Never Come Back

Chapter Sixty

A paramedic with a shaved head tended to the cuts on my hands, which I’d suffered when I removed the broken glass covering Ronnie. I sat on the back bumper of the open ambulance, a blanket wrapped around me against the cool autumn night. Ronnie sat next to me, and while my wounds received attention, another paramedic examined Ronnie, asking him to turn his head first one way and then the other. He shined a penlight into Ronnie’s eyes and asked him to follow the path of his finger in the air.

“You’re looking okay, buddy,” the paramedic said to my brother. “You’re going to be sore tomorrow, but I don’t think you have a concussion.”

“He was bleeding,” I said.

“I saw that,” Ronnie’s paramedic said. “It’s a small cut. Superficial. He’s lucky. With all that glass around him he could have really been sliced up.” The man pointed at my hands. “You got it worse, trying to help him.”

“She’s tough,” Ronnie said.

“Is that right?” my paramedic asked.

“He’s tough,” I said. “He saved me.” I looked to the house. It glowed with light, and the front door stood open. Richland and Post were inside talking to Beth. “They both did,” I said.

The wind picked up, rustling leaves in the street. I shivered.

“Should he go to the emergency room?” I asked.

“He’s fine,” Ronnie’s paramedic said. “He should take some ibuprofen and sleep it off. He’ll be back to his old self in a couple of days.”

“Thanks,” Ronnie said.

“Have they taken the body out?” I asked.

My paramedic turned and looked at the house. “Not yet. Usually the medical examiner and the cops take their sweet time with that stuff.”

I knew that well. Two bodies removed from the house in just over a week. Another big night for the neighborhood. They were going to ask us to leave—or turn us into a reality show.

“So she killed him just by smacking him with that lamp?” I asked.

My paramedic nodded. “He was probably gone before he hit the floor. You can do that to someone if you get them in the right spot.”

I hoped that was the end of all of it.

Ronnie and I gave our statements to Detective Post. We took turns sitting in the backseat of her warm sedan while Richland remained inside talking to Beth. It didn’t take that long. I could recall the events vividly, could still hear the sickening sound of that lamp against the back of Gordon Baxter’s skull.

When I finished my statement, Post told me she needed to get back inside to wrap things up.

“Can I ask you something?” I said.

“Sure.”

“Beth,” I said. “My… half sister… What do you make of her?”

“She seems like she’s been through a lot,” Post said. “Hard years. We see a lot of people like that in our business. People whose lives just don’t go the way a life is supposed to.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Is there something else you want to know?” Post asked.

“I guess I just want to know if you believe her,” I said. “If I should believe her.”

“I think you know I can’t decide that for you,” she said. “She’s your family, so you have to make up your own mind about her.”

“I thought you might say something like that,” I said.

“My cop instincts say she’s on the level,” Post said. “She saved your life and your brother’s life tonight. That’s not a small thing.”

Saved my life. I never thought I’d be the kind of person who would need her life saved.

“And,” Post said, “if you want to know something else, we looked into the story she told you about why she disappeared back in 1975. It turns out there’s a detective still alive from back then, an old guy named Ron Forest. They broke up a ring of drugs and pornography in Haxton about a year after your sister ran off. The guys who were behind it were involved with a lot of things, and it doesn’t look like Mr. Baxter’s name ever came up in association with that investigation. But something like that was going on in Haxton back then. It’s a little corroboration for her story from a reliable source. And I guess learning something like that about your father when you’re fifteen years old could really strip your gears, you know? It might take a long time to get over that.”

“Or never,” I said.

“Indeed,” Post said.

“Maybe thirty-seven years of anger, thirty-seven years of living the wrong kind of life brought that lamp down on his head tonight.”

The car started to feel too warm. I still had the blanket wrapped around my body, so I reached up and loosened it from where it rubbed against my neck.

“Are you going to stay here tonight?” Post asked.

“It doesn’t sound that appealing. I need to call my uncle and tell him what happened. Maybe Ronnie and I can stay over there until… the house is cleaned up.”

“Would you like a ride there?” Post asked.

“Is Beth… is she finished?”

“Soon. Do you want to talk to her?”

“Yes, I do. I should wait and see where she’s going to stay tonight.”

Post patted me on the leg. “Sit tight. I’ll tell her you’re still out here.”

She climbed out of the car, leaving me alone with my thoughts in the dark.