Rage Against the Dying

Fifty-three





The next day felt oddly normal except that it took much longer than usual, prolonged by politeness. I expected at some point Carlo would deliver the coup de grâce, but I wasn’t going to put my head on the block for him. He had seen me unbalanced the night before and was probably finding it hard to know when and how to talk to me, but I’d show him I was tough enough to take it. It was so incredibly sad. We didn’t speak much, hardly even looked each other in the eye; two people being alone in the same house only intensified the loneliness.

I knew he would always carry the image of me from the night before in his head and that it would color everything between us. I knew what that was like. I had a lot of those images I couldn’t get rid of.

Morrison called, asked how I was, confirmed that I would be at his office at nine A.M. the next day. He was very solicitous and didn’t sound like he was going to go after me for killing Emery. He sounded nervous.

I next called Gordo Ferguson and told him thanks for watching Carlo and that I wouldn’t be needing him anymore.

I went back into the NamUs Web site and found the contact information for Kimberly Maple’s parents. Someone would have to tell them their daughter’s body had been found and that Cheri had died. If not me, then who?

I called Max’s wife Chrystal. She must have been at the hospital; I left a message.

Laura Coleman: not a phone call for her. Despite feeling depressed and stiff, I lugged my body into the car and down to the same hospital where I had visited Floyd Lynch the day before.

When I got up to her room on the second floor, I found her family—mother, father, and older brother—draped around her bed like a cordon. I started to go away again, but Coleman spotted me in the crack between her parents and called me into the room. I was introduced all around as the person who saved her life. Ben Coleman flickered with recognition, but Emily didn’t remember me at all. Her brother, Willis, of heftier build than the willowy Val, mashed me into his substantial girth and praised his god for me.

I didn’t speak of who had saved whose life. We still needed to get all the facts right between us before either of us submitted to interviews. I guess she was kind of right because, although she was the one to shoot Emery, if I hadn’t shown up at the bar she’d definitely be dead. See what I mean about the truth? Hard to pin down sometimes.

Coleman asked her family to leave us alone for a few minutes, and they departed to the hospital cafeteria after more kissing on Coleman and repeated thanks to me.

I noted the bandage on her ear where Emery had stapled it. “Boo-ya,” I said to her. “You were one tough broad. Did they stitch up your tendons okay?”

She looked proud at the praise, more like an agent and less like the daddy’s girl I saw when I first entered the room. She nodded and said, “They’re going to let me go this afternoon. Doctor says it will take some time with a lot of therapy, but I should be able to reassume all my duties just fine. And with this Percocet I’m more than fine.”

“Ah, good stuff. I’ve enjoyed that myself on more than one occasion.”

“But I’m not too groggy. Tell me what happened and how you found me.”

I explained how I’d been suspicious when she didn’t contact me, what I did to try to track her down. The clue that was only significant to me, the unlocked car. Breaking into her house. The logs. Floyd’s murder. There was a lot to tell. Then it was her turn.

“I told you how Emery captured me, kept me drugged. He had my phone. He was sending text messages to the office. Then he got into my Yahoo! account and…” She paused, ashamed. He would have needed her password, and she didn’t want to talk about what it took to get it from her.

“And Morrison never asked to talk to you directly because he was pissed at you and was happy to have you out of the way until Lynch made his plea. Nobody could take what you took, Coleman. I would have given him my password, too.” I told her what I’d figured out. “Emery Bathory, Floyd Lynch, Gerald Peasil. They were connected, and Lynch only knew what happened in the Route 66 murders because Emery told him.”

“How did they meet?”

I told her about the chat-room connection. “You were right from the start, Floyd Lynch just pretended to be a killer and got caught up in the celebrity of it when he was nabbed. If you hadn’t pulled out that logbook that showed he wasn’t there when Jessica was killed, I wouldn’t have had anything to confront him with. That was what made him tell me the truth.”

Coleman’s brain swam through the painkiller haze, focused temporarily. “Three guys, you said.”

I nodded. “In a loose confederacy. Trading stories, mostly, until things got messy.”

“And Emery heard every word we said in the bar.”

“And knew we were a threat to him.” I stopped before spilling about his sending Peasil to kill me. “Through the cops’ talking he’d know everything that went on. It was a great way to keep tabs.”

Either the Percocet was really taking effect or her mind was watching some of the tapes from the night before. Then, “Who’s Gerald Peasil?” Coleman asked.

“Who?”

“Gerald Peasil. You said that name.”

