The Homecoming

by Carsten Stroud

  “Where Charlie Danziger is, there’s usually a Coker.”

  “No. Coker and every other county cop are all out looking for Byron. Along with most of the CID and a lot of the state guys too.”

  “Maybe I should have punched him harder.”

  “Maybe you should have. Just out of curiosity, why did you punch him at all? Other than because he’s a mean stupid bully who richly deserves a beating. I loathe all bullies. I surely do.”

  Nick told her, the short version.

  “And that’s when the deer showed up? While everybody in the van was yelling at you?”

  “Basically.”

  Kate smiled, her eyes bright, tears welling up behind them.

  “You could have been killed, Nick. You toad. Then where would my life be?”

  Nick put his hand back on top of hers, said nothing, but held it there until she cried it out a bit. She took a tissue from a box on the table beside the bed, held it to her eyes, rubbed her nose, crumpled it into a ball inside her fist.

  “There are people in the hall, waiting to see you.”

  “Rainey?”

  “And Axel. And Hannah. And Beth. And Boonie Hackendorff. Also Reed—”

  “Reed. How is he?”

  “He’s fine. I mean, physically. Emotionally, he’s pretty banged up. Marty Coors put him on suspension until the inquiry is over.”

  “Still has a badge and a gun?”

  “Yes. But no regular duty. For now.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No. I checked out right after Boonie told me that people got killed.”

  Kate told him the story, including the final butcher’s bill. Eight dead—one more hanging on in the OR but expected to go soon—thirteen injured, four seriously. The traumas were down at Sorrows in Cap City. The rest were here in Lady Grace, including the dead ones down in the morgue.

  Nick listened carefully, seeing it play out on the movie screen at the back of his skull.

  “What’d those truckers think it was, the Indy 500? Lined up along the road like it was a claiming race? Jesus. Stupid as hell.”

  “Yes. It was stupid. It wasn’t Reed’s fault at all. The men in the Viper were shooting at him. Reed thought they’d be just as happy shooting at the people lined up at the Super Gee. Marty Coors was telling him to back off, and then the men in the Viper jammed on the brakes. Reed tried to swerve, but not soon enough—”

  “There’s not a lot of leeway at two hundred miles an hour.”

  “No, there isn’t. But you know how it is. Civilians get killed during a police chase, even if it’s their own damn fault, somebody in a uniform has to pay.”

  “What about the guys Reed was chasing?”

  Kate made a face.

  “The Brothers Shagreen? What do you always say? Best thing you could say about them is they’re dead. One of them, I think his name was Dwayne Bobby, was still alive at midnight, but I don’t think anybody was going to heroic lengths to save him. He died by two in the morning. It’s possible one of the OR nurses was standing on his oxygen tube at the time. They’re not down in the morgue with the good people, by the way. State is holding them in a refrigerated meat truck at their HQ.”

  “In that line of truckers, was there anyone we know?”

  “Yes. Billy Dials’ brother.”

  “Jeez. Mikey?”

  “Yes. He was killed. Not instantly. It was bad. Billy’s taking it pretty bad. They were close.”

  “Anybody else?”

  “No one we know. Thank God. Will you see Rainey? He’s pretty upset. About you. And he’s been having a tough time lately. At school. Now Axel is catching it too.”

  “Catching what?”

  Kate filled him in on the bullying that was going on, Coleman and what Kate was calling his “minions.”

  “Marty’s kid is in on this?”

  “According to Rainey and Axel.”

  “Of course. Send him in. If Axel’s there, send him in too.”

  “They’ll only let one person in at a time.”

  “Okay. Start with Rainey, then.”

  Kate got up and went to the door, while Nick managed to get himself into a more upright position. Rainey came in wearing his school uniform and an anxious expression, Kate following behind with a worried look.

  Nick gave him a smile and Rainey put out a hand for a formal shake. They hadn’t reached the hugging stage yet. Perhaps they never would, although Nick was ready to try. Rainey studied Nick’s face while they shook, as if searching for something.

  “God, Nick,” he said, after a moment. “You look awful.”

