“Okay, he had a brain disease that drove him nuts. I still don’t see how it helps our case,” I said.
“Tell him the rest, Doc.”
“The rest?” I said.
Doc was pacing now, still carrying the brain. “This is not the result of a disease, not in the conventional sense of the word, at least.”
“Then what is it?”
“It sounds almost too crazy to say out loud twice in the same day,” he said.
Chapter 30
“The tissue—” Doc began just as my cell phone rang.
“Sorry,” I said, pulling it from my pocket, flipping it open. “Hello?”
“Beer’s getting warm, buddy. Any longer and I’ll have to drink it myself. Can’t let good beer go to waste, you know!” Teddy. Crap.
“Uh-oh,” I said. “Something came up. Sorry, Teddy.”
“Where are you?”
“I’ll tell you later, I—”
“Understand I do. No time for your old friend!” He had obviously put down plenty of brew already. He was loud and his words were in Early Slur.
“I’ll make it up to you soon, Teddy. Gotta go.” I closed the phone with him still blabbering. “Go ahead, Doc,” I said.
“The tissue in this man’s limbic system appears to have been cooked. Specifically, microwaved.”
I just looked at him.
“Let me show you something.” He put the brain upside down on a stainless steel table and then used a scalpel to slice a layer off a non-affected part. It reminded me of that scene near the end of the movie Hannibal, when Hannibal Lecter cut off a chunk of that cop’s brain.
“Follow me,” he said, and walked into the little outer office.
“Please tell me you aren’t really going to do this,” I said as he put the sliver of tissue in a microwave.
“Calm down, Gray. This is a purely scientific demonstration.” He set the timer for fifteen seconds and keyed START.
When the bell dinged, he opened the door and carefully extracted the sliver with a pair of tweezers. “You see?” He was beaming like a child who had caught his first fish. He was also right: The tissue looked exactly like the necrotic area, shriveled and whitening around the edges.
“Isn’t there some other explanation?”
“You asked for my opinion. I’ve given it. Something appears to have selectively cooked—via a microwave-similar process—the limbic system of this man’s brain. As to what or how, I have no clue.”
“Question?”
“Ask all you want.”
“Would this condition have been fatal?”
“If it continued, most likely. At the very least, had this effect continued to progress, he would have soon become a bizarre specimen of a human being. For while the rest of his brain could have theoretically continued to function normally, all emotion, all feelings, would have become more and more erratic and then, finally, shut down. I’d say you did the chap a favor.”
“Okay, I thank you for putting yourself out like this, Doc. You sure you don’t mind keeping him here for a while?”
“Picked up a walk-in freezer back when Dave’s Superette shut down. Not a problem.”
We made our way back out to Penny’s SUV and she tossed me the keys. “You know the roads. You drive.”
It was nearly midnight when we topped Squaw Hill and saw Montello laid out before us. There were a dozen different stories about why it was called Squaw Hill, but I don’t think anybody really knew. A tight curve sits at the bottom of the hill and has claimed way too many lives over the years, and from the look of it, it may have just bumped up the count.
We could see the flash of the emergency vehicles even before we rounded the curve, their strobes popping blue, red, and amber bursts into the sweltering black night. When it all came into view, I immediately noticed that the entourage was unusually large for a car wreck. It seemed every police car in town was there, along with a tow truck and an ambulance.
Kenny Presley, a patrol policeman I’d known all my life, was directing traffic through the melee. I rolled down my window when we pulled even with him. “What’s up, Kenny?”
“Hey, Gray. Can’t believe it, man.” He was shaking his head slowly, sadly.
“Bad?”
He nodded.
“Dead?”
“Yeah.”
“How many?”
“Just one. Bobby Knight.”
Chapter 31
The house was dark when I got home. I went into the girls’ room, kissed them on the foreheads, then on into our bedroom. Abby had the air conditioning cranked low and was burrowed deeply into the down comforter, sleeping peacefully. I took a shower and slipped into bed. She never stirred.
I lay there, fatigued and craving sleep, but my mind wouldn’t shut down. In less than a week, my comfortable life had been rocked to hell and back. I had stared death in the face and won the first battle, but the war was still on.
And now Bobby Knight was dead. He and I were at odds over this thing, but we had known each other for a long time—he used to be a good guy. I wondered who drew the horrible duty of going to tell his wife and kids.
And what was going on with Abby, acting like a stranger? Had something been coming on that I had missed? Here I was in my greatest hour of need and, in addition to the fact that she was almost certainly screwing around, she was acting like she couldn’t care less what happened to me. I couldn’t stand it anymore and nudged her.
She grunted and pushed my hand back. I poked her again. “Abby, wake up. We need to talk.” I switched on the lamp on my nightstand.
“What is it?” she said as she pushed herself up onto an elbow and squinted at me.
“Why are you acting the way you are with me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She yawned.
“Abby, don’t. You’ve gone cold on me since this thing started. At first you were Miss Concern, but it’s been downhill from there. To put it bluntly, you act like you don’t give a damn and I want to know why.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll do better. Now can I go back to sleep?”
“No, not until you tell me the truth.”
