Winter and Night (44 page)

"It wasn't a cop."

"The rain—"

"Fuck the rain, McFall. Macpherson fired because he knew Paul would shoot back and he knew what that would start."

"Why would he do that?" McFall asked.

I looked from Letourneau to Sullivan; neither of them spoke.

"Shit," I said, rubbing my eyes. "There was a girl in Warrenstown who was blackmailing Coach Ryder." I realized how exhausted I was, and how cold. McFall gestured to a young cop across the room, turned back to me. "She knew he deals drugs," I said, "and she wanted him to get ecstasy for her."

McFall shot a look at Sullivan; Sullivan shrugged.

"But the blackmail," I said, "she told him she 'knew about him' but not what she knew. She thought that was clever. She told him a jock she was dating told her."

The young cop from across the room came over, put another cup of coffee in front of me. I looked at him, surprised; McFall nodded his thanks. The coffee was hot and freshly made. I drank almost half of it before I went on.

"She thought he'd have a bad conscience about the drugs— steroids, McFall, for the boys— and get her what she wanted. But he doesn't. He doesn't care who knows. No one in Warrenstown would give a shit. In Warrenstown you could put that on the front page of the paper and people would come up and thank him for helping their boys get big."

I drank more coffee; I was desperate for a cigarette. "He does have a bad conscience, though, about something else. A crime Al Macpherson committed years ago, that Ryder framed another kid for. That might be too much even for Warrenstown to swallow."

Letourneau looked away. Sullivan didn't, but he didn't speak.

I said, "He found out which jock she'd been dating: Gary Russell. The son of one of the only other people in Warrenstown who knew about the details of the old crime, the cover-up, the frame. He thought that's what Gary told her, that that was what she knew. He talked to Macpherson about it. The two of them think I know, too, and Paul, and another Warrenstown kid who had the shit beat out of her the day before yesterday by someone trying to find out what she knows."

"Stacie Phillips?" Sullivan interrupted. "You're telling me one of them beat up Stacie Phillips?"

"Ryder, probably, but you'll never prove it," I said. I saw Sullivan's mouth set into a hard line, but I didn't care. "When the three of us came out together Macpherson must have thought it was Christmas. All he had to do was get a firefight started and the Plaindale PD would take care of the rest. He didn't know," I said to McFall, "what a tight operation you run here. Most small-town departments, trying to deal with something like this, every weapon in that lot would have been emptied, and Gary and I would be dead now, too. But your people are trained better than that. They stopped firing as soon as they could and it wasn't them who fired first."

McFall exchanged a look with Sullivan and Letourneau. "I'll talk to Macpherson again," he said.

"Yeah," I said, "you do that. It'll get you fucking nowhere, but if it makes you feel better, McFall."

"Wait," Sullivan said. "You're saying Gary was Macpherson's target?"

"All of us. Gary first, but Macpherson thinks we all knew."

"If the that were true, why wouldn't he—"

"He will. Put a guard on Gary's room."

Sullivan looked at the other two cops. "Joe can do that as long as Gary's here. But eventually he'll go home."

"Pick up Macpherson before that."

"For what?"

He caught my eyes; I looked away, watched the steam rise from my coffee.

"A twenty-three year old crime," Sullivan said. "Victim who doesn't remember. Witness who may have seen, what, an argument? No physical evidence. Confession and suicide at the time, for Christ's sake. You want me to find a DA who'll indict a guy like Macpherson on that? Where would you suggest I look?"

He was right. Of the whole thing— the rape, the frame, the suicide, even the shots today— the only crime was the rape. New Jersey has no statute of limitations on rape, so technically Macpherson could be prosecuted, even after all this time; but he wouldn't be. He might be willing to see people die to avoid the embarassment of it all coming out, but he wasn't about to be arrested, and he knew it.

"And what about you?" Sullivan said. "A guard on Gary's room, but what about you?"

"I'll take care of myself."

"Don't go near him," said Letourneau.

"What?"

"I think this is crazy, Smith, and I can see it could lead to trouble."

"Lead—"

"Stay away from Macpherson."

I stood. "Yeah," I said. "Because if you catch me near him you'll throw me in the can. Because if you don't, Al Macpherson'll be pissed off, and in Warrenstown, that's a disaster."

