logbook next to large amounts of cash.
I’m a good man to have in a crisis. The high-functioning child who grew up around old people, “man child” Grandmother called me. The multitalented adult who could do all sorts of different things well, but could never quite succeed at any of them. The cop who was too smart for law enforcement. The professor not smart enough to get tenure, or conform to the new political conventions of the academy, or even write popular history books that would sell.
And now, through a strange collision of events, all these destinies had been placed in my hands. Right that moment, my hands shook. My heart clubbed my ribcage. The point of pain between the belly and my heart had grown into a persistent ache.
“What have we gotten into?” I said to the mountain in the bed before me.
Only the mechanical wheeze of the respirator responded.
My voice was a dull monotone in a dim room. “Why is your badge number on those pages?”
I was suddenly so tired and angry with him, for putting me in this situation, for getting hurt, for abandoning us-it wasn’t rational, but, as I say, I was in a state. Just as quickly, I filled with remorse. But finally, I came back around to Dean Nixon’s record book, and the terrible history it gave. Could it possibly be true?
It would all have to go to Internal Affairs, of course. And to the feds. And to the media.
I had a lot of complaints and crotchets about the Sheriff’s Office over the years. But I never, even at my most discontent, thought we were corrupt.
Maybe this was all some kind of put-on.
But if so, why did my stomach hurt so damned much?
I could not accept that this man before me was a dirty cop. I could not. I owed him my life, on more than one occasion. But a voice inside me, a voice trained by an unfaithful wife and a career ruined by betrayal, said, How well do we really know anyone, especially the people we love? And the voice of a trained historian, who knew to look beneath the surface, to view institutions skeptically, to distrust one’s preconceptions…well, that voice told me I was in too deep.
“David?”
It was Sharon. She had come in silently and now stood behind me. I stood and gave her a quick hug.
“Have you been crying?” she asked.
It was a slander. It was the smog. I said, “You went back to the radio show?”
“I had to find a routine,” she said. “Better to deal with other people’s problems than mine.” She was wearing expensive-looking cream slacks and a black blouse. Her black hair was pulled back in a ponytail, bringing out her high cheekbones. She sat in the other chair and took my hand.
“He won’t wake up, David,” she said. “I don’t know what to do. I’ve read whole books and web sites on head trauma and comas, but it’s shocking how little they know, even today. So much of it seems out of our hands.”
She stood and worked her way around his bed, inspecting gauges, connections, fluids, contraptions. “We’ve been taking shifts, the girls and I. We try to have someone with him every moment they’ll let us.”
Peralta’s color looked all wrong. His broad, expressive face-the turbulent synthesis of Aztecs and conquistadors-was several shades lighter than I had ever seen it. The crinkles around his eyes seemed etched in pink blood.
“David, how is the hunt going for this convict?”
“Badly,” I said. “But I don’t think he’s our suspect anyway.” I told her of the events of the past few hours, cleaning it up for civilian sensibilities, leaving out the part about the gunshot aimed at my head.
She shook her head with increasing agitation. “I can’t believe someone can try to kill the sheriff of one of the largest counties in America, and you people are so helpless!”
“It’s not that,” I said quietly, feeling pretty damned helpless. “We’re making progress. But it’s taking us in a different direction.”
“But David, you have a note pointing to this…”
“Leo O’Keefe.”
“What a name,” she said. “No wonder he’s deranged. I’m going to write a book someday about what parents do to their children with rotten names.”
“I’m not saying he’s not involved. I’m just saying I don’t think he pulled the trigger.” I let silence fill in the room again. I had to talk to her. I just didn’t know how.
“How is Lindsey? That is a pretty name.”
“She’s OK,” I said. “She’s concerned.”
“Sometimes,” Sharon said, “she reminds me of a young Susan Sontag, all that dark hair, and that poetic watchfulness she has.”
“Different politics,” I said. But I liked the phrase “poetic watchfulness.” I added, “And she doesn’t consider herself an intellectual. She’s quite stubborn about that. But she is a great mind and soul.”
“I like Lindsey,” Sharon said, turning aside my idealistic parry. “I’ve come to like her. She’s knocked off a lot of her rough edges the past couple of years.”
“She’s knocked off some of mine, too.”
“I suppose so,” Sharon said. “You certainly seem happy around her. I don’t know if that’s a reason to get married. Who said a second marriage is ‘the triumph of hope over experience’?”
“Dr. Johnson,” I said.
She patted my hand. “David, the Renaissance man. I hope she gets that about you.”
“She does,” I said. “She reads. We read to each other. That’s a big deal today.” I felt uncomfortable, as if I were defending Lindsey from a subtle, professionally engineered attack.
“You know,” she said, “the day he was shot, I was wrapping up an article about women and marriage.”
“Oh, yeah?” I was relieved for a slight change of subject.
“The headline, I guess, is that marriage is bad for women’s growth. That’s the way I see it.” She sighed heavily. “I was trying to figure out how I was going to tell him about this without setting him off. How screwed up is that?”
“It sounds pretty bleak,” I said. “About marriage.”
“Oh, there are always exceptions, I guess. But in my line, love gone wrong is the biggest source of people’s unhappiness. On the radio show, I could take nothing but lovelorn calls. I have the screener keep a better balance with other pathologies, just so I don’t get bored.”
She added quietly, “I haven’t been sure I wanted to be married for years. Many women are that way, David. They’re stunted in their growth taking care of their men.”
She went on: “I can’t say it quite like that on the radio, of course. It would disappoint the love fantasies of too many listeners, and their advertisers. So this article is for an academic journal. Publish or perish, you know all about that.” She paused. “Anyway, I guess I should feel terribly guilty in the wake of all that’s happened. So you and Lindsey have set a date? You’re going to do this for a second time, David?”
There was a lot I wanted to say. But I just said, “April 30th. Central Methodist Church. We expect you both to be there.”
She just smiled and nodded. Then, quietly, “David, I always imagined you as the scholar, just living the life of the mind.”
I made myself talk. “Sharon, have you ever heard of something called the River Hogs?”
She said she hadn’t, and asked the inevitable “why.” I avoided answering, the cop way, by firing another question.
“What do you remember about Mike after the Guadalupe shooting? What was his state of mind?”
“His state of mind?” She laughed. “You were his partner, David. You tell me. You knew him better than I did, certainly back then.” She smiled to herself. “You were such an oddity. This intense young man who read books and seemed gentle and thoughtful, among all these cowboys. I think I learned something about Mike from the way he gravitated to you, in spite of himself. It was like you filled a part of his soul that came from his father. It was a part he’d never let me into.”
I sat up and rearranged myself, trying to find a comfortable perch in the chair. But there was nothing wrong with the chair.
I went on, “What was his life like off-duty? Did he talk about work?”
“He barely talked at all,” she said, her huge eyes darkening.
