The Righteous Path: A Parker County Novel (The Parker County Novels Book 1)

by James D F Hannah

  An island sat in the middle of the kitchen. There was fruit in a bowl and flowers in a vase. Matt pulled himself up onto a bench as Amy set a coffee mug in front of him. She leaned on the other side of the island, sipped from her cup.

  “How are you?” she said.

  “Alive, though that’s liable to change.”

  “Rachel still love those jokes?”

  “I save them for the adults-only show.”

  Amy sipped more coffee. “I’ve never understood what she was thinking, going back to you.”

  “You know, I’m three feet from you. I can hear what you’re saying with crystal clarity.”

  “Drinking my coffee doesn’t save you from my opinions. You’re something of a dick sometimes.”

  “Only sometimes?”

  “I’ve only been around you sometimes. But you’ve been good to Carl since everything happened—”

  “Carl and I go back to the Stone Age, Amy. What happened only happened because he was doing me a favor. Rachel and I, we won’t forget that.”

  “Carl has always liked you. Respected you.”

  “Carl would have been a better sheriff than me.”

  Amy shook her head. “When we were kids, Mom was forever having to send him back to neighbors’ houses to apologize for being too rough, or mouthing off and saying something he should have thought twice about saying. But he’d listen to you. Hell if I ever understood why.”

  “The obvious answer is the quiet sense of power and authority I exude.” Matt looked toward the back door. “He outside?”

  “Yeah.”

  Since Carl’s return from Pittsburgh and his first rounds of intensive physical therapy, and after moving into his sister’s house, Matt knew he spent much of his time on the back porch. Whenever Matt came over, Carl was out there reading, tapping away on his iPad, or staring out over the yard.

  “At least it’s fresh air, I suppose,” Matt said.

  “He says he’s done with physical therapy. Says there’s no reason to keep going. He’s down more. More defeated. He’s not eating much. He’s always either out there or in his room.”

  “He seemed fine when I’ve talked to him.”

  “You’re here a few hours a week, Matt. I live with him. I’m the one who has to help hoist him in and out of the bathtub and has to empty a colostomy bag. I’ll do it so long as I can, because he’s my brother and I love him, but no one thinks they’ll have to dump their brother’s shit and piss out of a bag, either. Nothing prepares you for that. He was my hero growing up, and now I have to hide I want to puke every time. He’s ashamed of something that isn’t even his fucking fault.” She sucked in air through her teeth and seemed to let herself catch her words before saying anything else.

  Matt reached across the table and laid his hand on hers. It sat there for a moment before she turned it over and wrapped her fingers around his hand and squeezed. At first, it seemed a kind, simple embrace. Then it grew tighter and tighter, and Matt winced in pain. He saw a smile on Amy’s face and he pulled away, and she let him go. He shook his hand, moving blood through it.

  “You’re a goddamn piece of work, Amy,” he said.

  “Yeah, I’m a bitter and spiteful cunt.” She took her coffee cup and headed out of the kitchen. “Go talk to Carl. I’ve got shit to do.”

  The back deck of the house overlooked several acres of un-fenced land. The stretch of land offered a spectacular view of the sunrise. Matt remembered the weekend he and Carl had spent with Michael, Amy’s husband, building the deck, drinking beer, and cursing and laughing. It hadn’t been long after Rachel left him, and Matt had needed something to keep him busy, to keep his mind off of other things. Carl had all but dragged him over, and he had protested going the entire time, but once they started swinging hammers and sweating, he had enjoyed himself.

  When they had finished, Michael cooked steaks on the grill, and Carl and Matt kept on drinking, and they ended up with Amy driving them both home, and the next morning a deputy—Matt couldn’t remember who—drove them back out to pick up their cars. They were both hung-over, masked in hang-dog expressions of veiled regret, wearing sunglasses though only the faintest hint of sun peeked out. It was one of the best times Matt could remember from that period, when there hadn’t seemed to be too many good times.

