The Righteous Path

by James D F Hannah

  “In my defense, I wasn’t filled with cancer then.” Matt gave his neck a gentle twist, listening for the crack. There was a small, subtle pop. “Is this the attitude you take with all of your patients?”

  Fordham pulled the glasses off his face. Matt thought the doctor had the face of an aging boxer, or perhaps a dog with a shoved-up snout, the ones everyone called “so ugly they’re cute.”

  “Just the ones I like,” Fordham said.

  “And the ones you don’t like, do they accept death as the preferable option?”

  For the first time since Fordham had walked into the exam room, he smiled.

  “Who would want to give up all of this charm?”

  Chapter 3

  Crash called Matt as he left the doctor’s office to tell him Mr. Campbell was awake. She waited for him in the hospital parking lot, holding a cup of convenience store coffee in each hand. She offered one cup to him. Matt popped the lid off and took a long drink. Crash watched with wide eyes.

  “Wasn’t the coffee hot?” Crash said.

  Matt nodded. “Very. Huge fucking mistake,” he said. His eyes watered and his face flushed red. “Goddamn.”

  Crash took a measured sip of her coffee. “How’d your appointment go?”

  Matt wiped the tears from his eyes. “Fine.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “We ever talk about it before?”

  “No, but I thought—”

  “Then I don’t want to talk about it now.”

  On the walk inside, as they headed to the elevator, Matt said, “Any sign of the state police poking around?”

  “Nothing so far. Should they be?”

  “This isn’t anything they would care about, but all the same, I prefer we keep it to ourselves.”

  Inside the elevator, Crash pushed the button for the fourth floor.

  “No offense, Matt, but who cares?” she said. “If the staties come in, or if we catch whoever did it, what’s it matter, so long as someone goes away for it?”

  Once the steel doors slid shut, Matt said, “I’m tired of the state guys coming in and taking over cases. It’s what they do, and they take a huge joy in it. It makes it feel like it doesn’t matter what we do because they’ll always be better than us.”

  The elevator car slowed to a stop with a gentle pulsing shimmy, and the doors opened and they exited into the hallway.

  “Do you know what the sheriff’s department used to do, Matt?” Crash said.

  “I feel like this is where all your fancy college learning is about to come into play.”

  “It collected taxes. And before you say it, I know it’s what we still do. But in another time, that was the sole function of sheriffs. It’s why the sheriff is the villain in Robin Hood. That was the only law enforcement we did. It only came over time we became an investigatory agency.”

  Matt said nothing and instead rocked on the heels of his feet.

  Crash said, “What I’m saying is, this who’s-got-the-biggest-dick show with the state police, it’s a waste of time. Seems like all of us working together would be the smarter way to go.”

  They walked side by side into Gary Campbell’s room. Campbell sat up in bed watching Fox News. He looked worse than Matt expected. The old man’s face was swollen and discolored, a deep purple. The swelling distorted his face, so he looked like something from a low-budget horror film where the makeup had been slapped on in a hurry. Under normal conditions Campbell would have been considered a good-looking man, well aged into his later years, but these weren’t those conditions. He seemed sad and mournful, his face papered with bandages. His gray hair was tousled and scattered down his forehead. He wore rimless glasses with the right lens cracked, and he blinked large, watery eyes at the officers as they entered the room.

  Matt introduced himself and Crash then explained that the sheriff’s department was investigating the attack. Campbell kept his eyes on Crash, concern and wonder both on his face, as if asking himself what she was doing there.

  “How are you today, Mr. Campbell?” Matt said.

  “Shitty, to tell you the truth. I suppose that’s what you’d expect from someone in a hospital, after something like what happened to me and Wilma.”

  “What have the doctors told you about your wife?”

  Campbell folded his hands together. They were large and covered in age spots and fresh bruises. Matt thought they seemed fragile, like a bird’s nest exposed from behind fallen leaves.

  “There’s swelling in her brain, and they’re worried about that. She fractured her hip, broke a couple of bones.” Campbell’s voice cracked with emotion. “Goddamn animals in this world.” He puffed out his chest. “If I’d gotten to the pistol in the bedroom, I suppose you’d have been talking about murder charges for the persons involved in this.”

  The broken pride of an old man was a hard thing for Matt to see. Campbell probably wanted to seem strong, able to provide, able to protect.

  “I doubt that,” Matt said. “Can you tell us about what happened?”

  “I’m chair of my church’s budget committee, and we met last night. Wilma plays piano on Sundays, so the men met downstairs, and she practiced upstairs. We got home—it must have been about ten or ten thirty. Later than I like to be driving at night, but the church is looking to expand and the meeting went long—”

  “Did you notice anything suspicious when you came home?”

  “Not at all. We came through the front door and—” Campbell sucked in air and reached for his chest, clutching his heart. He took a deep breath and relaxed.

  “What happened when you entered the premises?” Crash said.

  Campbell paused as his lips drew tight and thin against one another. “No offense, young lady, but these are details I’m not comfortable discussing in front of you.”

  Crash’s mouth opened, but before she could say anything, Matt laid his hand on her shoulder.

