Bitter Recoil

Chapter 28

By late afternoon of the next day I was stir-crazy. Worse, I hadn’t seen Francis Guzman, hadn’t heard about Estelle…I was god-damned marooned in that stupid little room. There was nothing wrong with me other than a few stitches. “Admitted for observation” might be a nice way of saying that I’d been sidelined on purpose.

The manhunt for H. T. Finn was centering on the western half of the state…it was top-of-the-hour news on both radio and television and splattered a headline across both the evening and morning papers. No reporter had sought me out. Sheriff Pat Tate had hidden me away.

Shortly after 3:00 p.m., I was sitting in the hard vinyl chair by the window of my hospital room. I’d had a fitful night’s sleep and, for want of anything better to do, a short morning nap. The only medication they forced on me was a mild painkiller and I took that gladly. My back hurt worse than my shoulder.

The first rifle bullet had blown through my vest and skinned across my back just below my shoulder blades. The projectile had never broken the skin, but the bruise and burn on my back was two inches wide and nine inches long.

I’d been lucky with that one. The other bullet had done more damage, ripping first through the edge of my vest and then through the muscle over my right upper arm bone. The bullet hadn’t actually hit the bone, although the shock wave had caused all kinds of “neurological confusion,” as one of the doctors put it. An hour in surgery had put stitches in all the right places. One of the doctors told me that in two weeks I wouldn’t even know I’d been nicked. Two weeks was forever.

There I sat, newspaper folded on my lap, looking ninety years old, when the door opened. Dr. Francis Guzman looked about as old as I did. And now that we were face-to-face, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see him. He closed the door behind himself and leaned against it. He may have needed to. The bags under his eyes were black and deep.

I rose and he waved a hand at me. “No, don’t. Sit.”

“I’ve been doing nothing but sitting all day, Francis.”

He pushed himself away from the door, walked slowly across the room, and shook my hand. His grip was firm and he hung onto my hand for just a moment. “How’s the shoulder?”

“Fine. What’s the word?”

He grinned-barely that…just a weary twitch of the lips and a little dance of light in his eyes.

“I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to get up here more often to see you,” he said. “I looked in on you a couple times yesterday, but you were either under the anesthetic or asleep. Sheriff Tate told me last night you were getting antsy.” He grinned. “I dropped in this morning and you were sleeping in that chair.”

“Yeah. The hell with that. How’s Estelle?”

“She’s doing as well as we could hope.”

He started to say something else, but he was sounding just like a goddamned doctor. I interrupted him. “That doesn’t mean a damn thing to me, Francis. Just tell me in simple English.”

“She’s going to live, barring complications.”

“Complications?” Francis looked around the room for something to sit on. “Take the bed,” I said. He flopped down and fell back, arms over his head. After a moment he pulled himself up to a sitting position.

“Whenever the brain is injured, there’s all kinds of problems,” he said. “It’s a hell of a lot harder making sure all the bleeders behave themselves.” He pointed his finger as if it were a pistol. “Apparently the bullet hit the point of her skull right here.” He tapped the rear crown of his head. “A glancing blow, but…” He took a deep breath. “With a high-powered rifle there’s just so damn much force involved. She has a serious skull fracture.”

I waited while he decided what he wanted to say. “At first they thought that some skull fragments might have penetrated the dura, maybe damaged the brain tissue itself.”

“And?”

“She was in surgery a long time. She’s strong, and the docs did a fine job. The wound is clean. No chips. Hell of a lot of bruising, and that’s always worrisome with the brain. But they did a fine job.” He grinned with a little more energy. “I was there to make sure they did.”

“Any paralysis?” I said, and my voice was husky.

He shook his head. “Not that we can tell yet.”

“Is she conscious?”

“In and out, but that’s to be expected for a couple days.”

“I’d like to see her.”

Francis Guzman nodded but held up a hand. “It’d be best for both of you to let it wait until tomorrow.” He stood up and rolled his head around, trying to loosen the neck kinks. “Give her a few more hours of rest. We’ll know more then, anyway.”

“Francis…”

He looked at me, one eyebrow cocked-just like his wife.

“What about the baby?”

The young physician smiled, and my relief was like ocean surf. “She told you, huh, Padrino?”

“Yeah, she told me. She didn’t lose it, did she?”

“No. She’ll be fine. Tough stuff. She really is.”

“I’m sorry this happened,” I said, sounding lame and dumb.

