Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

Helm shrugged. “Did you actually see light-colored paint streaks, or only silvery metal showing through where the factory paint job was scraped off? And if there were lighter paint streaks, who knows where they came from? Any given blue van could pick up paint streaks in any number of places.”

“But it would shorten the odds by a good bit.”

“Some, yes. How much? Who knows? Again, probably not enough to dispel the timeworn, juror-tested notion of reasonable doubt.”

Pace let his head fall back. “This is a nightmare,” he said, “and I’m sick of it.”

Helm pushed himself up out of the chair and put a hand on Pace’s uninjured shoulder. “For the time being, I suggest you follow your editor’s orders and concentrate on getting well.”

“What about the case?”

“You let Marty Lanier and me worry about that. That’s what you pay us for.”

Pace nodded. He was about to say something when a nurse came in with a tray.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said when she saw Helm. “I thought everybody had gone but the patient. Dr. Boudreaux left orders for medication.”

“I was just leaving,” Helm told her. He turned to the reporter. “I know this sounds stupid, but try not to worry about things you can’t help. Get some sleep, hotshot.”

A moment later, when Helm was gone, the words came back and hit Pace so hard he choked on his medication. “Get some sleep, hotshot.”

That’s what Mike had called him.

The nurse doused the light and eased out the door, and Steve Pace lay in the dark, anger and frustration washing over him like waves on a beach. Despite the sleeping pills, he would not doze off for hours.

Casey Boudreaux discharged Pace two days later, acknowledging cheerfully that most recovering patients fare better at home.

Boudreaux pushed Pace’s wheelchair to the hospital door personally, carrying on nonstop in suspect Cajun dialect about how the reporter should take care of himself.

“Now yew hain’t got but a single wel-come in this hos-pi-tel, unnerstan’? I don’ wanna be hearin’ yewv been puttin’ yer batter’ ol’ body here in fron’a no more persons who wanna be beatin’ the bejezzes outta yew, cuz I don’ do no doctorin’ on the same beaten-up persons no more dan once. If yew come sa-shayin’ through here all beat up agin, ya jus’ gonna hafta fine yerself diffren’ medicine-type personnel what can do your doctorin’, cuz ole Casey here, he don’t have much truck for people with no more sense than to let there be a second time around. Man, a crawfish got more sense dan dat, and a crawfish hain’t hardly got no sense a-tall. Now yew gonna be lookin’ some better when ya haul yer car-cass back here on Friday for yer checking-up, or I gonna be some kinda aaaan-gry, an’ if ya never befo’ done seen no angry Cajun, I can only say yewd be advised to keep it that way.”

Kathy and Melissa walked beside the wheelchair, hearing Boudreaux’s routine for the first time. Under other circumstances, both would be laughing, but neither was tempted this day, nor was Pace. He was angry in general, and they were angry with him.

The swelling in his face was down, the blood that appeared briefly in his urine had disappeared, and his torn muscles were healing. He was ambulatory, if gingerly so. Both Casey Boudreaux and Avery Schaeffer ordered him to stay home and stay quiet; Schaeffer assured him the crash story was under control.

“We’re keeping close tabs on the NTSB investigation, the FAA investigation, and the police investigations. If there’s more to find, they’ll find it, and we’ll report it,” he said. “So far, there hasn’t been anything new out of Dulles, and inspections of the 811s haven’t turned up any more suspect turbine disks. I think we had a couple of fluke problems in Seattle and Kansas City.”

Pace had spent most of the night awake again. Only the pain of movement stopped him from tossing and turning. His mind created one scenario after another in an attempt to find a logical reason for the crash and all that followed it. He couldn’t make it play. The pieces wouldn’t fit.

And he acknowledged candidly to himself that he was troubled by Clay Helm’s assessment that his description of the van in which his assailants fled could be demolished in court; his expectations had been raised by Helm’s own admonition to keep watch for such a vehicle.

When they had come to pick him up that morning, Pace told Kathy and Melissa for the first time the full story of what happened in his parking garage.

“I think I’m a rational person, at least when I’m not railing at Ken Sachs in a drunken rage,” he’d said. “I can tell the difference between reality and hallucination. The longer you’re awake after even the most vivid dream, the fainter the memory becomes. The memory of what happened in the garage, what I saw and what I heard, isn’t fading a bit.”

“I don’t doubt your story. Nobody does,” Kathy said. There was an edge in her voice that matched the deeply troubled look on her face. It had been there since he’d revealed his belief that the two men who assaulted him were probably the same team that killed Mike McGill and Mark Antravanian.

“In retrospect, it’s unfortunate Clay Helm told you about the van, but he was only trying to help,” Kathy had concluded.

“I don’t doubt you, either, Dad,” Melissa added with a bright smile. “You wouldn’t lie about what you saw.”

“Thank you, ladies. Your confidence and support are appreciated.”

A look of worry set itself on the teenager’s face. She watched Kathy pack away the few personal items they’d brought to the hospital for Steve and bit her lower lip. “Are you gonna do any more reporting on the story?” she asked.

“Well, I guess not for a while. Mr. Schaeffer has ordered me to stay home for the rest of the week.”

“What about next week?”

“We’ll have to see what next week brings, honey. If there’s still a story to be reported, I’ll be the one to do it.”

“Steve!” Kathy had looked up from her packing with horror on her face. “How can you say that in the same minute you told us the men who did this —” she held out her hand toward him as though she were conducting a tour of his battered body “—are the same ones who committed two murders? How can you be so… so cavalier about it?”

“I’m not being cavalier about anything,” Pace had insisted, his voice rising in frustration. “But I am not going to let those bastards run me into a corner with my thumb stuck up my ass, hiding for the rest of my life.” He raised his hands before Kathy could say anything about his language. “Sorry. But I mean it.”

“Nobody’s asking you to hide,” Kathy snapped. She was highly agitated. “That’s ridiculous. That was never even on the table. We’re merely suggesting maybe it’s time you grew up and quit playing cowboys and Indians, it’s—”

Steve had sat straight up in the hospital bed, driven by outrage so intense it masked his pain. “Cowboys and Indians?” He heard his voice rise, and he knew he shouldn’t let that happen. But it wasn’t something he could easily stop. “This is not a game. I can’t believe—”

“Not a game, no. Nobody meant to imply it’s a game. But murder investigations aren’t what the Chronicle pays you to do. Chasing bad guys is a police function, not a reporting function. And despite the fact that reporters and cops collaborate, cops don’t try to write newspaper stories. And reporters shouldn’t try to hunt down criminals.”

“Kathy, ever since the accident you’ve been begging me to find out what happened, what killed Jonathan. And now you’re telling me you want me to stop?”