  “Thanks, kid,” Nick said, smiling—his smile wasn’t reassuring, but he hadn’t seen his face in a mirror yet. “You look pretty good yourself.”

  “What was it like?”

  “The rollover?”

  “Yeah. Was it scary?”

  “No. It was sort of … busy. A lot going on.”

  “Kate says it was a deer?”

  “Yes. A buck, actually.”

  “And those two marshals got killed by it?”

  “Yes,” said Nick, pushing the image down.

  “The deer—the buck—was it standing in the road?”

  “I wasn’t looking at the time. But probably not. Probably running along the shoulder, or trying to cross the lane. When a deer thinks it’s being chased, it will run straight for a while, and then it will cut sharp, right or left. They’re quick and nimble. Whatever’s chasing it—a coyote or a cougar—it usually gets deked out of its shorts and the deer’s gone. Only when what’s chasing the deer is a car, if the deer cuts to the left, he’s going to cut right out in front of the car.”

  Rainey thought this over, filing the data.

  “You were with Axel’s dad, in the truck. Everybody says he got away.” Nick nodded, feeling suddenly tired.

  “Yes. He did.”

  “Axel’s scared of his dad, you know.”

  “I know, Rainey. I’ll talk to him about it.”

  Rainey saw Nick fading.

  He shot a look at Kate, who nodded.

  “You coming home soon?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Good.”

  Something in his expression caught Nick’s eye.

  “Kate says you and Axel are having trouble at school? With Coleman and those guys? Jay and Owen? When I get out of here, I’ll go talk to Little Rock. And Captain Coors. He’s a friend of mine. He’ll talk to Owen. Okay?”

  Rainey shook his head.

  “It’ll only make it worse. Father Casey already talked to them. It just makes them mad. And then they tell everybody at school that Axel and me are snitches. And wimps.”

  Rainey paused.

  “What I’d like …”

  “Yes?” said Nick.

  “Can’t we do something about it ourselves? Me and Axel. We’ve been talking about it.”

  Nick glanced at Kate, and then came back to Rainey.

  “Like what, Rainey? Axel got into a fight with Coleman. So did you, last week. Do you want to fight him again?”

  “We already tried that. You saw what happened. I got my clock cleaned. So did Axel. He’s too strong.”

  “He shouldn’t have let it happen at all, Rainey,” Kate put in. “He’s supposed to be a sportsman, isn’t he? Isn’t fair play what Regiopolis is all about?”

  “Not for us,” said Rainey, but softly.

  Nick was curious.

  “Okay. Fighting didn’t work. What would you do, then?”

  “Axel says we should tell Coleman that Axel’s father escaped so he could come and kill Coleman.”

  Nick and Kate rolled with that, but it shook them both to hear the venom in Rainey’s voice.

  “Rainey, I don’t think threatening a schoolkid with murder is the way to go here.”

  Rainey considered it for a while.

  “Maybe he could get kidnapped like I did. Only they wouldn’t bring him back.” />
  Silence followed while Nick and Kate worked out a way to deal with this.

  Kate spoke first.

  “Rainey, I know Coleman’s a bad person, but we don’t want something like that to happen to anybody.”

  “It happened to me.”

  “Yes, it did,” said Nick. “And that sucks. And one day I’ll find the people who did it, and we’ll make them sorry, won’t we?”

  “Nick,” said Kate, a warning tone, but Rainey cut in.

  “We could make Coleman look in the mirror.”

  “The mirror?” said Kate, her heart in her throat. Rainey turned around and faced her.

  “I remembered. The mirror in Moochie’s window. I was looking at it the day when it happened—”

  “The day what happened?” asked Nick carefully.

  “The day I got kidnapped. I was standing on the sidewalk in front of Moochie’s. I was looking at the mirror in the window. The gold one with all the curly stuff in the frame. It’s really old. We could find out where it is and make him look at it. Maybe he’d disappear too.”

  They both stared at the kid. And they were both thinking exactly the same thing, because that mirror—the same antique mirror that had been in Moochie’s window—was sitting at the back of the linen closet in the hallway outside their bedroom right now, wrapped in a blue blanket. It was still where they had put it six months ago. He knew because he checked it regularly, the way you check a loaded weapon. Had Rainey found it?

