Hello, Stranger

by Virginia Swift

  “What’s a lot?” Hawk asked.

  “Couldn’t say for one company,” Dickie said affably. “But I heard one estimate that the Ring of Fire companies make a million handguns a year, and more and more of them are three-eighties.”

  “You say used to?” Sally asked.

  “Yeah,” said Scotty. “Bryco went bankrupt a couple years ago. Some kid got shot by his babysitter and ended up a quadriplegic. Faulty safety on a Bryco three-eighty. By the time the courts were done with it all, the company owed the plaintiff, like, twenty-five million dollars. Naturally, the owner scooted.”

  “Where to?” Sally asked.

  Scotty almost smiled. “Florida,” he answered. “Land of Sunshine. But the point is, there are still plenty of guns coming out of the Ring of Fire, and hundreds of thousands of these little sweethearts floating around on the market. You could buy one off the Internet this afternoon and have it here by tomorrow, and nobody’d pay any attention.”

  “Until you shot somebody,” Hawk said.

  A moment of silence.

  “How much do they cost?” Sally asked.

  Dickie snorted. “A working model, at a legal dealer, maybe one hundred and fifty dollars. For the less fastidious purchaser and seller, maybe fifty dollars and a bag of weed. And of course, there are websites where they ask no questions, make no guarantees about whether the fucker will shoot, and the price goes down to something any kid working a pizza delivery route could easily afford.”

  “And easily buy, no questions asked,” Scotty added.

  “Jesus Christ,” said Hawk.

  “Hey,” said Dickie, “you’d be surprised how many pizza boys are packing. They never know, when they come up to somebody’s front door, what kind of lunatics might be inside.”

  “I’ll remember that next time I complain that they didn’t put the anchovies on my pie,” said Sally.

  “You might think about getting yourself a nice heavy wooden door for that bathroom,” Scotty said. “That thing blew a hole the size of a golf ball in your piece-of-shit hollow core door.”

  Sally sagged.

  Hawk took a breath. “Enough. Why would some little scumbag come into my house and shoot at my girlfriend? She’s currently on a crusade to save every punk and punkette in the Rocky Mountains.”

  “We’ll find out,” Scotty said.

  “Emphasis on we,” said Dickie, aiming a look at Sally that she was sure he used on his kids, probably with excellent effect. “Not you. Not either of you. You’re through. You will not go tearing around town looking for assholes. Consider yourself extremely lucky to have survived this encounter with one of them.”

  The teakettle whistled. Hawk brought Sally a mug. She put her hands around it, warmed her icy fingers. She nodded. “I take your point.”

  “About those pictures,” said Hawk. “There has to be a connection. And there are other people in them. Maude Stark. Aggie Stark.” He hesitated almost imperceptibly, though Sally noticed. “Dave Haggerty. All kinds of people in crowds.”

  “We’re on it,” Scotty said.

  “So what do you do?” Sally asked. “Go around looking for some little shit in big saggy pants with a camera phone in his pocket and a fucking gun in his sock? And let’s see, maybe a sweet little Palm Pilot so he can schedule his robbing and shooting and terrorizing and pick up text messages from his homies? Man, these days you can carry enough high-tech gear to run a small war without even maxing out your pants pockets. Especially considering the size of the pants.”

  “The pants,” said Dickie, “are functional.”

  “Well, one thing’s for sure,” said Sally. “We know that Billy Reno wasn’t the one. He’s in jail, right?”

  “Sure,” said Scotty. “But he has friends, you know.”

  “And enemies,” said Sally.

  “Don’t concern yourself,” Dickie said, warning in his voice.

  “What about Charlie? Doesn’t she have enemies?” Sally asked. “Doesn’t she need protection?”

  Dickie slumped in his chair. “You have no idea,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?” Sally said.

  Dickie and Scotty exchanged a glance. “Bea Preston took her out of the hospital. It happened about an hour ago, when my deputy was down in the cafeteria, getting a cup of coffee and, unfortunately, taking the time to flirt with the girl who was working the steam table. Just like that. The floor nurse called right after they left. Said she tried to stop them, but Bea wouldn’t listen.”

