Hell on Church Street (17 page)

“What’d he say?”

“Nothing really. Said he couldn’t really discuss an ongoing investigation.”

She stared at me a little more and tapped her fingers on the bed rail. “Oh.” She looked back over her shoulder. “I have to go.”

“Yeah. I guess so.” I touched her hand. “I miss you, baby.”

She said, “Okay” and turned and left, but before she got to the door, she swung around and came back and bent down and kissed me roughly on the lips. Then she was gone. I heard the door glide shut.

 
For a while, I lay there listening to the silence. I thought of Norris fighting for his life upstairs. I thought about the eventual talk I was going to have to have with Nick. I thought about having to talk to the cops.

When I fell asleep I thought I knew the worst of it.

Chapter Eighteen

Sometime later I awoke. Night darkened my window. I rustled, blinked, and coughed a few times. “He’s awake,” a deep voice said. The voice didn’t seem happy.

A young man I didn’t know was sitting in the chair by my bed. Bald, with a horn-shaped goatee that curved down and jabbed his clavicle, he was muscular to the point of grotesqueness. When he stood up, the wall behind him vanished. In a voice at the lower end of the human register, he said, “I’m going to get
Grandmom
.”

From somewhere behind him, another man muttered, “Okay” and the muscular young man strode out. Then the other man walked over to my bed and used the electronic doodad to elevate my head. This hurt just about everything and I let out a moan. The drugs were gone, and my body ached.

The man was short with intense dark eyes and curly hair the color of steel wool. He was wearing a pressed white shirt with a gray tie and looked, to me, like a lawyer.

He asked, “Do you know where you are?”

“Connor County Hospital,” I said.

“That’s correct,” he said. He rested his hands on my
guard rail
. His hands were clean and smelled pleasantly of aftershave.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“It’s about seven.”

“At night?”

“Yes. You’ve been asleep for the better part of two days.”

I nodded. My head was still in a brace, and still hurt, but it didn’t hurt as much as I would have thought. I ached all over, like I’d taken a beating, but I could tell—could just feel—that I was okay. I’ve always had that kind of luck, the kind of luck that ensures that you’re always healthy enough to fall deeper into trouble. I’ll never die accidentally.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“
Vandover
Norris. Friends call me Van.”

“I’ve heard of you. You’re a lawyer.”

“Yes, I am.”

“And Sheriff Norris’s brother.”

“Yes.”

“I see. How is he?”

“He’s dead.”

Under my clean, warm sheets I felt my skin turn to ice. “I’m sorry,” I said.

He shrugged and looked over his shoulder.

The muscular young man had returned pushing a little old woman in a wheel chair.

Her
pinched
face was powdered white, and a thick gob of lipstick sat on her tiny, toothless mouth like a drop of blood on a corpse. When the young man stopped, the old woman rose slowly from the chair. A long, snowy ponytail hung over her yellow flower print dress, and she brushed it back.

When she spoke, her broken voice was soft, even fragile, but her gray eyes were as dead as gravel. “Are you…the one…who killed my son?” she asked.

I could not think of how to answer her. Next to me, Van Norris seemed to shrink.

The tiny old lady stared at me. As she began to speak, her voice quivered, unsure from syllable to syllable, but not from anything resembling fear. Her eyes sparked to life, like coal catching fire, yet they were still trapped in a body that was wasting away beneath her. “I asked you…a question. Did you kill…my son?”

“No ma’am.”

“No ma’am,” she sighed. With the young man standing behind her like a wall, she leaned across the
guard rail
, close enough that I could smell her lipstick. “I know…all about you,” she said. Her voice was thin and frayed, but the closer she got the more her powdered skeleton seemed as hard as a corkscrew. “You’re a …degenerate, a murderer, a molester of little girls…” She turned to her son. “What do you…call that, Van? A man who…molests little girls?”

“A pedophile.”

She turned back to me. “That’s right. A pedophile. That’s…what you are.”

I shook my head. “No ma’am,” I said. “She’s a little young but she not…”

She patted my arm again like she was my grandmother. “I want you…to be quiet now,” she said. “Like a little baby…like a little baby in a crib. Quiet…as can be.”

I nodded.

“Ian,” she said, “give me…my purse, dear.”

The young man handed her a wide maroon handbag. She
lay
it on my bed and unsnapped the silver clasp in the middle and took out a small handgun. Like it was a pet, she scooped it up with both hands and held it out to me as if she wanted me to take it. I didn’t move and neither did anyone else. She was simply showing it to me. Then, holding the barrel with one hand she tried to pull the hammer back with her other hand.

