"There is no secret."
"Bullshit."
"I need to finish updating my books. Where's Karen? She get sick of you already?"
"I'm giving her a break from my winning personality. Alex, do I need to beat it out of you with my cane?"
Outside, a tanker truck rumbled by on Highway 101. After it passed, Harry Connick Jr. was in between songs, so the only sound in the store was the scratch of Alex's pen. Gage waited. If he spoke, he'd only give his friend another chance to dodge the subject, so he had to let Alex get to it in his own time. His own time took another minute, one note jotted in the ledger book after another, before he finally sighed and set the pen down in the fold of the spine. He took off his glasses, letting them hang by their strap, and rubbed his eyes.
"I'm taking Eve to OHSU on Monday," he said.
"What?"
Alex stared blankly into the stacks of his store rather than at Gage. There was such a profound sadness to him that it stopped Gage from saying anything. When somebody in Barnacle Bluffs was willing to make the two-and-a-half-hour drive to Portland for an appointment at Oregon Health & Science University, it was almost always serious. Harry Connick Jr. started up again, something about love and loss and all that jazz. Looking at his friend, and seeing the obvious anguish there, Gage felt a sinkhole open at the pit of his stomach, draining all the warmth out of him.
"They found a mass," Alex said, and his voice caught on the last word.
"Oh Jesus."
"It's only one, very small. Hasn't—hasn't spread, that we can tell from the MRI. Left breast. We're going to OHSU to have a double mastectomy. It's the best option."
"Alex, I'm so sorry. How's Eve holding up?"
"A lot better than me, I'll tell you that."
"How long have you known? I really wish you would have told me sooner."
"Yeah, well," Alex said, "it wasn't my call, buddy. I'm not even supposed to be telling you now."
"Why?"
"You know Eve. She never wants to be the center of attention, especially if she thinks it will bring people down. I told her it's not fair to her friends and family to keep it secret, but she won't really discuss it. So you can't tell her you know, okay?"
"You know I can't keep that promise," Gage said.
"Damn it, Garrison—"
"I'll tell her I got it out of you at gunpoint."
"It won't make a damn bit of difference. I'll still be sleeping on the couch."
"Then I'll buy you an extra pillow."
"I don't need another damn pillow! I just need my wife!"
The outburst shocked them both. Alex's eyes flared wide and dark, and his hand, gripping the pen, trembled. Pinpricks of pink dotted his face. Then, just as fast as it had arrived, the moment was gone, the flush fading, the shoulders and chin dropping.
"Sorry," Alex said.
"Forget about it."
"It's just really got to me."
"I'd think less of you if it didn't."
"I just—I don't know what I'd do without her, you know? It never crossed my mind that I'd ever have to worry about it. I'm ten years older than her. And, well, just look at me. My body looks like it's held together with duct tape and Elmer's glue."
"You do look like shit, that's for sure."
That got at least a tiny wry smile from Alex. "I love how you keep my spirits bolstered."
"I'm sorry, was that in my job description? I thought it was just to provide you with a never-ending supply of donuts."
"Yeah, well, you're pretty much failing on that front too."
"Failure is my middle name."
"I thought it was Winston."
"See?" Gage said. "Even at birth, I was already failing. Anybody with Winston as a middle name is destined to go through life as a perpetual loser."
"Well, you could blame that failure on your mother, at least."
"Hey, no comments about my mother. I could still beat you on the head with my cane."
They both laughed. It was a weak attempt at levity, but it still did the trick, even if it only lasted a moment.
"Seriously," Gage said, "if you need anything …"
"You'll be the first person I call," Alex said. "Or not call, I guess, since you don't have a phone."
"Pal, if having a phone meant you and Eve wouldn't have to deal with this crap, you know I'd have one put in tomorrow."
"I know. You okay with Zoe running the store? We should be back in a couple of days, but I want to be home with Eve as much as possible while she recuperates."
"Sure. Better to have Zoe here, where I know where she is, than running around who knows where. You going up there tonight?"
