Wright & Wrong

by W. Glenn Duncan Jr.

  “Take me to bed, Ugly.”

  “You said I was a big ol’ softie.”

  She slid her hand down my chest, over my belt buckle and did warm, wonderful things in my lap. Her lips found my ear again and she whispered, “Maybe not that much of a softie, after all.”

  Chapter 12

  It took the Grand Jury exactly thirty-seven minutes late on a Friday afternoon to give District Attorney Maria Hernandez the indictment she wanted.

  So said Monica’s latest report in the Dallas Morning News, so it must have been true.

  Details aside, Bradley Wright had been indicted to stand trial for the murder of four people on the day of the Columbus High School shooting—Rebecca Gibbons, student, age 16; Steven Erwin, student, age 17; Riley Inglis, student, age 13; Catherine York, teacher’s aide, age 34—being an accessory before the fact for the other fourteen victims, and a slew of other offences.

  It was finally happening. Bradley was going to get everything he deserved. All he needed to do was wake up first.

  It looked like I wasn’t the only one pleased with the latest turn of events. Continuing from Monica’s latest front page—KID KILLER INDICTED—a series of interviews spilled over nearly a dozen pages where Bradley’s schoolmates left nothing to the imagination in describing the troubled youth:

  ‘Weird kid. Always by himself. Quiet. Like a time-bomb waiting to go off.’

  ‘Bradley Wright? Yeah, I knew him. Not very well, you know. He didn’t seem to talk to many other kids. No, I didn’t have any idea that he would do something like this, but then you really never know about someone else, you know?’

  ‘What? No, I didn’t ever see him hanging around with Randy or Kevin, but I avoided those two like the plague, and I didn’t have any classes with the three of them so I wouldn’t really know.’

  ‘Brad was such an idiot. Like he couldn’t even stand to be called Brad. Always insisted that his name was Bradley. Like there was one time where I called him Brad when we were working together on a project and he got really mad and yelled at me that he wanted to be called Bradley, not Brad, and how would I like it if he started calling me Penny instead of Penelope. Cause that’s my real name, Penelope, but like I don’t mind it if I get called Penny. In fact, it sounds kind of nice. Kind of perky. Like Bunny or Cindy. Like it’s not such a big deal. So I really don’t know what Brad’s problem was.’

  ‘We had a few classes together. Nope, never had any problems with him. He was always real quiet, though. Seemed to be by himself a lot. Nope, didn’t see it coming at all.’

  The phone rang, jerking me away from the collected mutterings of the next generation of people to run our country. I was glad for the interruption.

  “You’ve reached the offices of Holmes and Watson Esquires. Purveyors of the world’s finest opium and ponderers of the world’s most quizzical riddl—”

  “Rafferty?” a female voice said.

  “This is he.”

  A chuckle. “I figured it hadda be ya. No-one else coulda come up with a line like that.”

  “Hey, Monica. Actually, just been reading your latest piece. So, Maria Hernandez is locked and loaded by the looks of it.”

  “Yup. Just gotta wait until the Wright kid wakes up. He’s gonna be in a world of hurt, won’t know which way is up.”

  “He has it coming.”

  “Not for me to say. I don’t make the news, just tell the stories as they happen. Anyway, I’m callin’ ‘cause I wanted to say thanks for the heads-up on Bradley. You gave me a jump start on everyone else in town, not to mention a huge boost with my editor. So, thanks.”

  I waited for a few seconds in case Monica wanted to add anything else. Like, ‘So, as a token of my thanks, I’m gonna have a cashier’s check for five grand sent over to you this afternoon.’

  Crickets.

  I couldn’t remember who it was that said no good deed goes unpunished, but it probably didn’t matter. Whoever they were they sure seemed prescient.

  “No problems, Monica. Always happy to help out.”

  “Huh? Oh yeah, thought you’d dropped out there. Anyway, my editor’s gonna keep kicking my ass to keep this story rolling, so you hear anythin’ else, you let me know, okay?”

