David Dun - Overfall

“And what does that tell us?”

“Well, people like that are willing to break the law in big ways, and you really hate to find out that you are dealing with them. They tend to be dangerous.”

“So what do we do?”

“We try to be careful and not get shot.”

“I need to tell you something,” she said. “I need to tell you how I got to where I am today.”

“Certainly, if you’ve waited this long, now would be a good time to tell me.”

“I had some resentment toward my father.”

“Alleged perfection is always a real bad sign.”

“When I was about nine I walked in on my mom and dad making love. Let’s just say it was graphic and not exactly conventional sex. As an adult I have no problem with it at all. In fact as an adult I would have laughed. In fact after my dad’s death my mom and I worked up the nerve to talk about it and we both laughed. But at nine it was a little bizarre. At the time it happened, my mother freaked, which probably didn’t help.

“After that day my dad never had a serious conversation with me except once; it was a rainy day under the tree in the front yard. He put his arm around me and he told me he loved me. That simple gesture and those few words were the only serious communications that I received right up until the day he died.

“All the rest of the time he only joked. Just smiley and friendly but never close, never truly warm. Never hugged me or touched me except to pat me on the head. It was like I knew something and he couldn’t wash it out of my mind. So I had leprosy or something.

“This does all relate to my brother but you have to be patient. When I was twenty my brother was married to Sydney. One day she comes over to the apartment. It was Saturday and I was cleaning up my room and trying to clean up the rest of the apartment that I shared with two other girls. It’s kind of my ritual.

“About midmorning Sydney was ushered in by a roommate. Sydney’s makeup had been running and she looked bad. We had this conversation. ‘Jason is seeing another woman,’ she said. She tells me she found jewelry under their bed. After being with her mother on a visit, Sydney came home to discover the jewelry. I pointed out that it didn’t prove anything, but at the same time I had this sinking feeling. And I hate to say it, but burned into my brain was the idea that my dad was, you know, oversexed or something. It was crazy, but I thought, oh, yeah, a chip off the old block. Then she tells me she found cocaine in his pants. Grady is only three and he was watching her and I freak out.

“Sydney made up an excuse to leave town, but hid her car and came to my place. Right in the middle of school and work when I had things to do fourteen hours a day, I faked an illness and we took turns watching Grady and following Jason.

“At that time part of Jason’s work was in conjunction with a molecular biology lab associated with the university. Often he went to the lab for conferences although his regular office was at the university. On a beautiful Saturday afternoon I was following Jason when he walked to the lab but did not go in. Outside he met a young woman who looked like a student. I figured a graduate student. Although the woman was no knockout, she was slim and not bad-looking.

“Scared to death he’d catch me, but determined, I followed them to a condominium. They walked into the complex and with all the corners, it was hard to follow. Near the swimming pool they disappeared. I was pretty sure they must have gone inside one of the units fronting the pool, but couldn’t be positive. It proved nothing, but two days later Sydney reported that Jason had gone to the condo with a woman matching the description and hadn’t come out for two hours.

“Thereafter Sydney showed up at my apartment with a bruised face, the result, she said, of a fight with Jason. She had confronted him. There was some counseling, but a divorce followed and I took Sydney’s side. I was convinced that Jason was a cocaine-using wife-beating two-timer. There was a divorce and then we had the custody battle. Jason’s money paid for both sides. It got very ugly and I was desperate to win. It had almost become my fight; I was pushing Sydney.

“God, I hate to say it but I saw my dad in Jason and I just fought like a junkyard dog. Even Sydney, I think, was feeling driven by me. I remembered every bad thing about Jason that I could, and I used whatever charm I had on that judge and we beat Jason until he gave up. I never personally asked him about the coke or the girl or the beating. In court he said it wasn’t true and I just knew he was a lying SOB. Once he tried to call me in the middle of it all, and he tried to stop me on the sidewalk. Both times I told him to go to hell. Now for the really ugly part.

“After Jason went to France he called me. I had just gotten my first really big checks from User Friendly. I had money. And this is the part I really hate myself for…” She choked but composed herself.

Sam was smart enough not to comment. He just waited in silence.

She cleared her throat. “Anyway, he calls and says that he’s having some mental issues. And I just told him to quit snorting coke and he’d feel better. Then I hung up. Right after that he got treatment of some sort, from Chellis Labs, and then went off to Canada and I never heard from him again. But his call really bothered me. I think I waited a week and then I went off to see Sydney in California. By this time I was mostly living in Manhattan, although I was spending a lot of time in LA so that I could be with Grady. This was back when Grady liked me.

“Anyway, I talked with Sydney and she was kind of ticked that I was bringing it all back up again. And she started reminding me that we had Grady and that was the important thing. She reminded me that we had fought for Grady. Why did we have to rehash the past? So really my questions about the coke and her story about the beating went unanswered except in the most general way.

“Then things went along fine for a while. At the ripe old age of fifteen Grady got her first boyfriend. She thought it was serious. Sydney and I were determined that Grady was too young, and she was, and we determined that we were going to break it up, and we did. Grady has the strongest will of any child I have ever known. The apple of my eye, my little honey, turned into a tigress. Since she didn’t want to hate her mother, she sent it all my way. Every ounce of it.

“Soon thereafter, when Grady was sixteen, Sydney was in a really bad car accident with a drunk who ran an intersection. We thought she might die, but she didn’t. I went to see her when she was really bad, and she begged my forgiveness and told me she had lied about Jason. He had been talking about moving to France and it scared her. She knew there would be a divorce and was desperate to get Grady.

“While Sydney was convalescing, Grady begged her mother to place her with her Aunt Lynn. Lynn was what Grady wanted because Lynn worked, wanted the money that went with keeping Grady, and meant well, but had no time. So Grady lived as though she were eighteen when she was sixteen. And I lost her. It broke my heart, but I understood Sydney giving in to Grady.

“With Sydney’s revelation I went after my brother and began visiting regularly and here we are today.”

“Quite a story,” Sam said.

“You’re not going to go over how stupid I was, are you?”

“Lectures? Nope. I’m the guy who got his son killed.”

For one of the first times in her life, Grady wasn’t sure what she should do. A full day and night had passed since she had spoken with Guy. Her trainers had announced a twenty-minute break, during which Grady was to pee, think, and, as Spring put it, find her center of gravity. Spring, like Sam, was a force to be reckoned with.