The Homecoming (18 page)

So, all in all, a bit of a failure on the part of local law enforcement.

By the time they were fully into the challenging work of failing to detect anything remotely useful, Byron Deitz and Andy Chu, taking the side roads, were well on their way to Andy Chu’s neat wood-frame
rancher at 237 Bougainville Terrace in the Saddle Hill neighborhood of southwestern Niceville.

Chu had a garage with an automatic door, so Deitz stayed low until Chu got the Lexus parked inside and shut the engine down, his heart going like one of those miniature gas engines they put in model planes. Much to his surprise, Deitz didn’t shoot him as soon as the garage door powered down.

“Got anything to eat?” was what he said.

Well, not quite exactly.

Because of his nose, it actually came out as, “God addy ding doo ead?”

Either way, it eased Chu’s mind.

For now.

Around noon on the same Thursday that Mr. Endicott was reviewing his options in his suite at the Marriott, pain brought Nick back out of the dark. He was dimly aware of previous periods of consciousness occurring randomly through a long and difficult night, fragmented images of doctors frowning at him under cold blue lights, and two large nurses standing over him, talking across his naked body, in Italian, about the shocking price of arugula.

This more recent awakening, into a milky light pouring through a window, seemed nearly normal, as if he were coming out of a sound sleep.

He opened an eye and Kate was looking back at him, her face drawn and pale.

She smiled at him, leaned forward, and kissed him on the cheek. She smelled wonderful. He hoped he did too, but he doubted it. Kate leaned back in the chair, still holding his hand.

“You’re supposed to say ‘Where am I?’ ”

Nick tried a smile.

It hurt, but he did it anyway.

“Where am I?”

“Lady Grace. It’s about noon Thursday. The day after you were in the accident. Basically, they say you’re fine. I have no idea how, but they say
you are. Your eye is okay, they just put a bandage on it to protect the bone around the socket. You cracked something called the supraorbital process. You’re only groggy because they sedated you. They had to. You were thrashing around a lot and they couldn’t get any X-ray images. You also have an injury to the knuckles of your right hand that the doctors—and I—believe may have been acquired just prior to the rollover.”

Nick lifted his right hand.

The knuckles were swollen and there was a spreading bruise along the back of his hand.

“I may have punched Byron in the nose.”

“That’s what I thought. Good for you.”

“How do I look?”

“Like a public service announcement.”

“That bad?”

“No. Not really. As I said, you’re basically okay. The doctors think you’re made out of hickory. The X-rays showed nothing. They say anybody else would have cracked a rib or broken his neck. But not you.”

This was said with a tremor, but she rode on over it.

“You have a lot of Niceville friends, Nick, for a boy from Away who’s only been in town for three years. Your partner, that nice lad Beau Norlett, he was here earlier, but he had to go on a call. Tig Sutter looked in. Jimmy Candles and Marty Coors and Mickey Hancock. Lemon Featherlight was here, out in the hall, talking to Rainey. Mavis Crossfire phoned to ask about you. And I saw Charlie Danziger in the lobby and he was asking after you.”

“Where Charlie Danziger is, there’s usually a Coker.”

“No. Coker and every other county cop are all out looking for Byron. Along with most of the CID and a lot of the state guys too.”

“Maybe I should have punched him harder.”

“Maybe you should have. Just out of curiosity, why did you punch him at all? Other than because he’s a mean stupid bully who richly deserves a beating. I loathe all bullies. I surely do.”

Nick told her, the short version.

“And that’s when the deer showed up? While everybody in the van was yelling at you?”

“Basically.”

Kate smiled, her eyes bright, tears welling up behind them.

“You could have been killed, Nick. You toad. Then where would my life be?”

Nick put his hand back on top of hers, said nothing, but held it there until she cried it out a bit. She took a tissue from a box on the table beside the bed, held it to her eyes, rubbed her nose, crumpled it into a ball inside her fist.

“There are people in the hall, waiting to see you.”

“Rainey?”

“And Axel. And Hannah. And Beth. And Boonie Hackendorff. Also Reed—”

“Reed. How is he?”

“He’s fine. I mean, physically. Emotionally, he’s pretty banged up. Marty Coors put him on suspension until the inquiry is over.”

“Still has a badge and a gun?”

“Yes. But no regular duty. For now.”