  “Was Charlie conscious?” Sally asked. “How did they get her out?”

  “Seems she woke up,” Dickie said. “She’d been in and out, according to the nurses, and Bea barely left her side the whole time she was there. They took her out in a wheelchair.”

  “How could they?” Sally’s voice rose, tinged with a hint of a shriek. “She’s a witness in a murder investigation.”

  Dickie looked down at his hands, then looked back up. “The nurse said Bea told her she wasn’t satisfied with the care her daughter was getting in the hospital. Said she was taking her to a private facility where she would get what she needed.”

  “I just bet,” Hawk said.

  “Was it just Bea, or were there more people with her?” Sally asked.

  “Just Bea,” said Dickie. “And the nurse said it looked like Charlie was going along with it. But then, if it was me zoned out on horse tranquilizers and nerve bombs, I don’t reckon I’d put up much fuss when somebody told me they were springing me from the hospital. I guess, whatever else might be, I’d be grateful for that.”

  “Maybe,” said Sally. Or maybe not. Brad Preston had, after all, died a well-to-do man whose immediate family consisted of his daughter and his second wife. The terms of his will might affect how much gratitude Charlie had toward her stepmother.

  Chapter 20

  Facing the Strange

  It seemed as if it took the police forever to finish up, scouring the house for evidence, checking Sally over for injuries and shock, asking the same million questions a billion times. By the time they were finished, Sally was drained. Dickie suggested that she and Hawk get a motel room for the night, just in case the intruder had some plan to come back, but Hawk took one look at Sally and declared that they weren’t going anywhere, and he’d take responsibility for dealing with anybody who came around, for any reason. Dickie didn’t like it, but Hawk stood firm.

  So when at last the cops departed, Hawk swept up the last of the mirror shards and wood splinters, wiped down the tile and mopped the bathroom floor, methodically made a list for a trip to the hardware store to get things to repair the damage.

  The property damage. How in hell would they recoup the emotional cost of the day?

  Sally barely moved. She got up from the table once, to make more tea, but mostly she sat still, staring at nothing. Her brain, usually so jumpy and quick, felt swollen and sluggish, as if somebody had injected it with molasses. Was that how shock felt?

  “How about some food?” he asked. “You barely ate anything at lunch.”

  Lunch? Oh yeah. They’d had lunch at El Conquistador, right after they’d finished up talking to Party Boy Mike. Before her useless Friday afternoon meeting. Before she’d gone into the alley with Scotty Atkins. Before the quarrel, and the bath, and oh Jesus, the rest. Could you really live through all that in one day?

  “Food. I probably need some food,” Sally replied dully.

  Hawk peered into the fridge. Watching him, Sally recalled their earlier conversation. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know how I get myself into these things.”

  He turned and sat down at the table with her. “I don’t either. I mean, I understand why you care when people get hurt. I do too. I want to help out where I can. But why, really darlin’, why do you constantly put yourself at risk?”

  She drank a little tea while she thought about it. At length, she said, “It’s about being alive.”

  “Being alive?” His voice began to rise. “You
were damn near shot in your own bathtub, Sally! Being alive?”

  She took a moment to choose her words. “It’s hard to explain. It has to do with the lure of the unknown, with the spark that comes from things being unpredictable, edgy, risky.”

  Hawk got up, got the Jim Beam out of a cabinet, and poured himself a shot. “Keep talking,” he said.

  She held out her mug. He poured a little whiskey in her tea. She took a sip, nodded. “When I first started playing music with bands, everything was brand-new. The best of them were like getting a new life every night. We practiced a lot, did a lot of new material, played new places, saw new faces every single night. We traveled all over the place. Half the time we gigged in clubs and bars and halls we’d never played before.

  “You never knew what was going to happen. Sometimes it wasn’t so good. Sometimes there were fights, and a lot of people ended up getting bloody or even getting busted. Sometimes guys hit on me in really disgusting ways. Sometimes I even felt threatened. But that element of the unknown was what kept it, well, exciting. It was...stimulating. You know that line in the David Bowie song ‘Changes’? The one about facing the strange? Well, that’s what I liked about it. Seems I’m a sucker for the strange.”

