Jolly had been even luckier, though of course, his good fortune had not come cheap. He’d been in the process of scurrying down out of the foxhole, Duke slung over his shoulders like an oversized duffel, when the satchel charge exploded. Without the white boy’s body between him and the blast, he would have been decapitated; instead, he was merely dotted with shrapnel and sent flying down the hill. Duke was ripped to pieces, but Jolly’s only significant injuries, as near as he or the medics could tell, was a badly sprained right ankle and a laceration of his left ear that required stitches to save the lobe.
The bitter irony stuck in Gunner’s craw for a long time. Jolly had been bound and determined to have Duke die that day, and hell if the giant bastard, for all of Gunner’s efforts to stop him, hadn’t finally gotten the job done, inadvertently or no.
But there was greater insult added to Gunner’s injuries left to come. Less than three weeks later, the US military command would capitulate to the NVA and abandon Firebase Ripcord altogether, following up a complete withdrawal of troops with a wave of B-52s that would turn the base back into the rubble from which it had been built. Duke’s name was then added to that of the thousands of others who had died in Vietnam to no apparent purpose.
Gunner was back home in the States and out of uniform by year’s end. His war was over and his country’s would be soon enough. He wasn’t the same man coming out of Vietnam he’d been going in, but he was alive and whole and for that he couldn’t help but be grateful. He resigned himself to putting the war behind him and, for the most part, was successful. The noticeable limp he would walk with for several years yet was the only vestige of Firebase Ripcord he gave any thought to, until one day in the spring of 1971, when he received a phone call from a man he didn’t know. It was Duke Wayne’s father.
He said the last letter he’d received from his son before he died had included some instructions in the event of his death, and one of them was to see to it that Gunner got his fire engine red ’65 Ford Shelby Cobra. Duke’s father wanted to know how soon Gunner could get out to Myrtle Beach to pick the car up. He was anxious to have the constant reminder of Andy out of the family garage and was prepared to sell it to the first interested party if Gunner didn’t come by soon to take it off his hands.
Four days later, Gunner was fireballing west back to Los Angeles behind the Cobra’s wheel, the title assigning him ownership tucked into his back pocket. He cried off and on throughout the trip, unable to decide how to feel. The car was a wet dream come true, but it had Duke’s blood all over it and always would.
The memory of Vietnam had just become that much harder to outrun.
13
THESE DAYS, OVER THREE DECADES LATER, the only time Vietnam crossed Gunner’s mind was when he was in Jolly’s company, and then only rarely. The nightmares and the cold sweats, the flashes of sudden recall that used to come upon him with only the slightest provocation, were things of the past. Jolly was even more unscathed, at least on the surface. For reasons neither could fathom, they had been chosen to survive the war relatively intact, a miracle for which Gunner made a point of saying thanks whenever he found it necessary to pray to the Lord above.
Harper Stowe III had not been so fortunate. He had come back from the hostile fields of Afghanistan with the full weight of the war still strapped to his back. Where Gunner had managed to put the memory of Firebase Ripcord behind him, Stowe seemed to live, day and night, in an Arghandab River Valley of the inner mind, haunted by ghosts and wracked with pain. Whether the war had turned him into a murderer or not had yet to be factually determined, but his resemblance to one could not be argued; watching him shuffle listlessly into the visitation room of the Twin Towers jail downtown early Wednesday morning, a uniformed sheriff’s deputy guiding him along like a nurse steering an old woman through a convalescent home, Gunner had no trouble imagining him turning suddenly violent. There was just something about the way his eyes darted from one focal point to another that seemed to suggest a permanent—and dangerous—state of fear and unrest.
Wearing the standard orange jumpsuit of a prisoner, Stowe was led into position and deposited into a chair behind the glass barrier of the cubicle where Gunner and Kelly sat waiting for him. The deputy uttered a few instructions to him and stepped away, leaving him to pick up the handset of the phone on his side of the cubicle as Kelly took up her own.