  “Deputy Landing is my chief deputy,” Matt said. “She’s an exceptional officer, and you can speak to her as you would any other deputy.”

  The discomfort was obvious for Campbell. Matt guessed the old man had spent most of his life sending women out of the room so men could discuss the unpleasantries of life.

  Campbell nodded. “I came in first. I unlocked the door for Wilma, and as I opened it for her, someone grabbed hold of me and pulled me in and threw me into the wall. Then they took Wilma and threw her on top of me and slammed the door shut and locked it. I heard the deadbolt snap into place, and it sounded like the hammer on a gun.”

  “Did you see their faces?” Matt said.

  “No. They were wearing masks. Rubber masks, like it was Halloween or something.”

  “How many were there?”

  Campbell furrowed his brows. “Four. It—it happened so fast. Then, when they struck me and Wilma—”

  “Did they say what they wanted?”

  “No. They were animals, Sheriff. Nothing but animals.” He sniffed, and a tear rolled down his cheek. “They kept beating me and Wilma and laughing about it the whole time.”

  “All four of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “All of them male?”

  “Yes. I guess. The masks, it was hard to tell.”

  “Did they seem younger? Older?”

  “They sounded like they were younger, but I’m not sure. The masks muffled their voices.”

  “When they spoke, did they address you by name?”

  He nodded. “I’m old, and I’ve got footprint enough in this town.”

  “How much of anything do you remember?”

  “More than I wish I did. One of them hit Wilma upside the head, and she collapsed. She’s not well, she has heart issues, and—” Campbell’s voice trailed off, and he looked away to the window and the blue sky. “They dragged me to the kitchen, hitting and kicking and cursing at me. And laughing, the whole time laughing, like it was all the funniest thing ev
er.”

  Campbell pushed his face into his hand, and a soft gasping noise crept through his fingers.

  Matt said, “Just a few more questions, Mr. Campbell. Do you have reason to believe they targeted you? Were they looking for something specific?”

  The old man lifted his face up. “They’re nothing but people who’ve spent their lives listening to the shit on the radio they claim is music, watching horror movies, and playing video games, and it’s broken them as humans, and now they’re nothing more than bottom-feeders on the rest of society.” He shook his head. “We’ve been in that house almost forty years now, and our lives are quiet. It’s Wilma and me, and I don’t know what to do if—”

  The unspoken words hung there for a second.

  “We’ve contacted your daughter, Mr. Campbell,” Crash said. “She said she’d—”

  Campbell’s face snapped into anger. “What the hell did you do that for?”

  Crash and Matt exchanged looks. “We thought you—”

  “Last time I checked, you weren’t paid to do anyone’s thinking.” Campbell’s tone took a sharp, angry tone. “What you should do is busy yourself finding these people and making sure they don’t do this to anyone else. Good people shouldn’t have to worry about this.” Campbell sighed and leaned back in the bed. “Can you please go now? I’m tired, and I need to get some sleep.”

  Matt set a business card on the table next to Campbell’s bed. “If you think of anything, please—”

  Campbell closed his eyes. “You all have a good day.”

  In the hallway, free from earshot of Campbell’s room, Crash said, “That was weird, right? It wasn’t just a thing I’m interpreting as weird?”

  “It was unusual.”

  “What was it about, you suppose?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t care either unless it’s got something to do with what happened last night.”

  “I can’t remember anyone freaking out that way over mention of his kid coming to see him.”

  “That’s between him and the kid.”

  “You don’t have a big sense of mystery, do you, Matt?”

  “Life’s not about mysteries, Crash. Life’s just about getting through the day to the next.”

  “Dark way of looking at things.”

  “We all can’t be sunshine and puppies,” Matt said as he stepped into the elevator, Crash a step behind him.

  Chapter 4

  Rachel sat on the back deck drinking wine when Matt got home. He watched her through the French doors that led outside from the kitchen. She held a cigarette between the fingers of one hand, and she took a drag and exhaled and used the other hand to fan away the smoke.

  Matt didn’t remember her smoking before their reconciliation. Maybe she had and he had been oblivious. It wouldn’t have been surprising, all the hours he logged at the office, him not recognizing it. It was those hours—his mindless devotion to the job—that had led to her with the attorney, to the divorce. When he got his second chance with Rachel—Matt didn’t believe in divine providence and assumed life to be a random series of happenstance and blind luck—he’d been surprised when he discovered she smoked. The lawyer had been a selfish fuck who liked women “a certain way,” though, and Rachel developed the habit to stay thin, to maintain his approval.

  Rachel tried to hide it from Matt, he knew. He caught her sometimes, sneaking when he wasn’t around. She would toss the spent cigarette butt over the fence into the neighbor’s driveway. Then she would finish her glass of wine, chew gum, spray perfume. All part of the performance.

  Matt went upstairs without telling her he was home, stripped and tossed his clothes in the laundry basket, and started a warm shower. He took his time, the water washing over him, loosening the tightness in his body, reviving the tired and aching parts of himself. He ran his hands down his torso and across himself, examining the places where there had been more of him not so long ago. He imagined that he could feel himself wasting away underneath his skin, the cancer gnawing at his insides.

