Riders on the Storm (14 page)

The way I was trying to topple Lon Anders.

F
ROM
V
ALERIE
'
S
I
DROVE OUT TO
C
HERIE
'
S, THE ROADHOUSE
where Donovan had been drinking the night he was killed. Saturday was the only day they served lunch here so the packed parking lot didn't surprise me.

I took a stool and surveyed the dining area that spread out below the raised bar. Customers generally dressed up some when they came here at night but this afternoon summer clothes, even beach clothes, were the standard.

I ordered a Hamm's draught and then asked if I could speak to Mr. Hobart, the manager.

“Something wrong, sir?”

“No, no, this is a very nice place. No complaints. This is a private matter.”

“I'll need a name.”

“Sam McCain.”

He was mid-twenties with Beatles hair and a jaunty way of mixing drinks. He also had a good bartender's innate suspicion for anything untoward a customer might say.

“Just a second.”

He stepped over to the phone next to the cash register, punched in three numbers, and then started talking in a quiet voice. He nodded and hung up and came back to me.

There were four booths in the west corner of the bar. He pointed to them and said, “Neil said to wait in one of the booths over there and he'll be out in a few minutes.”

“Thanks.” I picked up my draught.

A few minutes turned out to be sixteen or seventeen minutes according to my watch. The bar got more and more crowded. Most of the men along it were now watching the Cubs game on the elevated twenty-seven-inch screen.

I knew Neil Hobart from the downtown group that perpetually tried to have its way with the city council. The group was the new Establishment but they wouldn't have full power until the present group retired or passed on.

Very cool, very expensive fawn-colored collarless shirt, flowing white trousers with fawn-colored belt yet. Rimless glasses and thinning blond hair in a ponytail. How cool is too cool?

No handshake. He sat down across from me and said, “You're wasting your time, McCain.”

“I hear that a lot.”

“Everything I know I told to that new police chief.” I wanted to give him a quarter tip for not calling him “Paul.”

“So I suppose you think Will Cullen is guilty?”

“I have a friend in the department. He laid it all out for me. Of course he's guilty. And if that isn't enough, I was at the luncheon for Senator O'Shay this noon. He's convinced it's an airtight case. That kind of says it all, doesn't it?”

“When Donovan was out here drinking the other night did you talk to him much?”

“Some. I felt sorry for the guy. This is a bullshit war and he's one of the people who paid for it. I tried to be as nice as I could but he was getting way too drunk. I did everything I could to get him to take a cab. I even offered to drive him home myself if he'd just wait till closing time.”

“How was Will?”

“Sort of pathetic. He just kept drinking and saying that he wanted to be friends again with Donovan. But Donovan just kept pushing him away.”

“Physically, you mean?”

“Yeah. Will'd get close and Donovan would tell him to shut up and go away. And a couple of times he gave him a little push. No big deal. I finally got Will to go into the dining room and do his drinking.”

“Was Lon Anders here that night?”

“I had a dinner that night so I didn't get out here until around nine. He wasn't here while I was. Why're you asking about Anders?”

“Just doing my job.”

“Anders is a friend of mine.”

“All I said was that I was doing my job and that is all I'm doing. How about Teddy Byrnes?”

A sneer as cool as his shirt. “Yeah. He was here for an hour before I got here. Then he left when I got my friend Heinrich to help me. He's one of our chefs and I had to pay a lot of money for him to come here from Chicago. Eight years ago he was still in Hamburg and he wasn't working as a chef. Have you ever heard of Sankt Georg?”

“No.”

“You're taking your life in your hands to walk around there at night. Heinrich grew up there and pulled two years as a bouncer in a club where he claims there were at least two murders a month. I need any help with some psycho bastard like Byrnes, I just walk back and sic Heinrich on him. As soon as Heinrich got Byrnes in a hammerlock and then jammed his thumb in Byrnes's eye, I assumed the fight was
over. And then Byrnes slipped the hold and knocked Heinrich out in one punch. And he was out for almost ten minutes. I got scared he wasn't going to wake up.”

“What happened to Byrnes?”

“He took a long look at how unconscious Heinrich looked and split.”

“But he
was
here and I assume you'll testify to that.”

“Of course I will. But that's a long haul to prove that he had anything to do with Steve's death. I admired Steve for serving the country, by the way, but he was totally full of shit about the war. You didn't do so well by it yourself, McCain, and you didn't even get over there. That was one hell of an accident.”

“Yeah. It wasn't fun.”

“I lucked out. Heart palpitations since I was young. They've never really bothered me that much but they were my ticket out so I have developed a fondness for them.”

He was out of the booth and this time his hand was out.

As we shook, he said, “For what it's worth, I know Will from the times he's been out here. I like him and I feel sorry for him.”

“But he's still guilty, huh?”

“I'm sorry, man,” he said, “but he's still guilty.”

The psych ward. I had called Lindsey Shepard but was told that she and her husband were probably on the ward now visiting with Will Cullen. I assumed I could persuade them to let me speak to Will.

I stepped off the elevator and was confronted by a long desk and two thick-looking doors to the left and right. Both bore signs:
ONLY PEOPLE WITH PASSES ALLOWED
. The air was somehow different here. Confined, claustrophobic.

A man in a blue security guard uniform laid his paperback down on the desk and said, “Is there something I can help you with?”

“I'd like to talk to Will Cullen but to do that I need to speak to Lindsey Shepard first. Are she and her husband here?”

The guard checked his clipboard list. “Yes, she's still here. Her husband left.”

