I lifted my cup. “Not sure how they get away with calling this coffee. Black, yes. Hot, yes. Liquid, yes. And yet, coffee it is not.”
Confusion played over his face, then he seemed to come to the conclusion that I wasn’t threatening him, just making social commentary. “We’re not talking to reporters.”
“Huh?”
He turned his back, fed another round of quarters into the machine. “I said, we’re not talking to reporters.”
I laughed. “You think I’m a reporter?”
He shrugged.
“A guy can’t sit in an uncomfortable hospital seat drinking bad coffee without getting mistaken for a reporter? What’s the world coming to?”
“Good question.”
“You’re Bradley Wright’s dad.”
Turned to face me. “How’d you figure?”
“Saw you in there. Near his bed.”
“His uncle, actually. You sure you’re not a reporter?”
“Sure as I can be.” I stood. Held out my hand. “Rafferty.”
“Ray. Ray Wright.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Uh, he’s stable. That’s about all we know at the moment.” He gave another tired smile, looked like it might be the last one he had left, grabbed both cups of coffee from the dispenser. “I’d better get this back to Charlene. Good to meet you.”
I saluted him with my cup and watched him disappear back toward his nephew. Sat on my duff, finished my so-called coffee.
All right, it was time to get the hell out of there and do… well, anything else.
As I stood to toss my cup in the trash, footsteps approached from behind and I turned to see the red-haired woman ten feet away, arms crossed against her chest, paper coffee cup still in hand.
“Mr Rafferty?”
“Uh huh.”
“I’m Charlene Wright.” She uncrossed her arms, stuck out her hand, and stepped forward. “Bradley’s mother. Raymond told me you were out here.”
I’d only been planning to put eyes on Bradley, not get into a conversation with his mother but I thought, why not spend a bit of time chatting to the progenitor of evil. Since I had nothing else on for the afternoon.
I really needed to rethink using that as a guiding principal.
We shook. She had a firmer grip than I expected.
Five and half feet or so tall, a bit hippy but carried her weight well, and she looked like she took care of herself. Aerobics, Jazzercise, something similar. She wore her hair out which paired well with the understated makeup, and soft color on her nails.
Her dress and shoes weren’t couture, but she wasn’t picking through the bins at Goodwill.
Simple gold hoop earrings the only jewelry.
If I had to make a prediction, I’d have said working middle-class. A small three-bedroom ranch in, say, Lower Greenville.
“How’s he doing?” I asked.
She let loose a big breath and rolled her head. Her neck cracked.
“He’s alive, thankfully,” she said. “Still in a coma, and I know that’s what the doctors say is the safest thing right now, but I’d give almost anything to be able to talk to my boy again.”
Before I knew what I was doing, I gestured, offering Charlene a seat. She took it with a small nod of thanks, and I eased back into a chair one over.
“It’s so good of you to come down to check on Bradley. Especially with everything that must be going on at the moment. I can’t even begin to imagine how you’re coping with all this.”
“Come again?”
“Well, I imagine it must be terrible down at the school right now, with so much to do, and probably not even any time for you to grieve.”
“Huh?”
“You’re one of Bradley’s teachers, right? I don’t remember seeing you at school, you sure don’t look like a teacher, and now that I think about it, I can’t remember Bradley ever mentioning a Mister Rafferty, but if you’re not a teacher, then …”
She rose and, although looking equally as drained as Ray, her eyes flashed a look of determination that tiredness alone would not be capable of extinguishing. I’d seen that same look in Hilda’s eyes from time to time, and the message was unmistakable—Mamma Lion is here. Do not fuck with Mamma Lion. “If you’re another reporter,” she hissed, “I already told your colleagues, I have nothing to say.” She turned on her heel.
“Wait.” I should have just let it go, but the word was out of my mouth before I knew it. She paused, turned, but didn’t sit. “I’m not a reporter. Or a teacher. I’m a P.I.”
