I said, “No particular reason, no. It’s where I live and where I work, and I’d like to sleep in my own bed tonight. You have my home address and telephone number; that’s where I’ll be three hours after I leave here.”
“Yes, of course,” Dillard said. “Well, we’ll let you know.” And he went out and left me alone again.
I sat there and looked out the window at the parking lot. I still felt tired and my head still hurt. Mild concussion. Christ. But I was lucky I was sitting here and not lying in a hospital bed with my brains half scrambled like a carton of old eggs. For that matter I was lucky I wasn’t dead.
Lydecker came in after a while with a statement for me to sign. I asked him if I could go home pretty soon, and he said he thought I could. Then he took me out of his office and put me in another room, a small interrogation cubicle with nothing in it except a table and four chairs. I did some more waiting. At the end of twenty minutes Huddleston showed up with another cup of coffee and the news that the first battery of reporters had arrived outside.
“Terrific,” I said. “Do I have to talk to them?”
“That’s up to you.”
“Then no way. I’ve had enough questions for one day.”
“How’s your head?”
“It hurts.”
“Want me to get the doc to take another look?”
“No. It’s not that bad. Listen, when can I leave? Or am I going to become a permanent fixture around here?”
“You sound a little pissed off,” he said.
“Not me. What would I have to be pissed off about?”
“Dillard, for one thing. Those FBI guys are a pain in the ass.”
“You said it, I didn’t.”
He gave me a lopsided grin. He seemed to like me, which was more than I could say for either Dillard or Lydecker; that was some small comfort, at least. I needed all the allies I could get.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I think they’re going to release you pretty quick.”
“I’ve been hearing that ever since I got here.”
“Just hang in a while longer.” He went to the door. “Bradford’s daughters have both been notified, by the way,” he said before he went out. “The chief took care of it while I was out fetching you.”
It was another half hour before Huddleston came back; Lydecker was with him. I was in a foul humor by then, but I didn’t let them see it. And Lydecker took the edge off it by saying, “All right, we’re through with you. You can go now.”
“Thanks.”
He told me I would be wise to drive straight back to San Francisco, to keep myself available in case I was needed again-the usual speech. I said that was what I intended to do. Huddleston went out front with me and helped me run the gantlet of half a dozen babbling reporters; I tried to ignore them and their questions, but one of them plucked at my bad arm, bringing a cut of pain, and I shook him off and snapped at the pack of them that I had no comment to make. My nerves were in worse shape than I’d thought.
We got outside and over to my car. Huddleston gave me his hand and said, “Good luck,” and I said, “I may need it,” and got into the car and drove out of there as fast as I could without breaking any laws.
If I could go to my grave without coming back to Oroville again, there was still a chance I’d die a happy man.
It was almost eight o’clock when I drove across the Bay Bridge into San Francisco. The trip had taken me four hours-I had stopped three times, once for gas, once for something to eat, and once for coffee-and I felt lousy. My head throbbed, my thoughts were muzzy, my left arm and hand were sore again. A five-year-old kid with a cap pistol could have tried to mug me and I would not have been able to fend him off.
When I got to my flat I took a beer out of the refrigerator and then went into the bedroom and switched on my answering machine. There were several messages, one of which was from Arleen Bradford and another of which was from Hannah Peterson. Miss A. Bradford said I should call her as soon as I could; she sounded pretty distraught. Her sister said, “This is Hannah Peterson. Please call me right away, it’s very important. I need to talk to you about what happened to my father.” She sounded distraught, too, even more so than Arleen. Charles Bradford must have meant more to her than I’d given her credit for.
I drank most of the beer as I listened to the playback tape. That was a mistake; I didn’t remember until I drained the last of the can that you’re not supposed to drink alcohol when you’ve got a concussion. That one beer had the effect of three or four stiff drinks of hard liquor; I began to feel woozy, light-headed. Arleen Bradford and Hannah Peterson could wait until tomorrow. I was in no shape now to deal with grief or anger or whatever else the two of them wanted to throw at me.
I shut off the machine, shut off the lights, and started to shed my clothes. I had just enough time to get out of my pants before the bed reached up like a hungry lover and gathered me in.
Chapter 15
Somewhere, a long way off, bells were ringing. I crawled down the steep embankment, trying to get away from the train that was bearing down on me. A guy who looked like Lester Raymond was leaning out of the open door of one of the boxcars, screaming obscenities about death; he smelled like burning flesh. Then he jumped off, and disappeared-poof, like magic stuff-and over the sound of the bells the hobo named Flint said, “You want sympathy? Hey, man, sympathy is what you find in the dictionary between shit and syphillis.” Then Raymond was there again, beating my head against something hard and unyielding. Then I woke up.
The ringing bells belonged to the telephone. I fumbled the handset out of its cradle, dropped it, picked it up off the floor, and said, “Yuh?”
“Are you all right?” Kerry’s voice said worriedly. “My God, I just saw the morning papers.”
“Yuh,” I said again. “I’m all right.”
“Are you sure? You don’t sound all right…”
“You woke me up. What time’s it?”
“Nine o’clock. The papers said you got a concussion…”
“Mild concussion. I’m fine, don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry? You idiot, of course I worry. What is it with you and murder cases? You just get your license back, you get a new client, and bang, here you are all over the news again. And with a concussion besides.”
I was awake now. I sat up, wiggled my hips until I had my back braced against the headboard, and ran my free hand over my face; it made a sound like a cat scratching on a door. My head didn’t hurt too much, which was a surprise. Neither did my bad arm. I was in great shape, all right. Another couple of days, I thought sourly, and I would be well enough to go out and play a strenuous game of checkers with the other old farts in the park.
“Don’t lecture me, okay?” I said. “I can’t deal with lectures until I’ve had my morning coffee.”
“One of these days you’re going to stay out of trouble on a case, and I’m going to be so surprised I won’t believe it.”
“Did you hear what I said about lectures?”
“You can be so damned exasperating sometimes,” she said. “I don’t know what to do with you.”
“I can think of a couple of things.”
“Hah.”
“Hey, can I help it if things keep happening to me? If I don’t have any luck?”
“No luck? You’ve got more luck than ten people, or else you wouldn’t still be walking around in one piece.”
“Nuts,” I said. “Did the law get Lester Raymond yet?”
“If they did it was too late to make the papers.”
Damn, I thought. Could Raymond pull off the same kind of vanishing act as he had fifteen years ago? The odds were against it. The first time around he’d been as lucky as Kerry claimed I was; this time the FBI would catch up to him before he could go to ground long enough to establish a new identity. It was only a matter of time.