“Who’s this?” Stowe asked his attorney as she tried to make preliminary small talk, referring to Gunner.
“This is Aaron Gunner. The investigator I told you about, the one who’s been helping me with your case.”
Stowe looked at Gunner blankly, overcome with indifference. “Okay.”
“How are you doing?”
He shrugged, but one would have had to be forewarned the gesture was coming to notice it.
“Do you need anything?”
“I need to get out of here.”
“I know. We’re working on it. But we need your help.”
“What kind of help?”
“We’ve been trying to find out where you were at the time of Darlene’s murder, since you say you don’t remember.”
“I don’t ‘say’ I don’t remember. I don’t fuckin’ remember.”
“Of course. I’m sorry. You don’t remember where you were.”
“No.”
“And that’s still true? Nothing at all’s come back to you since the last time we talked?”
“No. Nothing. I’ve been trying to remember. Don’t you think I’ve been trying?”
“What about the night before? At Tyrecee’s apartment?”
“I told you. We hung out, I crashed, that’s it. Next thing I know, I’m wakin’ up at Pops’s.”
“Around 2 p.m. the next day.”
“Yeah. Somethin’ like that.”
“And the gun?”
“Gun?”
“The gun that killed Darlene. The one the police found your fingerprints on. You must have handled it at some point, Harper, and we need you to tell us where and when.”
“I can’t. I never touched that gun. I haven’t touched a gun since I was discharged.”
Kelly turned to Gunner. He’d only been privy to her end of the conversation, but the lack of value in her client’s responses had been easy enough to ascertain. He and Kelly swapped positions in the cubicle and Gunner took the phone, Kelly pushing in close so they could share the instrument’s earpiece.
“Listen, Harper. Fingerprints don’t lie. You came in contact with that gun somehow and we’ve got to figure out how. Knowing where the gun came from would be a good place to start.”
Stowe just shook his head.
“If it wasn’t yours, maybe it was your father’s. Is that possible?”
“Hell, no. Pops ain’t got nothing to do with this.” His voice was loud enough now to carry across several cubicles.
“What about Darlene? Did she keep a gun in her office that you’re aware of?”
Stowe paused before answering. “I don’t know. I never saw one in the office.”
“But?”
“But I saw Johnny get one out of there once.” “Johnny Rivera?”
“Yeah.”
Gunner and Kelly shared a look. Stowe had the idea that nothing more needed to be said.
“Go on.”
“He got into it with some asshole who was all up in his grille. Johnny went back in the office and came back out with a piece. He told the guy, he didn’t get the fuck out, he was gonna put a round in his ass.” “And then?”
“And then nothin’. The guy took the hint and left.”
“And the gun?”
“Johnny put it back where he got it. I never saw it again after that.”
“Did you get a good look at it?”
“The gun?”
“Yes.”
“Nah, not really. Black semiauto, that’s about all I could say for sure. I was on the other side of the store with a customer when it happened.”
“Any idea
who this guy Johnny was beefing with was?”
“Nope.”
“Can you describe him?”
It was asking a lot of Stowe, considering his memory lapses, but to Gunner’s surprise, he said, “Pissed-off white boy. Dark hair, dark complexion, beard ratty as shit. ’Bout my age, maybe a little younger.”
The picture he painted meant nothing to Kelly, but Gunner thought it fit someone he’d seen once to a T: the owner of the emerald green Camaro that had roared into the Empire Auto Parts lot the day before, near the end of his last interview with Eric Woods.
“And you’re sure you never touched this piece Johnny had that day?”
“No way. I told you.”
“Okay. Let’s forget the gun for now,” Gunner said. “You told the police and Ms. DeCharme here that it was just you and your boy Eric chilling at Tyrecee’s the night before the murder. Is that right?”
Stowe nodded. “Yeah.”
“Well, Eric says there was a fourth person there that night. A girlfriend of Tyrecee’s who’s apparently on the large side.”
