Probably a split decision.
Ray came outside, handed me a glass swirling with two fingers of amber liquid and pulled up the other lawn chair.
“Thought you might want that.”
I took a bite of the scotch; not bad, and I tipped my glass to him.
“I guess things like that happen pretty often in your line of work,” he said.
“Actually, not as often as you’d think,” I replied. “But don’t tell anyone, I’ll have to lower my rates.”
He forced a short smile in the gloom.
“Um, your partner …”
“Uh huh.”
“Has anyone ever told him how much he looks like—”
“James Coburn?”
“Yeah.”
“Best you don’t mention that to him.”
It was true that Cowboy looked like Coburn. A lot. Especially from his role in The Magnificent Seven. They were both lean and rawboned, forthright, and shared a similar proclivity towards a limited lexicon. Cowboy always claimed it bugged the hell out of him, but the longer I’d known him, the less certain I was. He didn’t complain as much as he used to about signing autographs.
“Leaving doppelgängers aside for the moment,” I said, “tell me about your sister and nephew. I’m not getting closer to disproving his guilt. Or proving it either, for that matter. The place where I’m getting bogged down is that I’ve only got impressions, but I still don’t know anything about him.”
Ray picked at a loose thread on the knee of his jeans.
“What do you want to know?”
“Let’s start with the obvious. Did he do this?”
I hadn’t finished asking the question before Ray started shaking his head. “Nope. No way.”
“Convince me.”
“Um, well—”
Ray’s attempted defense of Bradley was interrupted by the squeak of timber and a voice from my left.
“Sir, what do you have to say about the tragedy that almost occurred here today?”
I got up and met the reporter at the top of the steps. He kept firing questions at me while I made myself large and began stepping down from the porch.
I backed him down the stairs—he didn’t fall, dammit, but I saw his camera guy twist an ankle—and when I had enough space on the garden path, I reached for a coiled hose. Before I could turn the faucet on, the duo had begun to retreat across the lawn, the camera guy protecting his equipment and the on-air talent his suit, I imagined.
Stood there a while longer, glaring at the fearless news crew shuffling their way back to the comfort of their truck, and eyeballing the rest of the crowd.
Since Frank’s attempted bravado earlier in the day, I felt like the energy on the front lawn had been pulled just a little tighter. Like the way a sail sheet will start humming when the wind fills the canvas.
The tension in the system is obvious and even magnificent, as long as that power remains contained. If the sheet or any of the rigging ever lets go, then all hell breaks loose and people get hurt.
I hoped we weren’t heading towards a similar catastrophe on this boring suburban front lawn.
Stumped my way back up the steps and pulled the lawn chair back under my butt.
“So, Ray, I think you were about to deliver an impassioned defense of your nephew when we were rudely interrupted.”
“It’s been hard since Bradley’s father lef—”
“That’s not a terribly good start. My mind leaps immediately to the idea of an angry young man, missing out on a male role model, and pissed off at his mom and the world for making his life too hard. It’s easy to see how that combination could lead to—”
“You didn’t let me finish, Mr Rafferty.”
I shut up and let him finish.
“It’s been hard since my ex-brother-in-law left, but that’s mainly been the financial stress on Charlene. She had to go back to work after being a stay-at-home Mom for nearly ten years and that was difficult for her to do. She tended bar for a while, worked at Safeway, a few other things, long hours wherever she could get them, until she got the pharmacy job.”
I raised my eyebrows. I’m all for gathering backstory when it comes to working out the players in a case, but I was concerned about falling asleep before we got to the good stuff.
“But for all that, they—both Charlene and Bradley—have never been happier or more settled. It’s been a really great move for them to come up to Dallas.”
“Where were they before they came to Dallas?”
“Galveston. We both grew up down there and I, well, I guess I never moved away. Never saw a reason to. But once that prick had left Charlene and Bradley high and dry, I encouraged her to make a new start of it.”
“Big deal to move a kid away from family,” I said.
“I guess so, but she asked my opinion, and I agreed that starting over somewhere that didn’t hold so many bad memories was the best thing to do. She could always move back if it didn’t work out.”
“When was that?”
“Nearly four years ago. Everything had been going great until … well, you know.”
“That still doesn’t give me anything about why Bradley didn’t shoot anyone, Ray.” He flinched twice on the words ’shoot anyone,’ as though I was pulling the trigger right in front of him. “Could he have still been pissed off at his dad, trying to get back at him? Hell, could he have hated Dallas so much that he would do almost anything to get away?” I didn’t really believe any of that, there’d been no evidence I’d seen so far to back up that idea, but I was starting to feel like I was getting to the point where I was glad there weren’t straws on the side table for me to grasp at.
“No. No,” Ray said. “That’s what I’m trying to say. Things were so much better for them both here than they were in Galveston.”
“How so?”
“Okay. Bradley’s always been a sensitive kid. Kept to himself mostly. Loved—loves!—music, books, art. Could spend the weekend holed up in his room reading about Middle Earth, or the great explorers.” Ray smiled at a memory.
“So he’s going to be the next Renaissance man. So what?”