I'd walked away then and no one had stopped me. I went outside, had a cigarette. Once I was beyond the doors I wanted to keep going, through the lot, to the sidewalk, onto the suburban streets. I didn't give a damn about the rain, the wind; all I wanted was to move. But I stayed by the door. The media, barred from the hospital, had set up at the edge of the parking lot, and the place was thick with broadcast vans and slicker-wrapped reporters. Stacie Phillips's dream, to be out there with them. Right now I'd have killed the first one who shoved a microphone in my face.

When my cigarette was gone I had another, standing under the hospital canopy, watching the streetlights glitter in the rain that crashed across the cars, the pavement, the hunched-over people hurrying to shelter. It wasn't night, not yet, but the rain made the day dark. Behind the streetlights hung a featureless iron sky, no depth or distance or sense that anything but this violent and lasting storm could ever come out of it. But of course sometime— tonight, tomorrow— the rain would stop. Days would be sunny, either mild or cold, but beautiful; nights would be clear. And then, other storms.

I asked a man arriving with flowers and a stork balloon if the game was over at Hamlin's. It was, he grinned, and though the seniors had won, as expected, the coach called some spectacular new plays for the Warrenstown underclass team, and they came within six. Closer than ever before, he said. A victory for both sides. I thanked him and congratulated him on the new baby. "It's a boy," he said. "Ryan. Eleven pounds, three ounces. Huge. And strong. Helluva kick, already."

"Great," I said. I watched him walk inside, then went back to my cigarette, and the rain.

Twenty-Nine

It was two hours after that that the surgeon came into the waiting room. Four hours altogether from when the ambulances had come screaming in, from when Paul had been pronounced dead in the emergency room and a resident, smiling reassuringly, had moved close to look at my forehead, and Gary had been rushed into surgery. The doctor reported: A bullet had cut through the flesh of Gary's left arm, but that was easily dealt with, nothing serious. But another had shattered his kneecap, ricocheted and damaged the bone below. The orthopedic surgeon was called, and he assembled his team and did what he could. "Although essentially," he said, "really, what I did was stabilize. The reconstruction will have to be done by a specialist. There's some terrific work being done in that field right now, really kind of miraculous." My sister had arrived by then, passing by me with a long look and no words, crossing the room to sit with Scott, speaking softly to him in the waiting hours that followed. The surgeon gave them an encouraging smile and the name of one of the miraculous specialists, promised to call him, discuss Gary's case. Helen, with Scott's arm protectively around her, thanked him.

When the doctor left the room I followed. I had been in and out of the waiting room all afternoon, unable to sit there long with Scott, later with Scott and Helen, unable to trust myself. Lydia had been there, too, sometimes sitting beside me, sometimes pacing, as she does. I had felt Scott's eyes, full of venom, burning through me all afternoon, but he never spoke. Lydia's pacing, though, was more than he could take. Late in the day, he exploded at her to fucking sit down or get out. She stopped, met his eyes, turned and left. I had to leave then, too, or I would have laid Scott out right there.

Lydia and I had gone to the cafeteria then, had coffee and tea, blankly watched McFall still questioning people, and then come back upstairs to wait for Gary. Now we left the room again, after the doctor; we stopped him in the hall.

"I'm the boy's uncle," I said, and the surgeon, a thin man younger than I, said nothing, just nodded and waited. "His parents want the sugar coating; I don't."

"As I said, he's doing well—"

"Will he lose the leg?"

"Oh, good God, no. There's no danger of that."

"Will he walk?"

He gave me a long look. "He's young. There are breakthroughs in rehabilitative medicine all the time. We can do things now that were impossible five years ago. A year, two years from now—"

"He's an athlete. Football, baseball, track."

To that he said nothing. He met my eyes, then turned away, walked down the bright corridor shaking his head.

Across the street from the hospital, neon beer signs glowed in the windows of a bar called the Recovery Room. Lydia and I spent the next hour there, the hour we waited for Gary to be brought from his own recovery room to a place where we could see him. We took the long way around, leaving the hospital by a rear door to avoid the press. As we walked through the cold, sharp rain I said to her, "You don't have to stay."