“Oh, so you’re investigating my son! It’s not bad enough that he’s lying in hospital in a coma, that you need to come sniffing around like … like …”
“No, nothing like that,” I said. “I was in the vicinity when Bradley got h— when the accident happened.”
Charlene shifted her weight. Raised one eyebrow. “That still doesn’t tell me how you know Bradley.”
“The cops interviewed me, after the accident, and I heard them mention his name.”
“So? There’s plenty of people who know Bradley’s name, now that he’s been in almost every paper. Just because he got hit by a … by a … by a bus.”
That undid her and she slumped back into the seat, pulling out a tissue, pressing it to her eyes. I sat, let her do what she needed to do. Nothing I could offer anyway.
“What’s his prognosis?” I tried.
She sniffed. “Like you care.”
She was right. I didn’t really care but, despite Bradley’s actions, I wasn’t unfeeling to her pain. Remembered watching my mother go through the anguish of losing a daughter, and I didn’t expect the parent-child connection changed depth no matter what said child had done.
I mean, it was possible even that Hitler’s mother loved him. In her own way.
Charlene dabbed at her eyes. Turned to me.
I said I wasn’t unfeeling to her pain, not that she somehow got a free pass because of it. So I opened my mouth, ready to unload. Let her in on a few home truths about her son. What he’d done—what I’d watched him do—and the city-wide repercussions because of it. The dead kids, the broken families, the—
I don’t know what made me stop. The way she looked at me—hopeful and oblivious—or the image of Ed in the back of my mind, knowing what he would say and do if I let slip things I shouldn’t.
But I did stop, and that left me with nothing to say.
Her look of hope turned to one of confusion and I scrambled.
“I’m here on a completely different matter, Charlene. It’s got nothing to do with Bradley.”
“Really?”
“Really and truly.”
She tried a smile and, in better times, it looked like it might have been a winner, but this one played on her lips for only a second and then fluttered away. “I can’t tell you how much of a relief that is. It’s just so hard right now. There’s nothing I can do, not while he’s still unconscious. But, I’ve heard that people in comas can tell what’s going on around them, they can hear things, so I want to be with him as much as I can. I want him to know that he’s not alone.”
“Uh huh.”
I’d started the afternoon just wanting to get eyes on the surviving school shooter, get some nod of confirmation that he wasn’t going anywhere. That he wouldn’t almost get away again. Now I found myself in conversation with mother of said shooter who, by first appearances anyway, was not at all who I would have been expecting.
Belligerent. Overbearing. Angry and aggressive. Chip on her shoulder.
I know that stereotypes are just that, and never a hundred percent accurate, but hell, they exist for a reason, and I would not have been surprised to find Bradley’s mother—and those of the other two shooters, for that matter—to be easily fitted with one or all of these.
Not Charlene Wright.
She continued in her soft, almost sing-song voice.
“The doctors say they’ll keep him in the coma for as long as they can, letting the swelling
on his brain reduce as much as possible. They say it’s the best way to avoid the potential for brain … for brain damage.”
She teetered on the edge then and, just for few seconds, sobbed to herself. Fished another Kleenex out of her sleeve and blew her nose. She looked back towards the doorway to ICU. “Thanks so much for coming to check on Bradley. I’m sure he can feel the support he gets, somehow anyway, and the more people he has in his corner, the more likely it is that he’ll pull through.”
She forgot why I was there, reached across the empty chair between us and grabbed my hand between hers. Looked me in the eye.
“I mean it Mr Rafferty. I thank you and I know Bradley does, too.”
I headed back to the street when Charlene Wright turned back to “be with her boy”. I perched my butt on the Pacer’s fender, ignored the Bradley Wright Support Group, and fired up another pipe.
Just as I had it blazing away nicely, starting to settle my nerves and overpower the dead not-coffee taste in my mouth, a voice floated over my shoulder.