  I promised I would, though I couldn’t think at all what that might be now that the case was firmly in the hands of the DA’s office, and I hung up the phone.

  Grabbed a fresh cup of coffee and turned back to the paper.

  The father of one of the dead shooters was in jail after running over a reporter on his front lawn. Looked like the reporter would be okay once the broken bones healed. A lawsuit was being considered.

  Imani Laweles was still newsworthy, taking up column inches with a spread less about the tragedy on the day and more about her family and how they spent their time when she wasn’t being shot at.

  Turns out that Imani was a foster child. The article didn’t go into detail about her background, but I assume it had been worse than the three siblings she now shared a mother and father with. Photos with the article showed the family on the rear terrace of a two-story pile in the Park Cities. The six of them looked close, with arms around each other and smiles all around. Except Imani. She looked haunted.

  I was about to turn to some work—checking what else the paper had to offer—when there was a knock at the door.

  Aha! A client. Or a bill collector possibly, but I could at least attempt to be optimistic.

  It turned out to be Paul Eindhoven, which was a disappointment all the way around.

  He stepped in, sat, and waited.

  I leaned back and put my feet on the desk. “Why me, Paul?”

  “I hear you’re the best.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “I asked around.”

  “Not very far, obviously.”

  “You’d be surprised. I also spoke to that Sergeant at DPD. What’s his name? Rocco?”

  “Ricco.”

  “That’s him. Anyway, he says, and I’m quoting here, ‘Rafferty is the biggest pain in the ass you’ll ever find …’” Paul paused and smiled. “‘… but if you need help, he’ll do you right.’”

  “I should probably send him a thank you note,” I said. “But, there’s got to be someone else.”

  “Ricco told me about the job you did with that missing girl. What you went through to get her back to her family.”

  I waited. Here it came.

  “Bradley deserves the same.”

  “Kimberly had been drugged, kidnapped, and held hostage in the desert by a religious nutcase. She didn’t shoot anyone.”

  “I don’t believe Bradley did either.”

  “That’s all well and good, Paul, but let me ask …” I looked him in the eye. “Would you use that defense in court?”

  “Of course not.”

  “So why do you think it’ll work with me?”

  “Because, the other thing I hear about you is that you keep an open mind. That’s exactly what Bradley needs right now.”

  “An open mind? Me? The man who thinks that Colt hasn’t improved the design of the handgun in more than seventy-five years?”

  “Joke all you like, but Ricco also told me how you were the only one who believed Kimberly was in trouble. Everyone else wrote her off as a runaway. You didn’t. You went and found her.”

  I didn’t want to think about the shit-storm that happened in Lincoln, so I sipped coffee and tried to ignore Paul. He didn’t play his side of the scene well.

  “You keep saying that Bradley did this.”

  I smiled and spread my hands wide.

  “Okay,” he said, “show me evidence of that and I’ll walk away.”

  “Are you deaf? Or stupid? Have you already forgotten that I saw him? With a gun. Or did you miss every single one of the papers last week? Not counting Bradley and his rifle-toting friends, twenty dead. Sixteen injured. Which part of—”

  “No,” he said. “Evidence. Not statistics. Show me hard evidence that a
single person was injured or killed by anything Bradley did.”

  Interesting. I’d never had anyone ask me to prove them wrong before.

  “So all I need to do is to dig around, confirm what is obvious to everyone, and you’ll lay off?”

  “That’s it.”

  I swiveled the chair a little further left to take the pressure off my right ankle. “I don’t work for free. No matter how easy the job is.”

  Paul reached inside his suit jacket and pulled out a calfskin wallet. Leaned forward and counted bills out onto the desk. “Will five hundred be enough to start?”

  “You’re not going to let this drop, are you?”

  He let the dimples and teeth hit high beam, tapped the pile of bills and raised an eyebrow.

  If this thing wasn’t going to leave me alone the least it could do was help me get the Mustang back. Shook my head. “One thousand,” I said, figuring that he could afford double my retainer. I sure as hell deserved it, and if it was too rich for his blood, that suited me fine too.

