Big Sick Heart: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery (16 page)

“How ’bout that?”

“Yeah, we’re lucky BYU’s big cell-biology
researcher is a football fan.”

“All right, so we’ve got a faculty member in town
we want to talk to.”

“And a state representative.”

“Good work, Ryan.”

*  *  *

The local news made a big
deal of the arrest of the doper for killing James Weston. They said they didn’t
know his motive. They didn’t float any link to Dolores Weston. I wasn’t real
happy about not being able to figure out whether Dolores Weston iced her
husband—and whether it had anything to do with the Hagerty murder. But the
pieces would come together when they were ready to, not when I wanted them to.

I pulled myself off the couch and walked into the
kitchen, took the Jack Daniel’s down off the shelf. On the counter sat an
orange-juice glass that looked reasonably clean. I poured myself a couple of
inches and went back into the living room to sit down.

The fight with Ryan earlier in the day had drained
all my energy. He was a good guy, and he hadn’t deserved that shitstorm. Good
thing about him, though: he was willing to let me talk to him about it, get it
out in the open, and resolve it. I had it under control.

I carried the drink over to the desk in the corner
of the living room and booted my laptop. This seemed like the perfect time to
get myself a terrific deal on some penny stock, pick up that ten million
dollars from the African king for helping him transfer his huge estate to the
U.S., or increase my manhood at least two full inches, guaranteed.

Instead, what I got was an automated e-mail from
Tommy’s vice principal, Mr. Wilhelm, informing me that Tommy’s truancy had reached
a rate that not only threatened his learning but also raised the possibility he
would not be able to progress to the next grade along with the rest of his
classmates. Would I please contact Mr. Wilhelm first thing Monday morning to
set up an appointment, along with Tommy’s father, Bruce Seagate, to come to
school to discuss this matter?

Holy shit. I could feel my pulse start to race.
Bruce hadn’t mentioned anything about Tommy cutting school. Or didn’t he know?
Yes, of course, this was the perfect conclusion to the week, realizing that
there was a big son of a bitch of a problem I hadn’t even seen coming: my son
was falling apart.

One thing I’d learned about this kind of problem
was if you fail to acknowledge it and pay it the respect it knows it deserves,
it gets pissed off and decides to teach you a lesson. Well, here it was at my
door, rapping with its huge, hairy knuckles. What a surprise! Come on in, won’t
you stay a while? I downed the rest of my drink and walked over to the kitchen
counter to refill it.

I picked up the phone to call Bruce but decided
something this serious called for a visit. I poured and drank another inch of
JD, picked up my keys, and hurried out to the carport. I didn’t remember the
drive over to Bruce’s. Wasn’t aware of any other cars, the stop signs, the red
lights. I couldn’t say whether it was clear or raining. All I knew was the blur
of shock, fear, and regret, knowing my screw-ups were now hurting the one
person I had wanted, more than anything, to protect. I pulled into Bruce’s
driveway, the car parked crooked. Out of the car, up to the steps, knocking on
the door fast and hard.

I heard the footsteps coming to the door fast.
They were too heavy for Tommy, and Bruce never saw a reason to hurry like that.
The door opened quickly, and Angela wore an expression close to panic. “Karen,
what is it? Is everything okay?”

“No, Angela, everything’s not okay.” I could tell
my voice was too loud, the pitch too high. I pushed past Angela. “Where’s
Bruce?”

Angela was scared. “He’s out back, on the patio.
What is it, Karen?”

I ignored her, striding down the hall, into the
living room, to the screen door to the patio. There he was at the redwood
picnic table, working on one of his rods. I slid the screen door hard,
startling him.

He put the rod down on the table, a mean look
coming over his face. “I thought we agreed to call first.”

I ignored the comment. Standing there, hands on my
hips, I said, “Did you get that e-mail from Tommy’s school?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said,
picking up a screwdriver to work on the rod.

“The e-mail from the vice principal saying Tommy’s
cutting school and they might hold him back because of it.”

“No, I haven’t seen that. Don’t look at e-mail
much.”

This is typical Bruce. I tell him his son’s in
trouble and he thinks I’m interested in his approach to e-mail. “Did you know
he’s been missing a lot of school?”

