Cold Hit

Chapter 13

Zack was in a big Archie Bunker chair parked in front of a dark big-screen TV. He was staring out the window at a small backyard with a lit kidney-shaped pool. His wrists were wrapped. The bandaging looked professional. I knew Zack wouldn't go to the emergency room. They'd be forced to report an attempted suicide and that would be career death for a cop. I remembered he'd told me that before they were married, Fran was an E. R. nurse.

We were standing in the threshold, but Zack was still staring out at the backyard. "Shane's here," Fran said. Her voice had the same detached, impersonal tone you'd use showing a plumber where the leak was.

Zack was wearing a maroon bathrobe and slippers. When he turned, I saw that he had removed the splint from his nose but still looked at me around a swollen purple mess. His eyes were expressionless, like holes punched in cardboard. Fran stepped back into the hall, closed the door, and disappeared.

"Intense," I said, as I crossed the room toward a wing chair by the window and sat on the arm. "Propped in the tub, wrists up, bleeding dangerously. Very operatic."

Zack didn't want to look at me, and turned his gaze back toward the window.

"What's the deal? Did that fancy Glock jam?" I said.

"Can it. I didn't call so you could come over and piss on me."

"Hey, Zack, what game are we playing? I'm not a psychiatrist and, obviously, I don't want to say anything that's gonna drive you over the edge, but my bullshit meter is redlined, man."

He still wasn't looking at me.

"How's this supposed to go now? You come over here and slash your wrists, but you don't quite get the job done and Fran and the boys come home and find you tits up in the tub with Sinatra singing, 'My Way.'

the fuck outta here," he said, his voice a whisper.

I stood and started toward the door, but then stopped and turned back. "Zack, I owe you a lot. You were there for me and I'm trying to be there for you, but you gotta admit, even at my worst I didn't pull a bunch a weak shit like this."

"I try and kill myself and you call it weak shit?"

"If you're gonna check off the ride, don't do it in a bathtub like some Valley transvestite. Screw that damn Glock into your ear and take care of business. You want my take?" He turned his eyes down so I continued: "You're hoping Fran will let you come back and this is some kinda guilt trip."

Then his eyes filled with tears.

"Get me outta here, Shane."

"Done."

I left him in the den and went to find Fran. She had washed his clothes. They were still warm from the dryer. In the harsher light of the laundry porch, I thought I saw the last remnants of an old bruise under her left eye. There was a darkening there, a faint smudge covered over with heavy pancake. I returned to the den, closed the door, and handed him the clothes.

He started rambling. "My boy looks at me like I'm. ." He couldn't finish. "Like I'm some kinda monster."

If he'd been knocking Fran around that could be why. But I didn't know that for sure. I didn't have any proof. I was confused and conflicted. When he finished dressing, I said, "Let's go. You got everything?"

We walked to the car and I loaded him in. Then I went up to where Fran was standing on the front porch watching us. The strain of all this was adding years to her face.

"Where're you gonna take him?" she asked, concerned. "I don't know if he should be alone. He could try this again."

"Look, Fran, he's a cop. He's got access to weapons, or if he really wants to open a vein, there're sharp edges everywhere. We can put him in a psychiatric hospital, but unless he agrees to stay no civilian facility is gonna be able to hold him." She stood there with her arms crossed, her mouth growing smaller.

"Has he been hitting you?"

"I wish it was that easy," she answered. "I need for this to be over. I need to move on." There was finality and a brief shudder as she said it. This suicide attempt was an ending for her, a door closing.

"He's got a brother. Don or something? He never talks much about him. Lives in Torrance, right?" I asked.

"They don't get along much anymore."

"I'm taking him there anyway. Give me the address and while I'm on my way, call Don and give him a heads-up. Tell him I need Zack to stay put until I can figure something out."

She promised to call, wrote down Don Farrell's address, and handed it to me. I walked back to the car and got in. Zack was slumped against the door.

"I'm taking you to your brother's house," I said.

He didn't reply, so I put the car in gear and headed off to Torrance. As we pulled up onto the freeway, I turned to look at him. The overhead lights played over his face, strobing across a swollen landscape of depression and despair.

"Have you been hitting Fran?" My voice was so soft it was barely audible.

He sat quietly for a long time. I didn't think he had heard me. "When I was little, my father. ." Then he stopped.

"What? What about your father?"

"What you are and what you become is written in the Big Book before you're even born. It's in your DNA. There's no way to alter destiny," he whispered softly.