'Marvin something. Marvin Fleischman.'
She shook her head. 'Don't know him.'
'Have you spoken to Mom?' I asked.
'Once,' he said. 'Her sister drove in from Seattle.'
'She didn't want to be here?'
'I wouldn't let her be here,' he said.
'If you're worried about the money, she could stay with me,' I said.
'She's not here because I don't want her to be. The house won't take care of itself. Bills don't send their own checks.'
'People can help you and her, Dad.'
'We don't need people. We're fine.'
'Clearly.'
'These public defenders,' my father said. 'Do they know their ass from their elbow?'
'Depends,' she replied. 'A lot of lawyers go the PD route because they believe everyone deserves a fair trial and good representation. Believe it or not, a lot of lawyers enter the profession for the nobility of it. Of course, a lot of them go the PD route because it's a guar anteed paycheck, as opposed to private practice where you run the risk of getting stiffed on your bill by a client who can't pay. And…' She trailed off.
'And what?' James Parker said.
'And some of them, well, let's just say that govern ment work does not always attract the best and the brightest.' My father slumped into his chair. I got the feeling he thought this Marvin Fleischman fit the latter category. 'But seriously, Mr. Parker, every lawyer is dif ferent. You could get great representation from a PD.'
'So,' I said, 'let's hope you got a guy who graduated from Harvard Law with a summa cum laude in nobility.'
The noise my dad made said he wasn't quite expect ing that to be the case.
'Listen, Dad,' I said, 'we've found out a lot. About
Stephen, his family. I think he was mixed up in some pretty bad stuff.'
'You're telling me. Remember, I knew that mother of his.'
I didn't have the heart to tell him that unless Helen
Pinter, Jason – Henry Parker 04
The Fury (2009)
Gaines was a junkie back in Bend, she'd only gotten worse. Two peas in a pod, her and James Parker.
I filled him in on what we did know. About Helen and Beth-Ann Downing. About Rose Keller, and the
Vinnie brigade.
'We need to know more about the night you saw them,' I said. 'We know Helen wanted money from you, and she told you it was for rehab, but I don't think that's the case. Think about your conversation with
Helen. Specific words. Gestures. Clues that might give us a lead as to where the money would actually be going, or what was running through Helen's mind when you saw her.'
He rubbed his head, either thinking very hard or working very hard not to think. 'Henry, it was a rough night. I remember the big things. The gun, this woman
I hadn't seen in years looking like she was hopped up on something.'
'Like what?'
'I don't know, I'm not a doctor. But her eyes were red as all hell and she had a bad cough. That girl was not in good shape.'
I looked at Amanda. That would jibe with the pos sibility that Helen was still using.
'Anything else?' I asked.
He tapped his thumb against his cheek, tongue flicking against his upper lip. 'One thing seemed strange,' he said. 'Helen.'
'You mean besides the jitters and the gun? What about her?'
'She was a mess, but she was scared, too,' my father said. 'And not of me. Kept looking around, like someone could burst through the door at any moment.
I could tell from her eyes something was wrong. Now, does that make sense? She wants to check her son into rehab, seems to me that'd be a cause to have hope, you know, these two chuckleheads finally getting their act together. But Helen wasn't like that. When she didn't think I was going to give her the money, she just… freaked out.'
'Maybe that's why she took the gun out,' Amanda said. 'She was worried that if she didn't get the money from you something terrible was going to happen.'
'What?' my father asked.
'I don't know, but you're right about her being scared. Granted, I've never been to rehab, but you'd think fright isn't the number-one emotion running through a mother's head when helping her son. Unless she was scared of you. Is that possible?'
'Oh, she was scared of me at the end of the night,
I'll say that, but this was there when I got to the apart ment. Something else scared Helen.'
Amanda said, 'I'd be surprised if what scared Helen didn't kill her son.'
We both looked at her, knowing she was on the money.
Turning back to my father, I said, 'Please, Dad, think hard. Did she say anything, anything at all that could give you a clue as to what she was afraid of?'
My father raised his head, his eyes red. His breath ing grew labored. Immediately I recoiled and Amanda looked at me. I could see my father's teeth, bared through his lips. I'd seen this before. It was rage boiling inside him, ready to explode. It was how he would get when my mother or I upset him. It was how he looked before a rampage, before he made us too scared to live in our own home. It was the rage and confusion of a man who couldn't do anything to stop his world from spinning on an already tilted axis. So all he could do was force that energy outward onto the people closest to him.
I watched this from across the table as he simmered for several minutes. Then the rage subsided, his breath ing returning to normal. He realized there was nowhere for the rage to go here. No outlet for it. He was an animal surrounded by barbed wire.
I finally realized that what it took to subdue my father was not him seeing the pain he caused others, but him seeing the pain he could cause himself.
'There was a notepad,' he finally said quietly. 'At one point Helen went to the bathroom. I took a look around the apartment, just curious. So I see this lined pad she must have just been writing in.'
'What was on it?' I said.
'First thing she wrote, weird as hell, was 'Mexico' and 'Europe.''
'Any specific country in Europe?'
'No, just Europe.'
'Maybe those were rehab spots Helen had in mind.
Cheaper ones since she couldn't afford the tony places in the States. What else?'
'Next she wrote '$50,000,' with a question mark after it.'
'Thirty years' back child support,' Amanda said.
'That could add up to fifty grand. Maybe that's what the number represented.'
'The last word she wrote was-' my father thought for a moment '-fury.'
'Fury?'
'It was capitalized, like a name. And she underlined it. A few times. With another question mark at the end.'
'We can guess what the other words represented,' I said. 'But what does the 'Fury' mean?' I asked the question, but a small chime went off in my subcon scious. Like I'd heard the word before. And not in relation to its standard usage. Something more specific.
But I couldn't conjure up just what it was.
'What if,' Amanda said, 'they had nothing do to with rehab facilities or resorts. What if Stephen and
Helen were trying to get away from something?'
'Like what?' my father asked.
