Up in Smoke

by Charlene Weir

  He made a right turn around the tree, which the directions said was birch—he couldn’t tell a pine from an oak—and watched the odometer until it went another 1.1 miles. He nosed the car as far as he could to the edge of the path and got out. Wind attacked him with fury.

  Using the flash, he spotted three concrete steps, trotted up them and followed the pathway. An owl hooted in a tree above, nearly sending him into cardiac arrest. Around a curve sat an old wooden farmhouse with a wide front porch, a barn some distance behind, a silo next to it, and a windmill, black against the night sky. He could hear the creaking of the paddles. Lights were on inside the house. Somebody must be here. Sean hoped it was Fromm. The owl hooted again and he spotted it, silhouetted against the sliver of moon. Scary sad sound in the dark.

  He went up the porch steps and knocked on the door. No answer. Asleep or out of it from booze and pills or not here. He tried the knob. Oh ho, now look at this, the door was unlocked. Surely, the good Samaritan thing to do, was go in and see that Fromm was all right.

  The house was silent. No sound of television or dishes rattling in the kitchen from someone seeking a late night snack. Lamp on in the living room, shabby couch with a decided sag in the center, shabbier overstuffed chair facing the television set. Lamp table by the arm of the chair. Line of pharmaceuticals. Darvocet. Prilosec. Atenolol. Sonata. He picked Sonata and read the instructions: Take one at bedtime as needed. The bottle was empty.

  A feather of worry touched the back of his neck. The refill date read October sixteen and the prescription was for thirty tablets. Today was the twenty-eighth. Didn’t mean anything. Fromm could have spilled them, deliberately thrown then away, sold them, flushed them down the toilet. Yeah, right.

  “Wakely? Hey, Wakely! Where are you? You asleep?”

  Silence.

  “It’s Sean Donovan! Where are you, old buddy?”

  He put the prescription bottle back and went across a hallway into the kitchen. The house had a stillness to it he didn’t like, a feel of being vacant. Kitchen table had a few dirty dishes, half a ham sandwich, jar of mustard, jar of dill pickles, package of potato chips, package of cookies.

  He went along the hall to the first doorway and gently pushed the half-open door with his elbow. It swung silently inward. Nothing. Empty. A regular-sized bed with a faded green chenille bedspread. Bedside table with paperback books. All science fiction and mystery. On the chest against one wall sat a framed photo of two eager young men all suited up for a parachute jump, arms draped across each other’s shoulders. Twenty years younger, Jackson Garrett and Wakely Fromm. Fromm was taller and huskier than Garrett.

  Hard to imagine the wasted drunk with the useless legs and the virile young man in the photo were one and the same. Where the hell was he? Someone picked him up and took him back to the farm?

  “Fromm? It’s Donovan!”

  He went farther down the hallway and the smell hit him. Faint, but unmistakable. He’d done enough reporting in warring countries in his younger days to recognize it. His heart revved up.

  Images played through his mind as, knowing what he was going to find, he reached for the doorknob. Not smart to stand in the line of fire. He twisted the knob, sidestepped and kicked the door open.

  Empty room. He blinked, trying to integrate emptiness with the images in his mind. Obviously, Wakely’s room. Bed mussed, bottle of bourbon on the nightstand, picture of a pretty young woman beside it, dirty clothes on the floor. Apparatus over the bed, bars, and a dangling metal triangle, to aid Wakely getting in and out of bed.

  He edged along the wall to the bathroom, the smell grew stronger. Acrid odor of gunpowder. Blood, feces, urine.

  He pulled in a breath and nudged the door with the toe of his boot. “Aw Jesus,” he said softly.

  Blood, pieces of bone, gray clumps of brain tissue and hair were splattered over the white wall above the tub. Wakely Fromm, former smoke jumper and lately close friend of presidential candidate hopeful Jackson Garrett, listed to one side in his wheelchair. Wearing pajama bottoms, head and shoulders thrown back, arms hanging down, back of his head blown away. A revolver—an old Colt, Sean thought—lay on the floor, dropped as Fromm’s hand relaxed when the bullet entered his mouth.