  Kate was about to ask Rainey exactly that, and Nick was about to stop her, when there was a knock at the door. Kate opened it and Reed Walker was there, in his State uniform, cool and crisp and looking grim, his Stetson in his hand and his thick black hair cropped short.

  “Sorry to cut in, Kate—I know, I know—one at a time—but I just got a call and I have to go—I wanted to see Himself—”

  Nick admired Reed although he felt that if he stayed at the wheel of a Police Interceptor he was not likely to see the far side of fifty. He sat up and grinned at him as Reed came over and stood by the bed, setting his hand on Rainey’s shoulder.

  “Christ, Nick, you look—”

  “Like a public service announcement?”

  Reed showed his teeth, a sardonic smile which furrowed his lean face. Rainey, who seemed to have a case of hero worship when it came to Reed, broke in to ask Reed about the chase, what was it like, who were those two guys in the black Viper, why was the license plate HARLEQUIN, was that a clue?

  Reed slowed him down enough to tell him the highlights without dwelling too much on how utterly miserable he was feeling at this moment.

  Rainey took it all in, then went back to the bad guys in the Viper. “But those guys, who were they?”

  “A couple of White Power guys. Outlaw bikers. Dwayne Bobby Shagreen and Douglas Loyal Shagreen. Both of them were wanted on multiple felony warrants from all over the South—”

  “Where are they now?”

  Reed hesitated.

  “Well, they’re dead, Rainey.”

  “Yeah. But dead where?”

  “In a refrigerated truck parked next to the State Police headquarters in Gracie. Why, you wanna go see ’em?”

  Rainey lit up.

  “Could I? Could Axel come too?”

  Kate, who felt Reed wasn’t beyond it, stepped in. “No, you can’t. And Axel can’t either.”

  Reed smiled down at Rainey.

  “Kid, I saw them. Two huge ugly dead guys. The way they look would give you nightmares. Gonna give me nightmares.”

  Reed looked back at Nick.

  “The heck with the Shagreens. How are you?”

  Reed stood for a moment, getting a rundown on Nick’s status, his smile fading.

  “We haven’t got Deitz yet,” he said, after Nick had given him a brief sketch of what happened in the van. “No sign of him.”

  “Somebody’s helping him,” said Nick.

  “Has to be, considering what he was wearing. I understand he might also be wearing a broken nose?”

  Nick looked at Kate, who shrugged and smiled.

  “Well, I may have adjusted it a bit.”

  “Was he in shackles?”

  “Yep.”

  “Risky. Was there a camera in the van?”

  “Yep.”

  “Hit him anyway?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why?”

  “Seemed like the right thing to do.”

  “Why are you talking like that Spenser guy in the Robert Parker novels?”

  “Am I?”

  “Yep.”

  “You two,” said Kate, “should take this act to Vegas.”

  “Kate tells me Marty has you on a desk?”

  Reed’s expression shifted into gloom again.

  “No. Not on a desk. I’m suspended. Full pay, but don’t come into the office until he calls me.”

  Silence in the room.

  Everyone who knew Reed Walker knew that the job—driving an Interceptor—was the central axis of his life. Everything else turned around it. Without that pivot, that center of gravity, what would Reed Walker do? Fly off into space?

  Reed shook that off, grinned down at Nick.

  “So. Are you gonna lie around here all week nursing your boo-boos or you gonna get up and go looking for Deitz? I figure, since he spent a lot of time smacking Beth around, you and me have a special interest.”

  Kate was on her feet, the Irish in her rising.

  “Reed! Nick’s not going anywhere—”

  “Is this a bad time?” said a laconic Texas-tinted voice from the door. Everybody turned to look, and there was Boonie Hackendorff filling up the doorway and blocking the light from the hall.

  “Yes, it is,” said Kate, still winding up.

  “Good,” said Boonie, stepping lightly through the door, grinning broadly, bringing with him the scent of lime, of cinnamon breath mints and a strong afternote of cigar.

  “I hate sneaking sideways into a room. I prefer to make an entrance.”