  This morning, a thin, low-lying fog hung in the air. It made seeing into the distance of the property almost impossible, but Matt thought he saw the silhouette of a deer about a hundred feet away.

  Carl was at the edge of the deck, watching the silhouette. Even in his wheelchair, Carl seemed a huge man. He was six-four, and he had been built like a linebacker back in the day. He had lost some of that weight, and the muscle with it, but in the wheelchair, he still carried himself like a brute-even if hunched over, a weakened version of his self.

  Matt knew from his days hunting that the most dangerous animal was a wounded one.

  Carl had let his hair grow out, so it hung shaggy over his ears, down his neck. He had a beard now, a bushy growth ready to swallow his face whole. He wore a polo shirt and clutched a coffee cup in his lap. Matt stepped up beside him. Carl kept his attention focused on the silhouette in the back yard.

  “How long has he been there?” Matt said.

  “Most of the morning. There’s a family that comes out. This one, he’s younger. You look hard enough, you can see the nubs working their way out on the top of his head.” Carl sipped his coffee. “He’ll be a fucking beast.”

  “They get close?”

  “Only at night. I can see ’em from my bedroom. They’ll come up and eat Amy’s flowers, or on the little box garden she keeps trying to grow.”

  “I admire your sister’s persistence in killing vegetation.”

  “You work with the gifts God grants you. It’s like she’s the living embodiment of one of those Old Testament plagues sent to wipe out the crops. I suppose we’re lucky she can’t make it rain frogs.”

  “It would make driving to work difficult. I don’t know how my windshield wipers would handle it.”

  “The squishing noise would be the worst part.”

  Matt gagged.

  Carl laughed. “Pussy.”

  Matt dragged a patio chair next to Carl and sat down.

  Carl looked at him. “Tired?”

  “If I stand for too long.”

  “Pardon me if I’m jealous of the standing.”

  “It’s overrated.”

  “I’ll take your word on it.”

  “Always a mistake.”

  “So I’ve learned. How you doing otherwise?”

  “I’m dying. Outside that, I’m great.”

  “I hear dying puts a big crimp on plans.”

  “You stop buying green bananas.” Matt drank his coffee. “I realized the other day I’m not sure what to do about my vacation time next year. I’d toyed with taking Rachel and going up to the Poconos, but then I thought, ‘Fuck, I don’t want to put a deposit down on a cabin and make the arrangements, and then, you know, be dead before we can go.’ It seems like something inconsiderate to leave Rachel with.”

  “Maybe the Poconos would be the best thing for her. Take her mind off things.”

  “So it’s a win-win situation, is what you’re saying.”

  “For Rachel. Less so for you. Mind you, I’m still single, so maybe she and I could go together.”

  “That’s generous of you.”

  “I’m always looking out for you.”

  “What would I do without you?”

  “I hope you never have to know.”

  “And besides that, you’re the second person to offer to console Rachel in her time of grief after I’m dead.”

  “Because we all know you swung outside your weight class with her.”

  “I can’t argue that with you. What about you? Where’s your head been at?”

  “Attached to my neck, like it tends to be.”

  “Amy says you’re not going to physical therapy anymore.”


  “Yeah, I don’t see where that’ll do me any good. I ain’t walking anytime soon, so I figure fuck that noise.”

  Matt looked at Carl. He was still broad in the chest, with thick forearms and developed biceps from using the free weights in the spare bedroom. Carl was too prideful to let himself shrivel away. He looked solid and well-constructed, if a smaller version than before.

  “What about the shrink?” Matt said.

  “What about her?”

  “You still going?”

  “I am.”

  “That helping?”

  “I go in twice a week and talk. She asks me how I’m feeling. I tell her I’m angry, I’m frustrated, I consider eating the barrel of a pistol, and then I get the fuck over myself and go push weights until whatever’s left I can feel, until that hurts. This is my cycle almost every goddamn day, and until I figure out how to stand up and walk out of this chair, it’s unlikely to change.”

