Nobody Runs Forever

It made Jake’s head ache, along with all the other parts that already ached and itched and burned. It made him so frustrated, this unexpected problem looming down on him, that he did get woozy, and dropped off to sleep, and when he woke up, Detective Second Grade Gwen Reversa was sitting there in the chair beside the bed.

“Oh, good, you’re awake,” she said with a bright smile.

“I’m not supposed to have visitors,” was the first thing he thought to say, because he wasn’t ready to deal with all this, to deal with Elaine and this keen-eyed cop and the fact that Parker and Dalesia had nothing to worry about. They had nothing to worry about.

“Oh, I get special dispensation,” Detective Reversa told him, still with that sunny smile he didn’t trust for a second. “I promised I wouldn’t stay long, and I wouldn’t get you all upset.”

“Well, good luck with that,” he said.

She cocked her head, smiling and alert. “Really? Why do you say that?”

“Because if you’re here,” he said, scrambling to keep his mind ahead of his mouth, and also feeling ridiculous because he was lying here in front of this fine-looking woman with his leg aimed upward like an antiaircraft gun, “if you’re here, that means you think you know more about who shot me, and anything you want to tell me about that is going to upset me.”

“Well, there is news, you’re right,” she said. “We now know more about the bullet that was used.”

“Well, sure,” he said. “It isn’t in me any more, so you could look at it.”

“It was a thirty-eight Special,” she said. “Do you know anybody with a gun that uses that ammunition?”

“I don’t know anybody with a gun at all,” he said. “When I was in security, and before that in the police, I was around guns, but not any more.”

“It’s hard for me to remember,” she said, “you used to be on the police yourself.”

“Not like you,” he said. “Not a detective. I was just the guy who waved at the traffic.”

“But the fact is,” she said, “you do know at least one person who owns a gun.”

He frowned. “I do?”

“Your friend Elaine Langen.”

“Oh, my God!” he said. “She told me that years ago!” I hope I’m not overdoing this, he thought, and then, trying to tiptoe his way through the right reactions, he frowned at her and said, “You don’t think she did it.”

“Not necessarily,” she said. “We do know it was the right caliber. Unfortunately, Mrs. Langen has lost her gun.”

“Lost? How do you lose a gun?”

Detective Reversa’s smile turned ironic. “That’s a very good question, Mr. Beckham,” she said. “But really there’s another question first.”

“There is?”

“Well, two people had access to that gun,” she reminded him. “Both Elaine Langen and her husband.”

“Oh, because it’s in the house.”

“Exactly.” Leaning forward, being concerned, being on his side, she said, “If it turned out that Mrs. Langen’s gun was the one that shot you, which of the Langens would you guess might have used it?”

This was the nub, the hinge. This was the point where, if he was ever going to get out from under what Elaine had done to both of them, he would do it now. He would find the words. He would deflect the investigation, take it off somewhere far from the robbery.

She watched him, smiling faintly, in no hurry, and he thought, I can’t put it on Jack Langen. I would love to, but no way. “No way Jack Langen would shoot me,” he said.

She looked surprised. “You seem very positive of that.”

“In the first place,” Jake told her, “he’s got no reason to be sore at me, not any more, not for years. And in the second place, that isn’t what he’d do, it isn’t the way he operates. If Jack Langen wanted me shot, he’d get somebody else to do it. And he wouldn’t loan the guy his wife’s gun.”

“No, I don’t suppose he would. So you think Elaine did it.”

He turned away from those sharp eyes, that fake smile. Elaine did it; yes, of course, Elaine did it. They were going to know that, if they didn’t already. They might not ever be able to prove it, but they’d know it. “I’d hate to think so,” he said.

“Because you were very good friends.”

Well, he didn’t have to put up with that much irony. Facing the detective again, he said, “I had an affair with Elaine Langen. It was never going anywhere, we were never gonna run away together, and we both knew it. Then her husband must’ve found out the same time he found out I was stealing. He got his revenge, he pressed charges, he paid me back, it’s all over as far as he’s concerned.”

“Is it all over? Between you and Mrs. Langen, I mean.”

“Absolutely,” he said, and all at once he saw it. The road out of the woods. “She wanted to start up again,” he explained, “when I got out, but I’m done with all of that, every bit of it. I’m Mr. Staight- and-narrow. I told her, it can’t pick up like before, it just can’t.” Then he allowed himself to get a bit wide-eyed. “Holy shit.”

Alert, she said, “Yes?”

“You’re right. She did it.” Hushed, he said, “Elaine took a shot at me.”