“Would you get her on the phone? I'm sure she'll say it's all right.”

“I'll have to ask you for your driver's license.”

“Of course.” I handed my billfold over.

He studied the photo and then studied me and then handed the billfold back.

“That's Lindsey Shepard you'd like to see?”

“Yes.”

“Nice lady.”

“Yes, she is.”

He shook his hand as if it had been asleep and punched numbers on his phone. Then, “Kay, would you tell Mrs. Shepard that there's a man named Sam McCain who'd like to come back and see her?” Listening. “Sure, I'll hang on.” Cupping the phone and to me, “Still as hot out there?”

“Feels worse than ever.”

“I don't want to leave work. The air conditioning. All we've got at home are three fans. I could probably pull an extra shift if I wanted to but I'd feel guilty. I sorta feel guilty already. Here I'm sittin' in air conditioning and the wife and my three kids are sweatin' it out at home.”

I heard a voice through his muffling hand.

“Yeah. Fine. I'll buzz him in right now. Thanks, Kay.” After hanging up, he said, “There's a small reception area. That's what you'll be standing in when you go in there. Just wait and a nurse will come to meet you. She'll bring Mrs. Shepard to you.”

Why couldn't the nurse just take me back to Will's room? What the hell was going on?

The buzz that let me in was quick and quiet. The waiting area was plastic flowers, uncomfortable-looking chairs, two tables piled with magazines, and the kind of framed paintings you can buy on the highway sometimes from trucks and people who look like stereotypical Gypsies.

I stood and waited.

Most hospital floors are busy and noisy during the day. Two corridors stretched in front of me and in the center of them was the nurses' station. I could hear conversations working their way down the halls but they were subdued; the only familiar sound was the occasional squeak of a nurse's shoe on a polished floor.

This afternoon Lindsey Shepard had shed her casual look for a summer suit of ivory-colored linen. Her hair was combed back somewhat dramatically. This more conventional Lindsey lost the appeal of her former self.

“I've tried calling you several times, Sam.”

“Out and about. I just decided to run up here in case Will had started talking.”

“I wish he was. I think Dr. Rattigan got a little overexcited when Will started showing signs that he was at least understanding what people were saying to him. Doctor Rattigan asked me to come over right away. I was getting my photograph taken for a brochure we're doing. He saved me from that but I've been sitting with Will for two hours now and not getting anywhere. Chief Foster has been here twice and he's called twice. But there's nothing to report.” Then, “Would you be willing to spend a little time with him?”

“Of course.”

“He's sitting in a chair next to the window. The nurse said that when she first came in around seven o'clock this morning he'd gotten up out of bed and moved a chair around so he could look out. We've cut back on two of his meds to see if that might make him less groggy.”

“I'll just sit there and try to talk to him.”

“Hopefully he'll recognize you. And hopefully he'll trust you more than he does us. You two have been friends for years.”

“A quarter century.”

She hadn't lost that gamine smile. “Perfect.”

Once I got to the center of the psych ward I saw that it wasn't as quiet as I'd thought. There was a group room with a large-screen TV, a ping pong table, smaller tables where both checkers and chess were
being played, an exercise bike, and a tall bookcase stacked full with paperbacks. I noticed that there was a small square device in the wall near a snack table. When patients wanted to light a cigarette they went there, pressed the cigarette in what appeared to be a hole in the device and got their smoke going.

“It's a heating coil for smoking,” Lindsey said. “This is the only place they're allowed to light up.”

“Are you afraid of fire?”

“That's the first concern. Falling asleep with a cigarette going. But there are also patients we wouldn't be comfortable with having matches or a lighter.”

A pair of the men playing chess waved to Lindsey. None of the others here took notice of her. Or me.

The patient rooms were small and functional. Bed, bureau, shower, TV, closet. Soft blue colored walls. The room had no particular odor, certainly not a hospital one. The only window was large relative to the size of the room and at a glance looked over the far east side of the town where housing developments and a sprawling mall were under construction. If there was solace in the view it would be in the distant piney hills where horses and short-haul trains still ran.

Will had angled the chair so that he could easily turn to see somebody come into his room. He must have heard us enter but he showed no interest in identifying who we were. He wore a handsome wine-colored robe. His hair was mussed. You could see that he—or more likely a nurse—had worked with a comb or brush to give it some shape but it hadn't worked.

“Will, guess who's here? This'll make you very happy.”

She spoke to him as if he would respond with jovial interest. She took both sides of his chair and said, “Why don't we move you around so you two can have a nice talk?”

“Here,” I said, “I can do it.”

I got behind him and slid the chair around so that it faced the plain wooden chair against the west wall. His chair had thick cushions and wide wooden arms.

I stepped back then and got my first good look at him.

Though I knew this was impossible, he seemed to have lost some serious weight. Maybe ten pounds or more. Impossible. But he was so gaunt, his cheekbones sharper than they'd ever been and the flesh around his dark eyes so bruised from exhaustion they looked as if someone had punched him. He peered out at me from another realm, an unimaginable space that only he inhabited. Not the world we normally shared.

I thought of all the stories I'd heard from the vets. How wounds and grief alike would send soldiers into the kind of shock that sometimes nobody could bring them back from. They just died in that realm.

Or maybe I'd been wrong. Maybe in Will's realm he wasn't alone. Maybe the ghost of the little girl he'd killed was with him. Maybe this retreat from reality didn't have much if anything to do with Steve Donovan. Maybe it was the little girl who'd drawn him irretrievably back into himself.