“On the large side?”
“Fat. Eric said she was fat.”
Stowe grew still, his mind reaching for something he could sense, but not yet fully see. “Roxanne.”
“You remember her?”
“Yeah. She and Ty go back a ways. Fifth grade, or some shit like that.” Stowe nodded, trying hard to piece the memory together.
“Harper—” Kelly started to say, but Gunner waved her to silence. Push Stowe now, he knew, and the man would lose the thread he was working to unravel.
“Yeah, she was there. She gave me a ride.”
“From Ty’s? When?”
“In the morning. She crashed there, too. We left together. Yeah.” He nodded again, more forcefully this time, confidence growing that this wasn’t just something he was imagining had happened.
“Where did she take you?”
Stowe gave the question some thought, shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Try. Try to remember.”
“I am trying! What the fuck you think I’m doing?”
His outburst got a rise out of the guard who’d brought him in. Now standing a short distance away, arms crossed like iron bands across his chest, the deputy had been watching Stowe closely ever since dropping him off, waiting for what he clearly thought was the inevitable disturbance of the prisoner’s making that would require his removal from the room.
“Harper, calm down,” Kelly said.
“Fuck that. I didn’t kill Darlene. This is bullshit. You guys need to get me the hell outta here!”
“We’re trying.”
“Yeah, well, you ain’t tryin’ hard enough!”
The deputy took a step forward but Gunner froze him in place, flashing the palms of his hands to indicate he had things under control. But it was a lie that wouldn’t hold up long. Stowe was losing patience with all the questions and was showing signs that a major migraine might be looming.
“Just a couple more questions, Harper,” Gunner said. “Can you handle that?”
Stowe shrugged in silence on the other side of the glass, petulantly holding his tongue.
“You and Eric went over to Tyrecee’s the night of the murder and hooked up with her and this girl Roxanne. You and Roxanne crashed there overnight, but not Eric. Why was that?”
“Why was what?”
“Why didn’t Eric stay too? Overnight, I mean.”
“Oh. Because Laticia threw him out.”
Gunner tried to place the name.
“Ty’s mother?” Kelly asked.
“Yeah. She threw his ass out.”
“Why?” Gunner asked.
“I don’t know. He said or did somethin’ to piss her off, but I was asleep when it happened, so I couldn’t tell you what it was. Don’t take much with Laticia, anyhow. That bitch is crazier than me.”
Stowe laughed, and the effort involved twisted his face into knots.
Kelly gave Gunner a side glance: interview over.
He nodded without argument and rose from his chair as Kelly raised a hand, bidding the deputy who’d brought Stowe in to return her client to his cage.
“Well, we didn’t get what we came for,” Kelly said as they made their way out to their respective cars, “but we did learn a few things we didn’t know before.”
“This girl Roxanne, for one. If she did give him a ride from Tyrecee’s crib like he says, she might be able to give him an alibi for the time of Evans’s murder. That, or confirm that he actually committed it.”
“I prefer to hope for the former.”
“And I need to go back to see Johnny Rivera again, ask how he could threaten a customer with a gun he claimed yesterday he knew nothing about.”
“Can I help? Maybe I should talk to Rivera while you talk to Ty.”
“No, I’d prefer to do both. Only, I don’t think I’m going to talk to Tyrecee this time. I’m going to talk to her mother.”
“Laticia? Why?”
“Because I think it’s safe to say her daughter didn’t want us to know her girl Rox was hanging with her and the boys that night, so she isn’t likely to tell me where I can find Roxanne the first time I ask. I’d also like to know what Woods said or did to Laticia that got him thrown out of her apartment.”
“Is that important?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But it’ll give me a better idea of who Woods is, and what kind of friend he is to your client. And that info could be important.”
Kelly nodded in agreement. They reached her car in the parking lot and discreetly kissed goodbye.
