Crazy Blood

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “From what I’ve heard.”

  Jacobie lowered the phone. “I thought you were shacked up with April Holly.”

  “We’re good friends, and that’s absolutely untrue.”

  “Don’t get violent again.”

  “Don’t make it so tempting.”

  Howard Deetz came to the porch railing, holding up both lockbox and house key. “Finally! Wylie? What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for my Realtor—what’s it look like?”

  “Oh, hell, come in out of the snow. I’ll split the commission with your agent if Jacobie doesn’t buy it first.”

  “She’s late. I’ll try her again.”

  Wylie dug out his cell phone and got into his truck. His heart was pounding hard in his ears and he was having trouble coming up with any solution other than the lame bluff he’d begun. He called an old high school friend who sold real estate. She happened to be at her desk at Century 21, with really not much going on. He told her he’d been interested in 12 Madrone for quite some time, would love to look at it.

  “Set you back a million six,” said Dawn.

  “I still want to see it. Can you be there in five?”

  “Okay, okay. Hey, is that true about you and April Holly being an item?”

  “Just friends, Dawn.”

  “Hmmm. See you in five.”

  Wylie got out and crunched across the driveway to the front of the house. It was a large Craftsman style with timber columns footed in river rock and a big front porch. He climbed the steps, feeling as if he were about to enter a prison, which, it occurred to him, might well be in his future.

  He entered the great room, in which Jacobie Bradford and Howard Deetz stood slack-jawed and speechless amid the warehouse of bicycles and snowboards. “Jesus,” said Wylie. “The stolen ones?”

  “What else could they be?” asked Jacobie. He was shooting video with his phone, sweeping down one row and up the next. He wore a fleece-lined flannel jacket and shearling boots and a knit cap in Rasta black, red, and green.

  “This is the weirdest damn thing I’ve ever walked in on,” said Howard, taking out his phone, too. “I’ve found homeless families and drunks and fornicating teenagers, even a bear, but never an entire bike and board shop.”

  “These are good products,” said Jacobie. “Those bearded bike thieves know their stuff.” With this, Jacobie lowered the phone, looked at recently shaven Wylie, then back at the bikes. “So, who’s your Realtor?”

  “Dawn Loe.”

  “Yes, hello, Officer, this is Howard Deetz, town council. Can you put me through to Sergeant Grant Bulla?”

  “Where is your professed Realtor?” asked Jacobie, walking down the first row.

  “Running late, she said.”

  “You’ve been here awhile, then?”

  “Grant, Howard Deetz—hey, you gotta get someone over to twelve Madrone. You won’t believe what’s in the living room!”

  “I was early, waited in the garage, out of the snow.”

  “My NielPryde!” said Jacobie, running a hand along the top tube of a beautiful road bike. “Oh, baby, baby, I missed you.” He stopped caressing the frame, as if interrupted by an idea. “You look good without the beard, Wylie.”

  “You look like Mr. Clean with that shiny head.”

  “Here we go again.”

  Jacobie positioned himself defensively, with two rows of bikes between him and Wylie. “Humor me, Wylie. I watch too many TV cop shows, I admit it. Helps me escape. But they always tell you that in a crime, there’s no coincidences, you know? No coincidences. So, the sharp cop arrives on the scene and you’re already here. No biggie, but of all the houses for sale, why are you at this particular one? Then the sharp cop goes inside and sees the loot. So he has to figure it’s at least possible that you knew the stolen goods were here. After all, you’re a local, and the sharp cop knows the criminal tendencies in you. Then he thinks, Heck, this yokel might have stolen the damn things. So he thinks that maybe when the Realtor, Howard, and the legitimate house hunter, Jacobie, pulled up, you were already right here in this great room, maybe adding to your latest haul. And you heard them and sneaked out to the garage and tried to get to your truck and out without being seen. Fail. In fact, you didn’t look happy a minute ago when I called out to you, as captured on my phone. You still don’t look happy. Of course—and we learn this at the beginning of the episode—a few weeks ago you shaved off your beard after witnesses described the bike thieves as bearded. So that’s my plot. Think I can make it in Hollywood?”

