Riders on the Storm

21

The night, as I knew it, vanished.

The houses, the stoplights, the store lights were gone as soon as I found the turnoff Donlon’s map led me to. The road was gravel and tall summer corn walled me in on both sides. The quarter-moon hung low and stark. The day had cooled sufficiently so I kept my window down. I also kept the radio off. On the passenger seat were a cop-sized flashlight and my dad’s forty-five.

I thought about Karen. The affair Will had had with Cathy Vance had made me think even more of her and less of Will. She was apparently able to justify it to herself because of his terrible experience in Nam. I tried to do that, too, but somehow I couldn’t. Then I smiled to myself. Monsignor Sam McCain was doing it again, judging people from on high. I was in no position to judge Will. Not after what he’d been through.

A sudden wind tasted and smelled of impending rain.

The intersection of rural gravel roads I was looking for was several yards from a narrow wooden bridge that spanned a ravine. I found it and turned right.

More walls of corn, more gravel banging off my car.

Ahead I saw the silhouetted line of trees that marked the long area of woods I wanted. Hidden somewhere in there was Anders’s cabin. I sped up.

A few times I glanced at the forty-five. Would I actually shoot and maybe kill somebody?

One more turn and I was facing the narrow lane almost lost in the barrier of looming pine trees. I cut my headlights.

To reach the cabin you traveled a dirt path that was potholed as if by intention. I had to slow to under ten miles an hour to keep from being bounced to the ceiling and cracking my head. My window was rolled up again. Mosquitoes dive-bombed in squadrons.

Donlon’s map indicated that this dirt lane was approximately a quarter mile from the cabin. I kept close watch on my odometer. When I’d covered about half that distance I swung off the road and parked in an open area just wide enough to accommodate my car. I grabbed the gun and the flashlight, then got out. I locked my car and set off.

The woods provided a cacophony of sounds, some sweet, some vulnerable, some threatening. Animals of various kinds prowling, feasting, hiding.

Even among the cathedral-like trees the scent of rain was still sharp. The other sharp smell came from the pine trees.

Just before I reached the cabin I came to an open area in the woods. The grass had been mown for one thing and for another there was a green, white-trimmed wooden gazebo sitting arrogant and citylike in the middle of this nowhere.

The “cabin” lay to the right of the gazebo and it was not a cabin at all. It was a summer home, of course, two stories of wood and stone with a long, screened-in porch covering the front. The people who owned expensive places like these liked to take pleasure in dubbing them “cabins.” Rustic, you know.

As soon as I reached the clearing some cosmic force threw the switch on my paranoia. I felt observed. I started studying the darkened windows under the dormered roof. They reminded me of the paperback gothic novels my sister was always reading. Ominous, rife with suggestions and secrets. Her husband joked fondly that she bought them four and five at a time.

The quarter-moon provided enough light that I didn’t need my flashlight even as I got within a few feet of the house. I stood and listened for any sound I could hear above the familiar sounds of the wooded night.

I walked to the side of the house. I’d wondered how you got vehicles in and out of here. The din of a highway explained it.

Behind the house another wide dirt path began. It ran across a stretch of meadow leading to and over a hill on the other side of which was the access road. Two ways in and out.

There were no cars around.

I went back to the screened-in porch. I still had that feeling of being observed but by now I knew it was the situation that rattled me. After all, I was committing a crime.

My clients have paid me in a variety of ways. In lieu of actual currency I’ve been gifted with clothes, food, tune-ups, a banjo, photography lessons, and of course Jamie. Another of my gifts was a three-piece set of burglary tools. Occasionally I’d taken them out and practiced with them on locks at my apartment and at the office.

This was my first time for real. I tried not to think about it being a Class Six Felony.

I had no trouble getting inside.

The first few minutes I spent scanning the place with my flashlight beam. Anders lived well. A huge fieldstone fireplace with what appeared to be hand-tooled pokers (but of course); expensive hardwood flooring; an outsize TV screen mounted on the west wall; this a prosperous man’s idea of roughing it — the kind of pad that would give Hugh Hefner wet dreams. A little Frank on the stereo and the woman would be tearing her clothes off before she’d put even one three-inch high heel on the outside steps.

I had passed a partially open closet door and had started toward a hallway that I assumed would lead to the kitchen. I heard the closet door behind me make a faint but unmistakable sound. I spun around. He charged at me tiger fast and tiger sure. I was prey, long-awaited prey.

I raised the forty-five to fire but before I could he’d slammed into me. The gun hadn’t even slowed him down. He was so sure of himself he knew slamming into me would knock it from my hand. As it had.

His massive hands did not intend to just choke me to death, they were trying to crush everything inside my neck. His force was so overwhelming I felt myself trying to slip to the floor just to make it more difficult for him to hold me up by gripping my neck with such power.

Teddy Byrnes was screaming the way the old Celtic warriors supposedly had. It was said they could half-paralyze their victims with their voices alone. There was great abiding mad pleasure in the sounds.

I was losing consciousness so quickly I operated on instinct. Somehow my knee came straight up. Somehow it reached its target. Somehow my power was enough to temporarily mitigate his power.

Dizzy, gagging, stumbling I searched the dark floor for my forty-five. He was behind me — I chanced looking back — bent over and clutching himself.

I knew it would be only seconds before he charged me again. I wouldn’t have time to find my gun unless I literally stumbled over it.

A small metal statue of some presumably prominent figure stood on an end table. The head was so narrow it was almost pointed. I grabbed it just as the screaming started again.

The charge was pretty much the same kind of tackle-line maneuver he’d tried before. A mistake on his part. I knew when to step out of range. I also knew enough when to sink the statue in his forehead.

Between his rage and his shock and his pain he was temporarily disoriented. He staggered around, arms flailing for balance. The white T-shirt he wore was bloody from his hands swiping it.

I used the time to find my gun.

When I saw it I moved as fast as I could. It was under the coffee table.

And it was then that Byrnes decided to remind me of who and what he was. While I was grasping for the forty-five he got me around the hips, threw me over his shoulder and then heaved me into the fireplace. Bone and stone do not mix, not when bone is hurled against it at a great rate of speed.

Then he was pounding on me.