“I know he’s missed a few days. Maybe he’s missed
a few I don’t know about. So what?”

“‘So what?’” I tried counting, made it to five.
“Bruce, listen, we have to talk about this.”

“Okay, talk.”

“Look, I know it’s been real bad between us. We’ve
both done some things and said some things—”

“Shit, you’re admitting you said some things?”

“Yeah, Bruce, I know I got a mouth.” I looked at
him. His face was a blank. “Bruce, you know there’s one thing we agreed on when
we split: that we were both gonna be there for Tommy. We weren’t gonna let this
shit between us get to him. You remember, even when you got custody and I was
ready to kill you. In the courtroom that day, when we both told Tommy that.”

His face seemed to soften a little, as if he was
remembering. I waited for him to speak, but all he said was “Yeah.”

“Well, Bruce, this is one of those times we gotta
work together.” I paused. “When Tommy was born—remember that?—and you picked
him up for the first time, I saw something in you that made me love you all the
more. I saw it. You were crying. You knew, then, we both knew, we were gonna
protect him from all the bad shit out there.” Bruce was still fiddling with his
damn fishing rod. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I thought he was listening. He
never was able to speak about anything important, but I was sure he loved
Tommy. He had to know this was important.

“I’ve taken him fishing a few times. He gets more
out of that than he ever will out from school.”

The words stung. “No, Bruce, think for a second
about what you’re saying. You can’t mean that. You know he’s gotta go to
college, so he can make something of himself. You know that. Please, Bruce,
tell me you know that.”

I was on my knees, next to the bench. I reached my
hand up and touched Bruce’s cheek. “Please, Bruce. I know you and me agree on
what Tommy needs.” I felt the tears rising up. “Please.”

He turned toward me, our faces a few inches apart.
“I just don’t see it as that big a problem,” he said. “But I tell you what: you
think it’s important, I don’t mind you going to the school and talk to the vice
principal, whatever he is.”

I said, “No, Bruce,” crumpling to the concrete on
the patio.

Bruce pulled back, like he used to when we were
together and fighting. He spoke slowly, in a level tone, showing how he was
being reasonable and I was hysterical. “I don’t know what you’re so upset
about. I just told you go do what you want. I’ve always met you halfway, Karen,
but halfway’s never been good enough for you.”

I stood up, wiping the tears with the back of my
hand, and walked back into the house, past Angela, who was wearing a worried
look as she stood by the screen door to the patio.

“Is there anything I can do, Karen?” Angela said,
touching my shoulder. I pushed her aside, kept going, out of the house. I got
in my car and drove home.

Back in my house, I picked up the JD bottle and
filled the glass. Sitting alone at my kitchen counter, I cried and drank. Some
time later—maybe an hour or three—the bottle was empty. Damn it. I stood up,
steadied myself, and started looking for my car keys. I found them on the
coffee table. Bending down to pick them up, I lost my balance and fell onto the
couch. Lucky the couch was there, I thought. I got up and walked out of the
house, my hands on the hall walls for balance. The liquor store was less than a
mile away, but no way was I going to walk that far in my condition.

The sun had set, with just a pale band of yellow
remaining on the horizon. My eyes traced the yellow, watching where it
disappeared behind a house, a store, a truck. A car coming in the other
direction honked at me, and I realized I had maybe drifted a little into his
lane. I didn’t remember whether I had my credit card in my purse. I fished the
purse out of my big leather bag on the passenger seat, opened it, and pulled
out the stack of plastic. The light was bad. I had to strain to see the cards.

Looking up, I saw the blue minivan crossing the
intersection. Just visible over the passenger door, the girl, maybe eight or
nine, her blond hair hanging in bangs, the seat belt snug against her neck. The
girl’s eyes were wide with terror, her mouth open, as if she was screaming.

God, no, I thought, unable to move, as I heard the
explosion of steel on steel, then the rifle shot of the airbag erupting in my
face.

*  *  *

I felt the car rocking back
and forth as a voice drifted in, the sound separating into words. “Come on, you
son of a bitch,” it said. I lifted my head off the steering wheel, looked to my
left, following the sound, and saw a pair of men’s hands working my car door,
trying to get it open. I didn’t know where I was.

