Best Served Cold
Page 23
‘Oh,’ he said, looking at it. ‘Ah, I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘Said what, son?’ I asked.
‘That it looked like a monster, or somebody wearing a monster mask. I mean,’ he said, taking a deep breath, ‘this lady can’t help it that she’s got those scars, Dad.’
‘You’re right about that, son, and I’m proud of you for those thoughts, but the one thing she could help was not trying to kill everybody in sight.’
‘Why’d she do it, Daddy?’ he asked, still looking at the picture of Eden Brown.
‘Well, son, I think she just went a little crazy. With all the physical pain from the burns and all the surgeries she had to have, and then the mental pain because she lost the baby she was carrying, I guess she just went a little nuts.’
He looked up at me with those big eyes so like his mother’s that they sometimes give me a shiver. ‘I’m real sorry all that happened to her, Dad, but why’d she think it was y’alls fault?’
‘It was a raid. We’d heard about that new meth lab and we were doing a real crackdown on those start-up labs back then, trying to nip it all in the bud, so the whole department was out there. Lights and sirens. Guy just got spooked, I guess, and zigged when he shoulda zagged. The whole trailer went up with that lady inside.’
He shook his head and handed me back the picture of Eden Brown. ‘I’m not so sure I wanna go into law enforcement, Dad,’ he said. ‘I think maybe I’ll be a doctor, like Mom.’
‘That’s not a half-bad idea,’ I said, ruffling his hair and thinking that retirement I’d been looking at would have to wait a couple more decades.
And I talked to both my wife and Anthony about him getting some sessions with her to talk about all that had happened to him since he’d moved back to Prophesy County – the whole mess with the Connors and his wife and baby being hurt by our nut job. Anthony was reluctant at first, but when I said I really didn’t want to make it a condition of keeping his job, he relented. I was able to get the county to pay for it, not telling them which deputy it was, just saying that maybe all of ‘em needed a little counseling after what they’d been through. They agreed to one at a time.
And so it goes. One day at a time in our little town. Some days are golden and some are bat shit crazy, but it keeps us on our toes.