I hadn’t had time to climb to my feet so he stood over me punching at will. Stomach, sternum, face, skull. This was the pattern he’d no doubt found most successful and most efficient. He was not a dumb man. Stomach, sternum, face, skull.

I kept rolling left and right, deflecting as many punches as I could.

The formula he’d been using must have gotten boring for him because he suddenly felt the need to pick me up and hurl me again, this time halfway across the width of the fireplace and into the stand of tools including the hand-tooled poker.

He looked as surprised as I felt when I was able to creak to my feet and grab the poker.

He’d been ready for another round of stomach-sternum-face-skull or some variation thereof when I waved the sharp-edged poker in front of me. He didn’t move, just watched.

I moved several feet away from the fireplace. He stood where I’d just been.

“You’re doing a lot better than I thought you would, Counselor.”

“Thanks for the compliment. You’re not doing quite as well as I thought you would.”

“C’mon, now, Counselor, you’re not dumb enough to think this is really over yet. Are you?”

“No, I guess it probably isn’t.”

And once again he showed me why he was Byrnes and I was McCain.

He bent down and snatched up the fireplace shovel from among the other scattered iron instruments. Now it was his turn to cut through the air with it. He used both hands the way he’d swing a baseball bat. None of this candy-ass McCain nonsense of just waving it through the air to keep him away. I’d been playing defense. Byrnes, of course, was playing offense.

In this brief respite I had time to realize that I was in some real pain and that my nose was streaking blood into my mouth. The surprise was that I did not have a headache.

I kept thinking of the gun. The gun could save me. I couldn’t think of anything else that could.

He lunged. I backed up three steps into a grandfather clock in a corner. The chimes went wild for a minute or so.

He smiled. He was probably playing a movie in his head. The best scenes would be me on the floor and him savaging my head with his iron shovel. Maybe when I was at least half gone he’d take my poker from me and bash what little remained of my life with my own weapon.

Oh, yeah. He’d been rejuvenated. The baseball bat swing came closer and closer. Backing me up. Making me stumble not once but twice. Enjoying himself because he got to see that he was in control again.

I was now on a path to reach the couch. He was pushing me to reach it, slashing the air when I tried to move in a different direction, leaving me no room to maneuver. I needed to get the gun under the coffee table.

Then it was my turn. Or I hoped it was. I attacked him. My turn to carve my own direction. Fuck him.

And it worked.

His response to my sudden strike was to swing in an ever wider arc and that left him off balance. And that was when the hook of my poker caught him on the right cheek. It wasn’t a particularly sharp edge but I had the opportunity to hit him three quick times along the eye as well.

Blood poured from the massive cut I’d inflicted. His eyes lost focus for a few seconds.

I risked one more slash. It didn’t cut but it disoriented him enough to lose his grip on his shovel.

He came at me but I’d been able to run around to the front of the couch.

I had half-ass good luck.

I wasn’t quick enough to avoid the kicks he leveled at me as my hand scrabbled under the coffee table. He had to be wearing steel-toed boots. But I was quick enough to fill my hand with the gun so that when he grabbed me again — to hurl me across the room again? — I turned and shot him in the right shoulder. His hand shot out for the gun. He had the strength to wrench it out of my hand and it went off again. This time a bullet blasted his right thigh.

His first response was disorientation. He didn’t cry out at the pain. He didn’t try to shield himself from another shot. He just stood there staring at me in disbelief.

This wasn’t the way his world was supposed to run. He was attacker, not victim. The other guy was supposed to be in pain.

Then he tried to reach me with his other arm.

I walked over to a brown leather armchair and sat down.

“Where’s the heroin?” The trips to Mexico, packing the shipments privately. And heroin being the most profitable. I just took a guess.

He was starting to cry now. But as I soon found out, it wasn’t because of pain. Not physical pain anyway. He careened around to the front of the couch and just let himself fall down on it. His eyes were closed for a second. No tears though. The crying I’d heard was in his throat.

“I go up again I won’t be with my mom when she dies.”

So easy to mock him. But I didn’t. He was fading fast. His head wobbled and his breath came in gasps. He tried to reach up with the hand of the wounded shoulder and he sobbed.

“I always promised her.” But that was all he muttered.

“Where’s the heroin you and Anders ship?”

Drifting off: “Shoulda killed you.”

Then: Sirens. Nearby. On the wooded trail.

A single siren now, coming this way.

It was enough to rouse Byrnes, but not for long. He was bleeding badly from both wounds. He mumbled something angry that I didn’t understand.

I ran to the door and threw it open.

Chief Foster’s car slid across the grass, stopping about ten feet from the house.

Then he was running with his own gun ready.

Then somebody else was exiting the car.

Mary; Mary Lindstrom; my Mary.

22

More sirens, this time including an ambulance. But also three more cars from the police station, including Sheila Kelly, the forensic expert Foster had brought with him from his last job. Within five minutes of striding through the door with a large black bag, she had found the subbasement where all the shipping equipment was placed on a Formica work table along with two sizable bags of heroin to be shipped to Anders’s buyers.

Mary had called Foster and explained where I’d gone and why. He had picked her up immediately and brought her here.

Now Mary, Foster, and I talked on the front porch.

Foster wore a short-sleeved yellow shirt and brown trousers. “The drugs explains how Anders could live so well.”

“And why he had to force Al Carmichael out. Carmichael would never have put up with using the company as a ruse for shipping drugs.”

“I don’t understand why a man like Steve Donovan would have, either.”

“I don’t think he did. Not at first. I think he probably found it out after Anders had been at it for some time. Donovan had political aspirations for one thing. And for another he loved that company. He and Carmichael had turned it into a going operation. I’m pretty sure he confronted Anders and Anders made a promise to stop but then never did. And that’s why the two were always arguing all the time. And that’s why Anders killed Donovan.”

He smiled at Mary. “Mary and I had a little talk while we were racing out here.”

“All I told him, Sam, was that I was at least willing to consider the possibility that Will was guilty.”

The night went on. Bird racket in the trees; rain wind slamming against the windows and chilling us on the porch; animals scurrying for shelter before the rain itself began.

I sat there briefly comforted by nature because there would be no comfort coming from Foster.

