The Midnight Road (28 page)

“Was anyone hurt?”

“No. So let’s forget about that for now.”

Flynn wanted to say, Hey, you brought it up, but he let it ride. “He threw something out into the water.”

“Any idea what?”

“Black and small. Had some weight to it because it got some distance.”

“How far out?”

“Forty feet?”

“It’s gone forever.”

“I know. I think maybe it was a cell phone.”

“Start at the beginning.”

Flynn did but for some reason left Emma Waltz out of the story. The urge to protect her hadn’t lessened at all, and when he let his mind roll over he could still feel her in his arms, her compact warm solidity beneath him on the floor. He had to find her.

He cleared his throat and said how he’d opened his front door and was nearly blasted by someone at the far end of the parking lot. Three shots.

Raidin called someone over to go check Flynn’s apartment and pull the slugs out of the floor.

Maybe they were close enough now, with another body between them, to ask questions and get real replies. To talk about wives and kids. Fear and heartache. For that grudging respect to possibly burgeon into something else. A friendship, a brotherhood. Raidin was maybe five years younger than Flynn but could be the older brother he needed, the father he’d been missing.

Flynn sipped the coffee. It was cold, and the shakes started to take over. The black nerve throbbed in time with them. After all of this Flynn suddenly felt chilly. He leaned back and sagged against the cement wall, feeling himself becoming at least half as hard and frozen as the stone.

He slid down to a sitting position, very aware of the coffee, not wanting to spill it. Raidin stamped forward and put his strong hands on the back of Flynn’s neck and pressed his head down. Flynn was having trouble breathing but took the time to set the cup on the floor near him. Raidin said, “You’ll be all right in a minute. Breathe deeply. Through your nose.”

He did but it wasn’t helping at all. Colorful lights pulsed and coiled at the edges of his vision. Someone brought a blanket and threw it over Flynn’s shoulders. Raidin said, “When you can stand we’ll go talk in one of the cruisers.”

“No,” Flynn said, the light-headedness beginning to ease. “It’s okay now. Help me up.”

Raidin got him by the elbows and lifted. Flynn was abruptly on his feet, staring into the man’s eyes, the cop searching him, him searching the cop. Both of them probing deeper.

“Okay,” Flynn said.

“Did you talk with him before he shot himself?”

“Yeah.”

“What did he say?”

Flynn was still having trouble piecing it together. “He said I let his secret loose.”

“What secret?”

“He liked to let people die. And someone else knew it. He said he met someone as sick as he was, sicker than he was. Maybe the one who took the Goat. He said the guy noticed his hands, saw it in his eyes.”

“What about his eyes?”

“He said he let them go, just because he felt like it. Dozens of people over the years. He let them die.”

“Son of a bitch.”

Flynn lit a cigarette. “Except for Angela. He said he loved her enough to want to kill her.”

“I suppose it made sense to him. And this is the guy who saved your life.”

“Yeah, he said he didn’t want to be brought back.”

“No chance of that.” Raidin thought about it all, his hard small pointed body like a knife held in a talented hand. “Who’s he protecting?”

“I’m not sure that’s the way it was.”

“What do you mean?”

“He seemed to be angry. He called the other guy the Devil. Said the Devil talked to him with his own voice, his own words. Said he liked listening.”

“Another fucking nut.”

“Sure.”

Tugging the fedora down, not bothering to wear it at a hip rakish angle, Raidin walked back to the others who were still taking photos. Flynn stuck his head out of the stand and saw the M.E.’s wagon parked next to the Charger.

They were getting ready to pack the little god away soon.

“His name was Petersen,” Raidin told him. “Wayne Petersen.”

“I asked him but he wouldn’t tell me,” Flynn said. “It’s not over yet.”

“Perhaps he was working with his day job partner. EMT’s shift in pairs. We’re checking on that now. I’ve covered a similar situation before. A male nurse who started poisoning his patients over at St. John’s. He believed he was easing the pain of those who were suffering. Sometimes they pick up a god complex and can’t wait to exert the power of death.”

Flynn tried to see it. The guy shushing him, telling him to quiet down. Telling Flynn he was the luckiest son of a bitch he’d ever heard about. Saying how Flynn had angels watching over him they never taught the kids about in St. Vincent’s.

“I want my gun back.”

“We have to check it.”

Again with the checking.

“You could sniff it and know it wasn’t fired.”

“We still need to check.”

A uniformed cop stepped into the snack stand to draw Raidin aside and whisper in his ear, eyeing Flynn but not in an intimidating way. They still thought he’d probably capped the guy. Chased him down the Southern State heading the wrong way in order to punch his ticket out on the sand. It was a pretty good story, they liked it.

Flynn lit another cigarette and waited in the corner. The signs were making him hungry. Hot dogs. Hamburgers. Twenty flavors of ice cream. French fries. Nachos with fresh melted cheese. Pretzels. His father used to go in for the pretzels, the giant salty ones, eating about half of one before he started to tug off small wads to give to Flynn and his mother. His mother would chew heavily, absently, with a distant look in her eyes, waiting for the old man to start mixing it up with the lifeguards. On a good day it wouldn’t happen until late afternoon, just before they were ready to leave anyway. It was like his father couldn’t go back home without puffing his chest out just enough to give him a reason to feel tough.

They were breaking down the lean-to. The body was gone. Flynn could tell already that Raidin was getting bad news. If they’d tagged the partner, everybody would be smiling and flexing their muscles, running for their cruisers. The uniform cop slipped off.

