Ask the Parrot

“Oh, I know that, we both know that, he isn’t blaming you, he’s blaming what he calls ‘my own stupid self.’ But if it had been just him and Tom up there, they would have gone to the troopers, and who knows what would have happened?”

“Nothing good,” Parker said.

“Well, maybe.” She drank some of the water, then sat holding the glass in both hands in her lap. “Or maybe they would have seen it was an accident,” she said, “and that man was he was only wouldn’t have relatives or—”

“Garbage,” Parker said. “A man, but garbage.”

“It’s harsh when you say it that way,” she said, “but yes. The troopers might have looked at it, might have seen what Fred was and what that other man was, and just said, ‘Well, it was an accident, we won’t make a big deal out of it.’ Of course, now he can’t do that.”

“He never could,” Parker said. “That fella has an identity. They’ll find it, from fingerprints or DNA or dental records or something else. He’ll have relatives, they’ll want to be satisfied. Knowing their cousin is drinking himself to death is one thing; knowing he’s been shot in the back is something else.”

“Oh!”

“Fred wouldn’t be hit with a whole lot,” Parker told her, “but he would do some time inside.”

“That’s what scared him,” she said, and now she did look as though she might cry, but shook her head and kept talking. “One of the things that scared him. The idea of . . . prison . . . we can’t . . . we have our own—”

“Tom told me,” Parker said. “Afterward, he told me. He had to.”

“I haven’t blabbed around to anyone else, Jane,” Lindahl said. “Honest to God.”

“Oh, I believe you.” With that bleak look at Parker again, she said, “That whole thing hit Fred worse even than it did George. He’s had to take pills to sleep, or he just lies there all night, thinking about that cell, imagining that cell. He’s in the cell more than George is.”

Parker said, “How long is George in for?”

“Oh, a year more, at the most,” she said, dismissing it. “At the most. It was post-stress syndrome, everybody knows that’s what it was. His army record couldn’t have been better, everybody says so. Did Tom tell you he was wounded?”

“No.”

“I wasn’t telling stories, Jane,” Lindahl said.

“I understand that.” To Parker she said, “He was wounded, too. A roadside bomb.” She slid her palm down over her left hip. “It burned a lot of skin off there and smashed a joint. He’s got a plastic joint in there.”

“So they’ll let him out,” Parker said, “as soon as they can.”

“No more than a year.”

Parker nodded. “Have you mentioned to Fred, George will want to see him when he gets out?”

She blinked at him. “Well, he knows— What do you mean?”

Nodding at the rifle against the wall, Parker said, “He’s in pain right now. He might decide that thing’s better than a sleeping pill.”

Her eyes widened, and a trembling hand moved up toward her face, but she didn’t speak. She’d known the same truth but had been trying not to think it.

Parker said, “When you take the rifle back to him, remind him, George will be very disappointed, all he’s been through, if his father isn’t there to say hello when he gets out.”

“I will,” she said. “That might . . .” She looked around the room. “I don’t need any more water.”

Lindahl jumped up to take the glass from her. “We’re sorry, Jane,” he said. “None of us wanted this to happen.”

“It isn’t you two, it’s him. That’s the worst of it, he knows it’s him.” She got to her feet, slightly unsteady. “I shouldn’t be away from there too long.”

Parker stood and told her, “With you on hand, he’ll come through this.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Lindahl handed her the rifle. “The safety’s on.”

“Good.” She staggered slightly under the unaccustomed weight, which meant her husband hadn’t introduced her to hunting. “I’ll tell Fred what you said,” she told Parker. “About George wanting him there, when he comes back.”

“Good.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Lindahl said, and did so. Parker waited, and then Lindahl came back in to say, “You were very sympathetic.” He sounded surprised. “I didn’t think you’d have that kind of sympathetic manner.”

“I had to,” Parker said. “You know Thiemann’s thinking about killing himself. If he does, the cops’ll talk to the wife three minutes before they find out what happened, and ten minutes after that, they’re right at this door.” Parker shook his head. “I’ll be as sympathetic as I have to. Neither of us wants a gun battle with the law.”

8

Three minutes after Jane Thiemann left, the door opened and Cal Dennison sauntered in, saying, “That lady had a gun.”