Robert B. Parker’s Fallout

Eighteen

Scott Ford looked the way those Ultimate Fighters looked after they lost one of those big pay-per-view fights. And sometimes after they won.

His left eye more bruised than it had been in Jesse’s office. Right eye shut. Stitches above his lips. More stitches on his right cheekbone.

For a moment after Jesse walked in, he thought Ford might be sleeping. But the kid opened the only eye he could when he heard the sound of the door closing.

“Hey,” Jesse said.

“I don’t want to talk about it, if that’s why you’re here,” Scott Ford said.

There was a chair against the wall. Jesse pulled it close to the bed and sat down.

“Don’t have to talk about it,” Jesse said. “But you need to. Your father’s outside this door and fixing to organize a lynch mob for the kid did this to you.”

The kid in the bed closed his left eye, and groaned, as if even that small movement had sent a spasm of pain across his face.

“Dad’s probably just embarrassed I got the crap kicked out of me,” Ford said.

His voice sounded raspy enough that Jesse wondered if he’d taken a shot or two to his throat. Molly had already told Jesse on the phone that there were two broken ribs.

When Jesse saw him try to lick his lips, he grabbed the water cup with the straw stuck in it from the table next to the bed, handed it to him. Ford drank and handed it back, as if even reaching over to the table might exhaust him.

“Why would you catch a beating like this from Matt Loes?” Jesse said. “I got into some beefs of my own when I was your age. Including a beauty with one of my own teammates one time. Nobody ever ended up in the hospital.”

“You’ve probably figured out by now I’ve got a bad temper,” Ford said, the words coming out of him slowly, as if on some kind of delay. “Matt’s is worse. He and Jack were best friends. Like brothers. He’s blaming me for what happened. Or for not stopping it from happening. Whatever. I think he just wanted to hit somebody. It turned out to be me.”

“Know the feeling,” Jesse said.

He waited a beat and said, “Who started it?”

Ford turned his head on the pillow, away from Jesse. Winced again.

“Nurse says I need to rest.”

“I won’t be here much longer.”

The kid turned back to him. Somehow he formed a grin with his swollen lips.

“Bullshit,” he said.

Jesse said, “Where did it happen?”

“Over where we had the party,” Ford said.

“Anybody else there?”

Ford shook his head.

“Matt said we needed to talk about Jack, just the two of us, nobody else around,” Ford said. “Get some things straight. Make sure we were on the same page.”

“On the same page about what?”

The kid either didn’t hear the question. Or just ignored it. Jesse thought: He’s wounded in more ways than one.

A nurse poked her head in. “I’m sorry to interrupt, Chief Stone, but the boy’s parents say you’ve been in here long enough.”

“This is police business,” Jesse said, “involving what you can see is a very serious assault. I need a few more minutes.”

“Well, then, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Call Mike Pearl while you’re away,” Jesse said.

The Marshport chief.

“He’ll tell you I’m the good guys,” Jesse said.

“Did you have any idea that Matt Loes was spoiling for a fight?” Jesse said to Scott Ford when she was gone.

“No. But it was like he’d already lost his shit before he even got there, started screaming at me that Jack would be alive if we hadn’t got into it at the party.”

“And it escalated from there.”

“He got right up in my face,” Ford said. “I told him he needed to back off. He said that maybe I should make him back off. It went like that.”

He tried to clear his throat, seemed unable to do that. His voice sounded rougher as he went, and was getting weaker.

“I know,” he said. “It sounds like the same dumb playground shit as with Jack and me.”

“Then Loes threw the first punch?”

“Does it matter?”

“It does if you want to press charges.”

“Once he got me on the ground I was afraid he was going to kill me,” Ford said.

“But you’re not going to press charges.”

“Fuck no.”

The only sound in the hospital room now was the sound of the kid’s forced breathing. He told Jesse that he didn’t know why Loes finally stopped swinging away, but he did, and left him there. Ford managed to get to his car and drive home. He collapsed right after he walked in the front door. His mother took one look at him and called 911.

Jesse waited.

“Is that all?” Ford said finally.

“Not quite.”

“Not pressing charges,” he said. “We’re clear on that, right?”

“Might not be up to you,” Jesse said.

“It’s not up to you and it’s not up to my dad,” Ford said. “Now please leave me alone.”

“What aren’t you telling me, Scott?” Jesse asked.

And just like that, the kid snapped, rising up out of the bed, the pain of doing that written on his face, reaching for the call button, breathing hard.

“Leave me the fuck alone!” he yelled at Jesse then.

The nurse came through the door. She told Jesse he needed to leave, right now, or she would call security, whether he was a policeman or not.

Jesse did.

Some bedside manner, he thought.