Nobody Runs Forever

“It’s not a bad wound,” the detective told her. “The bullet’s still in there, in the flesh, but it didn’t hurt anything serious. They’re supposed to take it out tomorrow. I’m looking forward to getting it to the lab.”

“I bet you are. You got any suspects?”

“As a matter of fact, yes, two of them,” the detective said, with another pleased smile. “But before I say anything about my idea, let me hear yours. Do you have any suspects?”

“Me, no.” Wendy hesitated, but the detective’s silence encouraged her to go on. “I don’t know how much you know about my brother.”

“Military police, bank security, stole from his employer, went to jail, got out, on parole, works for a motel not far from here. No more black marks on his record.”

Laughing, Wendy said, “I’d say, you know him about as well as I do. The thing is, since Jake and I both grew up, I’m talking about thirty years now, we haven’t exactly lived in each other’s pocket. Our parents are dead, neither of us lives in the old neighborhood. When I have family get-togethers these days, it’s my family, my kids and my in-laws. I got a divorce a while ago, but it was a strange kind of settlement. I got the kids, the house, the car, and his parents, who can’t stand him. He got the bank account, but that’s okay, I get it back in alimony and child support.”

“He’s good about that.”

“He’s one day late, his parents are all over him. He’s a lawyer, he makes good money, he doesn’t want that trouble, and also he can afford it. Can you imagine you’re talking with an important client, your secretary says your mother’s on the phone, you have to say ‘No! Tell her I’m out!’?”

The detective laughed, and then said, “The point is, Jake really isn’t very much in your life, or you in his.”

“Almost nothing, until this getting-shot business. It happened I had time on my hands. I was probably feeling a little guilty anyway, so I said I’d come here, help out while he was laid up. But who his friends are, who his enemies are, all of that, I haven’t known that kind of thing about him since we were both in high school. And he didn’t much want me knowing even then.”

“Sibling rivalry.”

Wendy shrugged. “He was a shortcutter, and I wasn’t. So who are your suspects?”

Again the detective laughed. “You know,” she said, “you just don’t seem too much like a Wendy to me.”

“I don’t?” Wendy didn’t get it. “Why? What’s a Wendy supposed to be like?”

“Not so forceful.” Smiling, the detective said, “You ought to become a Gwen, like me. They’re both from the same name, you know. Gwendolyn.”

“I didn’t know that,” Wendy said. “What is it, you don’t want to tell me about your suspects?”

Another laugh: “There, you see? Forceful. No, I’m happy to tell you, because so far, they’re only suspects. Before your brother went to jail, he was having an affair with the wife of the owner of the bank.”

Wendy said, “What? His employer? He’s dipping and he’s dipping?”

“It all came out when they caught his embezzlements,” the detective said. “Everybody insists it’s all over, and maybe it is, but when I went to see Mrs. Langen yesterday—”

“The wife.”

“The wife. She has a pistol permit, and is registered with a Colt Cobra thirty-eight-caliber revolver. It’s a very light, small defense gun, it weighs less than a pound, she probably carries it in her purse, when she carries it.”

“Doesn’t sound much like a banker’s wife.”

“Some women got into that women’s self-defense idea some years ago. That’s when she got the gun. The trouble is, yesterday, when I asked to see it, she said she’d lost it.”

“Sure she did,” Wendy said.

“Up to that point,” the detective said, “I really wasn’t considering her at all. If there are guns in the story, you want to see them, have they been fired recently, is the serial number one that will show up here or there. So when she said it was lost . . .”

“Oh ho, you thought,” Wendy said. “It’s her.”

“Well, there’s also the husband,” the detective said, “which is why I said I had two suspects. Either of them could have taken the gun and shot it at your brother. If the husband did it, and then threw the gun away, then the wife is telling the truth. As far as she knows, it’s lost.”

Wendy said, “So what are you gonna do?”

“Wait for the bullet to come out of his leg, first thing tomorrow morning. If it’s a thirty-eight caliber, we’ll bear down.” Looking around the room, she said, “I know you want to unpack and get over to see Jake. Tell him I’ll drop in on him tomorrow afternoon, when we know about the bullet.”

“I will. But first, shop.”

When she came back from the supermarket, Wendy found herself envying those residents of Riviera Park who had those rusty little red wagons chained behind the office, for carrying their groceries home. As it was, she had two plastic sacks of necessities, and nothing to do but lug them on down Cannes Way and around the corner onto Nice Lane, where a tall man in a dark gray suit stood outside Jake’s pea-green mobile home.

She kept on, though she didn’t like the look of him, but then saw a big candy box in his hand and thought, Oh, it’s a get-well present for Jake. How unexpected.

Yes. “This is for Jake,” he said when she reached him, and lifted off the top of the candy box, and inside was a gun.

“Oh!” Startled, she jumped back, the grocery sacks dragging her down; she expected him to take the gun out of there and shoot.