“So even after all this you still don’t think Anders killed him?”

“As I said to Mary, Sam, why would he? He didn’t know how to run the company. With Donovan gone it would become obvious that the whole operation was getting a fair share of its profits from an unknown source. The IRS would have a lot of questions and pretty soon after that they’d get real suspicious and kick it over to the FBI. And then Anders would be all over.”

“Maybe Anders didn’t have any choice except to kill him.”

Mary looked pained that I’d rushed past Foster’s take on Anders to go right back into mine.

I said, “Maybe Anders was afraid that Donovan had finally had enough. That he was going to go to the authorities and tell them everything.”

“He’d be willing to sacrifice his political career?”

“Donovan had a terrible temper and he could be a bully when he got sanctimonious but generally he was an honorable man. He had to be miserable every day of his life knowing what Anders was up to. So I could see him snapping, saying that he’d had enough. Figuring out the best case he could for himself so maybe — just possibly — he could tell the law everything and avoid prison. Put everything on Anders, where it belonged anyway.”

“It seemed to me that Senator O’Shay had gotten Donovan pretty fired up about becoming a congressman.”

From the front doorway, Sheila Kelly said, “Think I could borrow you for a little while, Chief?”

“Be right with you,” Foster said, standing up. “We’re pretty much done here with you folks, Sam, if you’d like to go home.”

“I asked Mrs. Nelson to watch the girls. She’s usually in bed by nine thirty and it’s almost that time.”

“You know where to reach us, Chief.”

After a clumsy handshake, I said, “I’m still going to prove that Anders killed Donovan.”

His smile went to Mary, not me. “And I’m still going to prove he didn’t kill Donovan.”

The rain came as soon as we reached the highway. I kept the radio off so we could hear it play on the roof. Mary had her head back, eyes closed. Headlights were all we could see of the oncoming cars till they passed us.

“I was afraid you’d be mad at me, Sam.”

“You love me. You were afraid for me. You wanted to protect me.”

“If I ever need a lawyer I’ll hire you. You made a very nice defense of me.” Then, “So now will you tell me what happened with Byrnes back there?”

Foster had apologized to Mary but said he wanted to question me alone. He started by saying that even though I’d technically broken the law by entering the cabin without any kind of permission or warrant, he was grateful for what I’d done and no charges would be filed against me. I thanked him.

I hadn’t had time to tell Mary about the confrontation with Teddy Byrnes. But now that I repeated what I’d told Foster I realized how easily the situation could have turned out the other way around. Byrnes was not only a psychopath but also a skilled thug. The two things that saved me were his blind hatred of me, which had led him to make bad decisions in his attempt to kill me, and my ability to stay cool enough to think through how to outplay him.

“I can’t believe you’re still alive. Aren’t you in pain?”

“Yeah. My right side hurts quite a bit.”

“And you don’t have a headache?”

“Just now starting to. But it’s not bad.”

“A big drink and right to bed for you.”

“I need to unwind.”

“All right. A big drink and then you unwind.”

“This’ll all be on the news. I wonder what the girls’ll make of it.”

“They’ll be proud. They’ll make you tell them all about tonight. The cleaned-up version, of course.”

“That should be an interesting version. I don’t even get to mention the hookers?”

“What hookers?”

“See how fast that got your attention? Any kind of story you’re telling, you can never go wrong with hookers.”

“Didn’t we learn that in seventh grade?”

“No,” I said, “I think it was eighth.”

Since it was a workday I went to the office.

I did not stop anywhere along the way. Half of the front page of the morning paper dealt with the arrest of Lon Anders and the hospitalization of Teddy Byrnes. Valerie Donovan said that she would have no comment on the relationship between her husband and Anders. Chief Foster thanked me for my help with the case and called me “courageous.” There was a photo of me looking like a sixteen-year-old. I’d never seen it before.

TV and radio people had shown up at the house around eight o’clock. The girls watched them from the front window. Kate kept asking me if she would get to be on TV.

Mary did a fine job as my public-relations representative. In her blue skirt with the blue buttons running down the right side and her smart white collarless blouse, her makeup modest and perfect, she cordially explained that I would be making a statement very soon but that I had other matters to deal with and right now just couldn’t afford the distraction.

The word “hero” must have been used twenty times in the eight or nine minutes Mary was on the front porch. I was obviously no hero.

I hadn’t expected to find Teddy Byrnes at Anders’s house so you couldn’t say I’d sought him out. And as much as I hated him, I hadn’t been fighting him to rid humanity of a scourge; I’d just been trying to save my own sorry ass. But you couldn’t say that to the press. To them you were a good guy or a bad guy, and if you were a good guy you just had to be heroic in some way.

When Mary came back inside, she said, “You now have a fan club.”

“I don’t want a fan club.”

Kate said, “What’s a fan club?”

Nicole said, “That’s when people have posters of famous people on their walls and buy their records and stuff.”

Kate said, “Have you made a record, Sam?”

So now I sat at my desk smoking more Luckies than I should have and popping aspirins every hour on the hour. My left arm hurt when I extended it and my right side ribs hurt when I so much as took a deep breath.

Jamie said, “Everybody’s talking about you, Sam. I’m really proud.”

“This’ll last about two days and then my fifteen minutes’ll be up.”

“Look at that stack of phone messages and it’s not even ten thirty.”

“I looked at them. And they make me mad.”

“Why would they make you mad?” Today Jamie wore a blue-and-white polkadot dress and a blue barrette that accented the appeal of her fetching Midwestern face and body.

“Because half these people wouldn’t ever have returned my calls if last night hadn’t happened.”

“They just want to congratulate you.”

“The only ones I’m returning are the ones that might mean a little business for us. I’ve been thinking of adding a security service for businesses. We don’t have a local one. Some of the people who called probably need help that way.”

“Boy, you never mentioned that before.”

“I need to make more money. I...” I hesitated. I wanted to hear myself say it. “I hope I’m getting married.”

She had a great kid-sister grin. “That is so cool. Mary is the best woman you’ve ever been with.”

“It took me a long time to realize that.”

“I love her girls, too. I see them whenever I take my daughter to things for kids. Kate is hilarious.”