  “You still play music,” Hawk said.

  “Yeah. I play in a hobby band full of geezers who still sound pretty good. We play in the same old places. We know everyone in the room. Hors d’oeuvres are served. We haven’t learned a new song since ‘Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue.’ It’s fun, but it’s hardly living on the edge,” said Sally.

  “Let’s run the Colorado on a raft,” suggested Hawk. “Let’s climb in the Wind River. Let’s go to the Galápagos and see giant tortoises.”

  “All good ideas,” said Sally.

  “Better than doing shit that gets you shot at,” Hawk pointed out.

  “No doubt. But . . . what about puzzles, Hawk? What about the fascination of seeing things that make no sense, and worrying them until they do?”

  He inspected her with utter seriousness. “Puzzles. People get killed, and you’re thinking about puzzles?”

  “Of course not. Neither are you. Murder isn’t just a mind game. Neither is the kind of abuse Charlie Preston’s had to deal with most of her life. But getting to the bottom of these things—I don’t know. It’s compelling. It’s about starting with chaos and finding order, and some kind of reason for the ordering. It’s, well, it’s just a rush.”

  He reached over and took her hand. “You crave the chaos. I get that. But what really freaks me out is that you’re attracted to the danger of the strange. And I know it’s going to sound like nothing but jealousy—there’s some of that, I grant you—but this Haggerty guy bugs me. There’s something about him that doesn’t add up.”

  “You might be right. I don’t know. And I’m sorry to give you cause to be jealous. I can be a real jerk sometimes,” said Sally.

  “I give up. I love you anyway. I’m gonna make us some eggs,” said Hawk.

  Dr. Josiah Hawkins Green, eggs-over-easy expert, offering the comfort of the reliable. She accepted, and was glad.

  But at two A.M., she lay staring at the ceiling, heart pounding. She’d barely slept a wink. She couldn’t stop worrying about Charlie Preston.

  Maybe she’d seen too many documentary exposés, read too many horror stories about the treatment of the mentally ill. Sure, there were places where people with serious psychological problems found sympathy and therapy, the right combination of human and pharmaceutical care, whatever might be suited to their particular problems. Charlie Preston was clearly a deeply disturbed young person, and Sally didn’t begin to think she understood the causes of Char-lie’s disease.

  She tried to give Bea Preston the benefit of the doubt. She’d said she was taking the girl to a place she’d get good care. Why wouldn’t she be telling the truth? When Sally had visited her house, Bea had expressed at least some sympathy for the kid, right?

  Not much.

  And how had she treated Charlie’s earlier episodes? From what Bea had said, and what she’d learned from the Starks, Bea’s answer to Charlie’s problems had been to have her locked up.

  Where? Some cushy clinic where they’d pump her full of Thorazine until she seemed docile enough to release, suggestible enough to be persuaded that acting out and bursting out was what bad girls did? To be convinced to keep taking the meds and leave the management of her life and her desires to the experts? Some remote retreat where they’d mix in group therapy, keep in touch with her after she left, take a real interest in her well-being?

  The Prestons had the bucks to send Charlie to the most luxurious, spa-like psychiatric resort, if they wanted to. But would they? Wouldn’t people who believed in an angry God, people who clearly believed that sparing the rod spoiled the child, go for something more boot camp than Broadmoor Hotel?

  Or worse than boot camp?

  What about state hospitals? Had Charlie spent time in the care of the Wyoming mental health authorities? If she had, there would be some kind of government records about where she’d been treated before, maybe a clue as to where she was now.

  Right. Like some state mental hospital records clerk would just hand over the files when Sally came marching in declaring that she was a concerned professor. Whoever heard of a concerned professor? She wasn’t even a friend of the family. She was just some schlepper off the street. Hospitals didn’t generally play loose with medical records in any case; juvenile psychiatric records were probably harder to pry loose than Scotty Atkins’s smiles.

