Still operating under a cocktail fog of guilt and reflection, Gunner parked the Cobra in the hospital lot and made his way up to the ICU where Zina Curry—assuming the girl was still alive—waited. He knew it would be some time before she’d be able to answer the questions he and the police had for her, if she ever recovered from her injuries enough to do so at all, but the girl was unmarried and childless and, as far as he knew, Gunner was her last living relative in Los Angeles. Somebody had to be there when she either opened her eyes again or passed on. It didn’t matter that he and Zina were, for all practical purposes, strangers—he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her, and what little Del used to say about her hadn’t left him with anything more than a vague idea of what kind of foolishness she liked to watch on television or how much weight she’d lost or gained; she was family, and a man didn’t let family go unrepresented in hospital waiting rooms. Ever.
When he found the nurses’ desk on the third floor, they told him Zina had just come out of surgery and was still on her way to the ICU recovery room. They couldn’t comment on her condition. He asked to speak with the doctor who’d performed her surgery and then followed the nurses’ directions to the waiting room, which was every bit as claustrophobic and depressing as he’d feared it would be. The walls were bare, the magazines were all unreadable, and the muted television was tuned to a cooking show he would have traded for a cartoon had he access to the remote. The room’s only other occupant, a fat white woman in a yellow blouse and gray sweatpants, sat in one corner crying the blues into a cell phone, making a mockery of a sign mounted directly over her head forbidding the use of such devices.
Gunner figured he could live with her ignorance for a good five minutes; after that, the lady was going to need a new cell phone.
He had calls of his own to make. Del’s parents, Daniel and Corinne, had to be informed of his death and Noelle’s, and the condition of their granddaughter. He would wait until he spoke to Zina’s surgeon before contacting them in Atlanta. With any luck, they would absolve him of any further responsibility and volunteer to pass the word on to anyone else in the family who needed to be notified. It was a selfish wish, but that was what he wanted.
The big woman in the gray sweatpants and knockoff running shoes closed up her phone and waddled out of the room, leaving Gunner free to replumb the depths of his grief and confusion in relative peace. He tried the thought on for size one more time: Del was dead, and he’d murdered Noelle and tried to kill Zina.
It still made no sense.
It made no sense at all.
2
THE BACK DOOR OFF THE ALLEY at Mickey Moore’s Trueblood Barbershop led directly into Gunner’s office, but Gunner almost never used it as an entrance. Mickey was his unofficial secretary, and coming in through the front door enabled him to check for messages on his way to his desk. Today, however, whatever messages might be waiting for him could wait until hell froze over.
Today, the amusement he usually derived from walking the gauntlet of Mickey and whatever cast of fools, liars, and/or comedians was in the shop at the moment did not interest him in the least. He knew that word of Del’s death—and the crimes he was suspected of committing—would have reached this place by now, hotbed of community gossip that it was, and he was in no mood to deflect all the questions those in attendance would no doubt rain upon him. He had no way to answer those questions, and his ignorance was becoming a greater annoyance to him by the minute.
Still, he had no illusions that sneaking into his office through the back door was going to save him from Mickey himself. His landlord had a sixth sense where the shop was concerned and could detect the slightest disturbance within it, whether the shop was filled to capacity or as empty as a tomb. Mickey didn’t disappoint him. Gunner hadn’t completely closed the back door behind him before the barber split the beaded curtain that divided the two halves of the shop and started toward him, moving like a white-smocked spirit in the dark.
“Not now, Mickey,” Gunner said.
“I’m just checkin’ to see if you’re okay.”
“I’m okay.” Gunner fell into the chair behind his desk. “I just need a little time alone.”
“They say—” Gunner’s glare struck him silent. Mickey stood there for a moment, trying to decide how close to the edge of Gunner’s patience he should let his curiosity take him. Finally, he said, “Just so you know, reporters been calling askin’ for you all mornin’, and a couple have actually come in here lookin’ for you. I think one of ’em’s still parked out front.”
Gunner nodded. “Thanks.”
Mickey went to the doorway, turned before passing through the curtain to return to the head of hair he was supposed to be cutting. “He was a good man. No matter what might’a happened today, he was a good man.”
He walked out. Gunner watched the strands of walnut beads sway back and forth in his wake, and heard a host of anxious voices on the other side of the barrier welcome the barber’s return. Gunner counted three voices in all, including those of Joe Worthy and Chester Hayes, two of Mickey’s most regular customers—but it might have been four. He couldn’t trust his instincts enough to be sure of anything today.
He sat alone in the dark and closed his eyes, summoning the strength to do what he had to do next. He had put it off long enough. He picked up the phone on his desk, only to put it right back down again, having forgotten the instrument was nothing but a useless prop now. As he had his cable TV service, he’d canceled the phone’s landline a week ago, seeking one less bill to pay, and had been reduced ever since to being one of those people who lived and breathed at the mercy of a viable cell phone signal. It was a heartfelt loss. Maintaining a landline might have been ridiculously old school, even for him, but the comfort he found these days in things that were more reliable than fashionable could not be overstated.
Using his cell phone now, he called Del’s parents in Atlanta to give them the terrible news.
Daniel Curry answered the phone on the fourth ring, just as Gunner was about to lose his nerve and hang up. He hadn’t spoken to his uncle in over two years, and it made him sick to think that this was how he was going to break that silence, by dropping a bomb on the old man he couldn’t possibly see coming. Making every effort to be kind, he identified himself and got right to the point, not wanting small talk to give Daniel Curry any false hope that what he was about to hear was going to be anything less than devastating.
When Gunner was done and it was his uncle’s turn to speak, Del’s father reacted exactly the way Gunner thought he would. After letting the space of a few seconds go by, he said, “I don’t understand.”
And of course, Gunner couldn’t make him understand, as unable to understand it as he was himself. All Gunner could do was redeliver the bad news, over and over again, and promise to do whatever he could to help Daniel and Corinne Curry survive the dark days to come. Naturally, his uncle expected much more of him—he was the one out in Los Angeles, seeing Del on a regular basis—how could he not know more about what had happened than he was professing to know? How could Gunner not have more answers to Daniel Curry’s questions than he was offering? Wasn’t he some kind of policeman by trade? How could a policeman be as ignorant of his own cousin’s business as Gunner was making himself out to be?
And, most incredible of all, how could Gunner so willingly accept the authorities’ explanation for what had happened to Del and his family as fact when such a thing was so obviously impossible?
Gunner didn’t know what to say to any of this, especially the last, so he said very little. Apologies and condolences were his only recourse, and he offered up both until his voice was gone and his throat was dry. He let the call peter out with an exchange of sad goodbyes and hung up the phone, certain he had done all the damage his uncle and aunt—both well into their seventies—could endure.
They were going to fly out from Atlanta as soon as they could make arrangements,