I’d missed one of the phone slips. Now I sat staring at it. “This one I just saw.”

“Whose is it?”

“Senator O’Shay.”

“I didn’t like him at all. He made me repeat his name and number three times and then he said, ‘This is urgent government business, young woman.’”

“The hell it is. He heard my name on the radio and now he wants me to travel around with him while he’s campaigning.”

“I didn’t like him before anyway. It really burns me up that his two sons don’t have to serve when he’s so big on the war.”

“He’s not going to win.”

“You really think so?”

Her phone rang and by the face she made it had to be O’Shay. I shook my head.

“I’m sorry, Senator, he hasn’t come in yet.”

She held the receiver out while he ranted. He went through his “official government business” and then he wanted to know where he could find me and then he said, “A secretary in Washington would have done everything she could to find him. She’d have him on the phone by now. But that’s a level of competence you’re clearly not capable of.”

I grabbed my receiver and said, “Look, you clown. You have no right to talk to her that way and I want you to apologize to her right now.”

“Just who the hell are you to call me a clown?”

“I’m nobody, but I’m calling you a clown anyway.”

“I’ll be damned if I apologize to some stupid little—”

“You’re going to lose, Senator. Big time. And Jamie and I are going to celebrate your defeat.”

I slammed the phone down.

Jamie gave me a round of applause.

“You defended my honor, Sam. That was very sweet. Thank you.”

“Just call me Sir Galahad.”

“See — you can’t take a compliment.”

One of our five or six friendly running arguments.

I spent the next thirty-five minutes on the phone. The last call I made was to the hospital psych ward. The extremely friendly nurse I talked to — I’d said my name right at the top and she responded the way most people do to real live heroes — said that she’d talk with Dr. Rattigan about me visiting Will. And that, by the way, Will was now speaking haltingly but rationally and that Dr. Rattigan was very happy about this. She would call me back as soon as she could reach him. I used my best heroic voice to thank her. This hero stuff came in handy.

Karen called just before noon. “I spent an hour with Will this morning. He’s almost Will again. I’ll let him tell you what happened the other night. He absolutely didn’t kill Donovan. He’s worried now that he might have given Foster the idea that he was confessing or something. He’ll want to talk to you about that.”

“I hope to be up there this afternoon. The nurse I spoke with said she’d check with Rattigan. If Rattigan says no, I’ll call Lindsey Shepard.”

After a pause she said, “I’m going to forgive him, Sam. I love him. I’d planned on forgiving him but last night I got bitter all over again. I want to make our marriage work.” And then she started talking about where I’d been last night. And what I’d done. And how she was so proud of me.

The nurse called me twenty minutes later. I was slotted in at four o’clock to see Will.

Greg Egan was waiting for me, his wheelchair pulled up to the table he favored in “Mike’s,” a sandwich shop three blocks from my office. Waiting with him was Ted Franks. Their bitter joke was that if they put together the legs Greg had lost in Nam and the right arm Ted had lost there, they’d have a pretty tough guy.

Greg had contacted me about a call he’d gotten from Senator O’Shay. He wanted to know if he should go to the press about it. He’d also talked to Will on the phone this morning. That made two reasons I’d been eager for this lunch.

“Hell,” Ted said, “expose the bastard. You’d be doing all of us a favor.”

Ted had a long, intense face sitting atop a lanky body. These days his empty right sleeve — he always wore long sleeves — was pinned to his shirt. As a Jew he’d always felt like an outsider in Black River Falls, he’d confessed over too many bottles of Bud one night, but oddly enough he felt that his wound had given him the kind of friendship and acceptance he’d never had before.

Mike’s was small, the air conditioning kept it at freezer level, and the clamorous crowd loved to shout appreciation to Mike Feldman for the quality of his numerous deli sandwiches. The shouts (and Mike’s return shouts) were part of the ritual.

It got a lot worse if a Cubs game was on the radio. Mike Feldman was one of their messianic fans.

“So this asshole O’Shay calls me and says he’ll be giving a speech at the steel plant in Cedar Rapids. He wants to have a vet onstage with him. What he means is he needs a cripple. There’re plenty of vets we know who like O’Shay and would be glad to do it for him. But they’re not gimps.”

Greg liked that word. The self-contempt seemed to give him pleasure. I’d given him one of my lectures one day but he’d told me to fuck off and I had.

“Think I should call the paper about it? Expose him?”

Ted said, “I think he should, but then I know how Denise feels about it so I should keep my big mouth to myself.”

“Denise is against it?”

“You know her, Sam. She’s had kind of a tough time with the way I am.” In war times vets’ wives are always portrayed as the relentlessly optimistic vessels of support and good cheer for their husbands. But there are of course wives who have many of the same adjustment problems as their husbands. Denise Egan was one of them.

“I’m with Denise.”

My words surprised him. “Really? I know how much you hate O’Shay. This could really make trouble for him.”

“First of all, Greg, all he did was ask you if you’d appear with him. The thing about ‘gimps,’ as you like to call yourself, is in your mind as far as proving anything. He didn’t even hint at it. I doubt anybody in the press would even be interested in it. And second of all, think about Denise. Like Ted said, it’s easy for us to tell you what to do. And it’d be great if you could do some damage to O’Shay, but it wouldn’t be great for Denise. You know how much she hates talking to reporters. Now let’s talk about Will. How did he sound when you talked to him?”

“Believe it or not, he sounded like Will. He’s a little slower than usual — you know how he likes jokes — but he’s definitely Will again.” Then, “But he’s a little weird about Karen.” He glanced at Ted as he said this.

Ted said, “We started telling him how lucky he was to have Karen and all he said was that he hoped she’d understand someday. Then he changed the subject right away.”

“It kind of sounded like he’d said good-bye or something,” Ted said.

“Yeah, like he was moving on.”

“Maybe he’s not as back together as we think he is. Maybe he was just saying that he hopes that Karen understands all he’s put her through. He has to be feeling at least a little guilty about things.”

“That’s for sure,” Ted said. “All the shit my wife and kids’ve had to put up with while I adjusted to not having a right arm.”

