The Renegades

32

Shay Eichrodt held out his big hands and Hood fastened the cuffs, but not too tight. He wore an orange jail jumpsuit rather than his light blue mental hospital jumpsuit. He had let his hair grow to a stubble but his face was clean shaven and still very pale.

Dr. Rosen guided him by one arm and Hood took the other. When they stepped outside, Eichrodt came to a stop and looked at the sky and the leafless trees and the efficient, unimaginative buildings of Atascadero State Hospital.

“Mmm.”

“This way, Shay,” said Rosen.

Hood introduced Eichrodt and Rosen to Ariel Reed, and explained again to Eichrodt that she was one of the Los Angeles District Attorney prosecutors who had seen to his commitment at Atascadero.

He towered over her as he offered her both hands. She stepped into his shadow and shook them.

“Longer hair,” he said.

“Oh. Yes, I’m growing it.”

“Me, too.”

Hood explained to him once again that Ariel would be riding back to jail in L.A. with them, if he was still willing. Hood reminded him of his rights under Miranda and told him that Ariel’s purpose was to listen to his story and advise the District Attorney’s office on how to proceed. This was considered an informal interview; as spelled out in the affidavit, Eichrodt would say nothing under oath, nothing said could be used against him in court. Hood told him he could change his mind now about having a DA present, or change it at any point during the trip.

“You need to read and sign this,” said Hood.

He held out a clipboard and Eichrodt took it in both hands, turned his back to the sun and read it. It took him almost five minutes. When he was done he nodded and took Hood’s pen and wrote his name at the bottom of the second page, above “Defendant.”

They drove down the highway through grasslands green from rain and stands of oaks. The trees along the road cut the sunlight into slats. In the rearview Hood saw Eichrodt staring out, hardly blinking. A deer watched. Hood glanced at Ariel and she was looking out, too, the bars of sunshine passing across her and moving back to Eichrodt.

Eichrodt told his version of the arrest. His memories seemed clear, even though his language at times came slowly and he would have to wait for the arrival of some words. He used slang and profanities that he hadn’t used the last time Hood talked to him.

Eichrodt said that he was returning home to Palmdale from a bar in Victorville. He was working nights. He’d get off at midnight, close the Hangar at two a.m., drink and do occasional drugs with the bartender and assorted friends until three or four, then drive home. Same damned bar every night, same damned people. The Hangar was a dive but the beer was cheap. He was in fact high on alcohol, methamphetamine and PCP when they pulled him over. The deputies were a little blond creep and a fag muscleman. He showed them his license and got out of the truck like they said. The muscleman told him to turn and face the truck and put his hands behind his back and that’s what he did. The muscleman cuffed him. Eichrodt was looking down at the dusty red paint of his truck, he said, when the first of the baton blows caught him between his shoulder blades. He turned and charged the deputy, using his head as a battering ram. Both deputies used their clubs.

Eichrodt looked out the window while he talked. Hood saw that he was only partially concentrating on the story. Another part of his attention was out in the rolling central California hills.

Eichrodt said that at first they tried to take him down with leg and body shots but he wouldn’t go down. The meth made him fast and the PCP killed the pain and he believed that he would somehow win the fight and get away. He caught the muscleman once in the forehead, hard, but that was the only good shot he landed. The fight lasted several minutes and he was panting like a dog. His eyes ran with blood and it was hard to see. He estimated that he was hit thirty to forty times, approximately ten when he was on his hands and knees and too damned worn out to protect himself. He said cops don’t usually hit the head because it’s bloody and too easy to really mess a guy up, but these fuckers hit his head a lot. There was blood on both deputies’ shoes and on the pants of the muscleman. Some of his teeth were on the ground. By then the handcuffs had cut into his wrists.

The next thing he remembered was waking up in a hospital. Bunch of people taking pictures of him, flashes pissing him off. This memory came to him only recently, he said. Later there was a pretty nurse named Becka who had freckles and green eyes. His stitches hurt and smelled bad. Then came the long days in the hospital bed. His stitches didn’t hurt anymore but they sure did itch. Then came surgery to reduce the swelling in his brain, the groggy weeks of not understanding what had happened or what was happening.

