Gundown (31 page)

He sat at the kitchen table. “Why not? THREAD is a good thing.”

“So everybody says, but I don’t believe it.”

He held up his hand with the Alliance ring on it and wriggled his fingers. “It did you some good when you got here.”

She didn’t have an answer for that, so she concentrated on turning the chicken.

Franklin said, “Why haven’t you joined the Alliance? You work for ’em.”

“It’s just not right for me.”

“Why not? Does a lot for me and a whole bunch of folks.”

Okay, that was real hard to argue with. She and Chloe had both been helped by the changes the Alliance had made. If it weren’t for their advocacy system, she’d be back in Chicago with Murphy gloating at her through cell bars. She thought about it while she took three potatoes from the sack in the pantry and washed them.

Okay, why couldn’t she sign up, make the promise? Something in her resisted, something that expected . . . betrayal. Like her mama said, “Ain’t nobody there for you but you.”

Jewel turned to face Franklin. “I don’t trust it.”

“What did the Alliance ever do to you?”

Nothing, but she wasn’t about to give Franklin the satisfaction. “You want mashed or baked?”

“Baked sounds good.”

As she put the potatoes in the microwave and set the timer, Franklin said, “So why are you so down on the Alliance?”

He’d push at her until he got an answer, so she turned to him. “It’s that goddamn promise Noah Stone keeps yapping about.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“You make a promise, you live up to it. Stone didn’t.”

“Aw, you’re not talking about—”

Her anger flared. “Damn right I am. Noah said, ‘I’ll try my best to help,’ but he didn’t lift one finger to help Hank Soldado.”

“He couldn’t.”

She yelled, “He could have done something!”

“You mean use his influence to get around the law?”

She pushed her face right at his. “Goddamn it, the man stood up for Noah, and then Noah didn’t stand up for him! How’s he expect anybody to trust him when he turns on you like that?”

Franklin’s voice rose, just a little. She was getting to him. “The way I see it, Noah did stand up for Hank, and for me, and for you when he wouldn’t make an exception.”

She snorted. “No way it’s for me, ’cause I don’t agree!”

“I thought you hated Hank Soldado.”

“It doesn’t matter what I hate, I’m talkin’ about right and wrong. Don’t you try to change the subject.”

Franklin sat, silent. Jewel grew embarrassed about losing control. “I’m sorry, Franklin. It’s not you.”

He rose and went to the kitchen window. Looking out at Chloe on the tire swing, he said, his voice gentle again, “But it is, Jewel, it is me. And a lot of people in this town. If you’re going to live here”—he turned to her—“and if Chloe is going to grow up here, you need to get this straightened out.”

He was right. And despite all that had happened, she liked it in Ashland. She had a future in this place. “I don’t know how.”

“Go to the source.”

Feel the Pain

Hank awoke refreshed the next morning in a Repair Shop room, maybe even looking forward to the day a little. The plain white room, furnished with a hospital bed and a small dresser, was no Holiday Inn, but he thought it was a fine place to be. He tried the door. Locked. Well, that made sense. He’d had the idea of escaping. Who wouldn’t?

There was a sink and medicine cabinet, and he discovered a razor there. As he shaved, wondering what was next, doubt slithered into his thoughts. What would they do to his mind? Afterward, would he recognize the face in the mirror? Fear prodded him to escape, to keep his mind intact even if he had to live on the run. But he wanted more from life, not less. He dressed in a white T-shirt and white cotton pants he found on the dresser. He was gonna do it.

He got a little surprise when it was Arnie who unlocked his door. “Good morning, Hank,” he said. “You look better.”

Hank looked down at his white clothes. “I feel like an ice-cream man.” He grinned. “But I guess it’s better than looking like a giant Cheeto.”

After a friendly breakfast, Arnie escorted him to the doctor and introduced him to Dr. Gladys Moore. Her office reminded Hank of a cozy study. Bookshelves framed a console that held a computer. A sofa, a recliner, and a rocking chair bracketed a glass coffee table on a burgundy Oriental rug. A pitcher of water, glasses, and a pill bottle sat on the table.