“I’m the same with Denise and my kids. I feel guilty for not being able to walk. It’s irrational but I can’t help it. I see other dads playing ball with their kids—”

He started to choke up but stopped himself.

There was just no doubt about it.

War was fucking wonderful. Just think of all the parades. Just think of all the medals.

Just think of all the O’Shays.

23

He smiled as soon as he saw me.

He sat in the same chair he’d been in when I visited him before but now he was dressed in the kind of shirt and trousers he’d wear under his white medical jacket at the veterinary clinic. No Sears for him.

The room was filled with late afternoon sunshine and the heavy blue smoke of his cigarettes. “Well, look at you, Sam. If you were just a couple feet taller you’d look like an adult.”

Strained, but better than the eerie state of withdrawal he’d been in since the murder.

I sat on the edge of the bed. “Had lunch with Greg and Ted. Greg said you sounded a whole lot better.”

“Yeah, I do.”

The first minutes of conversation had come easily for him. But now the mouth pinched and the eyes narrowed and he sighed shakily. When he started to speak it was in the slow, precise way that Greg had described.

“I was sitting at home after the ER and I just kept thinking of how much I wanted to be part of the group again. I didn’t really get a chance to express myself at the party — at least as I remember it; I was sort of hammered — so I guess I got it in my head that if I could talk to Steve — just the two of us — he’d see why I’d joined that anti-war group. And then I’d tell him that I was dropping it. And then we’d be friends again. Not just Steve but everybody. Buddies. That’s all I could think of.

“So I called Cherie’s where Steve hangs out a lot to see if he was there. He was, so I drove out there. He didn’t want to have anything to do with me so I kept on knocking them down and finally I made it to my car somehow — it was practically parked in the woods — and I passed out. And when I woke up the parking lot was almost empty. I got out to take a leak — I was still pretty drunk — and that was when I saw Donovan on the ground. I was so wobbly I remember almost falling over him. Then somebody hit me from behind across the back of my head and it was maybe half an hour later before I came to.”

“Do you remember calling me from home earlier?”

“Yeah. I was having a really bad panic attack and I didn’t know what to do. I thought maybe you could help me. But as soon as I hung up I thought maybe the best thing to do would be to go out to Cherie’s and talk to Donovan. What a stupid idea that turned out to be. Man, I remember trying to drive home after I found the body. I was so terrified I couldn’t keep the car on the road. I even got so confused at one point I wondered if I really had killed him but couldn’t remember. It was like being in the psych hospital again. Days when I couldn’t think clearly. I pulled off the road to the place where the police found me. I know Foster still thinks I killed Donovan but I didn’t.”

“I know that, Will. And so does Karen.”

His cheeks tinged red suddenly. His eyes closed and he swayed forward, then checked himself. He had to clear his throat to speak. “I’m going to say something you won’t want to hear, Sam.”

I waited him out.

“I’ve given this a lot of thought. I know how much I owe Karen. And I don’t have to tell you how much I love our daughter. But the thing is—” He wrung his hands. His gaze fled to the window. “The thing is that I think I’ve had such a hard time adjusting after coming back home because the marriage isn’t right, Sam. And that’s not Karen’s fault and it’s not mine.”

I still said nothing.

A big dopey grin. “There’s this young woman I hired, Sam. And she’s been with me now for—”

Oh God. At least four married friends of mine had laid The List on me over the years. They wanted my approval, even permission in a strange way. I barely listened to Will’s List. I knew it by heart.

She’s just so much fun. My marriage hasn’t been fun like this in a long time.

She makes me feel younger. I even look younger when I’m shaving in the morning.

She has these ideas for my business. She’s my lover but she’s also like this brilliant thinker.

I know what it’ll be like for my little daughter — I know how selfish I’m being — but kids get over it eventually.

It’ll be tight for a while money-wise with the settlement and all — her fucking lawyer is an assassin — but I can ride that out, too.

And did I mention the sex? I swear to God I got it up three times the other night. I haven’t done that for years.

“I didn’t want it to happen. It’s just that April—”

“Her name is April?”

“What the hell, Sam. Is there something wrong with being called April? It’s a pretty name.”

“I was just surprised is all. April, I mean.”

“I know what you’re doing here.”

“Doing? What’re you talking about?”

“You’re taking Karen’s side. You’re making me the bad guy.”

“No, I’m not.” But I was. All Karen had done for him.

April.

“If you sat down and talked to her for a few minutes you’d see what a sharp girl she is. And you’d like her. And not just because she’s so pretty. She came up and saw me yesterday and I have this whole different mindset. Don’t I sound happy?”

He did. Given the fact that he was still the number one suspect in a homicide, he sounded ridiculously happy.

“Karen knows you had an affair with Cathy Vance. She found those letters you wrote her.”

“Yeah, I know. And I don’t blame her for being hurt.”

“That’s big of you.”

“Cut me some slack here, man. Look at all I’ve been through.”

He was feeling sorry for himself but he deserved to, the poor, suffering, aggravating bastard.

“What’s the point of writing all these letters and then not mailing them?”

A shrug. “Oh, you know, most of them are so sentimental they’re sort of embarrassing. But they made me feel better just writing them. I probably should’ve thrown them away.”

“So when does Karen get the news?”

“I’m not ready to tell her yet. This whole thing with Foster has to be cleared up. And then we have to wait a while because April has to tell her husband and she’s a little bit afraid.”

“You didn’t mention she was married.”

“This is pretty complicated. She’s not telling anybody about it and neither am I. Karen’s coming up in an hour and bringing a sandwich from Mike’s deli. It’s tempting to tell her but I won’t. I’m just so damned happy, Sam, I had to tell somebody. I got so caught up in the anti-war thing I just stayed drunk and fucked up my life totally. Now I have a special reason to get this Donovan thing over with.”

This Donovan thing. A small but annoying problem. Who hasn’t been accused of murder?

“I was thinking maybe you’d forgotten about that. What with April and all.”

“God, Sam, are you mocking me?”

“A little.”

We were silent for a time.

“We still friends, Sam?”

“Yeah, but you piss me off for Karen’s sake.”

“And you of all people don’t have any right to judge me. All the affairs you’ve been in and out of.”

“But I wasn’t married.”