  “Fine,” said Kate. “Now let’s see you make an exit. Nick’s only supposed to have one visitor at a time. This is turning into a parade.”

  Reed stepped in.

  “Actually, Kate, Boonie’s got business with Nick. Beth’s here, with the kids. Maybe we can all go get a bite of lunch? Let these two talk.”

  He looked at Rainey, who was oddly absent. Rainey shook himself, refocused, said, “Sure. Can I have a mimosa?”

  Reed looked down at him.

  “That troubles me on so many levels, kid.”

  “Yes, you can have a mimosa,” said Kate, taking his hand and pulling Rainey to his feet. “So long as your uncle has a Shirley Temple.”

  She came over, gave Nick a kiss that he could feel in his knees, gathered up her things, shot a glare at Boonie.

  “Don’t you be dragging my husband off anywhere, Boonie. You follow?”

  And they were gone.

  There was a silence, while Boonie and Nick considered Kate and all her ways.

  “Hell of a girl,” said Boonie after a pause. “You ever notice she says ‘You follow?’ just the way that guy said it in The Sting?”

  “The big guy, played the Irish hood everybody was so afraid of? Doyle Lonnegan?”

  “Robert Shaw.”

  “Yeah. Now you mention it, she does.”

  “Consider yourself warned. How you doing, anyway? Can you move around at all?”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Think you can make it to the morgue downstairs?”

  “I look that bad?”

  Boonie’s jovial mood darkened.

  “No. I mean, it’s … Look, I got a problem here, and I don’t want to take it back to D.C., or even to the rest of my people at Cap City.”

  “Why me?”

  “Nick, when you were in the war, I guess you saw a lot of dead bodies, right? Maybe saw a lot of weird shit?”

  Nick gave him a sideways look.

  “You could say. That
’s what war is all about. Stacking up those dead guys. Plus there were cookies.”

  Boonie looked pained, embarrassed.

  “Jeez, Nick. I meant no disrespect. I’m asking a serious question. I know it’s maybe stuff you don’t wanna talk about, but I can’t think of anybody else to ask.”

  “This all about a particular dead body?”

  Boonie looked down at his hands.

  “Yeah. It is. Thing is, nobody—right now anyway—nobody can know I’m asking you in on this. I mean, the jurisdictional thing and all. There’d be blowback out of D.C., maybe even with the State guys. Not Marty Coors, no. Nor Mickey Hancock … plus, there are … other things, about this body, details I don’t want to see go anywhere else. I know I can trust you to shut up. I’m not sure about the rest of my guys downtown. This is career death for me, I handle it wrong. Like I said, can you move?”

  “I can sure as hell get my ass downstairs.”

  Boonie looked uneasy, but committed.

  “You not gonna faint on me, or pitch a fit? ’Cause if you do, Kate will surely tear me a new—”

  “I’m fine. I promise I won’t die on you.”

  Boonie took it in, nodded.

  “Can we do it now? I got a guy with a wheelchair outside. You can ride down—”

  Nick was already standing, in his slippers, reaching for a thick blue robe. He lashed it tight around his waist, looked white around the edges, got his color back, and said, “Let’s go.”

  Boonie was going for the door.

  “I’ll go get the wheelchair guy—”

  “Boonie, you bring a wheelchair into this room, and you’ll need a flashlight and a crowbar to get yourself free of it again. You follow?”

  “I follow.”

  Coker and Charlie Danziger Have Another Frank Exchange of Views

  Charlie Danziger was aware that he reminded people of Sam Elliott—he was tall and lean and craggy and he had a big white mustache, and now that he wasn’t with the State Patrol anymore he wore his faded blond hair on the longish side. So Charlie Danziger, who liked to think of himself as an original, did what was possible within the narrow scope of choice that nature had given him to counteract that effect.

  This afternoon he was counteracting the Sam Elliott effect by sitting on the front porch of his ranch house in the foothills of the Belfair Range, watching his horses run on the downslope of his front forty while drinking Italian Pinot Grigio, a flowery white wine from Valdadige that Danziger was convinced the real Sam Elliott wouldn’t tolerate as a barbecue starter.