  “One thousand dollars it is then, Mr Rafferty.”

  Damn.

  Paul laid another five hundreds and a business card on top of the stack. “Consider yourself engaged to find hard evidence connecting Bradley Wright to the deaths and injuries from the Columbus High School shooting.”

  “No guarantees, Paul. I keep the money no matter what I find.”

  “Understood.”

  I looked at the money sitting on the desk. Didn’t get out of the chair, didn’t even take my feet off the desk as Paul stood and stopped in the doorway. “Goodbye, Mr Rafferty. I look forward to hearing from you next week.”

  I stayed sitting a while longer, watching the stack of bills like they might spontaneously combust. Maybe if I ignored the cash, it would go away and take this stupid case with it.

  On the other hand …

  Finally, I put down my coffee, reached for the fridge and pulled out a Shiner Bock, swept the cash into my top desk drawer, and tried to figure the downsides to this deal.

  By the time I had finished the beer, I hadn’t come up with any.

  The school had been knee-deep with evidence, which would all be cataloged by the investigating teams and being put into neat piles for the DA to use in their evisceration of Bradley Wright. I’d talk to Ed in the next day or so, pick over my choice of collected items to show Paul, and that would be that.

  Easiest money I’d ever make.

  Chapter 13

  I’d expected Mrs Jorgenson to be a little happier now that I was once again fully paid up for my rent, but it turned out the dour frown she wore seemed to be permanent.

  Paid a couple of other bills too, with the receptionist at my answering service reciting me a tired “Thanks for your custom, Mr Rafferty. Please be more prompt with future payments,” as I headed back out the door.

  Fuck ‘em. I wasn’t going to let them spoil the rest of my day.

  I still had a couple of hundreds in my wallet and I headed downtown to see if I could get lucky with Hilda.

  Turns out, I couldn’t.

  McKinney was jammed and it took me longer than I’d hoped to get the car squared away in a lot a couple of blocks down and over, then hoof it back to GARDNER’S ANTIQUES.

  The bell on the front door was still tinkling when Hilda’s head salesman, Ramon, glided into view.

  “Ahh, it’s you,” he said, lips clenched.

  “Always good to see you too, Ramon.”

  “Yes, well, Hilda’s not here. She’s working.”

  Ramon never missed a chance to let me know his impression of my enterprises. “A half-witted quest to save the world” had been his most recent assessment.

  I didn’t have to stand still and take an insult like that from him.

  I had hundreds of people ready and waiting for that honor.

  “You know when she’ll be back?”

  Ramon smiled and shrugged, made the gesture look elegant, and left me with no doubt that he knew and wasn’t telling.

  “When she comes back, let her know that I dropped by and I’ll see her at my place tonight.”

  Ramon inclined his head. “Certainly.”

  I was confident that he would remember my message verbatim and be precise in his non-delivery of it upon Hilda’s return.

  But, I also knew when I was beat so I headed back out to the street. Presumably, Ramon went back to polishing Edwardian sideboards or to brush up on his rich-folk speak. Repeat after me: Investment Opportunity, Increasing Value into the Future, Can you put a Price on Status, etc., etc.

  I busied myself with more important things and went to lunch.

  The chatter at Rush Diner, a Reuben, a mess of potato chips, and a Miller’s Genuine Draft did the job nicely to start the afternoon off right. Lisa was working her usual routine behind the counter and I sat there for a change.

  “Haven’t seen ya’ll for a while, Rafferty,” she said, in the middle of making coffee, a sandwich, and change, all at the same time. “Y’all come back now, y’hear,” she called to the back of a departing customer without breaking stride.

  “Uh huh,” I said.

  I’d long become accustomed to talking to the back of Lisa’s head. It wasn’t that she was rude; she was doing so many things at once that she was always in the middle of all of them. Didn’t matter, she could carry on a conversation at the same time.

  “You hear ‘bout that shooting over at Columbus?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  I didn’t want to talk about it.

  But not talking wasn’t an option when Lisa was involved.