He was quick.

“Sounds like that’s about to change.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Great. You should’ve married Mary a long time ago. How about we both be happy for each other?”

Damn him. I cared about him and I’d stand by him no matter what. I hadn’t heard him this happy since he’d come back from Nam.

“Are you still sure Anders killed Donovan?” he asked.

“Yeah. But even after last night with the heroin, Foster still doesn’t think he had a motive to kill him.”

“Maybe he was afraid that Donovan was going to the feds.”

“That’s what I told him. But no sale.”

“We just need to figure this damned thing out.”

“Yeah, I guess ‘we’ do.”

“You’re mocking me again.”

I was. What he was about to do to Karen and Peggy Ann still pissed me off.

“Not really. I’m irritated with you and I’m irritated with me. I’m being a judgmental asshole and you’re not concerned enough with Foster. He still wants to put you in prison for life.”

From the door I said, “Will, you need to think back through the whole night. Concentrate on every single thing you can remember from the time you left your house to the time the police found you in your car. You said somebody knocked you out. Really focus on that. There may have been some little thing you’ve overlooked. You can be a big help to me.”

“I’m sorry, Sam. You’ve been working so hard for me. I really appreciate it. You know I do.”

I nodded. “Yeah; yeah, I do.”

O’Shay got his gimp.

I felt sorry for the kid, obviously. He appeared to be about fourteen years old, the Irish altar-boy type right down to his freckles and brief nose. They were on a platform so heavy with American flags I was surprised it didn’t crash to the ground. This was a nooner; employees at a steel plant in Cedar Rapids had been treated to free hot dogs and burgers and soft drinks over their lunch hour in exchange for putting up with twenty minutes of lies and patriotic treacle. Pure TV.

“I swear to you, this young man’s fate will be avenged. We will never allow barbarians like the Vietcong to slaughter and wound our troops. The anti-American crowd says that we should stop ‘carpet-bombing,’ that we’re killing too many innocent Vietnamese. What they’re too stupid to realize is that there is no such thing as an innocent Vietnamese. Young or old, they all have one thing in common: they hate Americans — we went there to help them, after all — and won’t be happy until we’re all dead.”

A funny thing happened to the ear-shattering applause that should’ve followed such a red meat line. Maybe it was because the workers were holding hot dogs or burgers or soft drinks and couldn’t manipulate their hands to make the resounding noise O’Shay was used to. But even the poor kid in the wheelchair didn’t show much outward enthusiasm for O’Shay’s psycho remarks. Even if the kid was pro-war, he’d been there and seen a good number of innocent Vietnamese.

I got up and walked over to the TV and clipped it off.

Mary came back with an ice-cold bottle of Hamm’s for me. She’d been upstairs with the kids. I’d tried it, but given my mood I wasn’t much company. I did get an especially wet kiss from Kate which I hadn’t earned and a compliment on my two-day-old haircut from sweet, sensible Nicole.

“Feeling any better?”

“Afraid not. Thanks for putting up with me.” She had brought a can of 7UP along for herself. She curled up beside me on the couch. “Is it Karen you’re feeling bad for?”

“It’s everything. Foster’s obsession with Will and Anders getting off on a murder charge and Karen, sure, of course. I don’t know how she’ll handle it.”

Mary kissed me on the cheek and took my hand. “How about we just sit here and try to relax?”

For the next hour we watched a rerun of The Untouchables. As much as I liked the show occasionally, I never understood the American public’s fondness for gangster lore. Predators who prey on weak and defenseless people didn’t exactly make me want to spend much time with them, especially when they were as stupid as most gangsters are. Cunning, yes, but most of them — with the exception of the grand eccentric Bugsy Siegel — don’t make for riveting drama. Unless you’re into bloodbaths. I’d graced Mary with this sour speech a few times before. She deserved to be spared tonight.

When the call came, I was just about to head for home.

“It’s Karen, Sam. Will must have decided to tell her about this April tonight. She just keeps sobbing and sobbing. You really need to go over there.”

I went.

24

Karen greeted me in a wrinkled — Karen in something wrinkled! — white blouse and red walking shorts. In her left hand was a Chesterfield and in her right a very dark drink. It was now ten minutes after nine.

“I didn’t expect you to come over.”

“Mary’s worried about you and so am I.”

Her eyes were reddened from crying but she was apparently more in control of herself than she’d been on the phone with Mary. “I haven’t seen Peggy Ann in two days. I just don’t want her to see me this way. Thank God for my sister. I’m so damned selfish.”

“Yeah, that’s you. Selfish.”

“Let me get you a beer.”

There were at least two ashtrays overflowing. There was a water ring from a glass on the mahogany coffee table. A blue-covered throw pillow had fallen on the floor. A section of the newspaper hung from the phone stand. In a fair number of homes this would be normal everyday life. But in Karen’s case this signaled breakdown.

After handing me my bottle of Hamm’s, she walked over to the couch and sat down. I admired her most excellent legs and waited for her to talk.

She began by patting a small stack of papers next to her. “I’m going to try very hard not to cry.”

“Cry all you want, Karen. Seriously. You’ve helped me through some real bad nights of my own.”

“I’m sick of crying, Sam. And now I’m sick of trying to save this marriage.”

So he had told her.

“I went to see him tonight and he acted like everything was fine. I know you were there earlier. Anyway, by the time I left there he was almost like his old self.”

So he hadn’t told her.

“Then I got home and I made the mistake of going in his den again. Since I found those letters I’ve become compulsive about it. It’s as if I’ve conditioned myself to distrust him. As far as I know, he was faithful to me all the time we were married up until he got back from Vietnam. Maybe he’s ‘acting out,’ as the man at the VA told us. I didn’t find anything in his den tonight but when I looked in the front closet I saw this valise I bought him for his birthday a few years ago. It was leaning against the wall so I picked it up.”

She paused to sit up very straight and to take a deep, deep breath. Then she picked up the sheaf of papers. “He has a new girlfriend. I shouldn’t say girlfriend — he tells her he wants to marry her.”

I wanted to hate him but I couldn’t. The war had destroyed him. The old Will, the good, compassionate, clear-thinking Will had been killed along with the little girl his bullets had ripped apart.

