T Parker - The Renegades

Glances all around, then Robles sat back in his wheeled leather chair. “Tell me, did Draper indicate that his status as a reserve was a part of this profitable side job?”

“When he recruited me he said the badge and gun would open doors for me that I hadn’t even known were there. He implied that he wasn’t talking about legitimate doors within law enforcement, sir.”

“Why do you think Laws was involved?”

“Draper talked about him a lot. You know how he sounded when he talked about Terry Laws? Regretful. Like he regretted what had happened to Terry but it was somehow necessary. I got the very strange feeling that he was recruiting me to the department to somehow replace Terry. That may be way off. But it’s the feeling I got from Draper.”

In the silence that followed Hood formed a deeper appreciation of Bradley Jones’s intelligence and bearing, and a deeper suspicion of his stories.

“Gentlemen, I want to tell you one more thing. I could never tell Coleman Draper this because I never fully trusted him. But I can tell this to all of you-I want to join this department. I want to be one of you. I’ve got about a year before I can apply and I’ll spend that time in college, and in the Sheriff’s Cadets Program. I’ve got twenty-ten vision, I can run the sixty fast as anyone in your department, I can press my weight, and I’ve got an IQ high enough to embarrass me but it doesn’t. It’s all yours. Put me to the test.”

Another silence. Then Robles leaned forward and shook his head. “It’s not up to any of us whether you make it into the academy or not. It’s strictly merit.”

“Fine,” said Bradley. “I understand that. But I want you to understand this: I want what you have. I’m engaged to a beautiful woman I don’t deserve. I’m going to give her the life she deserves. I’m going to give her love and loyalty and a family. I know some of you think I took vengeance on Kick, but I didn’t and I’ve proven it. So far as this idea of someone other than Hood shooting Coleman Draper, well, you got the wrong guy. I can’t explain it and I’m not going to try.”

Bradley lifted his leather duster from the sofa and swung it on and walked out.

Hood drove up the highway in the morning, headed north through the Antelope Valley California Poppy Preserve. The wet winter was a week over and the hills were carpeted with flowers, miles and miles of them, eye-shudderingly bright, rippling in the breeze.

Ariel Reed sat beside him in the Camaro, fiddling with the CD player. She had listened to one of Erin McKenna’s nightclub recordings twice by then, and Hood was betting that she was going to play it again. He had seen that Ariel tended to do things over and over. Sure enough, the first song pounded to life again as they sped through the flowers.

Later they parked and Hood got the basket and blanket from the trunk. They hiked up over a rise, then down into a swale and along a dry creek bed and into a valley formed by two long hills, the flanks of which shivered with orange poppies.

They walked until the road was far behind them. A sudden surprising silence rose up to meet them. Hood felt small but not unimportant. He spread the blanket on a flowerless spot and they sat under a sky so blue it stretched credibility.

Hood poured two powerful margaritas over ice. They toasted and Ariel drained hers in one swallow, set the glass back in the basket, then kicked off her sandals. She lay back and hiked up her dress to get the sun on her legs. She spread one arm out on the blanket and shaded her eyes with the other.

“I feel like a lizard.”

“In a yellow dress.”

“In nature, color has a purpose. I might attract a mate.”

“You have.”

“Can you do some push-ups for me?”

Instead of push-ups Hood took off his shirt and lay faceup beside her, but not too close. He rested the margarita glass squarely over his navel. He thought of Bradley, and the choices facing him in the next few years, and which way he would go. He wondered if the Bulldogs might take him back, or if he should stay with Warren in IA. Then he drifted. It was easy to drift. No feeling like the sun on your skin, he thought. Even through his eyelids it was bright.

Hood thought briefly of the dogs he’d had when he was a boy. Then of riding horses and playing tennis. All of this past seemed to play forward logically and in a necessary way, as a prelude to the here and now. To him, these were good memories of good things. He turned his head and peeked at Ariel sprawled carelessly on the blanket nearby. He couldn’t believe his good fortune in getting her out here, though all he’d had to do was ask. She’d told him once that she was wound as tight as a golf ball and Hood had seen this to be true. Her brain fired so fast her mouth had trouble keeping up. He had hardly understood her when she told him that the DA had dropped the charges on Eichrodt-all he heard was a jumble of words. But now, that version of Ariel was gone, replaced by someone unwound and happily reptilian.

“I know you’re looking at me,” she says.

“Hard not to.”

“Quiet is an actual thing, not an absence.”

“Another margarita and you could become one with it.”

“I have no sunscreen on. My skin is a different kind of warm. My vision is hopping with little dark flecks that seem to move on their own.”

“My sister called them eye skippers. Like a water skipper but-”

“Give me a kiss like that one up in the hills.”

Hood downed the drink and tossed the glass and rose to one elbow. He looked into her eyes to see a gloriously alien creature. The bullet wound hurt but his heart felt whole. The blanket was big enough to keep them in and the world out.