"Yeah. Staying at Hotel Monaco. Treat ourselves to a night on the town, you know. Surgery's early Monday morning, so it makes it a lot easier just being up there."
"Have a blast," Gage said. "You guys deserve it."
They shook hands, and then, surprising Gage, Alex pulled him into a hug across the counter. Not being the sort of guys who hugged, it was the kind of awkward, back-patting flicker of human contact that would hardly be called a hug by the sorts of people who knew what hugs were. Even so, Gage was surprised by how bony Alex's shoulders were, how frail he was under his baggy shirt with the ballpoint pens. When had his friend gotten so thin? The frumpy clothes had acted as a costume, hiding this transformation from view, the person inside the clothes who was shrinking by the day.
"Good luck," Gage said.
Alex returned with a halfhearted attempt at a smile, his eyes watery, before quickly turning to his ledger.
* * *
It being a Saturday in November, the heart of football season, Gage had a pretty good idea where Arne Cooper would be.
Still, when Gage parked his van next to the chain-link fence that separated the Barnacle Bluffs High School parking lot from the sunken football field, he was still somewhat surprised to spot the coach standing on the sidelines, his green windbreaker and bald head shiny from the rain, barking orders at the kids scrimmaging on the soggy field. If it had been Gage's son locked up in the Barnacle Bluffs city jail on suspicion of murder, he'd like to think he might take at least one day off from the serious business of chasing a pigskin ball around a hundred yards of grass and dirt.
The rain was really coming down, great big buckets of rain, rain so furious that it exploded in white mist on the grass, the helmets, the muddy jerseys. Gage remained in his van, hoping it would subside a bit and watching the kids below sloshing and sliding around while the coach appraised them with folded arms and a hard stare. The stadium itself, which rose a good ten feet above street level, the rest of it below, blocked all but this one view onto the field. With the windshield wipers off, it was only a few seconds before the scene disappeared behind a watery veil, just long enough that Gage was sure he saw Arne Cooper turn and spot him.
When it became obvious that the rain wasn't going to let up anytime soon, Gage sighed and put on his fedora, clambering into the storm.
He hated to bring his cane, but the danger of slipping on the concrete steps was too great to chance leaving it behind. The deluge pounded him the moment he stepped outside, raindrops pelting the top of his fedora like bullets, crackling against his leather jacket, gluing his jeans to his legs. When he stepped through the open gates of the stadium and started down the steps, one hand on the rail, the other on his cane, there was some relief from the storm, but it was gone the moment he passed out of the protection of the overhang.
Popcorn bags, paper cups, and ticket stubs littered the wooden seating and slate-gray concrete rows. Arne didn't look at him once the whole way down, nor did he look at him when Gage stopped next to him. Two other men, also dressed in green windbreakers, were out on the field acting as referees, chirping their whistles now and then. The coach was such an enormous presence, like a tent himself, that Gage was tempted to stand closer to see if he could get a little shelter from the relentless downpour.
"Not even a day off, huh?" Gage said.
<
br /> Arne didn't answer. Gage glanced at him and marveled at the way the coach didn't so much as twitch as the water pounded off his forehead, ran into his eyes, streaked across his face. A stoic performance. The part of the statue will be played by Arne Cooper. Gage was about to comment on this when Arne suddenly shouted at a kid who fumbled a pass, telling him to get his legs moving. It was said with such authority that Gage had to suppress the desire to get his own legs moving right onto the field himself.
Another minute passed without a word before Arne finally spoke.
"Kids need the work," Arne said. "They were sloppy yesterday."
"I wasn't talking about the kids," Gage said.
"I don't see no point in sitting around moping."
"Your son is in jail."
"Where he deserves to be."
"So you think he's guilty?"
"He is guilty. Everybody knows it."
"I don't," Gage said.
"Then you're an idiot."
"Tell me something I don't know. But I'm still kind of surprised you're so sure about this. He is your son. Do you know something everybody else doesn't?"
