each one a minute or so of consideration. I was trying to figure out if one of them was the reason the thief had been in here. But most of them were old and pedestrian. Mortgages, divorces, wills-nothing that would be worth stealing.
When I was finishing up, I realized that this was a ruse, dumping everything out this way. He was searching for something else, and the piles of folders were nothing more than a distraction for my sake. Like many attorneys, I was file-rich and money-poor. But I’d never worked on a case that would prompt somebody to toss my office. Until now, the murder of Lou Bennett and the aftermath.
Since there was only one possible explanation, I went to my desk and opened the manila folder on it. I’d made copies of the material about Karen Shanlon’s death in the fire. There were six sheets in all. I had put them in order of the date on which the newspaper story had been published. When I went through them now, they were out of sequence.
I went back and finished the filing. I walked down the hall and got a Pepsi from the machine, and then came back to try and think this through. The thief obviously thought I had something he didn’t want me to have. And it had to do with the Karen Shanlon fire.
A picture of DePaul stared up at me from the folder. He’d been the chief at the time of the fire; he’d been the authority who’d called it accidental. I found myself thinking the unthinkable and enjoying the hell out of it. What if DePaul, the great patriot and overseer of public virtue, had taken a bribe? It wasn’t exactly unheard of. Big town or small, a certain number of public officials were always on the take.
Since DePaul was the man who’d written the report on the fire that killed Karen Shanlon, he was the man I needed to start with.
I was halfway out of my chair when the phone rang. I answered and heard: “Somebody really hurt him, Sam. Really hurt him!”
Sue was usually an unflappable woman. Her presence allowed Kenny to be as flappable as he wanted to be and still function. But right now Sue was angry and scared and confused.
I pretty much knew what she was going to say but I let her say it anyway.
“I came home and I found Kenny on the ground in front of the trailer. He was facedown. I thought he was dead. There was so much blood on the back of his head.”
“Where are you now?”
“Here. Home. But I’m headed to the hospital emergency room. Could you meet us there?”
“Absolutely. I’ll leave now.”
“He still hasn’t told me what you two are working on-he never tells me until afterward-but I want your promise that you’ll stop.”
What else could I say? “I’ll stop, Sue. I promise. Now I’ll see you at the hospital.”
16
The medicinal scents of the emergency room brought back memories of the three times I’d spent in the hospital. I’d had my tonsils out, I’d broken my leg falling off the top of the garage, and I ran a fever the doc thought might affect my brain and heart. All this before I was nine years old. There were bonuses for being in the hospital. I got all the comic books I wanted, and I didn’t have to pay for them with my own allowance. I remember especially a certain issue of Hawkman teaming up with Batman. I also got chocolate malts and a radio that seemed to play only the shows I wanted to hear. Sometimes being in the hospital is within pissing distance of being outright fun.
I had time for a cigarette and a cup of hospital coffee before Sue appeared with her arm around Kenny’s waist. They wore contrasting expressions. Sue appeared to be ready for his funeral; Kenny smiled at me. He had blood all over his short-sleeved blue shirt.
She got him into the seat next to me and said, “You make sure he doesn’t move, Sam. He’s in pretty bad shape.” Then she was off to fill out forms so that Kenny could see a doc.
“The bastard was good, McCain. He must have come up from the creek behind my trailer and waited me out. I came out of the trailer to take a break-you know how I walk around sometimes because I get stiff sitting at the typewriter?-and he got me as soon as I got on the ground. Just came right up behind me and wham! I was out.”
“You didn’t get a look at him?”
“Nothing.” For the first time his face crosshatched with pain. “I may have a little concussion. But man, Sue has gone batshit.”
“She loves you.”
“Yeah, but why?”
“Lots of people are asking the very same question.”
“What the hell was he looking for at my place?”
“I may be wrong, but I think this has something to do with the fire that killed Karen Shanlon. You’ve been asking around about Lou Bennett and so have I. And I’ve been to the library reading up on the fire. Somebody thinks we either know something or are about to find something out. He can’t be sure which it is, so he has to make sure we don’t already have something. He trashed my office, too. Knocked out Turk.”
“Well, then he can’t be all bad.” But his face twisted up when he tried to laugh. Up close he looked pale and shaken. The blood on his shirt was lurid, like blood in a crime-scene photo.
“I promised Sue we’d pull back on this. Just forget about it.”
“Are you crazy? Now I really want to go after him.”
“Sorry. I promised Sue. I can break my word to her, but you can’t break yours.”
“I didn’t give her my word. You gave her my word. So that doesn’t count.”
“You want to tell her that? You remember what happened the last time you broke your word to her?”
“Yeah. Spam the whole week.”
“Right. And you’re lucky she didn’t leave the goop on when she served it to you.”
“She had steak every night and I had Spam. She’s a lot meaner than she looks.”
Sue came back with a smiling nurse pushing a wheelchair. “Right in here, Mr. Thibodeau.”
“I can walk.”
“I’m sure you can. But these are hospital rules.” The nurse was middle-aged and had learned how to be sweet while she was slapping you around with rules.
When he was safely seated, Sue bent over and kissed him on top of his head. Then she looked at me: “You gave your word, Sam.”
“I did.”
“And I expect you to keep it. Both of you.”
“Maybe we could talk about that a little, honey.”
“Are you ready, Mr. Thibodeau? We’re going right down the hall and get you all fixed up. You may come with us if you like, Mrs. Thibodeau.”
Sue had elevated herself to wife status. I glanced at her and smiled. She scowled. Kenny should never have said that “maybe we could talk about that a little, honey.” The “honey” hadn’t helped at all. It was clear there’d be no talking about it. Not with Sue. Not ever.
I saw a doctor and another nurse go into the room where Kenny had been wheeled. Sue appeared about fifteen minutes later. The hospital coffee was withering my vital organs.
She came over and sat down next to me. “I feel stupid, Sam. I really overreacted.”
“You were worried.”
“I still should have been able to control myself.” She reached over and put her hand on mine. “I want to be a good mother.”
“I’m sure you will be. You got upset. So what? We all get upset. We just get scared.”
“Kenny doesn’t know this yet, Sam. I’m pregnant. Six months from now, I’ll be a mother and Kenny will be a father.”
So there you had it. The best news that Kenny would receive in his life. Better even than selling “Sex Sirens of the Watery Deep” to Real Balls Adventure.