“You don’t understand. His father, Clint, was the complete opposite. Never read a book in his life and was proud of the fact. Boasted about it to anyone and everyone. A hunter, a drinker, a wife-beater, and an all-around waste of oxygen. He was always trying to toughen Bradley up, ’make him into a man.’ Take him hunting, make him fight, drink beer—at nine years old for heaven’s sake!—and do whatever he could to make Bradley more like himself.”
“Maybe some of that finally rubbed off.”
“Nope. Bradley hated every bit of it.”
My eyebrows bounced up again.
“I swear,” Ray said. “The number of times a hunting or fishing trip would end with Bradley crying in the car on the way home and Clint yelling at him to stop being a ‘fucking sissy and harden up,’ well I can’t even count that high.”
“What was that about?”
“The very first time, just the sound of the shotgun sent Bradley into a panic. He screamed and screamed and screamed, like he was in pain just hearing the noise. Wouldn’t stop. Carried on for half an hour like that, until Clint yelled at him for scaring all the ducks away and slapped him across the face.
“Later on, Bradley would put on a brave face and even got to the point where he could shoot a gun. Tears would be streaming down his face, but he wouldn’t make a sound.” I watched Ray’s eyes well up. “He told me once that he didn’t want his dad to be angry, but he always missed on purpose whenever he had to shoot at something. He just couldn’t bring himself to hurt a defenseless animal. Even though he knew that Clint would yell at him for being such a ‘piss-weak Momma’s boy’ and would more than likely hit him, too.”
Ray sniffed, reached into his back pocket for a handkerchief to wipe his eyes and blow his nose.
“So when Clint finally said he couldn’t take no more and walked out on them, I don’t
think anyone was happier than Bradley. See, Charlene knew who Bradley was—is!—and just let him be. He’s a good kid, Mr Rafferty, the last four years of his life have been the best so far and I’m as lost as anyone as to how he’s involved in all this. I mean, I think he’s even got a girlfriend.”
“I figured. I found a note in his room. From ‘B’. Any idea who that is?”
“Nope. I was only guessing about it because when we spoke on the phone, ’bout three weeks ago, I asked him if he had a girlfriend yet. You know, just an uncle teasing his nephew, but he wouldn’t answer. The rest of the conversation, he was happy, really happy. I could hear it in his voice.”
We sat in silence.
“So tell me, Mr Rafferty. You tell me why he would do what the police and the papers say he did.”
Racked my brain, but right then, I had nothing.
Yet.
None of the front yard assembly had tried storming the house by the time Cowboy got back so we decamped from the porch, and the three of us—Cowboy, Ray and I—sat around the kitchen table and ate.
Ray put his burger down, wiped his hands on a napkin and said, “Gotta say, I feel sorry for Frank.” I raised my eyebrows, and he continued. “I don’t know him or his daughter, obviously, but what a hell of a thing to go through.”
Strange words about a man who had held a gun to his sister’s head a few hours earlier. I was about to pick up that thread and run with it when I heard soft footfalls on the stairs. I turned and Ray got up as Charlene padded into the kitchen with sleep-tousled hair and red eyes. He gave her a sad smile, which she didn’t return, then pulled out a chair for her.
“I smell food?” she asked.
I motioned towards the paper sack.
“Don’t know what you’re partial to,” Cowboy said. “There’s burgers, fries, and onion rings in there.”
Charlene unwrapped a burger and took a bite. Chewed methodically, mechanically. No pleasure, or even recognition that she was eating. Just instinct to keep the body alive.
I wanted to interrogate her, find the missing piece, get a better picture of this kid that I knew so damn little about. I also knew how my nerves were still faring after the day we’d had and I couldn’t imagine hers were any better, nor did she even seem to recognize that the rest of us were even at the table, so I didn’t.
Cowboy? He sat there, munching his burger like it was that Memorial Day weekend I would have preferred.
“You all right to bunk down here tonight?” I asked him. “I hadn’t planned on staying, but after today …”
“Shore,” he said. “I’ll jes’ do a scout around ’fore you leave. Get an idea of the killin’ zones, but we won’t have trouble tonight. Folks out by the curb got a good look as I brang the guns in from the truck. They’d be dumber than a box of hammers to try sumpin.”
I nodded. “Call me at home if anything happens.”
“Ah yuh.”
We finished eating in silence, thinking about the day, what tomorrow might bring, and hoping like hell it was a damn sight better.
Well, I was. I had no idea what the other three were thinking.
Chapter 20
The next morning looked a lot better.
Hilda flew out of the house with a piece of toast and coffee, headed for an early meeting with a potential buyer for a French ivory-handled mustache comb. Or something.
Sat on the back porch with coffee and a pipe drifting blue smoke into the morning sky. The air was still, and the smoke drifted a little left, then right, not dissipating.
Like this case.
The basic facts had been the same since day one but, no matter what I did, I couldn’t grab hold of it; whatever I squeezed slipped through my fingers to hover in the air in front of me again.