“Coleman, try not to think about it.”

She paused the tape and looked at me. “That’s the best advice Brigid Quinn can give? Try not to think about it? If I were feeling stronger I’d slug you.”

“Trust me, it works.” I straightened a wrinkle in the sheet. “Are we in agreement then? You’re not going to accuse me of perjuring myself when there’s a hearing?”

“Brigid.”

“You were crawling in the bar. You didn’t see what happened in the kitchen. You heard the gun go off. Maybe you passed out. That’s all you need to say.”

“Brigid, you’ll be in too much trouble. You’re not even an agent anymore.”

“And you’re not snow. You kept investigating a case you were no longer assigned to. You breached all kinds of protocol. Plus, you shot an unarmed man in the back. But the only way you can ultimately find justice in all this is to be snow. The homeless guy, Cheri, and Emery—three people died at the bar and there will be questions. If this whole situation gets hot and they do a real investigation, Morrison could be in trouble. He’d blame you, spin the situation so you’re the one who suffers any fallout. Do you understand?”

I didn’t add that I was already in big trouble, so taking the rap for this didn’t matter much. Coleman didn’t have to know that. She stared at me with neither assent nor disagreement.

“I’ve gotten out of worse situations,” I said. “This is nothing. And besides, I’m pretty much at the end of the game. You have a lot of scumbags left to catch.”

“One thing I still don’t understand,” Laura said.

“What’s that?”

“How did you know I had an affair with Royal Hughes?”

I decided not to tell her about Sigmund sensing it, or going through her address book, or about my conversation with Hughes where he admitted it. “Just a guess. I would have.”

She considered that, then said, “Do you want to know why I switched from Fraud to Homicide?”

Not that much, actually. I had other things on my mind. Carlo. Max. “Why?”

“Because I kept hearing so much about you and the cases you worked, the bad guys you caught. When I heard you were retiring I figured somebody had to keep catching those guys.”

“Aw, that’s sweet. The fact is, I retired because I caused the Bureau trouble over shooting that suspect.”

“That was political bullshit. I wanted to take your place because I admired you so much.”

Why do people always get this way in hospitals and airplanes? I said, “Oh, one other thing I forgot to tell you. I smashed the window in the back of your house and broke in the other day, so when you go home don’t be alarmed and think you were burgled. I didn’t take anything but some of your yogurt.” She opened her mouth with a question, but I stopped her with, “Trust me, Coleman. I’m the agent you don’t want to be.”

Finally, I made a quick stop in Max’s room. He was in intensive care, considerably worse off than Coleman. His wife, Chrystal, a woman who had nothing in common with her name, hovered on the far side of the bed in full stand-by-your-man mode.

Max was barely conscious but saw me as I approached. He tried to take a breath, to speak. You could tell it hurt. Chrystal stroked his arm and told him not to try. She said, “They told me it was a miracle, the bullet missed his right lung and didn’t hit any bone, something about the angle of his body, he didn’t take it dead on, otherwise it would have done much more internal damage. He’s also concussed because he hit his head when he went down.”

Max turned his head and I leaned over the bed to get closer. I heard him whisper, “I heard, you killed the bartender.”

“That’s right. I saved your life,” I said helpfully. “You should have believed me about Coleman. It was your own damn fault you got shot.”

Chrystal let out a shocked, “Brigid!”

Max took another smaller breath so it would hurt less, with just enough air to get the words out before he sank into the pillow, exhausted. “I’m surprised you didn’t kill me. You had the chance.”

Chrystal, who had been leaning over from her side of the bed, jerked upright and looked wide-eyed, expecting me to assure her he was hallucinating from the painkillers. I could have told him I’d rather have died myself than be responsible for losing him. Instead, I smiled and patted his hand. “That’s just because, .45 to the chest, I assumed you were already dead, sweetheart.”

He reflected my smile with a weaker one of his own. He said, “The phone. Peasil’s cell.”

“I know. I left it for you to find, and you traced one of the numbers to Emery’s bar.”

He shook his head as if he had something else to say and I was keeping him from saying it. He took another small breath. “Those faces.”

This was where we finally met, Max and I. We met in what was really important, in the victims, and seeing justice served even if we sometimes didn’t follow the manual. “I saw them.” He was almost worn out from our exchange, so I answered the question in his eyes without his having to ask it. “It was still an accident, Max. That’s the goddamn truth.”

“Good.”

There would be time later to find out what he meant by that word. He closed his eyes and Chrystal told me flat out to go.