“What the hell happened?”

“You don’t know?”

“No. I checked out right after Boonie told me that people got killed.”

Kate told him the story, including the final butcher’s bill. Eight dead—one more hanging on in the OR but expected to go soon—thirteen injured, four seriously. The traumas were down at Sorrows in Cap City. The rest were here in Lady Grace, including the dead ones down in the morgue.

Nick listened carefully, seeing it play out on the movie screen at the back of his skull.

“What’d those truckers think it was, the Indy 500? Lined up along the road like it was a claiming race? Jesus. Stupid as hell.”

“Yes. It was stupid. It wasn’t Reed’s fault at all. The men in the Viper were shooting at him. Reed thought they’d be just as happy shooting at the people lined up at the Super Gee. Marty Coors was telling him to back off, and then the men in the Viper jammed on the brakes. Reed tried to swerve, but not soon enough—”

“There’s not a lot of leeway at two hundred miles an hour.”

“No, there isn’t. But you know how it is. Civilians get killed during a police chase, even if it’s their own damn fault, somebody in a uniform has to pay.”

“What about the guys Reed was chasing?”

Kate made a face.

“The Brothers Shagreen? What do you always say? Best thing you could say about them is they’re dead. One of them, I think his name was Dwayne Bobby, was still alive at midnight, but I don’t think anybody was
going to heroic lengths to save him. He died by two in the morning. It’s possible one of the OR nurses was standing on his oxygen tube at the time. They’re not down in the morgue with the good people, by the way. State is holding them in a refrigerated meat truck at their HQ.”

“In that line of truckers, was there anyone we know?”

“Yes. Billy Dials’ brother.”

“Jeez. Mikey?”

“Yes. He was killed. Not instantly. It was bad. Billy’s taking it pretty bad. They were close.”

“Anybody else?”

“No one we know. Thank God. Will you see Rainey? He’s pretty upset. About you. And he’s been having a tough time lately. At school. Now Axel is catching it too.”

“Catching what?”

Kate filled him in on the bullying that was going on, Coleman and what Kate was calling his “minions.”

“Marty’s kid is in on this?”

“According to Rainey and Axel.”

“Of course. Send him in. If Axel’s there, send him in too.”

“They’ll only let one person in at a time.”

“Okay. Start with Rainey, then.”

Kate got up and went to the door, while Nick managed to get himself into a more upright position. Rainey came in wearing his school uniform and an anxious expression, Kate following behind with a worried look.

Nick gave him a smile and Rainey put out a hand for a formal shake. They hadn’t reached the hugging stage yet. Perhaps they never would, although Nick was ready to try. Rainey studied Nick’s face while they shook, as if searching for something.

“God, Nick,” he said, after a moment. “You look awful.”

“Thanks, kid,” Nick said, smiling—his smile wasn’t reassuring, but he hadn’t seen his face in a mirror yet. “You look pretty good yourself.”

“What was it like?”

“The rollover?”

“Yeah. Was it scary?”

“No. It was sort of … busy. A lot going on.”

“Kate says it was a deer?”

“Yes. A buck, actually.”

“And those two marshals got killed by it?”

“Yes,” said Nick, pushing the image down.

“The deer—the buck—was it standing in the road?”

“I wasn’t looking at the time. But probably not. Probably running along the shoulder, or trying to cross the lane. When a deer thinks it’s being chased, it will run straight for a while, and then it will cut sharp, right or left. They’re quick and nimble. Whatever’s chasing it—a coyote or a cougar—it usually gets deked out of its shorts and the deer’s gone. Only when what’s chasing the deer is a car, if the deer cuts to the left, he’s going to cut right out in front of the car.”

Rainey thought this over, filing the data.

“You were with Axel’s dad, in the truck. Everybody says he got away.” Nick nodded, feeling suddenly tired.

“Yes. He did.”

“Axel’s scared of his dad, you know.”

“I know, Rainey. I’ll talk to him about it.”

Rainey saw Nick fading.

He shot a look at Kate, who nodded.

“You coming home soon?”

“I hope so.”

“Good.”

Something in his expression caught Nick’s eye.

“Kate says you and Axel are having trouble at school? With Coleman and those guys? Jay and Owen? When I get out of here, I’ll go talk to Little Rock. And Captain Coors. He’s a friend of mine. He’ll talk to Owen. Okay?”