My head throbbing, I lifted my right hand and felt
at the lump on my forehead. I pulled my left arm from beneath the tent of the
deflated airbag. Grasping the door handle, I flinched in pain as my left wrist
bent. “I got it, lady; just stay still,” the man’s voice said.

I half-closed my eyes to block out the piercing
red, white, and blue flashes from the squad car, the fire-department dispatch
truck, and two ambulances—the lights violent and out of sync. The memory was
coming back to me, first in indistinct images. I read an e-mail about Tommy,
then out to the patio at Bruce’s, then nothing. Then, in an instant, the images
connected into a narrative and I gasped.

I looked out my windshield. The minivan, four feet
in front of me, the passenger compartment crumpled, its window broken in the
center by an impact, cracks radiating out like a spider web. The minivan was
empty.

I unlocked my seat belt with my good hand and
started pounding at the car door with my shoulder. “Just a second, ma’am; you
could be hurt,” the man’s voice said, but I kept pounding through the pain.
Suddenly, the door pulled open and I started to fall, a man’s hand catching my
shoulder before I hit the glass-littered street.

Recovering my balance, I pulled my bad wrist in
toward my stomach and snaked my body out of the car, past the windshield frame,
twisted down and in from the crash. “Stay where you are, lady,” the EMT said,
but I pushed him out of the way with my good hand.

I was over to the minivan, its sheet-metal skin
crumpled like balled paper from the front wheel to the back. “No, God, no,” I
screamed as I saw the blood on the inside of the passenger window at the impact
point. I looked down at the shattered plastic shards of the passenger door
panel jutting out over the passenger seat.

Panicking, I looked around. What happened to the
girl? Shielding my eyes from the blinding strobe of emergency lights, I saw two
EMTs loading a gurney into the back of their ambulance. I ran over to it, but a
woman wearing a neck brace saw me coming and intercepted me, pushing me off to
the side. “You stay away,” the woman screamed in my face, then lifted herself
into the ambulance as an EMT pulled himself in and shut the doors behind him.

Two EMTs from a second ambulance ran over to me,
restraining me. The senior one started talking to me in a calm but strong
voice. “Ma’am, you need to calm down.”

I was straining against him. “I need to find out
what happened to that girl.”

“Ma’am, we’re getting her to the hospital. I need
you to come over here to the curb and sit down. You could be hurt.” It took the
two big men to half push, half lift me over to the curb, but I wouldn’t sit
down. “Ma’am, you were the driver of the grey car, is that right?”

“Yeah.”

He was looking at my eyes, trying to get a read on
my pupils. He could smell the liquor on my breath. He saw the lump on my
forehead. “Ma’am, can you tell me if anything hurts? Are you aware of any
injuries?”

“I’m okay. Bad wrist,” I said, waving my left arm
at him. “Can you get on the radio now and find out the status of that girl? I
need to know she’s okay.”

“No, ma’am, I can’t do that now. They’re gonna
take care of that girl, and we’re gonna take care of you. I have to find out if
you’re okay.”

“I told you, I’m okay,” I said, my voice rising,
frantic, when I saw a second squad car pull up, the pitch of the siren falling
as the driver shut it down. The lights, punching red and blue and white, stayed
on. Matt hurried out of the squad car and ran over to us.

“Matt,” I cried out, reaching my arm out to touch
him, “help me with this. There’s an ambulance taking a little girl in to …”

“Officer,” the EMT said, interrupting me, “do you
know this woman? I think she might be in shock.”

“Yeah, she’s a police detective. I work with her.”

“Okay,” he said, “can you help me get her calmed
down so I can get her vitals?” He leaned in to Matt. “You need to do a BAC on
her.”

I heard this, pulling Matt off to the side. “You
can’t do that now.”

“I’m sorry, Karen, there’s nothing I can do,” Matt
said. “You were involved in a crash, an injury crash. I don’t do a BAC now,
it’s my job.”

“Please, Matt, listen to me. I can’t take a DUI
now. It’ll be my shield. I’m right in the middle of this Hagerty case.”

“What are you asking me to do, Karen?”

“Just give me two hours, Matt. Two hours. That’s
all I ask.”