Son of Fletch

“Load the cartridge into the gun,” Fletch said.

Again watching himself carefully, Jack slid the cartridge into the handgun’s grip.

“Aren’t you going to put a bullet into the chamber?” Fletch asked.

“Later.” Jack placed the handgun on the divan beside him.

The brass knocker on the front door banged more than a half dozen times. Fletch smiled. He said: “Hark.”

He pulled his shirt out over the butt of the gun in his waistband.

On the front porch stood a short, fat, balding man in prison denims. From head to foot and side to side he was covered with mud and manure. He squinted through filthy, askew, steamed glasses.

“You’re Kris Kriegel, the escaped murderer?” Fletch asked.

“Yeah.”

“Go around back.”

Fletch slammed the door just as the man stepped toward it.

Going back into the study, Fletch said to Jack, “It’s someone for you.” The handgun he had given Jack was not in sight. “I sent him around back. If you can’t keep the shit out of the house, at least keep the mud out. Mud the cops will notice.”

5

On the bed, Carrie was sitting on Fletch, still in the position in which both had climaxed.

“I could sit here forever,” Carrie said, “feeling you inside me. What would you do if I sat here forever?”

On his back, Fletch shrugged. “Send out for Chinese, I guess.”

Laughing, Carrie fell to her side on the rumpled bed-sheets.

Climbing the stairs, Fletch had said to Jack, who was going along the hallway below him toward the back of the house, “I’m going to sleep.”

He did not sleep.

He had rapped lightly on the bedroom door and said, softly, “All escaped convicts are chickens.”

When he inserted his head around the door frame into the dawn-lit room, Carrie’s big, blue eyes were on high beam.

The shotgun was on the bed with her, aimed at the door. The index finger of her left hand was on the trigger.

Fletch laughed.

He closed the door behind him.

“Everything all right?” she asked.

“All things being relative.”

Fletch took off his clothes and got onto the bed. “You’re not ready to go downstairs yet, are you?” he asked.

“No.”

She proved it.

Then, curled beside him, she asked, “Have we had any visitors?”

“Yeah. Santa Claus just showed up at the front door.”

“Hate to tell you this, Yankee, but Santa doesn’t come in the summertime.” She giggled and punched Fletch in the ribs.

“Poor him. His name is Kris Kriegel. He’s short, fat—”

Her head snapped back for a better look at Fletch’s full face. “You’re serious.”

“Yeah. He’s here.”

“Who’s here?”

“Kris Kriegel.”

“One of the convicts! I thought I heard a pounding on the front door. It woke me up.”

“Guess he couldn’t find one of the chimneys. Two of the other convicts I guess are still hiding out in the gully.”

“What gully? The big gully…?” She moved her head to indicate direction. “… Yonder?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you know they’re there?”

“I sent them there, to hide. Michael and Will came for the Jeep. They patrolled the place pretty well.”

“The gully.” Carrie made a face. “During the storm?”

“You care?”

“Why there? You knew that would turn into a ragin’ flood. God, the snakes!”

“To wear them all out. If we’re gonna have escaped felons around here, we might as well have exhausted ones.”

“Have them around here! Why didn’t you shoot them? Why didn’t you turn them all in? You said Michael and Will were here.” She sat up, cross-legged on the bed. Instantly, she was picking her fingers.

“Because of Jack.”

“Who’s jack?”

“Carrie, I think he’s my son.”

Her head snapped to look at him.

He sat up, too. “I knew a woman, once, named Crystal Faoni. She was a journalist, too.” Fletch spoke rapidly. “At a journalists’ convention we made love, once. This boy’s name is John Fletcher Faoni. He’s one of the escaped convicts. Or, at least, he says that’s his name. He seems to know about Crystal, about me.”

“Faoni.” She spoke slowly. “You recognized his name last night, at the roadblock. That’s why you began making sandwiches when you got home.”

“It’s not that common a name.”

“Your son!? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“I mean, why didn’t you ever tell me you have a son?”

“I never knew he existed until he walked through the French doors of the study last night. Crystal is one of these women who wanted to have the baby, raise the child on her own. I believe that’s true.”

“She never let you know?”

“No.”

“Are you upset about that?”

“Of course.”

“How did you know he likes tuna puffs?”

Always Fletch was amazed at the acuity of Carrie’s questions. Next to hers, District Attorney Alston Chambers’s questions were vague. “Last night he would have eaten re-fried roadkill.”

She put her hand on his forearm. “I’m sorry.”

“Attempted murder,” Fletch said. “He took a shot at a cop.”

“E=MC²!” Such was Carrie’s expletive. She considered the theory of relativity the most outlandish thing she had ever heard of.

She looked out the window. “It’s stopped raining.”

“I think it will be a bright, hot day.”

“The fields got a good wetting,” she said.

“It flattened the corn.”

“It will spring up again.” She got up off the bed. “Why are you putting up with this? Even if he is, maybe, your son, he tried to kill someone; I mean, you have no responsibility for him. How old is he?”

“Curiosity.”

“You know what curiosity did to the orangutan.”

“What did curiosity do to the orangutan?”

“Go ask him. He’s still sitting over in the Memphis Zoo. You saw how hellfire angry he still is.”