The Do-Right (26 page)

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PHELAN LEFT THE Robbins' and pulled up near the end of the traffic jam on Concord around the white ranch. If this was Pop the Whip, he'd have been the tail. He estimated they could have been working four, five hours already. Squad cars, unmarked, Highway Patrol, ambulance, a fire truck. News vans from all three local stations. The shabby house was illuminated to brilliance from the light rig set up behind it.

The rubberneckers, piled up craning behind the yellow tape, parted for a canine officer trotting by with a German shepherd. After introducing himself to a cop as E.E.'s nephew and as a private investigator on the case, Phelan persuaded the guy to ask E.E. if he could observe.

“Red Rover, Red Rover, you can't come over,” said the cop when he came back. He took his place by the tape, stamping backward on the foot of a pushy onlooker.

“Hey,” the onlooker protested. “My tax dollars and all that.”

“Yeah and all that.” The cop didn't turn around.

An hour. Two. Phelan milled around, picking up what he could. Mainly how many officers were there, little sniping between the cops and firemen. He passed the newswoman whose mic he'd batted away earlier. Her formerly sleek blonde hair had frizzed into a globe shape. She was positioning a compact mirror and dabbing the mascara smears beneath her eyes.

A middle-aged couple pushed up to the yellow tape and asked to be let through. The officers held them off. “But you don't understand,” the woman said, her voice rising, “you don't get it. That could be my
kid
back there.”

Everyone in hearing range oriented themselves toward the pair. The father was saying their son had been missing for two months, that he thought he'd run off, but—

The mother squeezed fists against her head. “He never ran away,” she said. “He never, never, never.”

The cop tried to convince them information would move through channels as quickly as possible. Home might be the best place to wait, he suggested. The woman ducked under the tape and squirmed past him. She ran.

“Shit,” said one cop, and both of them jogged after her.

After maybe ten yards the woman slowed, plodded on another clumsy stride and then stopped, on her own. Stood still, her hair flagging out, her skirt blown against her legs. The palms of her hands met, flat, in front of her face, and then sank down to cover her mouth.

The breeze, with its scent tendrils from the dead, carried into the people gathered behind the crime tape. Jostling ceased, then talking broke out. A woman dragged her kids away.

The two cops bookended the mother and gently turned her around. The newswoman was already cornering the father when Phelan heard a loud
crack-k-k
that rumbled on for several seconds and then echoed away. A minute later, the fire truck pulled out. Phelan eyed his watch. 10:28.

“Where they going?” A boy jumped up and down to see as they hit the sirens and the flashing lights.

“Put the wet stuff on the hot stuff,” his dad said.

*

He left Deeterman's ranch house, but knew he couldn't settle down in his own place, so he drove out to Leon's and landed on a bar stool.

Patty Peavey served him a freebie Pearl. “Your hair's standing up, Tom. You look like that white rabbit late for a date. Jesus, smell like him too.”

Phelan lifted the longneck to his dry lips. Johnny Carson as Carnac the Magnificent was holding a piece of paper to his forehead when Channel 4 news broke in and went live to the scene of an explosion and fire.

“Would you look at them chop those windows. That fire's just rolling out now!” Patty's hands clutched Phelan's shoulder seam. “What's…what's that nut trying to do to the firemen?”

Phelan took a long look. Little hairs at the back of his neck levitated. Dug a dollar tip from his wallet, poured the beer into a go-cup and slid into his car.

He jogged to the outskirts of the blaze, cordoned off by squad cars parked crossways. Phelan mixed with the watchers. The neighbor that called it in kept retelling the story. Another pointed out the berserk homeowner restrained in the back seat of a cop car. Phelan hung around the flames, the shooting water, and the falling debris until there was just smoke rising from black. Then he left and bugged the graveyard crew at the police station. Returned in the light of day to the ruined house. Couple chimneys. Clawfoot tub. Backtracked to the station. He dragged home around noon, took off his shoes, and fell backwards on the bed.