  “What’s she tell you?”

  “That what I’m feeling is normal, and that I need to accept this as my new normal.”

  “I know you well enough that that won’t happen.”

  “Fuck no it won’t. I’m just not sure how long I can keep being angry and staring at deer.”

  “You could come back to work.”

  “No, I could roll back into the office and shuffle papers around and pretend anything I did mattered.”

  “You should talk to Henry Malone. His experience, it’s not too dissimilar.”

  “We talked.”

  “How was that?”

  “Once he got past being glib and trying to be funny, it was okay.” Carl shrugged. “Big difference between him and me, though, is he walked in, and he walked out. He got shot, all it did was take out his knee. I got shot, and I can’t feel anything from the waist down. So while maybe you think the stories are the same, they’re not. We won’t be brothers in arms like that.”

  “I don’t know. Think it over. You’re both colossal pains in the ass.”

  They went back inside. Amy was cooking bacon and eggs, and she asked Matt if he wanted any.

  “I can’t. I need to get to the office.”

  Carl said, “You on that home invasion?”

  “Yeah. Nasty stuff.”

  “How’s it coming?”

  “Nothing so far. Crash is looking into things.”

  “She adjusting to being a big shot now?”

  “She’s doing fine, though every time I look at her, it feels like I should remind her she’s late for fifth-period algebra. Combine that with people treating her like it’s the eighteenth century and they feel the need to tell you it’s weird to have a woman as your chief deputy. They act like she’s a delicate flower.”

  “Have you mentioned to these people that Crash has a mouth that would shame a sailor?”

  “I’ll point that out to them next time.” Matt ran his hand over his face, eyeing Carl’s. “This thing. How long you plan on keeping that happening?”

  Carl brushed the back of his hand over his beard. “I’m going for the ‘crippled lumberjack’ look. I hear it’s a thing.”

  Matt’s eyes flashed over in Amy’s direction. She had her back to the men, but he watched her shoulders tighten and hunch at Carl’s words, then struggle to relax.

  The new normal.

  6

  Matt was in his office drinking coffee when Crash knocked on the door and walked in before he could say anything.

  Matt glanced up from his laptop, drugstore cheaters on the end of his nose.

  “Crash?” he said.

  Crash paused where she was. “Yes, Matt?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to wait for someone to tell you to come in?”

  “Would you prefer I close the door and we do this all over again?”

  “Not really, and not my point anyway. It’s just there are codes of decorum in a polite society.”

  “My parents did a good job of imparting those things on me.”

  “I’d quibble with that since you didn’t give me a chance to say ‘Come on in’ after you’d knocked. Who knows what I could have been doing in here.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Drinking coffee and typing reports.”

  “Nothing scandalous.”

  “Nothing that would get me on the front page of the newspaper.”

  “Then I’m not sure what this conversation is all about.”

  Matt removed his glasses. “What do you want, Crash?”

  “Iris Campbell—Gary Campbell’s daughter—she’s here.”

  “Show her on in.”

  “Should I knock first?”

  “Just let her in.”

  Iris Campbell was dressed in slim-cut jeans and a paper-thin cardigan sweater over a T-shirt. She moved in long strides, graceful in high-heeled boots, until she reached the other side of Matt’s desk. She looked to be somewhere in her well-preserved forties, tan, thin-lipped with a narrow nose that divided her face into near-symmetrical halves. Her brown eyes peered through thin slits, and her brown hair reached past her shoulders.

  Matt stood and reached out a hand. She looked at it, then back up at him. Matt glanced at his hand, flipping it back and forth, and drew it back. He shrugged and gestured to his visitor’s chair.

  “Have a seat, Ms. Campbell?” he said.

  “It’s ‘Warner,’” she said, folding her arms across her chest. “How’s my mother?”

  “The hospital could answer that question better than I can. Are you planning on sitting down, Ms. Warner, because if we’re being honest here, I need to.”