  The bathroom door opened, the shower curtain slid open, and Rachel, naked, appeared through the steam and stepped into the tub, wrapping her arms around his waist and pulling him close to her. She kissed him. She still smelled vaguely of cigarettes, but he didn’t care. He focused on the warmth of her, the water sliding between their bodies. His arms twined around her, and her breasts pressed against his chest.

  “How long have you been home?” she said.

  “Not long. I thought we could go to the Riverside and get dinner.”

  Rachel smiled. “The Riverside. You fancy devil, you. You spoil me.”

  Her mouth enveloped his, and they met together underneath the shower’s spray until the hot water started to give out. He shut off the faucet, and she led him by the hand into the bedroom, dripping water in their wake. She pushed him gently, and he fell backward onto the bed. She climbed on top of him.

  “We’re soaking the sheets,” he said.

  “I’ll wash them.”

  “And the mattress.”

  “We’ll flip it.”

  Matt laughed. “God but I love you.”

  “I love you too, Matt. Now take me.”

  So he did.

  They lay there in the aftermath of it all, their bodies wet with sweat and chilled shower water. Matt felt the cold and pulled a sheet across them, wanting it to appear he was just being considerate of her. He got cold easier now.

  Rachel rolled over onto her side. Matt’s head rested on the pillow, his eyes closed.

  “You didn’t say anything about your appointment with Dr. Fordham,” she said.

  “How could I? You all but raped me. I may consider pressing charges.”

  She flicked one of his nipples. He winced and popped an eye open and glared at her. “You’re an evil woman, Rachel Simms.” He closed his eyes again. “It was fine. Uneventful.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Not much. Things are the way they are.”

  “That tells me nothing, Matt.”

  “Perhaps there’s nothing to tell. Things are at a standstill.”

  “Cancer doesn’t get to a standstill. And you are not spontaneously in remission, either. So I need you to tell me what’s going on.”

  Matt sighed and repeated for Rachel what Fordham had told him that morning. She listened with a blank, almost stoic expression on her face as he recounted the dearth of options the doctor had given him.

  “What are the odds you can move up the transplant list?”

  “Don’t know. Depends on if they want to give a liver to an old, out-of-shape dude like me. There could be a rich guy they decide needs it more.”

  “I still think we should see about me donating part of mine.”

  Matt shook his head. “We’ve had this conversation.”

  “No, you’ve had this conversation, where you make it clear you won’t listen to anything I say about the matter.”

  “Because I’m not having you go under the knife because of me.”

  “Livers regenerate. I’ve read all about it. We have the same blood types. I don’t see what the—”

  Matt pushed himself up and off the bed. Standing, looking at Rachel, she seemed both smaller yet more fierce than he realized. Her eyes narrowed and her face tightened, and even naked, she seemed ready for battle.

  “They’ll figure this out—”

  “So you say,” she said.

  “So I know. Trust me on this.”

  “Someone told me once you shouldn’t ask someone to trust you, that it’s a cry for forgiveness.”

  “That person sounds like an asshole.”

  “It was you.”

  “But a wise asshole. Very knowing. Very trustworthy, so to speak. Also, trust me when I say the Riverside is our best option for dinner tonight.” He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “Now come on, because I want to get there before the AA crowd from St. Anthony’s shows up.
”

  Chapter 5

  Matt knocked on the front door of Amy Portis’s house and waited. The wheelchair ramp added onto the porch was a recent addition, he knew. Not painted or stained yet, and he wondered if he should ask if he could do that. That was what was on his mind when the front door opened.

  There couldn’t have been any question that Amy Portis was Carl Thompson’s sister. She stood six-two barefoot, feminine with broad shoulders. She filled the door frame with a lean, sinewy body, in a Parker County Bucs T-shirt and yoga pants, mounds of curly hair spilling off her head and out into the wild. She smiled a smile full of large white teeth at the sight of Matt, and the crinkles in the corners of her eyes added to her attractiveness.

  “About goddamn time you showed up,” she said, hugging Matt. She stopped and pulled back and her eyes were wide and fearful. “Oh Jesus Christ, Matt, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Are you okay? I didn’t—”

  Matt waved her words off. “I’m fine, Amy. The cancer beat you to causing the good damage already.”

  “Come on in,” she said. She shut the door behind him and led Matt into the kitchen. “Get you a cup of coffee? Pot’s fresh.”

  “That would be great.”

  Amy busied herself getting out mugs and sugar and a carton of half-and-half.

  Things were awkward between Matt and Amy after the shooting. White supremacists had shot Carl while he was protecting Rachel. The bullet penetrated his spine, left him paralyzed. The doctors told him he'd ever walk again.

  Amy, protective of her brother since childhood, blamed Matt. That Carl had no reason to take a bullet this way. Why hadn't Matt been the one with Rachel? Amy didn't care about all the other pieces that had been in play that day; she only saw her brother, this mass of a man, stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. It had taken Carl telling her over and over, day after day for months, before she accepted what her brother said to her: the danger was part of the job, and if he had to do it over again, he wouldn't change shit. Protecting people was what a cop did, he said.