  “What an awful thang,” she said as she breezed past with two plates for the couple in the nearest booth. “Not fair that the kids who did it should get off. Gets me madder’n a wet hen!”

  In the past, we’d talked about some of the cases I’d been involved in, just passing the time of day. Lisa had shown no more than a fleeting interest, no strong feelings one way or the other.

  She stopped in front of me on her way back to the coffee machine, took a big swallow from a glass of water and stood with her hands flat on the counter. “I keep thinking ’bout those poor kids. Should have been just another day at school, having fun with their friends, and complainin’ about teachers and homework.” Tears welled in her eyes and she ran a finger along her lower lids. “But instead, they’re murdered—frightened and screaming—by three punk-ass shits.”

  “You didn’t have kids there, did you?” I’d never heard Lisa talk about children, or even being married for that matter, but had the feeling we were skirting hallowed ground.

  “No.” She sniffed. “I don’t have kids … but my best friend’s daughter went to school there.” I whistled out a breath as she continued. “She was one of the lucky ones, but been waking with nightmares each night since. Won’t leave the house. Too scared to even go into the backyard. It’s getting to the family, too. My friend and her husband are startin’ to argue. And that ain’t like them.”

  Lisa looked over my shoulder and nodded, grabbed a napkin from the dispenser and wiped her eyes again. “Just a minute, honey,” she called to a man at the far end of the counter. Walked to the coffee machine and tuned up.

  “I don’t mind telling you.” Lisa played her coffee concerto as she spoke. “Watching my friend bawl her eyes out, feelin’ helpless ’cause there’s nothing she can do to protect her daughter is one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen. I don’t like to wish bad on anyone, Rafferty, you know that, but if someone was to offer me the chance to kill those two again, I’d git her done. And that one still in the hospital? All I can say is that I can’t wait for the DA to get through with him. Just what he deserves.”

  Lisa finished her coffee-making and bussed it to the booth. I finished my Reuben, upended my beer, and felt like I had an itch I couldn’t scratch. Fished a few bills out to leave on the counter.

  “See ya, Leese,” I said from the door.

  “Don’t be a stranger, Rafferty,
y’hear?”

  Maybe I’d been wrong about Ramon. Hilda turned up at my place earlier than usual, found me sitting in the back yard with a beer. She prepared a couple of grazing plates, joined me with wine, and we watched the sun go down while sipping, nibbling, and holding hands like teenagers.

  Paul butted his way into my thoughts now and then, but I managed to push him to the back without too much effort. There was plenty of time to get done what I’d been dragooned into. The DA’s office, and Ed for that matter, would be swimming in evidence, so two days would be plenty for me to get what I needed.

  The evening came and went, and it was a while later when Hilda and I fell asleep naked, sweaty, and wonderfully exhausted nestled together like two spoons.

  It was a great afternoon.

  Woke up in the middle of the night, the streetlight at the corner of Palm Lane brightening the gaps around the edges of the curtains.

  Bedside clock glowed a red 2:37am.

  I could hear the dull drone of late-night traffic a block away on Mockingbird, and the distant bark of an insomniac dog.

  Hilda burbled away in her sleep, bed warm beside me.

  Nothing out of the ordinary. All right with the world.

  Rolled over and waited to drop back off to sleep.

  Ninety minutes later gave up and rolled on to my back. Scratched my whiskers.

  Thought about what I’d got myself into with the All-Singing, All-Dancing, Let’s Rescue Bradley Wright Mercy Mission.

  Charlene was so convinced of her son’s innocence that she was prepared to blow the better part of a thousand bucks on a wild-goose chase.

  “Find hard evidence connecting Bradley Wright to the deaths and injuries from the Columbus High School shooting.” That’s what Paul had said. Even after hearing me repeatedly say that I watched the Wright kid stalk around the schoolyard with a gun.

  The gun later proved to have killed three students and a teacher’s aide in the Columbus hallways. Hallways which, I’m sure, had plenty of doors that were less open and shut than this case.