Dr. Moore looked relaxed in the rocking chair, a file folder open in her lap. Some would label the plump, fortyish woman with a long face “horsey,” but intelligence gleamed in the doctor’s gaze, and her warm smile made her attractive.

“Take a seat.” She indicated the recliner, and he eased into it. After a brief how-do-you-feel chat, she said, “The first thing I need to do is rummage around in your head a little. We’ll use hypnosis.”

His stomach clenched. But he had to, didn’t he? “Okay.”

“Good. Recline the chair for me, will you?” As he tilted back, Dr. Moore pulled a low stool from behind the recliner and sat beside him. Using a soft, low voice, she urged him to think of a pleasant place, something comforting. He couldn’t think of anything. He tried, but there was a knot in his belly that wouldn’t unclench. No way was he going to be able to let go.

After five minutes of her suggesting relaxation, he was as tight as ever. She stopped and said, “We may have to use sodium pentothal, though a natural hypnotic state is much more effective.”

Hank had a thought. He took Amy’s necklace out of his pocket and held it in his hand. He closed his eyes and visualized her photo on his nightstand. “Try again.”

As the doc crooned, Hank went to a place where a little girl laughed in bright sunshine . . .

Dr. Moore’s gentle voice said, “Wake.”

Hank opened his eyes and gazed at her as she settled into her rocker. It seemed as if no time had passed, but his back was stiff. He stretched as she said, “I’ve isolated three factors harming you. First, the circumstances around the deaths of your wife and child have you locked in a cycle of depression, and it contributes a great deal to your PTSD.”

He frowned. He didn’t want to hear about that.

“You and I can deal with that by using hypnosis to make conscious what happened, and then helping you accept it.”

“Okay, but that’s personal stuff. What about the trouble that got me in here? The way I see it, I was wrongly convicted, at least wrongly sentenced to the Keep.” She raised her eyebrows, and he added, “Well, yeah, I did have a gun. But I wasn’t wrong there, either. I have a right to one. We all have that right. And I did kill a thug, but it was justified.”

“I won’t argue the right and wrong of your positions, although I couldn’t disagree more. It was your powerful sense of duty that led you to shoot that man in defense of another. But that leads me to something that is a problem, your absence of feeling when you killed him. You have lost a sense of the value of human life that most people carry.

“We also need to do something about your convictions regarding your right to a gun. Or, to be more specific to Oregon law, to a lethal firearm.”

A sinking hit his stomach. Here it came, the part where they fucked with his mind. “What I believe is not uncommon. There are a lot of folks like me. Hell, it’s the Constitution of the United States. You’re not going to get me to go against that.”

She nodded. “I won’t ask you to. But that doesn’t excuse you from breaking the law. The solution that will get you released from here is to change those beliefs and, perhaps, open your mind to the legality of the gun control Oregon has implemented. And I know where the core belief comes from.”

Dr. Moore sat back and gazed at him. “Your pro-gun programming is profound, going back to your childhood, and strongly associated with your family.”

That was no surprise. “Yeah. They taught me. So what?”

She nodded. “I see it as more or less benign, not rabid like so many others, but it still limits your thinking. However, we—you—can get rid of it.”

That didn’t sound like something he wanted to do.

She said, “I’ll show you later. I think we can take care of the stone killer part of you at the same time.” She made a note in her file and looked back up at him. “That part will be tougher.”

“But first . . .” Dr. Moore put the folder on the coffee table and moved to the stool beside his chair. “Let’s work on the deaths of your wife and child. It’ll strengthen you for handling the other issues.”

His gut tightened. His old shrink had been right; he was afraid. “Okay.”

“Good. Relax now . . .”

Minutes later, his mind waited, open and ready. The doctor’s gentle voice said, “We’re going back to the day your wife and daughter died, the twelfth of September. You were working—where were you?”

“In my car, in Chicago.”

