T Parker - L. A. Outlaws

He dropped the blanket just beyond the edge of the table and it landed in a quiet puff of dust.

The head sat in a jar of vague yellow liquid, skin gray and eyes closed. Peaceful. Bald. The black hair was long and formed a loose bedding at the bottom. The neck was severed cleanly. Beside the jar was a lariat. Beside that was an oily red bandana, which Hood moved aside to see the Colt single-action revolver. An old handmade arrow with a small obsidian head lay in front of two topless, rough-hewn wooden boxes. In one was a nameless leather-bound book sitting atop a stack of carefully folded but very old clothes. In another were newspapers and photographs and a nearly empty bandoleer.

He sat down with his back to the wall and closed his eyes.

An hour later he covered the artifacts with the blanket and carefully replaced the insulation and finally slid the access cover back into place.

He was shouldering the stepladder from the bathroom back into the barn when Bradley appeared at the open door then stepped inside.

“What are you doing?”

“I didn’t hear you drive up.”

“They made us view her on a TV screen. I insisted that we see the actual body. There was an argument but I stayed patient and they let us.”

“I’m sorry, Bradley.”

“I asked you what you’re doing.”

“Looking for stolen property.”

“Find any?”

“None at all.”

“What’s the stepladder for?”

Hood looked at the boy, then at the stacked boxes he’d been through earlier. He saw the illogic of using a stepladder to reach the high boxes and knew that Bradley saw it, too.

“I need the extension ladder,” said Hood.

Bradley glanced toward the bathroom then gave Hood a hard stare that looked very much like his mother’s.

Hood saw his choices-either show Bradley the truth of his blood history, or show him nothing and let that truth either expire or be discovered later.

“I’ll help investigate,” said the boy.

“I can’t let you,” said Hood. “There’s a chain of evidence you need for court, and if it’s compromised by a citizen the case can be ruined.”

“Even the son of the accused?”

“Especially.”

“Then I’ll watch.”

“I’ll check a few of those boxes up there, then I’m done.”

“No stolen property so far?”

“None that I can see.”

Hood traded ladders then started up on top again and checked through different boxes. The pigeons watched him, heads down and cocked in curiosity. Bradley sat on the hay bale where Hood had sat.

“How old are you?”

“Almost seventeen.”

“Still thinking LAPD?”

“That’s a long time away.”

“You just started your junior year?”

“Yeah, but I’ll be done with all my solids at the end of it. I’ll have sixteen college units by the end of my senior year, something like that.”

“You should go to college.”

“What’s the minimum age for the Sheriff’s?”

“They want twenty-one, with a couple years of college.”

“But what’s the minimum age?”

“Nineteen and a half, and they’ll swear you for duty at twenty. It’s a good gig, Bradley. It keeps you fit and the people are mostly good and you can hang it up after twenty years with some nice bennies.”

“Have you killed anybody?”

“No.”

“Want to?”

“I used to want to make a really great shot that saved a life. Most young deputies imagine that. Not anymore. I’ve seen enough blood.”

“A gangbanger. My age.”

“Yeah.”

“Kick.”

“That’s his gang name.”

“I know what it is. You talk to him?”

Hood nodded. “Not a whole lot there to talk to if you know what I mean.”

“They going to charge him with murder?”

“I don’t know. The DA decides that.”

“I always knew she was hiding something.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

“She was her but not her. Joaquin Murrieta was a real outlaw. They cut off his head and put it in a jar and showed it for money. It wasn’t unusual. They decapitated dead suspects back then because there was no refrigeration and the heads were easy to identify. He was twenty-three, barely old enough to be a deputy. She told me about him when I was a kid. I never knew she wanted to be like him. Maybe that was my fault. Maybe I should have seen that in her.”

“There’s no way you could have seen it, Bradley.”

The boy glanced toward the bathroom but said nothing.

Hood looked down at him, sitting on the hay bale. “If you want a recommendation to the L.A. Sheriff’s, I’ll make it when the time comes. With your grades, Bradley, and the college units, and those athletic skills of yours-you’ll get in.”

Bradley shrugged. “I’ll think about it. Maybe as a deputy I’d run across Kick someday. And I could draw my sidearm and blow his fucking heart out his back.”

“You could.”

He shrugged again. “You were in love with her, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I was, too. I thought she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen or ever would see. Everything I did was for her. Just a common Oedipal thing. I knew I’d outgrow it like most boys do.”

“Bradley?”

“What.”

“Go to college.”

The memorial service was up in Bakersfield in an old cemetery that sheltered sixteen of Suzanne’s relatives. There were news crews all over the place, allowed in by Madeline so her daughter could make history instead of only teach it. The casket was open, and at a good moment Madeline fainted into Bradley’s arms. The cameramen scrambled and shot. When it was his turn, Hood could hardly stand to look.

The day was clear, with an east wind that carried an infernal heat, and Hood stood graveside with the mourners in the insufficient shade of a pepper tree. Suzanne was buried above her great-uncle Jack, with an empty plot on either side of her for Madeline and her grandmother.

Hood went over and stood with Ernest and the boys when it was over. They talked for a minute while the mourners went back to their cars and the gravedigger waited patiently atop his front-end loader.

On his way back up the hill to his car, Hood decided for probably the one hundredth time that he’d show and tell Bradley everything he knew about his mother. But two steps later he decided for the one hundredth time to let the boy find his own way through life.

He visited friends and stayed in a Bakersfield motel that night. He got drunk and slept poorly but rose early for the drive.

At eleven A.M. Hood was admitted into a fourth-floor room of the Manhattan Beach Marriott Hotel, hungover but ready to face internal affairs. Three of the four men he’d never seen before. Two were scruffy and didn’t look like cops. Another looked like a TV version of the driven prosecutor. One was an assistant sheriff, clearly unhappy about this.

On the coffee table were two digital recorders. Beside it was a small video camera on a black tripod.

Hood sat on a floral rattan sofa and looked through the window to the warm, hazy sky. He was exhausted by his own betrayals.

One of the scruffy cops turned on the voice recorders and the lawyer fixed the camera on Hood then in a strong clear voice established the place and time and players.

“Deputy Hood, tell us about Wyte,” he said cheerfully.

Two days later Hood again let himself into the Valley Center barn. Bradley was due in half an hour. He had agreed to be on time for what Hood promised would be an important meeting.

Hood got the stepladder and slid open the bathroom attic hatch, careful not to tear up the insulation.