He remembered Cruz’s lie about not having known Ed. But the relationship there was so obvious-the parking lot and all-that the cops would be all over Cruz. How far they pushed things, he figured, would be a function of Griffin ’s gut feelings. If he smelled a murder, he’d dig in. If not, everything to do with Cruz and Frannie and Army would be essentially irrelevant.
Well, what Griffin did was out of Hardy’s hands.
He came over Twin Peaks, down Stanyan, then through the Park out to 22nd. There was no sign of afternoon fog, and it gave his neighborhood an entirely different feel. People were outside playing Frisbee on the grass in the park, couples walked the streets hand in hand. The heat had let up somewhat, but it was still balmy.
He parked on the street in front of his house. He had to force the front door open again with his shoulder. This time, though, he walked directly down the hall to the kitchen, through it to the tool room, and pulled one of his planes off the wall.
In five minutes, he had taken the door off its hinges and was sitting on the front porch, planing. A stray cat came and sunned itself at his feet. Occasionally it would swat at one of the shavings.
When the door was rehung, Hardy changed the light in the hall, then went back to his study. He owned three guns-a 9-millimeter automatic, a.22 target pistol, and a regulation.38 Special that he’d used when he’d started in the police department. They were all in the lower drawer of the filing cabinet he’d made himself using no nails.
Eddie had been shot with a.38 revolver, so Hardy grabbed that. Double-checking to make sure it was unloaded, he clicked off a few rounds to make triple sure, then went into the living room and sat in his chair by the window.
The evening sun striped the room through the open bunds. Hardy put the gun on the reading table at his side, picked up a pipe and lit it. After a few puffs, he lifted the gun and aimed it at a few targets around the room. He passed the gun back from hand to hand, feeling the heft of it, checking its action.
He then aimed it point-blank at his head from several angles, using both hands. Finally, holding the gun in his right hand against his right temple, he closed his eyes, held his breath and squeezed the trigger, breathing out after the empty click.
He leaned back in the chair, still holding the gun in his right hand. Hardy was left-handed. Eddie was right-handed. The bullet had entered the left side of his head. So unless he picked it up wrong-handed, or somehow… No, it was ludicrous. “No way,” he said, “absolutely no way.”
Chapter Eight
THE TOWN of Colma is tucked into a pocket behind Daly City and Brisbane, its corpses far outnumbering its citizens. It was normally shrouded in fog, which seemed appropriate, but this day, for Eddie’s funeral, it basked in sunlight, bright and warm.
The Mass had been scheduled for ten, so Hardy timed his arrival at the cemetery for quarter to eleven, but no one else had made it yet.
Another group of mourners were gathered in a knot out over across the sloping lawn. A brace of eucalyptus at the front gate provided a feeble shade and a distinctive scent. Not at all deathlike. The sky was purplish blue. A warm breeze ruffled the high leaves.
Another hearse and its party appeared down the road, and Hardy, sitting on the fender of his Suzuki, waiched the line approach. He put his hands in his pockets and walked out to the street. McGuire’s pickup was visible midway down the line of cars.
It was a substantial group, which he had expected. Eddie Cochran, of course, had been well liked.
Hardy got into his car, waited, then pulled in behind McGuire. They went quite a ways back. Here the eucalyptus grew a bit thicker. Under the trees it was cool and pleasant. Picnic weather.
Father James Cavanaugh leaned down and glanced casually at his reflection in the car window. With his hair, still all black, flopping Kennedy-like over an unlined forehead and piercing gray-blue eyes, he was uncomfortably aware that he could be a walking advertisement for the glory of the priesthood. His body was trim, his movements graceful. The cleft in his chin was a constant temptation to vanity.
It was a glance, that’s all. He didn’t study himself, make any corrections to the look. He was, he knew, unworthy-of his gifts as well as his role, especially here, today.
And now here came Erin, Eddie’s mother. And again, the temptations, the haunting realization of his sinfulness. What a beauty she was.
And so strong. In spite of losing her eldest son, she seemed not to need his support, though as she stepped into his arms and he held her, he felt for a moment the pent-up grief as she sighed once deeply into the shoulder of his cassock.
Her hand lifted to his face. “Are you all right, James?”
He nodded. “How’s Big Ed?”
“He didn’t sleep much last night. I can’t say any of us did.”
Unbidden again, the thought came. What if we had married? What if, when they’d both been eighteen, he’d pushed just a little harder? He had never met anyone else with her joy in life, her sense of balance, her wisdom, her brain. And, as if that weren’t enough, even now, after four children, her body was rich, the perfect combination of curve and plane, of softness and tone. Her face was still smooth as a girl’s, the skin cream white. A touch of light coral lipstick highlighted the bow-shaped, sensuous mouth.
“You’re all right, though?” he asked gently.
She stared up at him, her eyes going dull. “I don’t think I’ll ever be all right again.”
She turned, planning to go join her husband.
But she couldn’t go to the grave just yet. She knew she should walk with Big Ed, be there for him, but the strength simply wasn’t there. Her husband was walking with Jodie, trying to comfort her. God, this was impossibly hard.
And Frannie, poor Frannie, so small in black, stumbling over roots, held up by her brother Moses. She looked over to see her own two sons, Mick and Steven, pallbearers, waiting patiently by the hearse. They were good boys. Of course, they weren’t Eddie. There wasn’t any more Eddie.
She looked up at the blue sky, struggling for control-biting her tongue inside her mouth, digging fingernails into her palms. She stared up at the sky, took a deep breath. A strong hand gripped her right arm just above the elbow.
“Ma’am?”
She was nearly as tall as the man. He hadn’t been at the funeral Mass. Perhaps he was, had been, a friend of Ed’s, though he was older. His face looked lived in-loaded with laugh lines. He wasn’t laughing now, though.
“Are you all right?” he said.
The hand on her arm didn’t bother her. She reached over and put her own hand over it. “Just tired,” she said, “very tired.”
Then she gently shook him off and started walking toward the gravesite, slowly. The man walked alongside.
“Did you know Eddie?” she asked.
“Pretty well. Both him and Frannie.” Then, “I’m very sorry.”
She nodded.
“I’m here because of Frannie, mostly. Her brother.”
She stopped now and looked at him again, their eyes on a level. “Were you at the wedding? Should I know you?”
He shook his head. “Weddings aren’t my thing. I, uh, got called out of town, couldn’t make it.”
“But now you’re…?” Letting it hang. Her eyes wouldn’t let him go.
“Moses doesn’t believe…” He paused, started again. “I guess I don’t either, that it was a suicide.”
She looked toward the gravesite. The bearers hadn’t yet moved the coffin from the hearse. She found herself gripping Hardy by the arm, talking through clenched teeth. “There is no way in the world that my Eddie killed himself. None at all.”
Suddenly it was essential to tell someone what she knew in her heart. “Here’s Eddie… he’d bring in a stray cat or a bird that had fallen out of its nest in a storm. He was almost… I don’t know how to say it… but almost feminine in being sensitive that way. He hated football. Hated ice hockey. They were too brutal. His father and Mick used to tease him about it, but he was just a soft man. If you knew him at all, you know that.”