One hand on the. 22 that had spilled from her purse when she fell, I imagined. She'd have realized something wasn't right, same as I did.
Two smaller questions to add to the big one, then.
Why was June carrying a gun in her purse?
And was Don Lee already down when she arrived?
He lay on the floor by the door leading back to the storage room and holding cells. A goose egg the color and shape of an overripe Roma tomato hung off the left side of his head. Glancing through the open door I saw the holding cell was empty. Don Lee's eyes flickered as I knelt over him. He was trying to say something. I leaned closer.
'Gumballs?'
He shook his head.
'Goombahs,' he said.
Donna meanwhile had put in a call for Doc Oldham, who, as usual, arrived complaining.
'Man can't even be left alone to have his goddamn lunch in peace nowadays. What the hell're you up to now, Turner? This used to be a nice quiet place to live, you know? Then you showed up.'
He dropped to one knee beside June. For a moment I'd have sworn he was going to topple. Droplets of sweat, defying gravity, stood on his scalp. He felt for June's carotid, rested a hand briefly on her chest. Carefully supported her head with one hand while palpating it, checking pupils, ears.
'I'm assuming you've already done this?' he said.
'Pupils equal and reactive, so no sign of concussion. No fremitus or other indication of respiratory difficulty. No real evidence of struggle. Someone standing guard at the door's my guess. A single blow meant only to put her down.'
Oldham's eyes met mine. We'd both been there too many times.
'Not bad for an amateur, I was about to say. But you're not, are you? So I was about to make myself an asshole. Not for the first time, mind. And, I sincerely hope, not for the last.' Grabbing at a tabletop, he wobbled to his feet. 'I need to look at the other one?'
'Pupils unequal but reactive. Unconscious now, but he spoke to me earlier and responds to pain. Doesn't look to be any major blood loss. Vitals are good. BP I'd estimate at ninety over sixty, thereabouts.'
'Ambulance on the way?'
'Call's in.'
'Could take some time. Rory ain't always easy to rouse, once he's got hisself bedded down for the day. Damn it all, we're looking at a major goddamn crime scene here.'
'Afraid so.'
'Ever tell you how much I hate court days?'
'Once or twice.'
'There're those who'd be pleased to pay for your ticket back home, you know.' He leaned heavily against the wall, reeling down breaths in stages, like a kite from the sky. 'But you ain't going away, are you, boy?'
'No, sir.'
'You sure 'bout that?'
'I am.'
He pushed himself away from the wall.
'Good. Things been a hell of a lot more interesting around here since you came.' Doc Oldham and I packed the two of them off to the hospital up Little Rock way, then he had to demonstrate his new step. He'd recently taken up tap dancing, God help us all, and every time you saw him, he wanted to show off his latest moves. This from a man who could barely stand upright, mind you. It was like watching a half-rotted pecan tree go au point. But eventually he left to make another try at his goddamn lunch, and I went to work. I'd barely got started when Buster arrived. Buster filled in as relief cook at the diner, cleaned up there most nights, snagged whatever other work he could. I never could figure what it was about him, some kind of palsy or just plain old nerves, but some part of Buster always had to be moving.
'Doc says you could use help gettin' th'office cleaned up,' he said, looking around. When his head stopped moving, a foot started. ''Pears to me he was right.'
'You don't have to do that.'
'Well, no sir, I don't,' he said, grinning. Then the lips relaxed and his eyes met mine. A shaky hand rose between us. 'Sure enough could use the work, though.'
'Twenty sound okay?'
'Yessir. Sounds right good. Specially with my anniversary coming up and all.'
'How many years does this make for you and Delia?'
'Fifty-eight.'
'Congratulations.'
'She the one deserves congratulations, puttin' up with the likes of me all these years.'
Buster went back to the storage room to find what he needed as I sank in again. Buster could clean the stairs at Grand Central Station during rush hour without getting in anyone's way. Someone once said of a Russian official who survived regime after regime that he'd learned to dodge raindrops and could make his way through a downpour without ever getting wet. That's Buster.
Don's desk tray held his report, with a photocopy of the original speeding ticket stapled to it. In the ledger he'd logged time of arrest, reason for same, time of arrival at the office, booking number. The column for PI (personal items) was checked, as was that for FP (fingerprinted) and PC (phone call).
Just out of curiosity, I paged back to see when we'd last fingerprinted or given a phone call. We rarely had sleepovers, and when we did they were guys who'd had a little too much to drink, bored high school kids caught out vandalizing, the occasional mild domestic dispute needing cool-off time.
Four months back, I'd answered a suspicious person call at the junior high. Dominic Ford had offered no resistance, but I'd brought him in and put his stats in the system on the off chance that he might be a pedophile or habitual offender. Turned out he was an estranged father just trying to get a glimpse of his twelve-year-old daughter, make sure she was okay.
Six months back, Don Lee responded to a call that a man 'not from around here' was sitting on the only bench in the tiny park at the end of Main Street talking to himself. Thinking he could be a psychiatric patient, Don Lee printed him. What he was, was minister of a Pentecostal church in far south Memphis, out towards the state border where gambling casinos afloat on the river have turned Tunica into a second Atlantic City. He'd only wanted to get back to the kind of place he grew up, he said. Touch down there, feel it again. He'd been sitting on the bench working up his sermon.
The previous entry was for that time, a year ago, when Lonnie, Don Lee, and I discovered how Carl Hazelwood had been killed-the day the sheriff got shot.
All these years, I'd never seen anything remotely resembling a jailbreak and assumed they only happened in old Western or gangster movies. But it was obvious this crew had come here specifically to spring Judd Kurtz. Goombahs, Don Lee had said. Even among the most hardassed, there aren't many who'll step up to a law office, even a far-flung, homespun one like ours, with such impunity.
I sat looking at that tick underneath PC. Then I made my own call, to Mabel at Bell South.
'Don Lee and Miss June gonna be okay?' she said immediately upon hearing my voice.
'We hope so. Meanwhile, I need a favor.'
'Whatever I can do.'
'How much do you know about what went down over here?'
'Just someone stormed in and beat crap out of the two of them's all I heard.'
'That someone came to town to break out a man Don Lee had detained on a traffic violation.'
'Take safe driving seriously, do they?'
Known for her biting wit, Mabel was. Not to mention the choicest gossip in town.
'The man made a phone call from this office just after Don Lee booked him in, around one a.m. I know it's-'
'Sure it is. Now ask me if I care. Just give me five, ten minutes.'
'Thanks, sweetheart.'