“There’s nothing to tell, Gray.” Her tone was icy, fully awake now. She yanked the cover up around her neck and rolled over so that her back was to me.
“Whatever you say.” I’m not by nature a mean person, but at that moment I wanted to hurt her. I switched off the lamp. “By the way, you might want to call Lucy Knight tomorrow.”
“Why?”
“Bobby was killed in a car wreck tonight.”
She sprang upright. “What?”
“Squaw Hill.”
She was still sitting up in bed. I switched the lamp back on and saw tears rolling off her face, which was screwed up in this horrible look of pain. “Night, sweetie,” I said, then switched the lamp off and burrowed into my pillow.
Chapter 32
When I left home the next morning, the girls were still asleep. Abby was up but didn’t speak. Nor did I. I went to Hatley’s, aiming to drown my sorrows in caffeine and grease. I waited until eight for Teddy, and when he didn’t show I ordered three eggs over medium, bacon, butter-laden grits, and a couple of fresh homemade biscuits split open and drenched in sausage gravy. My arteries undoubtedly paid a price, but it was a wonderful experience nonetheless. As I was walking out, Teddy was walking in.
“All your fault,” he said, pointing to his hungover face. His eyes were red and puffy, and he hadn’t shaved. “Had no choice but to drink for the both of us.”
I smiled, clapped him on the back. “You’ll survive.”
I stepped out onto the sidewalk, and something occurred to me. I turned around. “Say, Teddy, let’s take the back booth. I need to talk to you about something.”
“Sure,” he said with a yawn.
After we were seated and I was sure no one was in eavesdropping range, I got right to the point. “Did you know about Abby and Bobby Knight?”
T
he answer was important, not because he might have information I needed. I knew they were guilty and call me weird, but I didn’t want a bunch of details. It was important because I saw it as a barometer of just how trustworthy a friend he was. Through his myriad businesses—not to mention his wife, the nosiest gossipmonger in the county—Teddy Abraham knew everything that happened in Montello.
He looked at me for a couple seconds, then dropped his head.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said.
“Hell, Gray, how do you tell your best friend something like that?”
“Opening your mouth and telling the truth would’ve been a good start, old friend.” It’s fair to say I spat the last two words at him.
“Sounds real good. But let me tell you something, Sport, the one who tells is the one who loses in the end.”
I hate it when Teddy calls me Sport. That’s his lecture mode, a signal certain that he’s about to unleash a fount of Teddy Wisdom.
“Coffee!” he bellowed at the room in general. Around the diner, heads turned our way. Louise brought a steaming pot and two cups that she filled and quickly left. Teddy stared at the table, took a few sips, then looked up and continued, quietly.
“Real world, Gray, here’s how it goes down ninety percent of the time. I say, ‘Gray, Abby’s...uh...how do I put this...seeing...your buddy Bobby Knight. I thought you should know.’”
I drew a breath to respond, but he held up a hand. “No, let me finish. First, you’re all grateful, glad to have a friend looking out for you. You confront her, she eventually admits it, promises she’ll never do it again, it never meant anything in the first place, she can’t believe she did something like that, blah yada puke.”
A few more sips of coffee, then he continued, “Then you forgive her, you’re all lovey-dovey, and who’s the enemy? Me. The one who dared say something like that about your dear bride. Won’t matter that it was true, you see. Nope, simple reality is she’ll see me as a low-life snitch. You, being the loyal husband, decide it would be best if you just backed off from our friendship. Boom, Honest Teddy’s out in the cold. So yeah, I knew she was cracking Bobby. And I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry.”
He took a sip of coffee, looked down at the table. Tinkered with his spoon. When he looked up again, his eyes glistened. “You’re my best friend, Gray. I couldn’t chance losing that.”
He had a sad look on his face, like a child waiting obediently for his punishment. And just like that, my anger on him was gone.
“You know,” I said, “I wanted to kill him for what he did. I even got off on breaking the news to Abby last night, seeing her hurt. But now...I don’t know...all I can think of is that he was always such a good guy, such a straight arrow.”
“He screwed up, Gray, but he’s still the same old Bobby down deep.”
“Was,” I corrected. Teddy looked confused, and I realized he didn’t know. “Bobby was killed last night,” I said. “Squaw Hill.”
His coffee cup shattered when it hit the floor.
* * *
LungFao was back at work, still looking a little puny from his bout with a stomach virus. We put the jewelry out, started the coffee, fired up the televisions. I logged onto the internet and read through the headlines. Democrats and Republicans weren’t getting along in Washington. The Middle East was in a state of unrest. It occurred to me that I’d been reading the same headlines for twenty years. Only the names and details changed.
About an hour after we opened, Penny showed up with a box of donuts in hand. Despite the five pounds of breakfast I had already eaten, I ate a plain glazed and one of those white-icing jobs with the colored candy sprinkles.
“Why the long face?” she said.
I shook my head. Yes, we had become pretty good friends within the space of a few days, but not good enough for me to tell her about my wife spreading her legs to a cop who pretended to be a friend of mine. The same now-dead cop who had been a member of the let’s-nail-Gray squad. No, we definitely weren’t that close yet.
The door chimed and in walked a heavily tattooed customer with a 19” television. “Can we help you, sir?” LungFao said.
