Jason Pinter - The Fury

"You're telling me. Remember, I knew that mother of his."

I didn't have the heart to tell him that unless Helen

Pinter, Jason – Henry Parker 04

The Fury (2009)

Gaines was a junkie back in Bend, she'd only gotten worse. Two peas in a pod, her and James Parker.

I filled him in on what we did know. About Helen and Beth-Ann Downing. About Rose Keller, and the

Vinnie brigade.

"We need to know more about the night you saw them," I said. "We know Helen wanted money from you, and she told you it was for rehab, but I don't think that's the case. Think about your conversation with

Helen. Specific words. Gestures. Clues that might give us a lead as to where the money would actually be going, or what was running through Helen's mind when you saw her."

He rubbed his head, either thinking very hard or working very hard not to think. "Henry, it was a rough night. I remember the big things. The gun, this woman

I hadn't seen in years looking like she was hopped up on something."

"Like what?"

"I don't know, I'm not a doctor. But her eyes were red as all hell and she had a bad cough. That girl was not in good shape."

I looked at Amanda. That would jibe with the pos sibility that Helen was still using.

"Anything else?" I asked.

He tapped his thumb against his cheek, tongue flicking against his upper lip. "One thing seemed strange," he said. "Helen."

"You mean besides the jitters and the gun? What about her?"

"She was a mess, but she was scared, too," my father said. "And not of me. Kept looking around, like someone could burst through the door at any moment.

I could tell from her eyes something was wrong. Now, does that make sense? She wants to check her son into rehab, seems to me that'd be a cause to have hope, you know, these two chuckleheads finally getting their act together. But Helen wasn't like that. When she didn't think I was going to give her the money, she just… freaked out."

"Maybe that's why she took the gun out," Amanda said. "She was worried that if she didn't get the money from you something terrible was going to happen."

"What?" my father asked.

"I don't know, but you're right about her being scared. Granted, I've never been to rehab, but you'd think fright isn't the number-one emotion running through a mother's head when helping her son. Unless she was scared of you. Is that possible?"

"Oh, she was scared of me at the end of the night,

I'll say that, but this was there when I got to the apart ment. Something else scared Helen."

Amanda said, "I'd be surprised if what scared Helen didn't kill her son."

We both looked at her, knowing she was on the money.

Turning back to my father, I said, "Please, Dad, think hard. Did she say anything, anything at all that could give you a clue as to what she was afraid of?"

My father raised his head, his eyes red. His breath ing grew labored. Immediately I recoiled and Amanda looked at me. I could see my father's teeth, bared through his lips. I'd seen this before. It was rage boiling inside him, ready to explode. It was how he would get when my mother or I upset him. It was how he looked before a rampage, before he made us too scared to live in our own home. It was the rage and confusion of a man who couldn't do anything to stop his world from spinning on an already tilted axis. So all he could do was force that energy outward onto the people closest to him.

I watched this from across the table as he simmered for several minutes. Then the rage subsided, his breath ing returning to normal. He realized there was nowhere for the rage to go here. No outlet for it. He was an animal surrounded by barbed wire.

I finally realized that what it took to subdue my father was not him seeing the pain he caused others, but him seeing the pain he could cause himself.

"There was a notepad," he finally said quietly. "At one point Helen went to the bathroom. I took a look around the apartment, just curious. So I see this lined pad she must have just been writing in."

"What was on it?" I said.

"First thing she wrote, weird as hell, was 'Mexico' and 'Europe.'"

"Any specific country in Europe?"

"No, just Europe."

"Maybe those were rehab spots Helen had in mind.

Cheaper ones since she couldn't afford the tony places in the States. What else?"

"Next she wrote '$50,000,' with a question mark after it."

"Thirty years' back child support," Amanda said.

"That could add up to fifty grand. Maybe that's what the number represented."

"The last word she wrote was-" my father thought for a moment "-fury."

"Fury?"

"It was capitalized, like a name. And she underlined it. A few times. With another question mark at the end."

"We can guess what the other words represented," I said. "But what does the 'Fury' mean?" I asked the question, but a small chime went off in my subcon scious. Like I'd heard the word before. And not in relation to its standard usage. Something more specific.

But I couldn't conjure up just what it was.

"What if," Amanda said, "they had nothing do to with rehab facilities or resorts. What if Stephen and

Helen were trying to get away from something?"

"Like what?" my father asked.

"I don't know, but that kind of money seems kind of high for a rehab joint, especially when he could probably just check himself into detox. It would, though, be just enough money if you wanted to disap pear."

"Fifty grand might get you somewhere," I said, "but is it enough to start a new life?"

"Maybe not," she said. "But it might be enough to survive."

We arrived back home feeling like we'd taken a few too many punches to the head. So many thoughts and ideas were swimming around in there-mixed in with the fear and apprehension of what my father was going through-that I wished we could just curl up in bed, fall asleep for a month or two and wake up with everything back to normal.

Even if we did manage to prove that my father didn't kill Stephen, James Parker would go right back to Bend where he would reenter that joke of a life. My mother hadn't even come because he refused to let her. He wouldn't be seen like this. Chained. Weak. And knowing my mother, she wouldn't question it.

I wondered if it was worth it. Saving him. Maybe the universe was a little more right with James Parker in jail.

Maybe I was saving a man who didn't deserve to be saved.

Yet here I was, doing what needed to be done. Trying to find the proof that would free him. I wondered if he would do the same for me. The answer was fairly obvious.

I thought about the money Helen Gaines had asked for. Amanda was right. If Stephen's aim was to check into rehab, fifty grand was overkill. It could have been for more drugs, I supposed, but if the two of them had subsisted for nearly thirty years to this point, it didn't make sense that they suddenly needed a lump sum to sate their cravings.

From what it seemed like, the dealers I'd seen the other day had more than enough business to keep them going. True, on the surface the ones I saw looked far more put together than my brother. Scott Callahan and

Kyle Evans barely looked like they touched the stuff.

What was the old drug dealer's maxim-never get high on your own supply?

These two, as well as their well-heeled cohorts, looked as if they were in this game to make as much money as possible. With the exception of the kid whose briefcase now sat in my living room, they all looked like red-meat alpha males, the kind of guys who would normally be braying on the floor of the stock exchange rather than riding the subway to dole out dime bags.

Thing is, the cocaine in the briefcase made it clear that not all of their scores were small-time. Any company built its business on a combination of small revenue streams mixed with larger ones. The larger ones took more effort and paid higher dividends, but the smaller ones tended to be the most dependable, the ones that would always be there.