“Hey, Rafferty. Long time, no see. How ya doin’?”
I turned and smiled despite how I was feeling. “Monica. Yep. Been a while.”
Monica Gallo was a reporter for the Dallas Morning News. Originally from New York, and so far keeping her hard-talking ways from being softened by the south, she’d made a name for herself by uncovering, and then reporting on, a scandal in the Mayor’s office a year or so earlier. That it involved a highly placed politician, an underage prostitute, and drugs bought with public money made it front page material for nearly two weeks.
Not a bad effort given that at the time she was the arts and music reporter.
That little story gave her the cred she’d needed to demand a transfer to the crime desk, and we’d bumped into each other more than a few times when her stories and my cases crossed paths.
Five foot two, bright red lips, dangling earrings, and wrapped in a brown overcoat, Monica still looked like she should be covering gallery openings and who the latest new bands were, rather than dealing with the same elements of society that littered my path.
“What are you doing here, Monica? This isn’t exactly the crime beat.”
“Nup. But my editor wants to keep the Columbus High story as close to the front page as possible and the Wilson and McKinley families have gone to ground. I can’t get nothin’ outta them right now.”
“Ain’t no hill for a high stepper like you.”
She flashed me a bunch of teeth. “Nup. I’ll get something in the end but, in the meantime, Bradley Wright’s the best I got. Besides, still beats the hell out of writing another story about a West Dallas shooting gallery.”
“Uh huh.” Couldn’t fault the logic on that thinking.
“And maybe there’s something more interesting here, anyway.”
“What might that be, pray tell?”
“Well, for one, what the hell is Dallas’s finest P.I. doing here? Visiting some no-name high schooler injured in an accident? No offense, Rafferty, but that sort of sentimental bullshit don’t sound like you.”
“Thanks, Monica. It’s good to see you’ve finally recognized my professional standing within the community.” She gave me a wink. “But, given the responsibility that such stature carries, is it really too much to think that I might just be concerned for the kid?”
“Yep.”
“Ouch. That hurts.”
“What can I say, Rafferty? You might not like it, but I’ll never lie to ya. Now, whaddya got for me?”
I looked over her head to where the Bradley gang were now running cheers. “One, Two, Three - WE LOVE YOU BRADLEY, GET BETTER SOON!” Thought about the kid they were cheering for. About the twenty innocent people killed, the sixteen trying to rebuild their lives, and the countless others who wouldn’t ever be the same again.
Thought about Ed. “Keep your mouth shut, Rafferty.”
Thought about Monday morning, when I should have been basking in a mid-morning nap, but instead was standing on a roof watching a bunch of innocent kids get slaughtered.
“C’mon, Rafferty. You know I can smell it on ya.”
I looked down at Monica.
“Off the record, right?”
She nodded. Once.
“I mean way, way off.”
Monica smiled like a hyena who’d just laid eyes on a wounded wildebeest, and I thought maybe I should just keep my mouth shut.
Shoulda, coulda, woulda.
Chapter 10
Monday morning again.
Maybe I could get this one right.
It looked promising for a while: coffee, the paper, warm sun on my back, then the phone rang and downhill we went.
I grabbed the receiver. “Rafferty.”
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Hey, Hil. I’ve been using a pocketknife to clean my fingernails for nearly forty years, so thanks for your concern but I’m fairly certain I know what I’m doing. It’s not really that hard.”
“I meant the story in the paper.” I could picture her frown. “Monica Gallo?”
“Oh, that.”
Monica’s story splashed its way across the front page of the Dallas Morning News laying on my desk, casting new light on the movements of a certain teenager who survived the Columbus High shooting, only to get clobbered by a public transit vehicle later in the day.
She’d kept my name out of it, but that particular wrinkle hadn’t stopped Monica from picking up the threads of the story and running with it. The bold headlines told a very different story to that of the previous week’s reporting.