She held them out to me. “Please take these, will you, Sam? Read them. See how far gone he is.”

I knew what I’d find in the papers. April. But I had no idea how I’d respond.

I got them all right and I came back and sat down and put them in my lap all right but I didn’t read them. Not right away. Because when I did read them she was going to ask me if he’d said anything about the woman he was writing to. And if I lied to her and she later found out that I’d lied to her she would never trust me again.

She lighted anther cigarette but it took three angry little attempts to make her silver lighter light. But it wasn’t the lighter that wasn’t doing well, it was her.

“Read the one on top, Sam. Even when we were first going out he didn’t say things like that to me.”

Now I lighted a cigarette. It took me two matches.

I lifted the top white sheet of typing paper and read the first paragraph.

You’re my first thought in the morning and my last at night. At first you were only my heart, but now you are my soul as well.

I had the semi-serious idea that he’d found an article or even a little paperback that listed all the things a love song should contain.

And it went on that way for the entire page. If there was a romantic cliché he missed, I couldn’t find it. I tried not to think, cliché or no cliché, of the effect all the cornball language would have on poor Karen.

I raised my head and when our eyes met, I shook my head. She started crying then.

“Read a few more. See what I’m up against.”

“Oh, I think I’ve got the idea here good enough, Karen.”

Crying more now. “Please just read a few more. Look how much he loves her.”

“You’re punishing yourself, Karen. I don’t want to help you.”

“Just get to the one where he says he wants to have children. Children — I don’t know how he could even think of such a thing. Isn’t Peggy Ann enough for him?”

The children reference was not in the next letter nor the next one nor the next one. But there in the middle of the following one was that word — “children” — and it might as well have been in neon. Yup, he and April would have a whole passel of wee ones and they would live somewhere over the rainbow and speak only in the language of the worst romance novels. And their wee ones would speak the same language, too, and in time have their own passel of treacle-speaking wee ones. What he was outlining was the hammiest Broadway musical ever created.

But then I glanced down a few lines and when I saw that partial sentence I realized that Will had lied to me.

“I’m so sorry, Karen.”

I had a difficult time not bursting out the door. I really needed to get going.

I put the papers down. “I want to call Mary. All right if I use the phone in the kitchen?”

“Of course.”

She didn’t seem curious about why I didn’t use the phone in the living room.

I kept my voice low.

“She’s in terrible shape, Mary. I don’t think she should be alone. Would it be all right for her to stay with you tonight?”

“Of course. God, I can’t imagine what she’s going through.”

It took a full fifteen minutes to persuade Karen to spend the night at Mary’s but finally she agreed. And finally, still expressing second thoughts, she put some things in a small blue canvas bag and we went out to my car. Where she expressed third thoughts before actually getting inside.

On the way to Mary’s she said she was acting like a child and that was undoubtedly why I was treating her like one. Then she kind of sank into herself and said she was so tired she could barely keep her eyes open.

I made sure that Karen was in the safe and comforting presence of Mary and then I was in my car and speeding away.

25

One light burned in the Victorian house that stood silhouetted in the moonlight, all turrets and gables and broken roof lines. The light was on the first floor front where the waiting area was.

I saw all this as I stood next to my car, which I’d parked half a block away in a residential neighborhood just now bedding down for the night. I didn’t want to announce my visit.

I kept to the shadows cast by streetlights and heavily leafed trees. Now would be an inconvenient time for Foster — or any of his force, for that matter — to show up because I had my forty-five jammed down the beltline of my trousers.

I walked wide when I got to the cross street where the Victorian lay. There were no other houses or buildings on either side of it for half a block or so. I didn’t want anybody to see me approaching, though with the upstairs apartment lights out I wasn’t sure anybody was home. I went down half a block and then walked back using a long windbreak of pines as cover.

In back of the Victorian was an asphalt parking area for clients. On the far side of the lot was a two-story garage. Using a side window, I could see that two cars were there. This didn’t necessarily mean they were home. They were social people. Friends might have picked them up for the evening.

Then, my eyes adjusting to the gloom of the garage interior, I saw the two outsize suitcases standing next to the trunk of the smart black Oldsmobile.

I looked up at the dark windows on the back of the house. I wanted to be sure no one was watching me.

I went in through the side door of the garage. Smells of car oil and the mown-lawn scent from a small riding mower. I walked over to the Oldsmobile. Two dark traveling bags were laid across the back seat. I walked around to the trunk. The lid was a quarter open. Another traveling bag. The suitcases on the floor would be set in there and the traveling bag spread across them.

I wasn’t looking at a vacation; I was looking at an escape.

I walked to the front of the car, opened the hood and took care of something. Then I closed the hood and left the garage.

I stood in the shadows of the terra cotta walls. The Oldsmobile undoubtedly belonged to Randall. The other car was a sleek red Mustang and had to be Lindsey’s.

I eased the forty-five from the top of my pants and proceeded to the back door. As I’d hoped, it was unlocked. There would be a few more things to pack and take along.

Four steep steps leading to the interior.

Six steps before I could see well enough to know that I was in a storage area of some kind.

Ten steps to a door that opened on the familiar layout of the Shepard psychology practice.

They had both worked several intense years to build this practice and win it an admirable reputation. Now all that was left was furtive flight.

I walked as quietly as I could down the corridor of offices, the only light coming from the street. I listened for any sound that might tell me where they were but there were only the weary griefs that old houses, no matter how well you refurbish them, make late at night.

When I reached the front I stood in the light I’d seen when I’d been standing next to my car. I was so used to darkness by now the light had a garish, almost obscene cast to it. A coat tree and a rubber runner for when winter came and a large closet door. And then, just out of the light, the reception desk and the furnishings for the clients.

I turned around and started toward the staircase that led to their apartment upstairs and there she was waiting for me. I could have stepped on her hand but by sheer luck I didn’t. It was flung away from her body like something discarded.

Once again my eyes needed time to pick out detail in darkness.

I got down on one knee to look at her more carefully, shoving the forty-five back into my beltline.