Rainey shook his head.

“It’ll only make it worse. Father Casey already talked to them. It just makes them mad. And then they tell everybody at school that Axel and me are snitches. And wimps.”

Rainey paused.

“What I’d like …”

“Yes?” said Nick.

“Can’t we do something about it ourselves? Me and Axel. We’ve been talking about it.”

Nick glanced at Kate, and then came back to Rainey.

“Like what, Rainey? Axel got into a fight with Coleman. So did you, last week. Do you want to fight him again?”

“We already tried that. You saw what happened. I got my clock cleaned. So did Axel. He’s too strong.”

“He shouldn’t have let it happen at all, Rainey,” Kate put in. “He’s
supposed to be a sportsman, isn’t he? Isn’t fair play what Regiopolis is all about?”

“Not for us,” said Rainey, but softly.

Nick was curious.

“Okay. Fighting didn’t work. What would you do, then?”

“Axel says we should tell Coleman that Axel’s father escaped so he could come and kill Coleman.”

Nick and Kate rolled with that, but it shook them both to hear the venom in Rainey’s voice.

“Rainey, I don’t think threatening a schoolkid with murder is the way to go here.”

Rainey considered it for a while.

“Maybe he could get kidnapped like I did. Only they wouldn’t bring
him
back.”

Silence followed while Nick and Kate worked out a way to deal with this.

Kate spoke first.

“Rainey, I know Coleman’s a bad person, but we don’t want something like that to happen to anybody.”

“It happened to me.”

“Yes, it did,” said Nick. “And that sucks. And one day I’ll find the people who did it, and we’ll make them sorry, won’t we?”

“Nick,” said Kate, a warning tone, but Rainey cut in.

“We could make Coleman look in the mirror.”

“The mirror?” said Kate, her heart in her throat. Rainey turned around and faced her.

“I remembered. The mirror in Moochie’s window. I was looking at it the day when it happened—”

“The day what happened?” asked Nick carefully.

“The day I got kidnapped. I was standing on the sidewalk in front of Moochie’s. I was looking at the mirror in the window. The gold one with all the curly stuff in the frame. It’s really old. We could find out where it is and make him look at it. Maybe he’d disappear too.”

They both stared at the kid. And they were both thinking exactly the same thing, because that mirror—the same antique mirror that had been in Moochie’s window—was sitting at the back of the linen closet in the hallway outside their bedroom right now, wrapped in a blue blanket. It was still where they had put it six months ago. He knew because he
checked it regularly, the way you check a loaded weapon. Had Rainey found it?

Kate was about to ask Rainey exactly that, and Nick was about to stop her, when there was a knock at the door. Kate opened it and Reed Walker was there, in his State uniform, cool and crisp and looking grim, his Stetson in his hand and his thick black hair cropped short.

“Sorry to cut in, Kate—I know, I know—one at a time—but I just got a call and I have to go—I wanted to see Himself—”

Nick admired Reed although he felt that if he stayed at the wheel of a Police Interceptor he was not likely to see the far side of fifty. He sat up and grinned at him as Reed came over and stood by the bed, setting his hand on Rainey’s shoulder.

“Christ, Nick, you look—”

“Like a public service announcement?”

Reed showed his teeth, a sardonic smile which furrowed his lean face. Rainey, who seemed to have a case of hero worship when it came to Reed, broke in to ask Reed about the chase, what was it like, who were those two guys in the black Viper, why was the license plate
HARLEQUIN
, was that a clue?

Reed slowed him down enough to tell him the highlights without dwelling too much on how utterly miserable he was feeling at this moment.

Rainey took it all in, then went back to the bad guys in the Viper. “But those guys, who were they?”

“A couple of White Power guys. Outlaw bikers. Dwayne Bobby Shagreen and Douglas Loyal Shagreen. Both of them were wanted on multiple felony warrants from all over the South—”

“Where are they now?”

Reed hesitated.

“Well, they’re dead, Rainey.”

“Yeah. But dead where?”

“In a refrigerated truck parked next to the State Police headquarters in Gracie. Why, you wanna go see ’em?”

Rainey lit up.

“Could I? Could Axel come too?”

Kate, who felt Reed wasn’t beyond it, stepped in. “No, you can’t. And Axel can’t either.”