  Sean didn’t want to touch anything. He was already worried he might have messed up evidence by blundering around and sorry he’d come in the first place. Susan was going to skin him alive. Watching where he put his feet, he went up to Fromm and put two fingers under his jaw. People had been known to survive all sorts of grievous wounds. Skin cool, no elastic give, no pulse.

  Sean looked at his watch. Almost nine. What was it that sent Fromm on the final path? Just tired of it all? The half-man he’d become, the dependence, the relying on other people for intimate attentions that whole people take for granted, loneliness, the feeling of sitting in the chair watching life rather than being a participant? Whatever it was, Fromm didn’t even wait out the final hours. Usually it was 4 A.M., that bleak hour the soul couldn’t get past.

  Sean went out and stood on the front porch looking up at the cold face of the moon and the uncaring glittery stars. Times like this he wished he still smoked. Maybe he should pour a glass of Fromm’s bourbon and drink a toast to a downed smoke jumper. The wind had an edge to it that sent cold through him. He shivered, enjoying the feel of it. If he could feel cold, he was alive. If there was pain ahead, he’d give it a smile when he saw it coming, acknowledge a formidable enemy and be glad to see it.

  Still studying the stars, he reached in his coat pocket for his cell phone and pressed 911. “This is Sean Donovan…”

  * * *

  Susan had just gotten home when her phone rang. She listened for a moment, not making sense of what she was hearing. “What? Where! Right. I’m on my way. Tell Parkhurst I’ll meet him there.” All the reasons why this was very bad went through her mind as she drove out to the Kale house.

  When she rolled up she spotted Sean sitting on the top of three cement steps leading up to a pathway.

  “Your buddies are all inside.” He waved a hand at the house. “Crawling through blood and brains and picking up wee wiggling things with tweezers.”

  “You all right?”

  “Sure.”

  She sat down beside him. “In that case, what the hell are you doing out here?”

  “Pondering the fleetingness of life.”

  “You ought to be pondering the fleetingness of freedom. Cops look very closely at the individual who finds the body. I ought to throw your ass in jail.”

  “Another sign of the moral decline of my favorite cop.”

  “Didn’t your mother ever tell you sitting on cold cement will give you hemorrhoids?”

  “Your mother told you that? Mine said I’d go blind from beating the meat.”

  “That’s not an image I need to have.”

  “Wait’ll you see what’s inside.” He hunched forward and rested his elbows on his knees.

  “It’s freezing. Why you sitting out here?”

  “Your buddies threw me out.”

  Knowing journalists and knowing Sean even better, she would bet he had seen everything there was to see in the house before he called it in. “You working on an angle?”

  “Just sitting here breathing fresh air.”

  She didn’t believe that for a minute. Something was spinning around in his reporter’s mind and since he wouldn’t tell her what it was, it was probably something she wouldn’t like. She put her hand on his back. He stared out at the dirt road cluttered with squad cars, ambulance, her pickup, and the pathologist’s old station wagon.

  He looked up at the black sky. “It’s a beautiful night. Clear, crisp, just what fall should be. I wonder what it takes to stick the barrel of a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger.”

  “It makes a hell of a mess somebody else has to clean up.”

  He smiled at her. “You always were tougher than me. I watched you, you know, back home—San Francisco—working, putting on l
ayer after layer of armor, getting too hard to feel anything, dealing with all the stresses and ugliness, putting yourself beyond emotions, so you wouldn’t feel the pain of the poor bastards you dealt with every day.”

  “I need to go inside and see what’s going on, then I need to ask you some questions. You want to wait in your car?”

  “I keep seeing the picture of that son-of-a-bitch’s brains splattered all over the wall.”