“I take it you’re going by the hospital now?” she asked. Gunner had told her about the change in Zina Curry’s condition earlier, as they sat in the visitors’ waiting room prior to meeting with Stowe.
“Yeah. No sense putting it off any longer.”
“You’re afraid of what she might say.”
“Up to now, I’ve only had to fear the worst. Having to live with it might be more than I can take.”
14
GUNNER REACHED HARBOR UCLA just before noon. By then, LAPD detectives Jeff Luckman and Chris Yee had already come and gone. Zina had been drifting in and out of a thick sleep all morning, and the time she spent awake could be counted in minutes on one hand.
Zina’s grandparents were still there, however, though not in line with Gunner’s expectations for how he might find them. Corinne Curry was the one stationed in the waiting room, wide awake, when he arrived, while her husband Daniel dozed at their granddaughter’s bedside, folded up in a chair like a sock stuffed into a shoe.
Corinne told Gunner that Zina’s doctors now expected her to live, and she showed no obvious signs of paralysis, thank you Jesus, but she was still a far ways off from being out of danger.
“Has she spoken to anybody yet?” Gunner asked.
“Said a few words to your uncle and me. That’s about all.”
“You told her—”
“Yes.” The urge to cry was no match for her determination to do otherwise.
“What exactly did she say?”
“She asked where she was. I told her. She asked about her father and that’s when…we told her he was gone. Her father and mother, both. After that, she just cried. Cried ’til she fell asleep again.”
“You didn’t ask her what happened?”
“Daniel tried. I told him it was too soon.” She didn’t need to explain; Gunner could see it in his mind’s eye, his uncle’s mouth closing in midsentence as Corinne’s withering gaze voiced the order.
“And the police?”
“She didn’t say anything to them at all. We tried to tell them she wasn’t ready, but they wouldn’t listen. We only let one of them see her. The white man. All he did was upset her. They said they’ll be back later tonight.”
Gunner glanced in the direction of Zina’s room. “How long has she been out?”
“Couple hours. But—”
“I need to talk to
her, Miss Corinne.”
“No. We’re gonna let her rest now.”
“If somebody other than Del did this, she might know who it was. And the sooner we get a name, the sooner we can run them down for the police.”
“Somebody?” Del’s mother almost smirked. “There ain’t no ‘somebody.’ My son did this. Nobody else.”
Gunner had no words.
“Oh, I know what his father says. Not Del. Not his son. Del would never do such a horrible thing. But he doesn’t understand. I understand.”
“Understand what?”
“What it had been like for him lately. Feeling all alone. Like a failure.”
“But he wasn’t alone. And he wasn’t a failure.”
“Not to you or to me. But to him, he was both those things. Noelle didn’t love him anymore and his business was about to go bankrupt.”
“Who says Noelle didn’t love him?”
“She did. She told him so, more than once.”
“So he decided to kill her and Zina and then commit suicide?” He shook his head. It felt like he’d been denying this thing every hour, on the hour, for two days now. “No. No.”
She slapped him hard across the side of the face, demonstrating more power than he would have thought she could generate. Now the tears she’d refused to shed shone in her eyes. “You think I’d say such a thing if it weren’t true? Do you think I could say it if it weren’t true?”
Gunner held his tongue, his cheek burning like fire.
“She’s awake again,” somebody at the door said.
Daniel Curry stood there watching them, attuned to the fact he’d just interrupted something of great import. Gunner glared at Corinne, a warning of intent not to be questioned, and marched past his uncle into Zina Curry’s room.
It was dark and cold inside, lit only by the array of machines surrounding the young woman’s bed. Walled off from the other patient in the room by a drab green curtain, Zina Curry tracked Gunner’s approach toward her with eyes barely open. She looked like a science experiment gone terribly wrong. Had he the luxury of time, Gunner would have taken a moment to pity her.
“How’re you doing, Zina?” he said when he reached her bedside.
Good Man Gone Bad Page 12