Nothing I’d been able to gather so far proved or disproved Bradley’s innocence or guilt. I’d seen him with the gun, seen him fire off a shot, but hadn’t seen whether that shot hit anyone. If what Ray said the previous evening was correct, and there was no reason to think that it wasn’t, then Bradley had to be innocent.
C’mon Rafferty, you’ve got to stay objective about this. Let the facts lead you; don’t impose a result.
Good advice, and a path I was usually apt to follow. I had a problem this time. My gut was starting to tell me different.
I had nothing—nothing at all—to base Bradley’s innocence on, and truth be told, if I had to give a decision based on the facts I had to hand, he was guilty. Every day of the week.
But that was feeling less and less right.
I walked back inside, for more coffee. While it perked, I grabbed the phone to check in with Cowboy before realizing I hadn’t made a note of the Wright home number. He’d have to handle things a while longer without me; I needed to start making progress on this thing before I drove myself mad, or Charlene’s house got torched.
I wondered which might happen first.
That day’s edition of the Dallas Morning News wasn’t committing itself to finding a resolution either.
SUBURBAN SHOOTING AVERTED. MYSTERY MAN SAVES THE DAY.
A wildly wordy article got two of the basic facts correct about my dance with Frank Gibbons on the Wright front lawn, and then gave up caring. A couple of blurry photos of Cowboy—never with a clear shot of his face, how did he do that?—accompanied a large one of me, scowling at the camera from the Wright’s porch.
There wasn’t anything newsworthy in the body of the article, but the paper did its best cross-promotion and highlighted the latest report of the school shooting by Monica Gallo on page twenty-four. Now that the city’s raw grief had begun to wither, Monica and her editor thought it was time to throw on some fertilizer and get watering.
And so she had a sprawling, eight-page article rehashing and detailing exactly what happened that fateful Monday morning at Columbus High.
There were maps of the school, with graphics identifying the calculated movement of the shooters, the panicked fleeing students, and specific highlights where the luck finally ran out for too many kids.
Grabs from interviews where various kids described their horror at not knowing whether they would make it home that day, where they hid while it was all going down, and their relief at being led out of the school to safety by the police.
A couple of the excerpts spent a little too much time on the graphic scene of the bloodied hallway. I’d seen a lot of sick shit in my time, and here I was trying to forget the image of that space I’d seen on the day. I wondered how the kids would cope with it as they grew up.
Imani was there again, retelling her story, still amazed that she made it out alive.
I don’t know what was different this time, whether there was something in this version of her words, or the way I was reading them, but I finally started to look at the scene that Imani, and other students, had described so many times since the day of the shooting. Maybe it was that I’d spent all my time staying focused on what I’d seen, that I hadn’t looked at it from another point of view.
Whatever, for the first time, I saw it.
Really saw it. It came down over my eyes like a projector screen and I could spin the entire scene around with a thought.
I could see the angles. The buildings, the students, the escape paths. The details of who was where, doing what, and with whom.
I didn’t yet know why but, for the first time, I realized that Imani was lying her teenaged head off.
“Gallo.”
“Monica. Rafferty.”
“Hey, Rafferty. Good to hear from ya. I’m pretty busy at the moment. Can I get back to ya?”
“Just a quick one, Monica. Who’s the cop who gave you the inside info from Columbus High?”
Pause. “Nice try, Rafferty, but hey, ya know I can’t reveal my sources. Whatcha looking for?”
I wasn’t ready to tell Monica exactly what I was thinking. The last time I was up front with her, Ed felt it was his duty to rip me a new asshole. And while I could cope with Ed’s ranting, I
thought that if I could cut the DPD a break, it might be the right thing to do.
“Just chasing down a few things. They might not go anywhere, but I need to cross them off the list.”
Monica had a nose for a story, and I tried to give it enough aroma that she could smell it through the phone line.
“C’mon, Rafferty. You’ve got something, I can tell.”
“You know how it is, Monica. There are times even I can’t tell you what’s going on. Like your sources.”
She waited so long that I thought I’d blown it.
“Tell me what you’re after.”
“I don’t know, Monica.” I wiggled the bait. “It might be pretty sensitive.”
She rushed at that. “You need me then,” she said. “If it’s that big a deal, I can protect you.”
“Like you did with the story about Bradley Wright.”
“Fuck you. I never mentioned your name.”
“That’s true. I apologize.”
“Fuhgeddaboutit.”
I couldn’t help it, I smiled. I loved it when the old NY Monica came through loud and clear.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure I can tell you what this is all about just yet.”
“What about this? I can talk to my guy. If he’s willing to give me the info you want, and I should stress that he might not be, but if he is, I can pass it on to ya.”
“What’s it gonna cost me?”
“You gotta give it to me so I can keep this story rolling.”
“No chance, Monica. It’s not worth that.”
“Don’t you think the public has a right to know the truth?” While I agreed with that sentiment, I thought it was a long bow to draw that everything in the media was automatically the truth, given some of the things I’d seen and heard.
But I needed her onside, so I stood up for the freedom of information.
“’Course they do. But I don’t have all the facts yet. And I’d hate for you or your paper to get caught up in a story that turns out to be different than what it looks like.”
Wright & Wrong Page 15