“It wasn’t the partner,” Raidin said. “That guy’s name is Bucky Ford. Have you ever heard of him?”

“No.”

“He’s working today. Less than an hour ago he saved an elderly man who’d slipped on ice in St. James and given himself a concussion. He has a new partner. Petersen was let go almost four weeks ago.”

And he’d taken his zap paddles with him. “Why?”

“He started missing work, screwing up on the diagnoses at the emergency scenes, seemed distracted. They told him to take a vacation. He never came back from it.”

“It started going downhill for him a few days after he saved my life.” Flynn nodded, feeling the answer closing in on him, just not quickly enough. “Something happened to him. Something bent him.” Perhaps Bragg had made contact, threatened him, forced him to become a part of this. If there was a Bragg, if the colonel wasn’t dead in a swamp somewhere.

Or maybe Petersen had somehow gone so far out onto the midnight road trying to save Flynn that he’d gotten himself stuck on it.

“The rifle’s ten years old and was registered to a sometime second-story thief and bank robber named Leo Coleman. Have you ever heard of him?”

“No.”

“He’s got a few priors, a couple of convictions, went down hard this last time and he’s been in the can the last seven years.”

“I don’t know him.”

“Probably sold it a long time ago to some idiot crony who didn’t know enough not to buy a piece off someone who pulled jobs with it.”

“Was Coleman ever hurt bad?”

“Why?”

“Maybe he fell off a roof once and Petersen took him to the hospital and stole the rifle along the way.”

Frowning, Raidin said, “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know. I’m just trying to figure where he keeps crossing paths with all these people. It’s got to be in the back of his ambulance. That might be how he knew Angela Soto. You said she OD’ed a couple of times. He must’ve been the one who caught the call. Saved her life and figured he owned it, could use it or end it whenever he liked.”

“We’re checking into it.”

“Sure.”

Raidin kept working it. “What secret of his do you know?”

“I have no idea.”

“Yes, you do, you’re just not aware of it.”

“Same goddamn thing.”

Another expansive moment settled around Flynn, the sense that the past and the present were colliding and sluicing toward a near future full of significance. Flynn didn’t want to let the feeling go even though it left him vulnerable.

His life held a little more meaning in this minute than it had the minute before. The complexity of design tipped its hand and he could almost see the fates working behind the scenes, measuring out the length of his life, tying knots where he was meant to interact with others.

Raidin took him by the shoulder and said, “You’re still in shock after that insane ride and all the rest of it. You need to see a psychiatrist, you know that?”

“I know that—”

“You’re breathing too shallowly.”

“Chest hurts a little—”

“Try to stay calm. I’m calling for a medic.”

“I’m just—it’s just that—”

“Try to relax. When was the last time you ate?”

“I don’t know.”

“You look like shit.”

“You never answered me. Are you married? Do you have children?”

Raidin gave him a look that was a mixture of disappointment, anger and possibly even fear. Raidin walked back out into the blizzard, another faceless figure among other eddying figures to soon be swallowed by the snow and the endless cries of the ocean.

No medic ever showed but in five minutes Jessie Gray turned up. Other reporters were out there too, trying to stay warm in the parking lot, but Jessie slipped right in.

She came over and gave him a hard kiss, one filled with a misunderstood passion. Maybe as a show of thanks for constantly giving her something to do with her days. It kept her from watching the daytime shrink shows. She drew back and said, “Jesus Christ, you’re cold. Your lips are blue.” She lifted the blanket and drew it over his head, started to rub his hair with it. Ice crystals crackled and dropped to his shoulders. “You’re freezing. My God, we need to get you out of here.”

“I think I’ll be okay.”

“You’ll get hypothermia.” She took off her gloves and rubbed his face with her hands. It felt good. He smiled and knew he probably looked a little goofy.

“Thank you,” he said.

“I do care about you, you know.”

He lit another cigarette and let it hang. Everyone was strong but him. Here he was thinking of hot dogs and his dead father and sand castles, nearly passing out. He still had a way to go until this thing was through, and it was going to be tough. Something was twisting inside him, a piece of the puzzle sparking at the back of his brain. It was going to set fire soon. He had to be ready for it.

She looked into his eyes and said, “What’s the matter?”

“I’m wondering where we fit into each other’s personal journeys.”

“It’s okay if you don’t like me.”

“You’re quick to say those kinds of things. Why are you so fast on that draw?”

“I told you already.”

“Tell me again.”

“I know I drive men crazy, the ones I’m interested in.”

“Maybe you drive them crazy because you’re not really interested in them at all.”

It stopped her. She thought about it, and it was obvious she didn’t want to. She had an interview to run, an article to write. She was rubbing the ice off him. She smiled and then sort of grimaced.

“What do you want from me?” she asked.

He thought about what a loaded question that could really be. The two of them in bed, the feel of her action and edge beside him. Her dark night demands, her willingness to impress. The way she often stared at him like a man of substance. Other times she gave him a glance that made it seem like she couldn’t see his face anymore beneath the columns of ink. Her honesty, her in-your-face attitude. He liked it, he wanted it, and he was shamed by it. He hadn’t even given her a chance. His mind had been set to disregard her from the beginning, even before she could ruin it herself. He cared too much about his gray hair. Christ, what a fuck-up. He thought of Emma Waltz and—

There it was.

He remembered where he’d seen the Goat before.

And he knew where the rifle had come from.

He stared over at Raidin, the man’s fedora covered in white, the black raincoat snapping in the wind. He even took a step in that direction before the nerve burning inside him urged him to handle the next scene by himself.