  Her face remained blank, yet fierce. “I’m not stopping you.”

  Matt sat back in his chair. “Would you like a cup of coffee? Water? Someone to dislodge the branch shoved up your ass?”

  She arched an eyebrow. A hint of a smile flickered in the corner of her mouth. “Is this how you talk to everyone, Sheriff?”

  “My manners are terrible, but they’re what they are. Think of those without any manners at all, how lonely they must feel.”

  She sat down. Matt glanced up at Crash, still standing beside the open door.

  “We’re good,” Matt said. “Thanks for showing Ms. Warner in.”

  Crash nodded and drew Matt’s office door shut until the catch clicked.

  Matt smiled at her from across the desk. “Have you been to the hospital?”

  “Not yet. I’m waiting until there’s something definitive about my mother.”

  “What about your father?”

  She smiled this time, but it was the smile of a cat with a mouse caught underneath its paw. “I’m rooting for the old man to contract MRSA.” She produced a pack of cigarettes from her purse and shook a stick loose.

  “You can’t smoke in here,” Matt said. “County rules.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since the board of health banned smoking in restaurants. Such as restaurants that Parker County has. Then the county commission nixed it in public buildings.”

  She tossed everything back into her purse. “Crying shame, the things the government takes from you.”

  “I’m sure there’ll be plenty of time for lung cancer.”

  “I don’t need your judgmental attitude, Sheriff. There’s enough in my life without civil servants feeling the need to lecture me on my bad habits.”

  “The smoking was the only one I know about, but hang around a while and I’ll see what I can say about your posture or if you bite your nails.”

  “I don’t like your tone, Sheriff. Are you one of those people who thinks they’re funny when they’re not?”

  “I’m self-entertaining. Should I presume you are estranged from your father?”

  “Happily so.”

  “Any reason?”

  “Many, though I doubt they’re any of your business. I left Parker County the day after I graduated high school, and I’ve made sure not to look back ever since. I keep in contact with my mother, trying to encourage her to leave t
hat miserable bastard. None of my heeds have taken root.”

  “What do you do, Ms. Warner?”

  “I’m a freelance writer, based out of Cincinnati. It isn’t a glamorous life, but it pays my bills and means I’m not beholden to him or my mother.”

  “‘Him’ meaning your father?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is your father rich?”

  “My father’s accumulated money over the years. I don’t know how you’re categorizing rich these days.”

  “He’s not in a house I’d associate with a rich man.”

  “There are two ways for a man to become rich: one is by making a lot of money, and the other is not to spend any of said money. My father practiced both techniques throughout his life.”

  “But you’re still close to your mother?”

  “We speak. He doesn’t know. He’ll flip his shit when he finds out.”

  “Spoiler alert: he already has.”

  “Oh joy.” She rolled her eyes. “You told him?”

  “Guilty.”

  “Goddammit.” She spit the words out. “Sheriff, with all due offense, you should just keep your nose out of the business of others.”

  “It’s what I do. We all have to play to our gifts, Ms. Warner.”

  “Call me Iris. Warner is a pen name. The one act of decency my father ever committed, when I was growing up, he let me watch old movies with him, and I loved the old Warner Bros. films. Bogart and Cagney and all the tough guys.” Iris cast an eye across the desk at Matt, a look of evaluation, sizing him up. “Are you a tough guy, Sheriff?”

  “I’m practically bulletproof, Iris,” he said. “Any idea why someone would attack your parents?”

  “I’m sure my father’s given people plenty of reasons, but I’m not sure on specifics if that’s what you’re asking.” She folded her hands together and rested her elbows on her knees. “My mother’s a good woman, though. A good person, gender be damned. I don’t understand her blind devotion to my father, but she is who she is. I need to know you’ll catch the people who did this to her.”

  “My department will do everything it can to catch these men, Iris. You have my word.”

  “How much is your word worth, Sheriff?”