Finally, Arne looked at him, and it was a scowling mean-ass sort of stare that Gage could see turning even the most hardened of Arne's teenage athletes to jelly. Even Gage had to admit it affected him a bit, a sort of rumble in his gut. Of course, that also might have just been his body's way of saying he needed a sandwich. It was hard to tell.
"Very nice," Gage said. "Just need to get a little more sneer into it."
"What?"
"That expression. I can see you've had a lot of practice with it."
"Man, I'm really tired of your sorry ass. What the hell do you want, anyway? You want my gun again?"
Gage suppressed a desire to pat the place on his jacket where, underneath, his own Beretta lay in its holster. While he hadn't expected Arne to do anything stupid, Gage still thought it was better to play it safe. "Should I?" he asked.
"Well, it's a little late now, isn't it? Police got it."
"We still don't know if that was the revolver that was actually used to kill Connor."
"Are you kidding me? Jerry was caught with it red-handed!"
"Yes, that's true. But Jeremiah was pointing it at his own head at the time."
"Because he was ashamed of what he done!"
"Maybe. But if I was Jeremiah's father, I'd think I'd like to wait until the ballistics report definitively proved that was the gun before assuming it was. In my line of work, I've found that things are not always what they first seem."
Arne, eyes flaring through the watery sheen, stared at Gage another few seconds before turning his attention back to the field. "Never thought the kid could do something like this. I kill an ant in the house and Jerry would practically pass out. And he's got more strange phobias than anybody I know. I mean, he wouldn't eat peanuts because he might choke on one! Peanuts, for God's sake! We live on the ocean, but he won't swim because a shark might get him. A shark! When's the last time we had a shark attack in Barnacle Bluffs? Eighteen hundreds?"
Gage waited patiently, letting Arne burn this anger from his system. But it wasn't quite anger, was it? No, it had all the appearances of anger, but this was something else altogether. This cataloging of his son's flaws was a kind of grief, an expression of loss that might have been all that a man like Arne Cooper was capable of showing.
Through all this, the rain persisted. Even though his fedora was thick leather, Gage could already feel his hair dampening just from the moisture in the air. His fingers, gripping his cane, felt cold and numb.
"I'd like to talk to him," Gage said.
"What?" Arne looked at him, as if searching for the joke.
"Your son. I'll need your permission."
"No way."
"Don't you want to know his side of the story?"
"I already saw," Arne said. "I know his side of the story. He walked in there and shot the other kid in the back of the head with my gun."
"He told you this?"
"I said I saw him, didn't I?"
"Saw and talked are not the same thing."
"He didn't need to tell me. He didn't tell me he didn't do it either. That's enough. He's ashamed. He—" Arne caught on whatever word he was going to say, blinking rapidly, then shaking it off. "Don't matter. It's over. I just want him to confess so we don't have to go through the whole trial stuff. Then the town can move on. We can move on. Jeanie and I. Everybody. That's what's got to happen. He knows it too. I told him, but he already knows it."
"You told him to confess?" Gage said.
"It's the right thing to do."
"You told your own son to confess to murder when there's still no definitive proof he really did it?"
"All right," Arne said, "we're done here."
"I need your permission to talk to him."
"Go screw yourself."
"Is your son gay?"
"What?"
This got the bull to turn. Gage didn't think Arne Cooper could tower over him any more, but he was wrong. He might not have gotten any taller, but there was something about how he leaned in, something about the way he filled the space between them, that made Arne enormous, more beast than man. Nostrils flaring. A bit of teeth showing in the sneer. Gage couldn't even imagine being a kid of Jeremiah's size and trying to stand up to a man like his father.
"Who told you that?" Arne said.
"You're not denying it?"
"Of course I'm denying it! My son isn't no homo."
"Did he date girls?"
"What's that got to do with anything? So he was shy. Big deal."
"Did he do anything that made you think he was even interested in the opposite sex?"
"Okay. Okay, you got to go right now."