  But of course, Scotty would try to get them. Was probably doing so even now. And unlikely to accord high priority to keeping Sally in the loop.

  Maybe the Starks would know something. As Charlie’s former foster parents, wouldn’t they have been privy to certain kinds of information about their charge?

  And what about Aggie? What might Charlie have confided? What might Aggie have seen for herself?

  Teenagers were a lot more complicated than most people gave them credit for being. From appearances, Aggie Stark was a model kid, an athlete who did her homework and obeyed her parents and loved her little doggie. But there was that story about the girls in the dope house, with Charlie Preston playing the part of out-of-control rescuing angel. Aggie must have been involved.

  Sally worried the questions, like a whole mouthful of sore teeth, through the black hours of a blustery night. She pulled Hawk close, needing more comfort, but tried not to wake him with her restlessness and fear. She’d never been a very accomplished sleeper. Hawk, on the other hand, believed that seven hours of sleep belonged to him by birthright, and averaging eight hours was the mark of a truly successful life.

  It wouldn’t be long. It wouldn’t be polite, of course, to call Aggie’s house before, say, seven-thirty. She could call Maude at six.

  The phone rang at five forty-five.

  Trying not to wake Hawk, she got out of bed and went into the kitchen to answer. But it wasn’t Maude. It was Aggie, and she was crying.

  “They took Charlie away!” she said. “They’re going to do something terrible. You don’t know what they’ve done before, Sally. We’ve got to find her. You’ve got to help.”

  “I’ll do everything I can, Aggie. Take a deep breath,” Sally said.

  Sally heard the girl inhale, exhale. Then fumbling noises, the sound of a nose being blown. “I’ll be okay,” Aggie said, still shaky.

  Sally took her own deep breath. “Look, Aggie, we need to talk. I heard about some parties at Billy’s place. I think you know what I’m talking about.”

  Silence.

  Sally pushed on. “Your mom and dad are going to find out about this stuff eventually. I won’t be the one to tell them. I won’t even tell Maude. You’ve got to make your own decisions. But if I’m going to help, you have to tell me what you know.”

  A pause. “Okay.”

  Sally thought a moment. “Do you want to come over here now and talk?”

&nb
sp; “I don’t know,” said Aggie. “I need to get a run in.”

  What a kid. The world going to hell around her, secrets Sally was only beginning to imagine, but at fourteen, she had the discipline to keep to her workout schedule.

  There was the possibility that Mr. Saturday Night Special might be crazy enough to shoot somebody in broad daylight on the streets of Laramie. Then again, it might be more dangerous for Aggie to come to Sally and Hawk’s house, where there’d been some actual shooting. Everything had risks. And they might as well burn some calories. “Give me your address and I’ll come to your place,” she told Aggie. “We can run and talk, as long as you’re willing to take it slow.”

  “I like running with a partner,” Aggie said. “I don’t have to kick it every day.”

  Aggie was waiting, with her little dog on a leash, when Sally arrived. The dog barked joyously and ran circles around his own tail, leaping on Sally’s shin. She reached down to pet him and sent him into ecstasy. “Hey, Beanie, hey, good dog. You’re a friendly one, aren’t you?”

  “He’s the best doggie in the whole wide world,” the girl said as the dog pranced on his tether. “He remembers all his friends, don’t you, good boy? You even know how to keep up and not have to pee until we get to the park, right, Beanie boy?” She reached over to rub his back and scratch him under his whiskers, looking up at Sally.

  “And if anybody bugs us, this little schnauzer will bark like a mad dog.”

  Sally gave him another pat. He licked her hand and wagged his stumpy tail so hard, he nearly fell over sideways. Great. If someone attacked them, he could wag the bastard to death.

  They set off at an easy pace, Aggie clearly watching out for Sally’s comfort. The kid was a peach. Sally wished they could just jog around and gab about the weather and the virtues of miniature schnauzer dogs. But time was running out.

  So she got to the point. “Somebody came in my house last night, while I was taking a bath,” she told Aggie. “They shot at me through my bathroom door.”