After that were the long confusing hours in court. All he understood about it was that his ass was in a sling and he couldn’t remember a fuckin’ thing. The worst part was remembering, then not having words to describe the memory, then having the memory go away again. He said that memory is the only thing that means squat, without it we’d all be just rocks.

Eichrodt told them that after court he wanted to die, and at the mental hospital he hung himself with a strip of bedsheet but the ceiling sprinkler came off from his weight and he stood there in the middle of his room with the noose around his neck and the water coming down, freezing his ass off instead of being dead. But a few days from then he started feeling a little better, and the medications began to free his memory but he thought that the cold water had something to do with it and son of a bitch if Dr. Rosen hadn’t told him that an early American mental therapy was dunking the maniacs in cold water hoping to shock them out of being nuts but it didn’t do nothing but half freeze them. He said Dr. Rosen was a genius.

Hood drove and listened and said nothing. Ariel turned in her seat so she could maintain eye contact with Eichrodt, and she made notes.

She asked if the deputies had their guns out when they approached his car.

He said they did not.

She looked at Hood, then back at Eichrodt and asked him if they said anything to him.

He said nothing but license and registration and step out of the car, please. During the whole time they were whackin’ on him all they did was grunt, like it was just a job they had to get through.

She asked about the white van, Lopes and Vasquez.

He said they kept asking him that in court. And he kept trying to remember and maybe talked himself into remembering something that never happened. Because if you can forget something that did happen, you could just as easily remember something that didn’t, right? But now he knew he never saw any white van or any dead men or any money. He said he didn’t see one goddamned interesting thing that whole night until the cops’ lights showed up in his rearview mirror and he pulled over and the little blond and the muscleman got out. And if he really had taken all this money and put it in his truck, then the deputies must have found it and turned it in, right? Right? So what was the big deal?

They drove for a while in silence.

“Man,” said Eichrodt. “Did you see that hawk back there?”

“It was a red-shouldered,” said Ariel.

“Had something in his claws.”

“Looked like a gopher,” said Ariel.

“To me it looked like a hot dog but I doubt it.” He watched the bird sail over a hillside. “Thanks for driving. I’m gonna take a…ah fuck, you know a…”

“Nap,” said Ariel.

“You read my smashed-up mind.”

He leaned his big head back on the rest and fell asleep.

A few minutes later Ariel handed Hood a sheet of paper from her notepad. It said: Does he remember the truth, or just how to lie?

Hood shrugged and she wrote again.

I don’t believe what I just heard. I believe every word of it.

Hood nodded and steered the car south down Highway 101. They stopped in Carpinteria for lunch and got an outside table in the cool afternoon, where the orange giant wouldn’t get stared at by customers. Eichrodt concentrated on his food and ate slowly. When the sun came out from behind the clouds Eichrodt faced it and closed his eyes.

“I never got my ass kicked that bad,” he said. “Makes me feel old. I don’t need that kinda shit. You going to send me to prison?”

A moment of silence.

“Shay,” said Ariel. “I don’t know what we’re going to do with you.”

He nodded and smiled, his eccentrically white false teeth gleaming and perfect.

“I like it longer,” he said, pointing at her hair with a fried fillet of cod.

“Thanks, Shay. Finish your lunch.”

He nodded and gave her an arch stare.

After delivering Eichrodt to the county jail that evening, Hood and Ariel had dinner at the Pacific Dining Car and drinks at the Edison. This would have cost Hood the day’s pay but Ariel insisted on paying half, and she talked her way into a good table at the Edison on what turned out to be a very busy night.

She sipped an appletini and stared off into the crowd but she didn’t seem to focus on anything.

“You did a good thing today, Charlie. We’ll reconsider the case against Eichrodt. With Laws dead and Draper under suspicion we might have to delay or dismiss. That could lead us to charges against Draper. With the kind of detail Eichrodt was giving us today, I think a jury would believe him. I did. Mostly.”

“Good you asked him whether Laws and Draper had their guns out on the approach,” Hood said. “That’s important.”

“It sure got my attention. If the deputies really believed they’d pulled over a double murderer with a truck full of drug money, they’d have had their guns out and ready. That’s when I thought-this guy might be telling the truth.”

“And Rosen can lay down a medical foundation for the recovery,” Hood said. “He’s musty and kind and believable.”