Uncalibrated lighting in these hospital stairwells, combination of too bright and too dim that cast weird
shadows. Phelan plowed up the industrial-gray stairs, emerged into a hall, and dodged a runner with a stethoscope bouncing on his chest. Paused to pump the nurse at the third floor station, and then counted his way to room number 303. He couldn't see her past a blue curtain drawn between the beds.

Fluorescents spilled over the bed nearest the door. It held a lump with a pointy, shelf-like shape near the top end. All covered up by the sheet. Maybe morgue was short tonight.

The sheet slid down past a new, black, squeezed-on Astros ball cap to inquiring eyes, then to a bandage over one cheek, then part of a chin. A moon-face.

“Hey there,” Phelan said as he passed. He peeked around the blue curtain. Darker there, no light on, but the sheet wore the sweet undulation of a woman on her side. She seemed to be breathing steady. Phelan backtracked. He slung a plastic chair and set it down against the wall, equidistant to both beds, so he wouldn't be invading anyone's privacy.

“My mom
is
coming back,” said the moon-face. “She promised.”

Phelan nodded.

“You're not from Social Services, are you?”

Phelan shook his head. “Bet you're an Astros fan.”

“Duh.”

“Me, too.”

“Coach Durocher, he don't take shit from nobody.” The round face challenged him.

“Sure not any umpires.”

“No way. Or batters. Hey, pitcher, stick it in his ear!” Lips that'd been compressed into a bud by heavy cheeks opened, and the kid looked pretty much like a chubby fifth-grader with an ear bandage.

“Durocher's the man. That your wife over there?”

“Secretary. And friend.”

“She hadn't hardly woke up yet. What happened to her, car wreck?”

“Bad man hurt her.”

“No shit?” The boy looked shocked for a few seconds, then cut his chin hard and resettled his ball cap to a low and serious angle. “If I had a wife, I wouldn't let anybody hurt her. Ever. Not till the end of the world.”

“Then you're the man,” Phelan said.

A middle-aged nurse with a wheelchair blocked the door. “Tommy?”

Phelan's and the kid's heads turned together.

“My mom back?”

“Oh, not yet. What say we go visit the babies. Got a new one. Need to tire you out, sport.”

“Far out.” The kid swung his legs to the side of the bed. Pinched the gown to cover a skinny ass and elbowed off the nurse as she tried to guide him into the chair.

“Now, come on,” she said, “be nice.”

Gurgley hooting from the kid. “Nice guys finish last.”

The nurse said, “Men always say that. I don't get it. I like nice guys. Not that I know any.” They rolled away.

Phelan rose and slid back the blue curtain. He felt a twinge, remembering her pushing the gold-stickered certificate from Gatesville across his desk without saying a word. The whitened scar on the back of her neck.

Delpha's hand fluttered. “Help me turn over.”

He gingerly fit both hands beneath her side, lifted her body and, rounding his arms, let her slant back into them, stayed that way a while, holding her, then gently replaced her on her back in the bed, slid his hands back to himself.

She was grimacing, brow squeezed. “Thanks. How 'bout some real air?”

Phelan hoisted the blinds and pushed open one side of the window. Rain was falling through the smeary halos of the parking lot lights. It wafted in, little plinks of water along with the wall of heat and humidity. Tree frogs, crickets, katydids, cicadas sharpened their scissors, rubbed their wings, whirred, chirred
zzzt-zzzt-zzzt
, settled into the room.

“Better?”

Her head nodded.

“How you doing?”

“I hadn't slept like this since I was three years old.”

“Doc said he fixed you up. Nurse said barring infection, in a week or two you'll be back to work. Mind if I turn on the lights?”

“Not the ceiling one.”

“There's a little one on a pull-chain back of the bed. Mind that one?”

“OK.”

