T. Parker - Iron River

We ride the elevator with her head on my shoulder. I pretty much hold her up. I get her to the penthouse couch and change the bed-sheets. When I come back to the living room, she’s curled up, breathing fast. Then she starts in with those high-pitched moans that flutter on the ends, and I shoulder her up and to the bathroom and lay her gently on the cool marble floor and get some good hot water going in the shower.

I shut the door and wait outside. A few minutes later, I hear her banging around. Then she gets sick. That takes a while but there’s still something feminine, almost dainty about it. Then the shower door slides open and shut. She sighs hugely. She mutters. Nearly an hour later, I’m sitting in the living room and I hear the bathroom door open and the meaty pad of bare feet on hardwood. Then the bedroom door shuts.

I hustle downstairs to the range and collect the pretzels. Back in my office, I make myself a drink and set up the sleeper couch. I eat and drink on the foldout bed and read Winston Churchill’s The Gathering Storm then watch some true crime reruns on TV. When the show is over I read until late, but even with lights out I can’t get to sleep.

I smile in the dark and I know why I can’t sleep. I’ve got a nine-hundred-thousand-dollar deal working downstairs and the only woman I’ve ever dreamed of asleep in my bed a hundred feet away.

This is the happiest night of my life, so far, and I want it to last.

Hood introduced himself to Owens Finnegan through the security screen door of her El Centro home. He held up his shield wallet and said her father had asked him to look in on her. He couldn’t see her through the small perforations in the steel. Her voice was pleasant and soft.

“Dad’s okay?”

“He’s in the hospital in Buenavista.”

“Please come in.”

She was on the tall side and slender, just as her father had said. Her hair was brown and wavy and cut above the shoulders, with bangs almost to her eyebrows. Her eyes were light gray and calm. She wore a crisp blue pin-striped dress shirt over a pair of jeans and she was barefoot, with a silver or stainless steel chain around one ankle. There was a pearl on each ear. Her skin was pale. She was beautiful and she had neither the air nor the appearance of joy.

The living room was small and had two director’s chairs with blue canvas seats and backs facing the door. There was no other furniture and no pictures hung or plants growing. There were half a dozen cardboard boxes against one wall. The carpet was dark green and old.

“Just moving in?” asked Hood.

“I’ve been here two weeks. I don’t have a lot.”

“Do you move around?”

“When it’s time. I’d offer you coffee, but I don’t have any. There is water.”

“Please.”

Hood looked around the barren room and listened to the water running in the kitchen. She came back with two cups, and when she handed him one, he saw inside her shirt cuff the end of a scar that wrapped out of sight beneath her wrist. The cups were foam and the water was room temperature.

She regarded the room. “I dislike confined spaces. There’s a picnic table in the backyard and it’s in the shade this time of day. We can sit out there.”

The lawn was a stubble of tan crabgrass, but a peppertree shaded the table and benches. Hood sat across from her and told her what had happened to her father, and how he was doing now at Imperial Mercy, and how they had found ninety thousand dollars in cash in a tool chest in his truck.

She nodded as if she had heard all this before. “Did he tell you the bathroom products story or the wealthy family from Napa County story?”

“Bathroom products.”

“There are other stories, too.”

“Any of them true?”

“Everything he says is partially true. You haven’t really seen him, have you-his face as he speaks to you, I mean.”

“No. His whole head is wrapped up.”

“Well, to understand my father, you have to see him. I learned to watch his face as he talked to me. When you do that, something about him slowly becomes evident. It can take quite a while to realize it.”

“And what’s that?”

“He’s insane.”

Hood considered. He had once browsed the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and been impressed by the sheer number of them, and the way they were classified and differentiated. He thought again of his sister, whose sanity seemed to be dwindling until her brain tumor was discovered, and how quickly her sanity was salvaged when the tumor was removed. He thought of the bullet taken from behind Mike Finnegan’s cheek and wondered if it could have caused mental disturbances.

“What’s his diagnosis?”

“Paranoid schizophrenia. He’s been treated for it most of his adult life.”

“In institutions?”

“Occasionally. He’s not a danger to himself or others. No violence.”

“Does he take medications?”

“I truly don’t know. He’s always been sensitive and secretive about his condition.”

“What can you tell me about the bullet in his head?”

In the outdoor sunlight, the gray of her eyes looked like polished nickel, and Hood had never seen eyes of this color.

“You said he was hit by a car,” said Owens.

“They found a bullet lodged behind his cheekbone, below his left eye. They said it looked like it had been there quite a while.”

“He never told me he was shot. That’s Dad for you.”

“That’s just a little hard to believe, Ms. Finnegan.”

“You don’t know how many things about my father are hard to believe, Deputy Hood.”

“He must have a facial scar.”

“There is a small scar below his cheek. But he always said it was caused by a boyhood injury in the vineyard in Napa.”

“Did your father and mother get along?”

“She died of a heart attack not long after I was born. My father remembers her fondly. He loved her.”

“Did he ever take you to her grave?”

“She was cremated and scattered in the Pacific.”

“What was her name?”

“Bernice.”

She looked away and Hood found her scar, a raised and jagged thing lying in wait inside the buttoned cuff.

“Where did they get the name Owens?”

“Family. Way back.”

“Where’d the ninety grand come from?”

“I don’t know. I would ask him, then believe ten percent of what he says. As a starting point. I don’t mean to be facetious or dismissive of him. But I do find it necessary to keep some distance between us. Madness is contagious. Truly it can be.”

Hood looked out at the small backyard. There was a concrete-block wall on three sides, and the tree was the only living thing in the yard. Far overhead, three vultures circled perfectly like a baby’s mobile hung high in the blue.

“So you pack up and leave when you need to,” said Hood. “That’s the distance you’re talking about?”

She nodded.

“Then I can tell him that you’re all right and that you will be in contact with him when you’re ready?”

“Yes.”

“He asked me to tell you that you are loved beyond-”

“My wildest dreams. Beyond them. He’s been telling me that since I was a little girl.”

Hood’s turn to nod now and he saw the faint lines of a smile at the edges of Owens Finnegan’s mouth, then they were gone.

“Can you give me the name of his doctor?”

“He doesn’t refer to them by name. He rarely refers to them at all. He’s ashamed of his illness.”

“How does he support himself?”

“He does have the bathroom products business, which he works at only part-time. When he’s clearheaded. He has family money, though his father was not a wealthy Napa County viticulturist. It appears that he grew up in San Bernardino County and that his father sold new General Motors cars.”