  “If someone doesn’t pinch your head, just for the fun of it.”

  “There you go again, like you’re stuck in the sixth grade or something. Don’t you think anything’s funny? Can’t you use your words, like an adult?”

  Howard’s voice drifted through the silence. “How would I know how they get in and out? All I know is the lockbox was locked, just like it’s supposed to be.”

  “Maybe a local Realtor is in on it, too,” said Wylie. “The key to the lockbox, right? Maybe it’s Howard.”

  “Maybe what’s Howard?” asked Howard. “Grant’s on his way.”

  “Wylie here was conjecturing that you’re part of the bike thieves’ ring, Howie,” said Jacobie. “Because you have the lockbox key.”

  Howard shrugged with apparent disinterest, started taking pictures with his phone.

  “Sorry, Wylie,” said Jacobie. “I’m not a bad guy.”

  “You’re annoying and insignificant.”

  “I’ve done okay in life, for having no talent and an abrasive personality.”

  “You’ll learn the hard way.”

  “I wish I’d served my country.”

  “But you have a reason you couldn’t. People like you always do.”

  Jacobie nodded and glanced over at his bike. “You know what’s interesting, though? Back on the ‘no coincidences’ theory? I saw Belle trekking down Madrone in the snow when we drove up. That is to say, heading away from this house. Walking fast and determined, like she was upset. Or maybe in a hurry. Or both.”

  “She’s at home doing schoolwork right now.”

  “I can certify that she is not. Think I should tell the sergeant my theory?”

  “What exactly is the theory?”

  “You and some bearded buddy are the bike thieves. Belle does the cleanup here, gets the product ready for market. Somehow you guys got yourselves a house key for this place. You keep the beater car somewhere out of sight when you’re not using it. You shaved because you’d been spotted. Probably your partner shaved, too. So now you think you’re one step ahead of Johnny Law. But you’ve got a flaw in your alibi. Namely, that a doughnut shop employee/ski bum gigolo is in the market for a house listed at a million six. Unless April Holly wants somewhere to play house with her boy toy.”

  Words failed Wylie. He gauged the pleasures of strangulation against the consequences, kind of liked the way it penciled out.

  Jacobie eyed him with a small smirk, as if he’d spotted a stain on Wylie’s trousers, or a weakness in him. “Maybe I’ll just tell the sergeant what I saw and let him figure out the details.”

  Wylie’s old friend Dawn Loe pulled up a moment later in a silver Suburban. Wylie parted the blinds and watched as one of the vehicle’s side windows went down and the heads of two curious golden retrievers filled the frame, snouts lifted to the air. Next came a Mammoth PD slickback from which plainclothes Sgt. Grant Bulla stepped. He stopped to pet the dogs. Howard came from the house to greet him.

  “I’m not going to say anything about my theories, Wylie,” said Jacobie. “At least not yet. I’m still putting the pieces together.”

  “Let me know what you come up with.”

  “You can bet I will.”

  * * *

  Wylie sat in the living room of April Holly’s furnished rental in the Snowcreek development. It was a spacious town house, richly appointed, with views of the mountain. April had a fire going by the time he got there.
It was mid-evening. Wylie looked out to the fading profile of Mammoth Mountain, the stilled lifts rising like toy structures, their cables bellied between them.

  On late evenings like this, anywhere in the world that Wylie happened to be—in Mammoth or Solitary or in Kandahar or the Tegernsee monastery or the Great St. Bernard Hospice—he always tried to leave the lights off and the lanterns and candles unlit to enjoy the simultaneous fall of outside and inside darkness. Such a slow and subtle transition from day to night. A reminder to slow down. To reflect and maybe give thanks. But that was impossible right now, because April was buzzing from room to room, doing what someone always did—cranking up house lights in advance of sunset. Let there not be light, he thought.

  But this was her home. Wylie shook his head at his own pissiness, told himself to put one foot in front of the other. Be cool anyway, he thought, house lights or not. He’d been nearly silent for an hour. He felt stymied and useless and wanted to be alone and was only here now to please April, who delivered to him another light bourbon on ice. He took it without looking at or thanking her.