Phelan leaned in to snap the chain, stepped back, looking down on her strained, ivory face.

“Police gonna charge me for Deeterman?”

“E.E.'s got a sergeant down at the precinct that'll call down a Cajun riot if that happens.”

“Fontenot. I remember him.”

“They got Deeterman's diary from the bottom of hell. And this is Texas.”

“I 'as in Texas last time, too. Never been outta Texas.”

The summer tune thrummed through the window, hospital hummed around them. The bag on the pole dripped without a sound.

“Close, wasn't it, Delpha?”

She laid an arm across her eyes.

Phelan went over and retrieved the plastic chair, set it between the bed and the window. He tucked her fingers in his, said softly, “Piss-poor timing, but I gotta ask you something. Yesterday night while you were sleeping, a house blew up and took somebody with it. The body, if you can call it that, belonged to the father of the man you went to Gatesville for killing. Or least, that's who the '62 Ford parked out front belongs to. Ronald Wayne Pettit. His daughter hadn't seen him since supper last night.”

Her breath sucked in.

“House is a place of business belonging to one Wallace Daughtry, dba Daughtry & Co., Inc. You can see that…” A specter of ill flittered through him, and he shut up, mulling over how to put it. “It's just…there's kinda a collision of circumstances happening here. I know who blew the house. Fire marshal'll tell us how. But Ronald Pettit. Damned if I know why she'd do that for you. I can live without knowing, but it's gonna be awkward around the office.”

She moved her arm down from her face, slipped her hand from Phelan's and laced her fingers tight together. Squeezed eyes, a crease between her brows made her exhaustion clear. A whisper, “You askin' me for a alibi?”

“'Course not. Etherized on a table. Ringed by medical personnel, A-1 alibi.”

Her eyelids smoothed. The black lashes were glittering.

“That old man dead?”

“He's carbon, honey.”

The glitter bunched to water that pearled and the pearls flattened as they rolled down the sides of her face.

Damp from the rain sifted through the screen. Damp from the bayou. Phelan sat vigil until something began to leave
from her. Her chest rose and fell as she drew in breath, let it go, open-mouthed letting it go, drawing breath and passing it out of her, passing it on somewhere and on and farther while he sat and felt it pass.

Gone to sleep
, he thought after a while,
needs sleep and here I am keeping her from it
. He hovered his hand over hers, barely touching.

Delpha's head tilted on the pillow so that she was looking at him full-on. Not a cloud in the gray-blue eyes that met his. The horizon inside them was clear.

“I'll tell you why she did it but…first turn out this light.”

Tom Phelan clicked off the pull chain.

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

A BILLION THANKS to David Baker for being my closest reader, cheerleader, and wise and tireless advisor. A million to Cindy Black for the secretary suggestion, to Kevin Flatowicz-Farmer for asking the genre question, to Deputy Sheriff (ret.) Gene Langston for the title, to eagle-eyed Eddie Elfers, sympathetic Ruth Elfers, and veteran librarian Laurie Macrae for great catches and comments, to my engineer brother for oil rig information, to my fabulous, generous writing groups: Lynda Madison, Shelly Clark Geiser, Suzanne Kehm, Jane Bailey; Barbara Schmitz, Karen Wingett, Neil Harrison, Lin Brummels. Thanks also to Barbara B. Brookner for getting me into her friend's office with the Neches River view and to her kind aunt Deanna Ford for the Cajun translation. I'm grateful to Bobby and John Byrd of Cinco Puntos Press for commissioning me to write the story “Phelan's First Case,” from which this novel grew, to Johnny Temple's Akashic Press for anthologizing the story in their
USA Noir: Best of the Akashic Noir Series
, and—¿cómo no?—to the crafty Lee Byrd, whose skilled, guerilla editing made the book clearer, slimmer, and faster. Deep bow to you all.

In memory of N
ANCY
R
ICE
, 1950 - 2015.

Phenomenal Woman, that was you.