“Tough,” she said. “I don’t know why … they make these things…so hard to use. Hope I never get…jumped in the alley.” She pulled on the gun some more and shook her head. She said, “Ian, honey…”

The young man reached around, took the gun, cocked the hammer back and put it back in her hands.

“Thank you,” she said. She put the gun against my sternum, Van said, “Mother,” and she pulled the trigger.

And nothing.
Just a sharp metallic click.

“
Weepin
’ Jesus,” she said. She looked at the gun as if it were a
phaser
from Star Trek.

Pain shot up my neck and tears formed in my eyes.

“Did I do something wrong?” she asked.

Ian cocked the gun once more, she pointed it at me and pulled the trigger, and it clicked again. Ian took the gun, sprang the magazine and said, “No bullets,
Grandmom
.”

“Well for…Christ’s sake.”

“You forgot to load it,” he said. His voice had as much personality as a sheet of ice.

Van wiped his face, and I could hear his sweat hit the floor. “Mother, we’re in the middle of a hospital,” he pleaded.

“I told you…I should keep it…loaded,” the old woman told Ian.

“You don’t need a loaded gun around the house,” he replied.

“I would have…swore I loaded it…’fore we come up here.”

“Jesus,” Van said.

“You leave it on the counter?” Ian asked.

“I reckon I did. I bet you…I left the…loaded thing, the, what do you call it…”

“Magazine,” Ian said.

“I left it…on the counter.”

“Can we get down to business?” Van said sharply.

His mother looked at him as if he were a fool. “What’s it…look like…I was doing?”

“Mother. Not here. Not now. For Christ’s— We can’t…” He rubbed his face and then he looked at Ian. “You knew she was bringing a gun. You let her bring a gun into the hospital.”

The young man replied, “I don’t tell her what to do, Van. No one tells her what to do.”

“But it seemed like a good idea to you, bringing a fucking gun into the hospital?”

“She doesn’t run ideas past me, Van. Or you.
Or anybody else.
I’m not sure why you seem to have forgotten that.”

I wasn’t making a sound, but I was trying to find the button for the nurse. I was trying to find it without looking for it, but when I did glance down I saw that the old lady was holding it. She smiled at me and dropped it over the side of the bed out of my reach.

“That’s enough,” she said. She held out her arm—and the young man took it in his huge paws like she was made of crystal—and helped her into her chair. “Now,” she said, settling in. “What are we…going to do here?”

I said, “I don’t—”

“
Shh
,” she soothed. “I’m…talking to Van, now. You just…be quiet and listen.”

 
Van folded his arms across his chest. “What would you like done? That’s really the question.”

“Well,” she said, pointing a knotty finger at me. “First thing is…we need this …young feller dead…and in the ground before…tomorrow morning.”

Van sighed.

“What?” she said.

“Nothing. It’ll just be a little more complicated than you think.”

She slapped her knee. For the first time, she sounded irritated. Her voice was as tough as hickory when she said, “Jesus Christ in Heaven! It’s always about ‘difficult’ with you.”

Van’s shoulders stooped.

She stared at him. “I
ain’t
got…Doolittle around no more,” she said in cracking voice. It seemed like she might cry. “That means…I need you to be a man …
Can’t
you just…be a man? Can’t you just please… for once…try to be a man… and do for me…what needs to be done?”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Of course,” he said. “But hear me out: the wreck was on the news. This man was in the truck with the sheriff when he died. People are asking questions. Reporters are poking around. Doolittle was already a controversy all by himself. Now he’s died under questionable circumstances, and not only that, but when he died, he was with this man—a man who is already vaguely linked to a double murder. It has all the makings of a big story. There are guys down at the papers and news stations who live on this type of thing. They breathe it like air. They’re already asking why Doolittle and this guy were heading north. They’re already asking why he hasn’t been taken down to Little Rock. They’re already asking if it has anything to do with the murder of that preacher and his wife. None of it is getting into print yet, but all the right people are asking all the right questions. I’m not saying it can’t be done.” Van rubbed his face. “But I am strongly urging caution right now.”

Mrs. Norris said, “Ian?”

The giant behind her said, “Yes,
Grandmom
.”

“I want you…to remember this day…the day your uncle…showed his true colors. You know what his number one…true color is?”

“No,
Grandmom
.”

“Yellow,” she said. She pointed at me and told Van, very sweetly, in a voice completely even and strong, “You have to get rid of him, dear. I’m sure you can see that. I mean, we’re sitting here discussing it in front of him, aren’t we?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, we are. So…I don’t need to…debate with you over whether…we should do…what’s best for the family. I just need to know…you’re going to do it. Doesn’t that make sense, sweetheart?”