  She patted his knee and got up. Inside, Osey was leaning against the wall in the hallway, waiting for Gunny to finish taking pictures. “He doing all right?” she asked. Gunny was a wiz at photography, a student the HPD snagged to take pictures for them when needed. The quality had leaped up 90 percent from their previous method of using any cop who was available, but there’d been a honeymoon period. At first Gunny had turned green and keeled over at the sight of some of the more grisly objects he was expected to take pictures of, but even though he was getting almost blasé about the whole thing, this one would be hard.

  She stuck her head around the bathroom door just as a flash went off and was blinded. She blinked rapidly. When she could see again, she started taking notes and making a sketch of the room. The routine calmed her and she could tuck in the back of her mind the fact that her cousin Sean was mixed up in a homicide. Osey and Parkhurst didn’t speak as they worked, didn’t make any of the black jokes cops sometimes used to dull the edges of grim scenes. The silence was broken only by the whir and click of the camera as Gunny took shot after shot of the carnage.

  When she realized the flashes had stopped, she looked up. Parkhurst was standing by the bathroom door, looking at what was left of Wakely Fromm as if he’d just asked the corpse a question and was waiting for the answer.

  “What?” she said.

  Parkhurst studied the doorway as though judging how wide it was, looked back at the bed, then over at her. His face never gave a hint of what went on in his mind. She waited.

  “Why did he go in the bathroom?” Parkhurst said.

  “Why not?”

  “He was lying in bed, relaxing, reading, maybe watching television—”

  “Was the television on?” she asked.

  “Not when we got here. I didn’t ask Donovan if he turned it off.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “Right.” Parkhurst stuck his fingertips in his back pockets. “So, Wakely’s in bed, settled for the night, and then he’s suddenly swept away by the thought to whack himself.”

  “Maybe he was lying there trying to decide. Maybe he had thought about it, for days. Weeks, months. Maybe he was getting up the nerve.”

  “Okay. For whatever reason, tonight it all just got too much and he’s made up his mind. He’s comfortable in bed. Why get up? It isn’t like he can just throw his legs over the edge and stand up. He has to position the wheelchair, hoist himself into it, and roll himself in here.” Parkhurst gave a nod at the apparatus of bars and triangle that assisted the paralyzed man to get himself from bed to chair.

  “Take a piss?”

  “He hasn’t done that in twenty years. Plastic tubing and a plastic bag take care of it.”

  “Maybe he went in the bathroom to empty the bag.”

  “Right before he shoots himself?” Parkhurst rocked back on his heels.

  “Leave less mess on the bed?”

  “He’s going to splatter bone, brains, blood, and hair all the hell over everywhere and he worries about a little urine?”

  “Maybe he kept the gun in there.”

  “Where? The medicine cabinet?”

  “Suicides don’t always make sense,” she said. “Anybody who’s worked himself up to the point where he’s planning to stick the barrel of a gun in his mouth and blow himself into the world beyond is not necessarily thinking sensibly. Lots of times, they choose the john. Almost like saying sorry, this is the best I can do, make the cleanup easier.”

  He snorted. “I thought they were giving the finger to the ones left behind, see what you made me do.”

  “Yeah, that, too, sometimes.” The white wall behind Fromm that held what was left of his head looked like a painting by Jackson Pollock. Bone and blood and gray macaroni-like mass had slid down in clumps and puddled on the floor.

  “You reckon suicides ever think about somebody stepping on their brains?” Parkhurst edged closer and crouched to look at the gun. “Somebody could have come in and then backed out without stepping on anything.”

  “What are you saying?” She knew what he was saying and she didn’t like it.

  “This is a man in a wheelchair whose best friend is about to make a bid for presidential candidate. Why the hell would he roll it in here, park it and off himself?”

  “Maybe felt he was a liability. No money, no family. The friend has been supporting him for twenty years. Maybe felt like a burden. Maybe everything has been taken from him and this was the only thing left he had control over. To live or die.”