“Hindsight is a wonderful thing,” he said. He stuck out his hand again, and I got up. “We’d all be geniuses if our foresight was as good. Who knows what might have happened if you’d waited. But she’ll be fine. So will you. And the next time you have a vacation, we’re all going to go to Lake Tahoe or somewhere where neither one of you can get into trouble.”

“It’s a deal.” His spirits sounded upbeat, but I knew he was working at it. I followed him to the door, my shuffle just about as fast as his.

“And by the way…remember Nolan Parris?” Francis asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“He’s downstairs in one of the reading rooms. They won’t let him up. He spent the night, I guess. But Tate set some tight rules on this one. Takes an act of Congress to see anyone or find out anything. You want to see him?”

“I don’t know if I do or not.”

“As I said, he spent the night. He must be pretty worried. Nobody’s talking and he’s concerned about the little girl. He means well, I think.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Finally, he’s worried. We all are. But I don’t know what it would accomplish to see him or…” and I stopped. My brain was beginning to work. I shrugged like I was making a hell of a concession. “Yeah. Send him up. No, wait. Forget it. I’ll take care of it. I’ve got a phone.”

Francis nodded. “I’ll try to drop in on you later this evening. Behave yourself.” He smiled.

“And you get some rest, kid. You look like shit.” It felt good to be able to tell someone else that for a change.

Dr. Francis Guzman left, and I called the hospital gestapo to ask them if they’d let Father Nolan Parris enter the “R” zone. I had no desire to hash over his problems or his guilt that was no doubt rampaging after what had happened. It was simpler than that. I needed wheels, and Parris had access to a station wagon.

Age sixty-two is too late to worry about growing up and following the rules. There wasn’t anything wrong with me that wouldn’t heal as well elsewhere…where I might be more useful.

Nolan Parris hadn’t found his way through the multilevel labyrinth to my room when the telephone rang. I grabbed it. It was Tate. The old bastard must have been a mind reader.

“Bill, are you dressed?”

“Hell, no. I’m sitting here in a goddamn robe pretending I’m a nursing home patient. What’s up?”

“We got a break. A private pilot who was going to fly over and look at the forest fire says he saw Finn’s Blazer on one of the back roads of the reservation.”

“It’s not Finn’s goddamned Blazer and where was this? Which reservation?”

“Northwest of Grants somewhere…over by Haystack Mesa, they called it. He’s cornered at an old wildcat uranium mine. There’s dozens of them out that way. We’ve got it pinpointed on the map. A chopper is going to pick me up here in a minute.”

I was about to interrupt him and tell him that if I got left out of this one I’d curse his firstborn for generations. But there was a light knock on my door, and Nolan Parris stepped into the room. He was wearing his clerical suit, complete with white collar. I turned my attention back to the telephone.

“You have to pick me up, Pat.”

“That’s why I called. I cleared it with the hospital already. You need to get your old ass in gear, get dressed, and be at the helipad on the roof in about thirty minutes.”

“You got it.”

“And, Bill…”

“Yep?” I was already impatient to be off the phone.

“I’m not doing this as a favor to you. I want you to know that from the start. If it was up to me, you’d be locked in that hospital room for a week or so. I’m doing it because I was told to do it.”

I slammed on the brakes. I couldn’t imagine Pat Tate taking orders from anyone. “This is your case, Pat.”

“Damn right it’s my case. And it’s going to stay that way. But he’s got the child and this may be our only chance.” I heard the steady whup-whup of a helicopter in the background, and someone shouted at Tate. “I’ll talk with you in a few minutes. Finn must know he’s not going to slip through the net. He’s cornered, Bill. And he knows it. Now he wants to talk to you.”

“Finn wants to talk to…”

“Thirty minutes, Bill. Don’t make us wait.” Tate hung up and I stared out the window, the phone still in my hand. If the media had pried enough information out of Tate to know that the hospital was treating two survivors from the war on the mountain, Finn would have heard the news on any radio station. He knew my face. If he’d rifled through the glove compartment of the Blazer, he knew my name. The bastard wanted to negotiate.

I had forgotten that anyone else was in the room. Nolan Parris had heard enough though.

“Sheriff,” he said, and I turned around to look at him.

“You have to let me go along.” Parris limped across the room and touched my arm. He repeated his request, and I hung up the phone and pushed myself out of the chair.

“Why the hell not,” I said. If another passenger on the helicopter was all right with Pat Tate, it was fine with me. I didn’t know how they’d managed to corner the son of a bitch, but the rules had changed. Maybe the services of a priest would be useful.