  He thought of Robert and his eternal stillness. Would he ever move again? Was he aware at all? Did he want to be alive?

  He thought of Belle and Beatrice running off into the snow. He thought of the diminishing returns from Let It Bean and the snow soon to be melting through the ceiling into plastic buckets at home, and the fourteen thousand dollars it would take to replace that decaying roof, and the rent going up another $2,200 a month in January if they signed the new lease. He finally decided to list his MPP on eBay—the proceeds could pay for something, even if it was only the balance for the MPP itself. He’d thought long and hard about selling it just the other night, and now he saw no real alternative. He felt small and horrible.

  And he saw himself here, holed up in this tidy luxury chalet with America’s darling—a beautiful girl who was momentarily stuck on him for whatever reasons, who just also happened to be the most gifted aerial snowboarder the world had yet seen. A millionaire several times over. Which made him feel even worse. It might simplify things just to walk out on her right here and now. Let her get on with her career, and him with his. Pop the fantasy and get real again. Back to Earth. He turned and looked at the door. Where will I go when my plans betray me?

  Suddenly, he felt his inner boxes shifting around and heard the thumping within them. Once they started sliding, he was never sure when one might topple over, hit the floor, and spill its contents. Some of them housed relatively minor things, such as the small square one that now crashed and spilled out the beating he’d given Sky Carson when they were eight. Wylie saw his little fists flailing away, landing often on Sky, who squirmed flat on his back on the playground grass, trying to cover up. What shamed Wylie now wasn’t the beating, but the satisfaction he had taken in it, how good it had felt to silence a tormentor. He could have stopped sooner but didn’t.

  Down fell another, this one rectangular and long, as if for roses, rocking end to end before it settled. This contained Ellen Pelleri in their sophomore year at Mammoth High School, whom he had spurned bluntly, and who not long after had veered into an express lane of heavy recreational drugs and promiscuity. Two years later, she had committed suicide. He’d always known it was his fault, or at least partially his fault, so, what percentage exactly, and to whom did he owe restitution? No word on that from anyone. So there she was.

  Before Wylie could get Ellen back where she belonged, Sergeant Madigan landed hard on April’s hardwood floor, neck-shot and blood-drenched and knowing he was dying, and really, what more could Wylie have done? A team of surgeons couldn’t have saved him. QuickClot and tourniquets versus a blown carotid, severed vertebrae, and a ruined spinal cord? Wylie was helpless. Then why was Sergeant Madigan still up here? War was war. How was Wylie supposed to make it up to him?

  Next tumbled free the Taliban sniper who had shot Sergeant Madigan from a murder hole in a shot-to-shit abandoned hillside compound. Wylie’s B squad had patrolled past that compound nearly a hundred days running, checking it coming and going every time. But suddenly it was not abandoned at all and the sergeant was down in a blast of blood. Then came a barrage of enemy mortar fire. Wylie had done his best for Sergeant Madigan as the rounds rained down upon them. Hopeless, and they both knew it. Jesse thought he hit the sniper with a very good shot through the sniper’s own hole in the mud-brick wall. Later, Wylie and Jesse had clambered against the rocky hillside for cover, then worked their way up to the compound to see if Jesse had hit his target.

  Now Wylie saw the dead fighter splayed out in his man dress on the dirt floor of the compound, Jesse kneeling over him with the big knife in one hand, working away at the top of his head. At first, Wylie thought Jesse was taking a lock of his hair. Then he heard the grind of the steel against skull, and the rasp of parting scalp. And saw the in-and-out motion of Jesse’s elbow. Then, suddenly, Jesse went still. He looked down at his blood-sheathed hands. When he finally lifted his gaze to Wylie, it was in helplessness and wild shame. Wylie took the knife and pushed Jesse away and finished the awful act. It was the hardest thing he’d ever done. But the reason for it was good and true, was it not? To help his friend and take some of the shame and guilt for himself, to prove to Jesse that he was not alone, that they were in this together. Always faithful. Always. He would do it again.

  Wylie sat in the brightly lit room for a long while, waited for another box to fall, but none did. His mind wandered now, fatigued.

  “It’s Bea and Belle,” he finally said.