“What were you doing?”

“Watching a building.”

“Why?”

“A suspected murderer lived there, and I was detailed to surveillance.”

She said, “You’re going to relive what happened now.”

Memory became reality.

Hank stretched and stared out his car window at the house across the street. He imagined the suspect charging out, spewing bullets from an assault rifle. Anything to break up the boredom—in Hank’s business, drowsy equaled dead.

His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He flicked it open—damn, Amy’s nanny. She wasn’t supposed to call him on the job except in case of— “What’s wrong?”

Gretchen’s whisper shook. “Your wife—she’s here.”

Impossible. “How?”

“I don’t know. The doorbell rang, and there she was.”

Dear God. “Does she have Amy?”

“I tried to stop her, Mr. Soldado, I tried.”

He started his car. “I’m coming. Call 911 now!” He disconnected, slammed into gear, and floored the gas. How could Marcie be out of the hospital? With her postpartum psychosis still raging five years after she’d beaten their baby girl, he couldn’t even mention Amy’s name to her.

As he raced south on Lake Shore Drive, he called home. “How . . . how is Amy?”

Gretchen said, “I tried to grab her away, but your wife screamed she would kill her if I came closer. Amy was crying. They went upstairs, and I don’t . . . I don’t hear her anymore.”

“Stay away from them.” He rounded a corner and screeched to a stop in front of his brownstone. The afternoon sun dappled its walls with the shade of trees lining the street. It couldn’t have seemed more peaceful.

He yanked out his gun and raced for the front door. It swung open before he got to it.

Gretchen pointed. “Upstairs!”

He ran up the stairs and into Amy’s bedroom. Toys and books cluttered the floor. Her window stood open; a breeze stirred the chintz curtains. His wife’s laugh came from outside. He scrambled through the window and thundered up the iron fire escape.

At the edge of the flat roof, Marcie, as slender as ever, her long brown hair swirling in the breeze, held Amy over the parapet. Amy hung like a rag doll, her eyes closed, her body sagging, limp. Marcie laughed as she swung Amy back and forth. Amy’s head lolled with the motion. Her butterfly necklace glittered at her neck.

When she’d asked to wear her necklace that morning, he’d said it was just for special days. And Amy had said, “Maybe today is special, and we just don’t know it yet.”

He had smiled and helped her put it on.

Hank’s steps crunched on the roof’s graveled surface and Marcie looked around.

She smiled. “Hi, honey, I’m home.”

His heart ached at the madness in her eyes. “Please put Amy down, Marcie.”

She frowned. “You like her better than me.”

“No, honey, no way. You’re the best. Just put her down.”

Marcie brightened. “But she won’t hurt me anymore.” She hugged Amy’s limp form to her. “I fixed that.”

He prayed that Amy was only unconscious. “Lay her down, Marcie, and step away from her.”

She scowled at him. “No.” She swung Amy back out over the parapet. “We’re playing.”

He aimed his gun. “Put her down.”

She laughed and lifted Amy high in the air and smiled up at her. “Isn’t this fun, honey?”

She brought Amy back inside the parapet, safe from the long fall—he pulled the trigger. The bullet took Marcie below the ribs. Blood reddened an air-conditioning tower behind her, and she staggered back against it.

Marcie screamed at him, “Fuck you!” She threw Amy over the edge of the roof.

Too late, he pulled the trigger again.

The bullet spun Marcie to face him. Her expression softened. Her eyes cleared, and the woman he loved looked out at him. “I’m so sorry.”

She staggered to the edge and then dived over.

Hank ran to the parapet. Their bodies lay side by side in the alley. It looked as if they were holding hands.

His heart locked up.

Dr. Moore’s voice said, “Three . . . two . . . one . . . wake.”

He opened his eyes; the shift from Marcie and Amy lying broken in an alley to the doctor’s caring eyes disoriented him. She said, “That’s what really happened, Hank. Amy was already dead by the time you reached the roof.” She placed her hand over his. “You’re not to blame.”