“Need to pawn my TV, dude. Old lady’s in the hospital and I’m out of work. I’ll pick it up Friday.”
LungFao took care of him, for which I was thankful. I wasn’t in the mood to hear bullshit stories about hospitals and electric bills and medicine for the baby and eviction notices and bail bondsmen.
“You tell Lucas what we found last night?” I asked Penny.
She nodded, took a bite of donut, followed it up with a swig of milk. “He didn’t say much. Never does, really. You’ll go slap through a case and think he never heard a word you said, then he shows up in court and you figure out he heard it all. He’s a dick, but he’s a sharp dick.”
“That’s a mental image I could do without.”
She laughed and I tried to.
“Come on, Gray, what’s eating you? We at least have a new angle to work.”
“Nothing I can talk about right now.”
“More trouble on the home front?”
I nodded.
“Sorry.”
“Thanks. Now, what are we going to do with our new angle?”
“I did some research on Lexis-Nexis last night, and Doc’s right. There’s no known disease that produces those symptoms.”
“Then what does?”
“Hang on, Sad Sack, I’m not through. There’s no disease, but these symptoms have been reported. Check this out.”
She pulled a document from her briefcase and handed it to me. It was an article from a medical journal, entitled “Startling New Brain Pathology.”
I skimmed it, homing in on the passages she had highlighted. “Seven...”
“Yes, seven cases documented over the past few months in which parts of the limbic system appeared to have been cooked.”
Chapter 33
Bobby Knight’s funeral was a major affair. First Baptist, where we attended regularly—so had Bobby, every Easter and Christmas—was overflowing with people paying their respects. It was an old building with an old air conditioner that just didn’t have the horsepower, prompting people to fish around in the hymnal pockets for last week’s bulletins, anything to serve as a fan to stir the hot, soggy August air. Bobby’s casket, a bluish metal affair with chrome hardware, was parked at the foot of the altar, shaded in the crimson and gold light that filtered through a big stained glass window over the baptistry.
From the lectern, Brother Rick described a wonderful and selfless civil servant, a man of the people who would be desperately missed by all who knew him. For some reason, he failed to mention the sleazy wife-stealing element of the dearly departed’s character. Tommy Mitchell gave a brief eulogy, and somehow the church still stood.
Then came the procession, right up Main Street, which was lined with people on both sides for the length of the business district, all the way to Montello Memorial Gardens on the north edge of town.
I didn’t want to go but Penny insisted. She thought we might see someone there who looked out of place. The whole affair was a melee of contradictory feelings for me. I hated the bastard for messing with my wife and I wanted to chuckle while they lowered him into the ground. But I couldn’t. Truth was, I had liked Bobby for a long time—and he obviously didn’t force her.
So I didn’t laugh and I didn’t cry. I stood quietly beside my wife as she bit her lip and cried quietly over her lover, and watched the crowd for something out of place, not expecting to see anything. But I did. Standing at the back of the crowd, in a skinny little New Yorkish pair of sunglasses and a suit too nice for Montello, was a man who plainly did not belong.
It wasn’t just the clothes, either. He had slicked-back hair and a raw-boned face that made him look uncannily like a hawk. I turned back to the ceremony and listened as Brother Rick eased into the close with the ubiquitous line about ashes and dust. Bobby’s wife and son were crying now. Like a hawk. I sensed someth
ing and looked back over my shoulder. Hawk was looking right at me, as was the man now standing beside him, Sheriff Ricky Ballard. Like a hawk. Those three words rang some mental bell from a distant past. Like a hawk.
I tried to convince myself that it was coincidence, that they had no interest in me. I was simply in their line of sight, nothing more. Down deep, however, down in the place where denial has no power, down in the part of the soul where fear is born, I knew. This went to the top of the dirty little Pontocola County power structure, and it had everything to do with me. Standing there in the thick heat, I shivered. Just once. Then I heard a squeaking noise and turned back toward the grave to see the funeral attendants cranking Bobby down into the ground.
* * *
Halfway back to the car, which was uphill, someone behind me said, “Hold up there, Gray.” I turned around and saw Charlie Langford huffing his way toward us. Charlie—he must be at least seventy—carried some old war wound and used an aluminum cane, the kind with four little rubber-tipped feet. He panted, his face red, drenched in sweat.
“Hey, Charlie,” I said, then waited until he caught up with me before continuing on at a much slower pace.
“Never would’ve thought it of you, Gray,” he said, wheezing from exhaustion in the brutal heat.
I stopped walking, turned to face him, and motioned Abby to go on ahead of me. “Thought what?”
“My long-time client, whom I had already counseled on the matter at hand, mind you, gets arrested. I wait for his call, but it never comes. Then I find out he’s brought in the Memphis Showboat. That’s what they call him, you know.”
I stared at him, speechless.
“Hellfire, Gray. Don’t you give me that look,” he said, punctuating the really important syllables with his cane on the asphalt path. “You betrayed me.” Tap tap tap tap.
“Now hold on—” I tried to say.
“Old Charlie not flashy enough for you, I suppose?”
Pawnbroker: A Thriller Page 7