"Is it easier for you if I do?" she asked. "Or if I leave?"

I didn't know the answer to that, so she stayed.

I had bourbon while Lydia drank more tea. We didn't speak much. She ordered food for us after a while, grilled cheese for her, a burger for me, though I said I wasn't interested. The burger, when it came, smelled surprisingly good, and I ate it, watched the young doctors and nurses, orderlies and lab techs drink and flirt and pretend to themselves and each other that they just had regular jobs like other people, jobs you could leave behind at the end of the day. When the burger was gone I had a second drink, and when that was gone Lydia called the hospital. Folding her cell phone, she said, "He's in room two-oh-three."

I left two twenties on the table, a huge tip, because the waitress did have the kind of job you could leave behind at the end of the day.

Back at the hospital we picked up visitor's passes and headed to Gary's room. A cop sat in the corridor outside. Maybe that meant McFall believed me about Macpherson, or maybe he just wanted his own ass covered in the unlikely event I might be right. As Lydia and I approached we could see the door was open, Helen and Scott sitting by the bed. The cop asked for ID, we showed him some, and he went back to staring at the ceiling.

"I'll wait for you," Lydia said to me softly. "He doesn't know me."

I realized with a shock that that was true: all this time, all this pain, and Lydia and Gary had never even met.

She stayed in the corridor, I entered the room alone. The three of them turned to me. Gary's blue eyes, exhausted though they were, lit when he saw me. Helen blinked; her lip trembled. Scott heaved himself out of his chair.

"Get the fuck out of here," he snarled through clenched teeth. I couldn't speak, but I didn't move.

"Dad?" Gary's voice was weak. I looked at him; Scott's eyes stayed on me. "Dad? Can I just talk to Uncle Bill a minute?"

"I don't want him here." Scott did not look at his son. "Christ," he said to me, "you've been drinking. I can smell it on you."

I still said nothing, focused on the hot, tight place inside me, focused on forcing the fire to stay locked there.

"Just for a minute?" Gary said.

Helen stood, silently took Scott's hand, looked in his eyes. Color rose in his face, his own fire. "All right," he finally said, in a voice like sandpaper. "A minute." He moved aside so I could reach the bed.

"Alone?" said Gary.

"Goddamn—" Scott began, but Helen squeezed his hand again. I didn't know how far this would go, didn't have any sense at all of what I was prepared to do. All sound vanished, all sights except Scott's burning eyes.

Then he turned and left the room. Helen, with a look at me I had to turn away from, followed, and I was alone with Gary.

I sat in the chair my sister had been in, by the side of the bed.

"You okay?" Gary asked, his eyes taking in the bandage on my forehead.

"I'm fine," I said.

"I fucked up, huh?" He looked small to me, young.

"No," I said. "You did the right thing. The stand-up thing."

"I should have told you. What I needed to do."

"It might have come out the same."

"Paul's dead."

"He wanted to die."

"No, he didn't." He opened his eyes wider, anxious to correct me. "He only wanted things not to be the way they were, anymore."

I nodded. We were silent for a while, together. Gary's left arm was bandaged near the shoulder, where the bullet had cut through. An intravenous drip was needled into his other arm. He gestured to his right leg, immobile inside a thick cast under the blanket. He began to speak, stopped, swallowed, started again. "It's bad, huh?"

"Yes."

"Mom and Dad, they say everything'll be okay, but I can tell it's real bad."

"It's bad, Gary."

He tried a grin. "Out for the season, huh?"

I couldn't answer.

"Shit," he said, looked away. "Worse than that?"

"Yes." My voice was a whisper.

"Are they gonna— are they gonna cut it off?"

"No."

"Okay," he said, and he was whispering too. "Okay, that's good then."

I looked at him; his eyes were damp. He saw me see that, raised a quick hand, wiped the tears away.

I stood, bent by the bed, put an arm around him. It was an awkward embrace, because of the needle and the bandage, because of the cast, because we were both men, because of so many things.

His tears didn't last long. When his hold loosened, so did mine. I gave him a damp cloth for his face, took it from him when he was through.

"I'd better go," I said. "Your mother…"

He nodded. "Uncle Bill?" he said rapidly, as I turned.