It was Hood’s turn to stare off at the people in the bar, and consider what he was doing. Six months ago he had helped to bust a fellow deputy, and failed to help a reckless woman stay alive. He had voluntarily left L.A. for Antelope Valley, where he had hoped for quieter days and time to reflect. But now he was IA and deep into a cold case involving murdered drug couriers, suspect deputies, mysterious piles of money and a machine-gunned partner. Hood felt like a wrecking ball.

“What?” said Ariel.

“I used to like being a deputy.”

“You still should. You’re a good one.”

Hood wondered if that could be true. “In Anbar I got myself hated for chasing some soldiers who murdered a family for no good reason. There were some bad reasons. Now, back here, I spend half my time ruining the lives of my own men. Ariel, I signed up to throw the bad guys in jail.”

“But they come in all shapes and sizes. And, sometimes, uniforms.”

“I don’t feel sorry for them. Or for myself. What I’m saying is I want to be part of a team I believe in. I want it real clear-us and them. Us and them. I want to believe in us. I want to be on our side. Simple.”

“Simple hardly ever works.” She leaned forward and tapped her glass to Hood’s. “Charlie, if I could pick one guy they could clone into thousands of cops and deputies, it would be you. You’re honest and smart and you give a damn. There isn’t much more.”

“A thousand Hoods. Scary.”

“But we only get one of you. And to be honest, I’m very happy to be the woman sitting across from you in this bar. Glad to be in the same molecule with you, Hood-one little atom to another.”

She gave him her small, thrifty smile and he saw the glimmer in her eyes. He looked into them. What he saw thrilled him: someone singular, irreplaceable, beautiful.

“You’re going to make me blubber,” he said.

“We have napkins.”

Hood smiled back and sipped his drink. An old man came across the room toward them. He walked slowly with an ornately carved cane. His hair was white and neat and his eyes were clear. His suit was expensive and well tailored. When he got to their table he stopped and put both hands on the cane and looked down at Ariel, then at Hood.

“It is good to see two young people who are happy,” he said. “Enjoy every sandwich.” He nodded and slowly walked away.

“What a nice thing to say,” said Ariel. She flushed and the color was still on her fair cheeks. Her dark hair shined and she looked brilliant.

“Charlie, you know I love to drive. Name something you like to do.”

“I drive a lot, too. Not racing. Just driving and watching out the windows. I drive hours and hours and hours for work, then I drive more. Then I dream about driving. Then I wake up and drive again.”

“Why?”

“I’m looking for something that got away.”

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Where did it get away from?”

“Inside. I actually felt it go. So I weighed myself and I was a pound and a half lighter. But you know how bathroom scales are.”

“You’re pulling my leg.”

“No, I’m really not.”

She studied Hood with her level gaze, her legal assessment look. Then she pulled her chair closer and put her hand inside his jacket and over his heart.

“Something’s left in there, Charlie. You didn’t get completely cleaned out.”

Hood lowered his face to hers, touched her temple with his nose, breathed in. She turned and brushed his lips with hers.

“Let’s drive,” he said.

Hood drove the Camaro over to Sunset, then headed up into the Hollywood Hills. He passed the turnout where Allison Murrieta had taken him last summer and he tried to postpone the memory of her for just a moment, but this was a new thing for him and he felt disloyal. He found another overlook, a little farther up. He parked the car and left the engine idling and the defroster on low. Below them the dark flanks of the hillsides cut shapes in the city lights, and above them a cloud drifted, quiet as a ghost, over the moon. The stars glimmered in the sharp March night.

“Let’s continue that kiss, Hood.”

They continued it. Even with the defroster on, the windows fogged up and Hood had to turn the air conditioner on also to get them clear again. He pawed blindly at the controls with one outstretched arm, the other still wrapped around Ariel, their lips locked in a passion for the ages. He felt like a teenager.

Much later Hood drove back down out of the hills to Ariel’s car, still in a downtown lot near the Edison. He stood by her El Camino as she let herself in.

“Come to my place,” he said.

“Could you replace a hot outlaw with an atom-splitting lawyer?”

“You can’t replace anybody with anybody.”

“Not tonight.”

“Does someone else have that honor?”

“Once upon a time.”

“He was lucky.”

“He’s no longer with us. Or, is he?”

“I understand that question. I’m sorry.”

“That’s enough. That’s adequate. That was a good kiss.”