  “Can you tell me?”

  “That could put you in a position. They may be in some genuine trouble. I might not be able to fix it.”

  “Then I’ll stay out of it, Wylie. My plate’s plenty full, too.”

  “With Helene?”

  “Only by phone. But I spotted Logan today, cruising by here in one of my Escalades. Imagine a six-nine gargoyle in a beanie hunched over the steering wheel. I was standing out front and he looked straight ahead when he went by, like I wouldn’t notice it was him.”

  Wylie smiled at this.

  “I got you to smile.”

  “I know all this is hard. Helene. Everything.”

  “It’s been coming for years. Now, finally. There’s no good time for it.”

  “Is it as difficult as a triple cork?”

  “Harder. But, I have an idea.” She offered him her hand, which was warm and strong. “Let’s turn off all the lights and put on some music and dance to the last of the daylight.”

  He rose and began turning off lights. He willed his spirit to rise, too, but it seemed to be trapped in a concrete room with no door or windows. He watched her plug in a speaker no larger than a tennis ball and hook her phone to it. A tearjerker came on. Wylie caught April in the near dark and put his arms around her and they moved to the music. He felt her heart tapping away against him.

  “I feel good, Wylie. No matter all the stress. No matter what happens. I know we’ll catch some hell for this. They’ll try to give us hell. But I feel free and strong for this season. I like our chances for the Mammoth Cup.” She brought him closer. “However. What I don’t like was the look on your face a minute ago.”

  They danced and Wylie’s nerves began to unjangle. Images of head-butting Jacobie into the Grand Canyon dissolved as the small of April’s back moved warmly against his hand. “I want to be as good for you as you are for me,” she said.

  “You’re very good for me.”

  “Four hugs a day good?”

  “Or five, or six.”

  “What else is eating you? Besides your sisters? You’re almost strong enough to hide it.”

  “Just the usual.”

  “There’s a hot tub in the bath,” she whispered. “And the master bed’s a four-poster I just made up, and they have a fake bearskin rug by the fireplace. Fire’s all lit.”

  “Your choice.”

  “Up to you.”

  “Where we stand?”

&nb
sp; “Oh my, yes. Good as middle podium, you beautiful, haunted man. Kiss me now.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Sky guided his new love, Antoinette, into one of the wing chairs in his grandfather’s great room, trailing a hand across her shoulder on his way to the other chair. Adam sat opposite them at one end of the old leather couch, the hefty burl coffee table between them. Snow-streaked Mammoth Mountain waited just outside the window glass, looking close enough to touch. Sky tried to focus on the steep boulder and snow carapace of that mountain, then on the chairlift towers staunch against the silver sky, but his eyes kept drifting back to Antoinette, and hers to him. She was petite and stylish, black-haired and brown-eyed.

  Teresa came into the room from behind him, but Sky sensed her before he saw her, as he often did. She swept by and mussed his hair. “Such bright colors,” she said. He’d always liked Teresa, even as an infant, he’d been told. To Sky, it was nice that she was with Grandpa often now. They seemed comfortable and right together. Sometimes love was easy. And sometimes it was a high-adrenaline blur, like a ski-cross race. Which is how he felt around Antoinette. He stood and introduced the women, watched Antoinette rise and Teresa move forward for a brief handshake. Teresa then sat down at the opposite end of Adam’s couch and crossed her legs.

  Sky stood. “Grandfather, Teresa. The news I want to share with you is that Antoinette and I are engaged to be married.”

  “I thought so from that rock on her finger,” said his grandfather. “Congratulations to both of you.”

  “Yes,” said Teresa.

  Antoinette held out her left hand, smiling and blushing. Then she briefly bowed her head, as if acknowledging great and underserved fortune. Sky watched the curtain of black hair fall, aglitter in the light from the deer-antler chandelier above.

  “I have never in my life, sir and Teresa, felt this way about a woman,” said Sky. “I feel like I’ve awakened from a quarter century of sleep. You’re looking at a new Sky—the Commitment Guy.”

  Antoinette hooked a section of hair behind one ear and looked at Adam as if prepared for judgment, then to Teresa.