A relaxed evening at home. Jeans and a Joni Mitchell T-shirt. Tiny bare feet. This was “April,” better known as Lindsey. He’d wanted to exult over her with me but he’d known how I would respond if he told me that he’d fallen in love with his shrink. In the last letter of his I’d read, he’d referred to her as “trapped in the Victorian age.” He’d obviously meant the house she shared with her husband.

The good doctor had shot her in the forehead twice. He hadn’t taken any chances. The eyes reflected the horror. The body had begun to foul itself.

“The first time I ever saw her, she was fourteen years old. And I’ve been obsessed with her ever since.” Then, “I want you to stand up with your arms straight in the air. You’re not a very good burglar, McCain. I watched you the whole time you were in the back yard. I know you’re carrying a gun. So I want the arms straight up in the air. Do you understand?”

“Uh-huh.”

And I did. Before I could get to my own gun he could blow the back of my head off.

I stood up the way he’d told me to.

“Now take your gun out slowly and put it between the spindles on the stairs. You’re an intelligent man and I assume you want to live. So be very careful.”

At most times I would have found his clothes amusing. The professorial air had evolved into Western clothes. A dark shirt with white piping, tight jeans, and what appeared to be real lizard cowboy boots.

“You’re looking at my clothes. I don’t like them, either. One of the ways I tried to keep her interested was by following trends. I’m a piss-poor cowboy, wouldn’t you say?” Then, “Now the gun, McCain.”

As I did what he said, his self-mocking tone gave way to melancholy. “If you’re curious, her mother brought her to me when she was fourteen. I fell in love with her that very first day. I didn’t care about anything but her. I had to put her in institutions three times before she was sixteen. She had an older brother she’d slept with since she was eleven and she believed she was in love with him. Her parents hadn’t done anything about it until they finally came to me. By the time she was fifteen she’d come to be in love with me. I protected her as she’d never been protected before.”

“And you were sleeping with her of course?”

“You have a way of being very ugly, McCain. Lindsey said the same thing about you.” Then, “My loving her saved her. I made sure she finished high school with good grades and I saw her through college. We lived together all that time. Her parents had divorced and she despised them. The only trouble we had was when her brother secretly contacted her and she sneaked off to spend a weekend with him. Then everything started all over again. Fortunately I have an inheritance to rely on. I paid her brother quite a lot of money to never contact her again. I told him that if he ever tried, I’d have him killed. He believed me.”

My gun now residing on the staircase, I began to wonder if this was his confession before he decided to kill me.

“So she was never on her own; and when she fell in love with Will Cullen and promised to marry him, you realized that this time she’d be gone for good.”

“Oh, you don’t think this was the first time, do you? I made the mistake of putting her through college so she could be a psychologist like me. We’d have a husband-and-wife practice and everything would be fine. But three different times she started sleeping with clients. Two of them happened to be married, so when I confronted them they agreed not to say anything. They wanted to save their marriages. One was single and he blackmailed me. I had to dig into my inheritance again. He had nothing to lose and he could have destroyed us. They’d all had backgrounds like hers; they’d been seriously molested. She identified with them. I always kept a close eye on any male she dealt with who’d been molested.

“Cullen was a war victim. I didn’t think he was a prospect for her but I was very wrong, wasn’t I? After the last one she promised that she’d never do it again. But she not only did it again, she fell in love with him. When I found out I started wondering how I could get rid of him. When I heard about the argument he’d had with Steve Donovan I saw my opportunity. I started following him around and the rest was pretty easy.

“But just a few hours ago she said she was going to call you and tell you everything, including that she was sure I’d killed Donovan. Then she told me that she hated me and he was going to leave his wife and that they were going to move from Black River Falls and get married. The other ones she’d slept with, she never talked about being in love with them. I think she believed she was healing them in some way — and healing herself as well. But this—”

He stopped talking and then he shot me twice.

For a second there was no pain and then there seemed to be nothing but pain and the blindness of injury, confusion and rage. I’d been hit just below my left shoulder and my right ribs.

I fell to my knees and then I fell to the floor.

Running; he was running hard through the house. He obviously assumed I was dead or soon would be anyway. Running. The back door opening and slamming.

I knew I wouldn’t be conscious much longer. I needed to grab on to the lowest of the staircase spindles and somehow pull myself up. To my feet. The idea burned in my brain with the fever of a brilliant immortal thought. Of course. Get up and somehow make my way to the closest office.

It took three tries to get on my feet and what seemed like two or three hours to make it to the receptionist’s desk and the telephone and even then when I got to the desk the first thing I did was fall across it and bang my chin hard against its surface.

But somehow the phone got in my hand and somehow I told 911 what had happened.

And just before I passed out I had the pleasure of hearing Randall Shepard trying to start his car. Grinding and grinding and grinding.

But he wasn’t going anywhere.

Not without a distributor cap he wasn’t.

26

I wasn’t able to attend Steve Donovan’s funeral. I was in the hospital. The docs were optimistic about my full recovery. As bad as being shot had been, my military accident had been much worse. I was surprised that I didn’t have the headaches that had followed the crash. It was a damned nice surprise.

Kenny showed up a few times, as did Foster. My mom and sister called frequently. Two days into my stay I saw on the TV that Niven had passed. I wished I’d known him in his younger days. If even half the stories were true he would have been a hoot to have hung out with. And learned from.

I thought about Donovan some. He was the good-bad person most of us are but he’d taken his good-bad to epic size. He’d been a brave soldier and sometimes a generous man but I would never understand why he forsook Al Carmichael for a psychotic Anders.

As for Will and Karen, who knew? The only certain thing was that he’d need to find another psychologist.

I drifted in and out of sleep. Half the time I woke up I saw Mary sitting in a chair next to my bed smiling at me.

I remember one time she said, “You’re a hero all over again. You’re all over the news.”

That wasn’t what I wanted to hear so I didn’t fight sleep this time. I dove deep into it.

The time I woke up just as they were bringing me my tiny, tiny dinner I got the best news of all, except the news that I was going to live, of course.

Mary said, “I just heard the news on the radio. There’s a new poll. Senator O’Shay is eighteen points behind.”

I laughed with the same boisterous pleasure I’d once reserved for Bugs Bunny cartoons. Eighteen points behind. There was, after all, a God.