  “It’s an old gun,” Parkhurst said. “Was it his?”

  “Undetermined. Did you know him?”

  “Only what everybody knows. After the fire twenty years ago, Garrett took him in, took care of him.”

  “Why?”

  Parkhurst shrugged. “They were good buddies. Small town, knew each other forever, went to high school together, went off to fight fires together.”

  The sound of voices arguing came from the front of the house and Susan went to see what the noise was all about.

  A young man with silver blond hair, carrying two grocery bags was trying to get past the uniforms blocking his way. “What’s going on? Where’s Wakely?”

  “Chief Wren.” Susan showed him her badge. “Who are you?”

  “Murray Winston. I take care of him. What happened? An accident? Did he fall? I’ve told him and told him to be careful when he’s getting in and out of the wheelchair. He doesn’t always check that it’s locked. He just—”

  “I’m very sorry, Murray.” In all her years as a cop, she’d found the best way to bring bad news was not leave people hanging on a thread of hope but come right out with it. “Wakely Fromm shot himself.”

  “What?” His face tightened with shock. “How bad is it? Will he be all right?”

  “He’s dead.”

  Murray stared at her for several seconds, as though she’d spoken a foreign language and he was trying to figure out the meaning of her words. “He can’t be dead. I just left him two hours ago.”

  Susan brought him into a cheery kitchen with yellow walls and gray-and-white tile on the countertops. Angrily, he dropped the bags on the counter and, though clearly reluctant, sat down when she told him to.

  “When did you last see him?” She sat across the table from him. Parkhurst leaned at the doorway.

  “I just told you. Two hours ago. He was in bed watching a football game.” Murray kept his eyes on her, as though warily judging the moment when she’d pounce.

  This was a young man who moved lightly, looked fit, with the quick reflexes of a fighter. How easily could he be pushed into striking out? “Where did you go?”

  “Shopping. We were out of food and paper towels and—stuff.”

  “Where do you live, Murray?”

  “With him. Wherever he is. I told you, I take care of him.”

  “Are you a relative or—”

  “No. I’m paid to take care of him.”

  “Who pays you?” Parkhurst crossed his arms.

  Murray had to turn around to see him. “The governor. Governor Garrett. Does he know about this?” Murray shot up. “I got to tell him. He’ll—”

  “Sit down.” Parkhurst said.

  “But—”

  “We’ll take care of it,” Susan said.

  With obvious frustration—this was a man more comfortable with action—Murray sat back down and scrubbed his hands over his face.

  “You always shop this late?”

  Murray looked at his watch. “Yeah. I don’t have to worry about him if he’s watching footb
all. I can take my time and not have to hurry.”

  “How long have you been at this job?” Parkhurst asked.

  Having to turn his head to see Parkhurst behind him was irritating Murray. “Three years. Little more.”

  “Who took care of him before that?” Susan asked.

  “Uh—a nurse, I don’t remember his name. Jim something.”

  “Why did he quit?”

  “He wanted to go back to working in a hospital.”

  “You a nurse?”

  “Physical therapist.”

  “Has Wakely been despondent lately? Depressed?”

  “Yeah. He gets in these moods and lately—yeah, I’d say he’s been depressed.”

  “Why?”

  Murray looked at her like she was a half-wit. “He couldn’t walk, he couldn’t jump out of airplanes, he couldn’t f—make love to a girl, he couldn’t even wipe his own ass.”

  “Always depressed, or more so lately?”

  “Ever since I’ve known him.”

  “Did you like him?”

  “Sure. I wouldn’t stay if I didn’t.” He propped an ankle on the opposite knee. Getting relaxed, less worried. “Sometimes more than others.”

  “What about Governor Garrett? How did Wakely feel about him?”

  Quick smile. “Depends on how much he’d had to drink.”

  “Yes?”

  “If he was drunk, he loved him one minute, resented him the next.”