WHAT WAS COLUMBUS HIGH STUDENT RUNNING FROM?
She’d gone further than asking big leading questions, getting her hands on the attendance registers and an unnamed source in the DPD to verify that Bradley Wright was not confirmed at school before the shooting. It didn’t take a lot of column inches to draw the parallel between the two deceased shooters whose names also hadn’t been marked off in class.
But, unlike the other gun-toting kids, Bradley’s body wasn’t located in the school grounds after the shooting either, and the story that fact told screamed louder than any headline.
EYEWITNESS SEES BUS VICTIM WITH GUN AT SCHOOL.
Monica reported the scenes that I’d seen from the rooftop accurately enough. The writing had a breathless, ‘Can you believe this is happening?!’ tone which I thought was beneath her and detracted from the quality of her investigative work, but I wasn’t the city editor, so who cared.
“Yes, that. You gave her Bradley Wright’s name, didn’t you?”
None of this was new information. It had taken a little while the previous week to explain to Hilda that I’d witnessed more than just the massacre the previous Monday. Had, in fact, identified Bradley Wright as one of the three shooters and then been instrumental in making sure he was standing in the middle of the street when the 10:17 to Shreveport came through.
She was sympathetic as ever and did her best to make me feel as though none of it was my fault.
It helped. A little.
“You’re pretty good at detective work, you know that? Got a gut feel for it. I pick up a couple more cases and you could come on full-time.”
She sighed. I returned serve.
“I watched him do it, Hil. I stood there, and I watched him wander around the school with a gun during the massacre. Plus, the cops have proved that the gun he dumped in the alleyway killed four of the vics.”
Another sigh.
“Tell me, babe, what else should I have done? He did it. Ed’s gonna get him. Monica’s story doesn’t change that. All it does is let people know that he’s not the innocent little boy who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“But—”
“But nothing, Hil. He deserves everything that’s coming his way.”
“I’m not going to debate that with you. But I don’t see why you have to be the one stirring the pot. Just let Ed and the cops do what
ever they’re going to do and read about it after the fact.”
“Ah, yes, but what a boring life it would be without a little pot stirring.”
“I guess …” Hilda’s voice got faint. “What? Okay. I’ll be right there.” She came back to the phone. “I’ve got to go, hon. David’s just arrived and I’m still trying to smooth things out with him after … Anyway, I’ll call you later.”
And she was gone.
Turned back to the paper to pick up the rest of Monica’s story.
DPD HAD ADVANCE WARNING OF SHOOTING.
Monica’s unnamed source in the department had done more than just tell her who was marked in class and who wasn’t. The story was pretty much the same as Ed had told me—a desk clerk received a call from a concerned neighbor and discounted it rather than passing it on. Coming hard on the heels of the inquiries from the TV reporters, and with more veracity than a hastily hurled question on a doorstep press conference, this would cause Ed a whole bunch of grief.
I grabbed at the phone as soon as it jangled, and the receiver only barely cleared the cradle before my favorite lieutenant was letting me have it with both barrels.
“The fuck do you think you’re doing, Rafferty?” I assume he didn’t want me to answer, because I didn’t have time to draw breath before he was off and running again. “I can’t believe I was stupid enough to think you actually understood how sensitive this thing is and that you’d stick to your word. I won’t be making that goddam mistake again, that’s the goddamn truth. Just what the hell goes on in that brain of yours? Do you have any idea—any at all—how much grief your little chat with that reporter is going to cause me?”
It sounded like he was finished.
“Did someone get out of bed on the wrong side this morning, Ed?”
And he was off again.
I let him rail while I poured another cup of coffee, leaned back in the chair, and hoisted my feet onto the desk.
When all I could hear was heavy breathing, I gave it a couple more seconds to be sure then tried again.
“Why decide to pick on me? Anyone could have given Monica that story.”
“Don’t even try, Rafferty. I’m not that stupid.”
Wright & Wrong Page 7
