John Lescroart - Dead Irish

The sheriff said, “Lady named Hafner grows ’chokes maybe six miles south. She and the family were on their way up to the farmer’s market in Salinas. They usually leave before dawn and try to get a good place, you know. So they’re turning onto 101 and one of the kids sees what he thinks might be a deer by the road. Anyway, that’s food, you know, so Momma stops and it’s… Steven’s the name, huh?”

“Steven.”

“So she got here and the doc called me.” There was a long pause, as though Muñoz was trying to fathom how things like this could happen. “I figure-and the doc says it makes sense- he was thrown from the vehicle already unconscious. That’s probably why he lived, he was so loose. Just pretty much peeled the right side of his body, broke his arm, collarbone, couple of foot bones.”

“Could he have just fallen? Bounced out of the back of an open pickup maybe?”

“Yeah, he could’ve. He didn’t, though.”

Hardy waited.

“He was,” Muñoz paused, “sexually molested. Maybe the rest of the injuries-that look a hell of a lot like a beating-maybe they could have come from the impact hitting the ground at sixty, but the one…”

“Got it,” Hardy said.

“Just once I’d like to catch up with somebody does something like this. Not after a trial or anything, but catch ’em red-handed.”

“It would be a great joy,” Hardy agreed.

“Your friend Glitsky in the city, he gonna call missing persons, you think? Let ’em know?”

Hardy thought that he probably would-Glitsky believed in following through, but Hardy didn’t feel right making the commitment for him. After all, Glitsky dealt in homicides. Lost and found children were not his problem, and if somebody in San Francisco had the bad grace to get killed on this fine Saturday morning, it’s possible he might forget.

“It wouldn’t hurt if we called,” he said, though he let Muñoz do it officially.

Warm and drowsy. Smell of fresh linen. Had Mom finally made his bed?

Steven tried to open his eyes. They didn’t seem to work. The eyelids were too heavy, his whole body too weak.

Well, just a few more hours’ sleep. Can’t hurt. It’s the summer, after all.

But that jarred some memory. Leaving the house, striking out on his own, riding in the truck with those two guys heading for L.A., but in no real hurry. Mostly, they’d said, into partying, into cruising. That sounded okay.

It began to come flooding back, and involuntarily he groaned. They’d accepted him right away, including him when they stopped for a few road beers before they’d left the city. The beers didn’t taste very good, but Steven wasn’t about to let on. This was part of being an adult, and he was tired of being treated like a kid, or, worse, a nothing. So he’d act like an adult, go along, be cool.

He got a little more worried when the joints came out, but knew he was just being uptight. Lots of guys in school smoked dope all the time. It just hadn’t been his thing. But it wasn’t as though it was any big deal, or really wrong. It did make him cough, though, and the guys had laughed at him a little, but he could tell it was all in fun. They coughed, too, only not so much.

After that, in this blurry haze, they’d stopped for something to eat-maybe in Gilroy?-some really fantastic burgers that they took to this “special spot” for a picnic. And then things got scary kind of, with the two guys starting to tickle him and other stuff. Then really rough.

If he hadn’t been so dizzy and messed up, he probably could have outrun them, but when he pulled loose and tried that, his coordination was gone. And after they caught him, he thought he remembered other things, but the drowsiness was still there, and it was too hard to think about.

And where was Mom, then, if the bed was made? Just in the other room probably. God, it’d be great to see Mom. He called out for her.

That was a sound. Hardy, waiting for Muñoz to return from his phone call, ran around the corner to Steven’s room.

The boy lay, still unmoving. This was the hostility kid, he remembered-switchblade, fuzzed-out television and all. He shook his head. Talk about a bad week for the Cochrans.

Had Ed’s death somehow precipitated this, driven him over the edge of his own despair? Or was there some more immediate link? Like, might Steven have known something he shouldn’t have?

Hell, he’d find out when Steven came to if he had known his assailants. Or, more particularly, if Hardy knew them.

Big Ed looked anything but big.

Staring down at his bandaged youngest son, he was a shell of the man in the old but elegant suit Hardy had met at the funeral reception. Now a very worn green USF sweatshirt hung loosely over work pants and boots. Everything hung too loose. One bootlace wasn’t tied.

He stared as long as he could, then squeezed his thumb and forefinger into his eyes.

Muñoz stood next to him. “Are you all right, sir?”

Big Ed nodded. “Long night,” he said. “We thought, we thought…”

“Sure. But he’s not. Not even close.”

“He’s not close,” he repeated. And suddenly a shudder went through him and he was crying.

Hardy went out to the reception area, where a small boy with the beginnings of a shiner and a large red knot on his forehead sat stoically as his mother explained to the receptionist how he’d stepped on the tines of a rake and the handle had popped up and hit him in the face.

Hardy walked outside into the bright sun. He was hungry. The place on Gonzalez’s main street sold burritos the size of a suitcase for $2.49, and Hardy bought three, chewing on one while he carried the other two, wrapped, back to the clinic.

Muñoz and Ed, talking by the sheriff’s car, took the food. Big Ed seemed a little better.

“Sorry I didn’t recognize you in there,” he said to Hardy.

“How’s the boy?”

“Still sleeping. You have any idea who did this?”

“I wish,” Hardy said. “You reported him missing. Did he run away, or what?”

“What’s the other option?” Muñoz asked.

Hardy shrugged. “It’s unlikely, but he might have been kidnapped.”

“That’s crazy,” Ed said. “We don’t have any money.”

“It might have been to keep him quiet. Maybe he knew something.” The two men chewed their burritos. “About Ed, I mean.”

That stopped Big Ed. “What do you mean? They say Eddie killed himself.” He swallowed hard.

“I doubt it. I doubt it very much.”

“Well, then, what…”

Hardy could see it was almost too much for the man. His hand went up to his eyes again. He shook his head as though trying to clear it.

The receptionist came to the door. “The boy’s awake,” she said.

At least he wants to be home, Big Ed was thinking. That’s something. Being back home. He’d said it. Daddy, take me home. Daddy. Nobody’d called him that in ten years. It was always either Dad, Pop or Ed. Well, if Steven wanted Daddy now, Daddy was taking him home. There he and Erin might be able to figure out if and where they’d screwed up so he wouldn’t want to run away again.

He looked around to the back seat where Steven lay, sleeping again, strapped down by the seat belts.

“He okay?” Hardy asked.

Ed nodded.

Muñoz and Hardy had thought it’d be better if Ed didn’t have to drive back alone with his son, so they arranged that the sheriff’s one deputy would drive Hardy’s car back to the city later.

Ed again glanced into the back seat. He couldn’t look enough at his son, couldn’t really believe yet-after the fears of last night sitting up with Erin, his daughter Jodie and Frannie-that Steven, along with Eddie, wasn’t dead and gone forever. Whatever had happened, whatever he’d been through, at least he was still with them, breathing. He must’ve sighed with relief, because Hardy looked over at him.