“Yeah,” Archie said. Parker’s funeral was that afternoon. No tents for that one. No crowd control. His family must have moved mountains to make arrangements that fast. Archie thought he knew why.
Sanchez hesitated, then rubbed the back of his neck. “His blood alcohol was .24.” He looked up meaningfully at Archie, then scratched his bearded chin. “Thought you’d want to know.”
Archie closed his eyes. “Fuck.” They were getting him in the ground just in time.
“We’ll wait until after his funeral,” Sanchez said. “Make it public tomorrow.”
“Thanks,” Archie said.
Sanchez turned to go.
“You got my message about why Parker was meeting with Castle?” Archie asked. “Susan Ward’s story?”
“Crazy shit,” Sanchez said, turning back. He shrugged. “Doesn’t change the blood test, though.”
Archie sighed and leaned back in his chair, hands folded across his chest. The brass pillbox pressed against his thigh. Gretchen Lowell smiled in his desk drawer. “No,” he said.
Susan fiddled with the white piping of her brown dress. She had decided against black. It was too funereal. The brown dress was vintage, A-line, cap-sleeved, with white piping and two big white buttons on the chest. She had clipped her turquoise hair at the back of her neck. It seemed too colorful somehow, disrespectful of the occasion.
There were a fair amount of people in the church, probably a couple hundred. Susan recognized many faces from the paper. The wooden pews were full, and it was standing room only in the back. The rain had passed and sun streamed in through the stained-glass windows, throwing colored trapezoids of light on the wooden floor.
Parker was at the front of the church, in a glazed ceramic urn.
Susan was sitting in the third row. She’d arrived early. Susan was almost never early. But she’d arrived an hour before the funeral, and after twenty minutes crying in her car in the parking lot she came inside and got a place up front.
She saw Derek, sitting in the back with some other city beat reporters. He tried to catch her eye, but she avoided him.
Then she saw Archie Sheridan come in with his family and sit a few rows behind her across the aisle. He was wearing a black suit and shiny black shoes and sat with his arm around his ex-wife, who was wearing a black sleeveless dress that showed off her lean, tan arms. His son was wearing a gray suit and the little girl was wearing a gray eyelet dress. They looked like a photo spread of what to wear to a funeral.
Susan looked down at her own ensemble. She looked like she worked at Mr. Steak.
The Herald’s publisher, Howard Jenkins, gave the eulogy. A few of the older reporters at the paper spoke. There weren’t many left. Most Herald employees over fifty were offered buyout options to retire so the paper could save on pensions.
Parker was an institution. Parker was a reporter’s reporter. Parker was a muckraker, a local hero, a warrior for the afflicted, a champ, a gem, employee of the fucking year.
God, it was all such bullshit. Susan got up, squeezed past forty knees, feet, and purses, and walked as fast as she could out the door, into the hallway, down the carpeted stairs, and out of the church.
The old stone church had a courtyard that overlooked the park blocks. A few tables, fluttering with pink paper tablecloths, had been set up for the postfuneral reception. There was a large silver urn of coffee and a glass bowl of fruit punch. Several plates of deviled eggs sat spoiling in the sun. And bottles of Wild Turkey were lined up five deep. Susan smiled.
On the other side of the street, in the park, people streamed by, walking. Lunchtime traffic clogged the street. Susan’s hands were shaking.
Archie Sheridan appeared at the door she’d just fled through. “You okay?” he asked quietly.
Susan turned her head, embarrassed, and dug through her purse. “I just needed a cigarette,” she said, coming up with the yellow pack.
Archie walked down the stone steps and leaned against the church wall next to her while she found her lighter.
“Parker was legally drunk when he drove off the bridge,” he said. “They’re making it public tomorrow.”
Susan held the lighter to the end of her cigarette. The flame licked and jumped, then flattened as she inhaled. It was bound to come up, but she was still sorry that it had. “Parker was always legally drunk,” she said. “You know that.” She dropped the lighter back into her purse. “He was an alcoholic.”
Archie put his hands in his pockets and stared at the cobblestones. “His blood alcohol was .24, Susan.”
Organ music started in the church. “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Susan hadn’t even known Parker was religious.
She shook her head. This was insane. They couldn’t blame this on Parker. It was Castle. He was the predator, the asshole, the perv; Parker was a victim. “What about Castle?” she asked. “He could have still grabbed the wheel.”