Thiemann’s rifle, Lindahl said, “Deer season doesn’t start till next month.”

She looked at her husband’s rifle as Lindahl offered it to her at port arms, and said, “I’d like to sit down a minute.”

“Well, sure,” he said, surprised and embarrassed. As she dropped onto the sofa, not sitting, but dropping as though her strings had been cut, he stepped back and leaned the rifle against the wall. “I’m sorry, Jane, I forget how to be civilized. You want something to drink? Water? I think I got Coke.”

Parker said, “You want the television off?”

“Yes, please,” she said, and to Lindahl said, “I’d like some water, if I could.”

Lindahl left the room, and Parker switched off the set, then sat in the chair beside it, facing the sofa. He said, “Fred’s in shock.”

“We’re both in shock,” she said. “But he’s in more than shock. He’s angry, and he’s scared, and he feels like he’s got to do something, but he doesn’t know what. Thanks, Tom.”

Lindahl, having returned to give her a glass of water with ice cubes in it, now stood awkwardly for a second, uncomfortable about taking the seat on the sofa next to her. He dragged over a wooden kitchen chair from the corner and sat on that, midway between Parker and Jane Thiemann.

Parker said, “What does he say, mostly?”

“All kinds of things. A lot about you.”

“Me?”

“He doesn’t understand you, and he feels that he has to, somehow. The only thing he knows for sure, if it wasn’t for you, this would all be different now.”

“That fella would still be dead.”

“Oh, I know that, we both know that, he isn’t blaming you, he’s blaming what he calls ‘my own stupid self.’ But if it had been just him and Tom up there, they would have gone to the troopers, and who knows what would have happened?”

“Nothing good,” Parker said.

“Well, maybe.” She drank some of the water, then sat holding the glass in both hands in her lap. “Or maybe they would have seen it was an accident,” she said, “and that man was he was only wouldn’t have relatives or—”

“Garbage,” Parker said. “A man, but garbage.”

“It’s harsh when you say it that way,” she said, “but yes. The troopers might have looked at it, might have seen what Fred was and what that other man was, and just said, ‘Well, it was an accident, we won’t make a big deal out of it.’ Of course, now he can’t do that.”

“He never could,” Parker said. “That fella has an identity. They’ll find it, from fingerprints or DNA or dental records or something else. He’ll have relatives, they’ll want to be satisfied. Knowing their cousin is drinking himself to death is one thing; knowing he’s been shot in the back is something else.”

“Oh!”

“Fred wouldn’t be hit with a whole lot,” Parker told her, “but he would do some time inside.”

“That’s what scared him,” she said, and now she did look as though she might cry, but shook her head and kept talking. “One of the things that scared him. The idea of . . . prison . . . we can’t . . . we have our own—”

“Tom told me,” Parker said. “Afterward, he told me. He had to.”

“I haven’t blabbed around to anyone else, Jane,” Lindahl said. “Honest to God.”

“Oh, I believe you.” With that bleak look at Parker again, she said, “That whole thing hit Fred worse even than it did George. He’s had to take pills to sleep, or he just lies there all night, thinking about that cell, imagining that cell. He’s in the cell more than George is.”

Parker said, “How long is George in for?”

“Oh, a year more, at the most,” she said, dismissing it. “At the most. It was post-stress syndrome, everybody knows that’s what it was. His army record couldn’t have been better, everybody says so. Did Tom tell you he was wounded?”

“No.”

“I wasn’t telling stories, Jane,” Lindahl said.

“I understand that.” To Parker she said, “He was wounded, too. A roadside bomb.” She slid her palm down over her left hip. “It burned a lot of skin off there and smashed a joint. He’s got a plastic joint in there.”

“So they’ll let him out,” Parker said, “as soon as they can.”

“No more than a year.”

Parker nodded. “Have you mentioned to Fred, George will want to see him when he gets out?”

She blinked at him. “Well, he knows— What do you mean?”

Nodding at the rifle against the wall, Parker said, “He’s in pain right now. He might decide that thing’s better than a sleeping pill.”

Her eyes widened, and a trembling hand moved up toward her face, but she didn’t speak. She’d known the same truth but had been trying not to think it.

Parker said, “When you take the rifle back to him, remind him, George will be very disappointed, all he’s been through, if his father isn’t there to say hello when he gets out.”

“I will,” she said. “That might . . .” She looked around the room. “I don’t need any more water.”

Lindahl jumped up to take the glass from her. “We’re sorry, Jane,” he said. “None of us wanted this to happen.”

“It isn’t you two, it’s him. That’s the worst of it, he knows it’s him.” She got to her feet, slightly unsteady. “I shouldn’t be away from there too long.”

Parker stood and told her, “With you on hand, he’ll come through this.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Lindahl handed her the rifle. “The safety’s on.”

“Good.” She staggered slightly under the unaccustomed weight, which meant her husband hadn’t introduced her to hunting. “I’ll tell Fred what you said,” she told Parker. “About George wanting him there, when he comes back.”

“Good.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Lindahl said, and did so. Parker waited, and then Lindahl came back in to say, “You were very sympathetic.” He sounded surprised. “I didn’t think you’d have that kind of sympathetic manner.”

“I had to,” Parker said. “You know Thiemann’s thinking about killing himself. If he does, the cops’ll talk to the wife three minutes before they find out what happened, and ten minutes after that, they’re right at this door.” Parker shook his head. “I’ll be as sympathetic as I have to. Neither of us wants a gun battle with the law.”