It hadn't escaped Gage's attention that Arne had balled his hands into fists—if they could even be called fists. To get hit by one of those fists would be like getting hit by a truck. A train. A mountain. Two mountains. Gage may have gotten the better of Arne Cooper once, but he'd had the element of surprise, plus the advantage of working in the confined space of his doorway. Out in the open, with the relentless rain making things even more difficult, the odds would probably tilt a little in Arne's favor. Maybe even more than a little.
"You're not going to give me permission, then?" Gage said.
"Get the fuck out of here!"
Gage glanced at the field. This was shouted loud enough that even in the downpour, it attracted an audience. Or maybe they'd already had one, the threat of violence in their posture enough to get people's attention. The players, the assistant coaches, all of them had abandoned what they were doing to stare. Oh, how the coach wanted to plant that fist in the middle of Gage's face. Nothing was more plainly obvious. And Gage, tightening his numb fingers on the handle of his cane, was tempted to give the coach his shot.
But this wouldn't help Jeremiah. And it certainly wouldn't endear him to his fellow Barnacle Bluffians. There was no doubt who was the more liked of the two men about to come to blows.
"Thanks for your time," Gage said.
Chapter 13
Back in the van, the monsoon continuing unabated, Gage gripped the steering wheel for a good ten minutes before he felt his pulse begin to slow. His fingers were so numb they ached. The world outside his windows was hidden behind endless curtains of water. A cannon could have gone off on the football field and he wouldn't have heard it, the roar was so loud. His jacket and fedora had done little to protect him from the onslaught; he felt as if he were sloshing around in a half-filled washing machine.
Still, it was all he could do to keep himself from going right back out there. It would feel so good to whack Arne Cooper in the head.
Instead, he started the ignition and headed back to Highway 101, where he stopped at the nearest Chevron. While some kid wearing too much cologne filled his tank, Gage rifled through what was left of the phone book in the booth outside. Bingo. The address of Arne and Jeanie Cooper was listed.
Why wouldn't the head coach want his address public? Small-town mentality won out again.
They lived in one of the newer subdivisions, behind the BB-5 Cineplex and only six blocks from the high school, a nice but cookie-cutter two-level whose most prominent feature was the garage that took up the entire first floor. It differed from the other houses on the street only in how much gray brick trim decorated the outside. Like most people who actually lived and worked in Barnacle Bluffs, rather than simply occupied it on the weekends, they had no view of the ocean. They did, however, have a wonderful view of the back of the theater.
The house was actually quite small, but the way it was designed, it was as if it was trying to puff itself up, like a man sucking in his gut and standing on the balls of his feet to impress a woman. An American flag flapped in the wind. There was no net in the portable basketball hoop, which was really the only sign of neglect. The house was immaculate otherwise.
No cars out front. When he got out of the van, he saw an old woman peering at him through a kitchen window across the street. He waved at her and she snapped her blinds closed.
The massive deluge had slowed to a minor deluge, but as soaked as Gage was, it really made no difference whether it was raining at all. Regardless, he was glad for the arch over the front door. He rang the doorbell and no one answered. He knocked and got the same result. He sensed the old woman watching him from her perch behind her blinds. Making notes. If he knocked again, he was pretty sure she'd call the police. Why not? Only people up to no good knocked a second time.
Fortunately, he didn't need to take this chance. A white Ford Escort turned into the cul-de-sac, stopped at the driveway, and, after a moment's pause when he was sure the person behind the whirling windshield wipers was studying him, finally turned into the driveway. The garage opened. The car rolled inside. The garage closed. In between, he caught a glimpse of a stout woman wearing a red scarf over curly chestnut hair.
He waited a few minutes and tried the doorbell again. No answer. He knocked, then knocked again a little harder.
Finally, the door opened, catching on the chain. Jeanie Cooper, no longer wearing her scarf, peered at him with wide, fearful eyes.
The Lovely Wicked Rain: An Oregon Coast Mystery (Garrison Gage Series) Page 11
