“But drunk is your norm. How many years did you stay soused?”
Conrad screwed up his face, which was much more lined than it should have been for a man of sixty-eight. “Let’s see. What year is this?”
Crawford rolled his eyes.
“That was a joke,” Conrad said.
“Hilarious.”
“I remain gainfully employed, too.”
“Still out at the sawmill?”
“Sweeping up. Hot and dusty work, but it’s wages.”
“Why aren’t you there now?”
“It’s my day off.” The old man took a moment, during which he eyed Crawford up and down. “You’ve been keeping yourself busy.”
“You heard about yesterday’s shooting?”
“Couldn’t help but.” He gestured toward the TV. “Dominated the news. Tuning in between my movies, I caught most of it.” He made a rueful sound. “Sorry as shit about Chet. I knew him from the time he was a rookie deputy sheriff. Sent him a box of cigars when he got appointed bailiff. I saw him just about every time I went into the courthouse.”
“Did I ever tell you about the time he caught me and some other boys sneaking in the exit door of the movie theater?”
“No. What’d he do?”
“He let the others go. I was the only one he called out. Just stood there staring for the longest time, then said, ‘You go that route, get in trouble, you got nobody to blame but your own self.’”
“Straightened you out?”
“Worked better than jail, and I guess he knew it would.”
“He was a good man.”
“Yeah, and if he hadn’t taken that bullet yesterday, I might not be here.”
“Ah,” Conrad wheezed. “Survivor’s guilt. That why you dragged your butt out here? You want me to convince you that Chet’s time was up, that’s all there was to it, and that you can stop feeling bad about it.”
The front legs of Crawford’s chair landed hard on the floor when he got up and moved to the open window, ostensibly to try to catch a breath of breeze, when, in fact, he needed to speak frankly, and that was difficult to do when looking directly at Conrad. Oceans of whiskey had left his eyes threaded with red lines, but they were windows into a mind with the snapping precision of a steel trap.
In his prime, Conrad had been a feared and respected state prosecutor. His future brimmed with promise. Then his wife left him and moved to California with her lover. To blunt the pain of her desertion, Conrad turned to drink. But he could never consume enough to ease his heartache.
Soon, drowning his sorrow became his occupation, and he worked at it full-time and to the exclusion of everything else. With absolute apathy, he watched his life unravel. He squandered his career and future to become the town drunk, an object of ridicule.
The old alcoholic nursed no delusions about himself. With brutal candor and abasement, he owned up to his personal failures. Which made him as ruthlessly candid about other people’s mistakes and misjudgments. He took no prisoners, he cut no slack. While Crawford scorned the old man for wasting his life, any time he sought an unvarnished assessment of a dilemma, he knew he’d get it in this run-down house.
“Well?” Conrad prompted. “I was in the middle of a bloody beach assault. Did you interrupt all that excitement only to stare out the window? What’s going on? Why the sad-sack face?”
“What I did yesterday could screw me royally.”
“Going after the shooter, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“How so?”
“For starters, with my in-laws.” Crawford told him about the confrontation with Joe Gilroy. “I went over to their house late last night to check on Grace. Joe was polite for about two minutes, then he let me have it. He’s never been a big fan of mine. Now, I’ve given him an excuse to make me out a hothead.”
“Oh, and we all know better.”
His sarcasm brought Crawford around to face him. “Why I bothered coming out here to talk to you—”
“You bothered because you know that I won’t coddle you, that I’ll tell it to you like it is.”
“Then stop editorializing and get on with it.”
“Happily. Based on what I know of Joe Gilroy, I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire. I despise judgmental hard-asses like him. But in this instance, much as it pains me to say it, he’s right. Going after that gunman, you could have gotten yourself killed, and that would’ve made your daughter a double orphan.”
“I thought of that,” Crawford admitted. “But not until later. After it was over.”
“You acted in the heat of the moment.”
“Conditioned reflex.”
“Conditioned, my ass,” Conrad snorted. “You were born with it.”
“You agree with Joe, then? I’m reckless by nature.”
“Let me finish, will you? On the other hand,” Conrad said with emphasis, “what were you supposed to do? Let a madman with a pistol run amok in a building full of people? You’re a Texas Ranger, for God’s sake. Even off duty, you’re not off duty. No lawman worth his salt is. Am I right?”