Craig Johnson - Kindness Goes Unpunished

I clutched my towel and pulled my only suit jacket and tie from my bag. “Eventually.”

She took a sip of her beer. “You’re being weird.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.” She smiled.

“Look…” I wondered about what I wanted her looking at. “I’ve got a lot of things going on in my life, and the last thing we should be…”

She cut me off with each word as a statement of its own: “Shut. The. Fuck. Up.” She tried to continue, but the urge to laugh was too much. I waited while she laughed at me. “Jesus, Walt, you’re acting like some fucking prom queen the morning after.”

I stood there in my towel and felt ridiculous.

She got up from the stool and dangled the bottle from her hand like she had on the bridge and walked toward me, slowly. “How about I make it easy for you? We’ll just call it rape. I raped you. There. Do you feel better?” She was very close now, and she smelled like our sex, which she hadn’t tried to cover up. She gave me a long look from toe to head, where she replaced my hat. “And, if you don’t get dressed, I may do it again.”

It’s hard to scamper in a towel.

Vic said she’d meet me at the Academy with Katz and Gowder and had left me to my own devices and the hospital. We had taken the same cab for a while; Vic’s attention stayed out the window as the city rushed by. I kept trying to detect a weirdness in her, but it just wasn’t there. It was quite possible that she had more experience than I did. Since the end of her marriage, she’d been briefly involved with a dentist and had had a ferocious weekend with some rodeo cowboy who’d then showed up at the office and been treated to a reenactment of the Battle of Benevento; Ruby and I had desperately tried to pretend that we weren’t listening.

“I’ve only had sex with six women in my entire life.” It came out before I had a chance to edit it or make any additions, and I said it like I was talking about heart attacks.

She turned her head and looked at me, with a little bit of sadness. “Oh, Walt…”

When I got to the ICU, the head nurse told me they had been trying to call me. Cady had opened her eyes. Michael had been in the room. He was by her bed, standing easily on the one unwounded foot. “How ya doin’, Sheriff?”

I looked at her, but her eyes were closed.

“She had them open for about an hour and a half, and she closed them no more than ten minutes ago.”

I sat down in the chair by the bed and stared at her motionless face, at the ceremonial Cheyenne trappings still surrounding her, and started to cry. I couldn’t stop. All the pent-up emotion of the last week found fissures in my stalwart act and began cracking like ice dropped into hot water. I could feel the strike of tears dripping onto the two-fisted grip of my hands. I wasn’t aware of Michael moving, but I felt his hand on my shoulder. The wretched, cynical husk that had written Cady off and had prepared me to let her go was dying. The transition from malice to relief was quick and, when my eyes could refocus, I noticed that I’d crushed the finger brace.

Michael and the nurse kneeled in front of me, both of them looking at the twisted aluminum wrapped around my broken finger. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

I tried to catch my breath and noticed that my ribs weren’t aching either. I looked past the nurse’s head and could see that Cady had opened her eyes again. I smiled. “Not anymore.”

Rissman had been called; he had left a message that he wanted to talk with me when I arrived. He was trying to keep my attention as I watched Cady’s eyes and counted how long it took her to blink. He said that most comas end with the patients opening their eyes and regaining consciousness, but that 10 percent of those who do fall into the category of Apallic Syndrome and don’t respond to environmental stimulus.

I squeezed Cady’s hand, but she didn’t respond. Her eyes looked into the distance to places I could not see. The color was clear, and the whites as bright as I’d ever seen them.

He said that for her to regain consciousness, both reactivity and perceptivity would have to be present.

I bit my lower lip and could feel the heat returning behind my eyes.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” He looked at the ceiling, the floor, and my left shoulder.

I looked across the bed at him. “She’s going to make it.”

He shook his head. “Please don’t get your hopes too high. Even in the best of circumstances…”

“She’s going to make it.” I sometimes underestimate the vigor of my statements, and I’d imagine it has to do with having to deal with the law on a continual basis. I rarely let emotion get a strong grip on me or have an influence in my responses, but this was different. I’d been waiting so long for hope that I wasn’t letting it slip away. I’d seen what the hopeless approach was like, and I was never going back there again. “She’s going to make it.”

Rissman said that he was ordering some more tests now that she had opened her eyes and that I had at least a few hours. Michael said he’d be happy to stay and wait for Cady while I went to the reception. I tried not to concentrate on the features he shared with Vic.

“This section tells the story of the Autumn Count; it is a legendary buffalo robe inscribed by Crazy Horse that supposedly had the ability to tell the future.” He looked up at us. “I have never heard it mentioned outside the tribal council and certainly never by a white man.” He looked back at the ledger and turned the page. “This is the most comprehensive history of the Notame-ohmeseheestse I have ever read outside of the reservation.” He shook his head. “I would very much like to meet this William White Eyes.”

Katz pulled out a chair and sat down across from Henry, while Gowder leaned against the table with his arms folded. Vic stood beside him. “Welcome to the fucking club.”

The Academy staff was setting up the finishing touches on the reception that was scheduled to open in less than an hour, and it promised to be quite the wingding. The main hall was festooned with billboard-sized enlargements of the Mennonite Collection, as it was now called, and it was a little odd to have a gigantic Lonnie Little Bird looking at me from behind the table where Henry sat. I could almost hear the “um-hmm, yes, it is so” drifting across the marble-floored hall.

“What about page seventy-two?”

He flipped the pages, placed a hand gently in the corner, and held the book open. “It is a record of business dealings, numbers, but there is a code that I do not understand.”

I glanced at Katz, who nodded. “Money laundering accounts.”

“So, this ledger possibly gives us the numbered accounts of Toy Diaz’s operation?” Katz shrugged, probably weighing the evidentiary value of a prosecuting attorney holding up the ledger in a court of law. “But I guess without William White Eyes’ corroboration, these things are pretty much useless?”

Henry looked back at me. “They are incredible works of art.”

I reached over and took the ledger from him. “You’ve been hanging around in museums too long.” I handed the book to Katz, who stacked it on top of the other one. “I guess we need Billy Carlisle.”

The detective dropped his head. “I’ve got a wife and kid who’ve forgotten what I look like.” He scooped up the ledgers, placed them under his arm, and glanced at Gowder. “I’ll head back to the Roundhouse and get Meifert on a search for Carlisle. You?”

“I might hang around.”

I put my hat back on, and we all stood. I made the general announcement. “Cady’s eyes opened.”

The Cheyenne Nation was the first to respond, even if his expression stayed the same. “Of course they have.” He reached out and thumped both paws on my shoulders. “I wondered why you were acting strangely.” I glanced at Vic, who covered her mouth. Henry had followed my look and then added. “We will retire to the hospital after the reception.”