Staring down at his bandaged youngest son, he was a shell of the man in the old but elegant suit Hardy had met at the funeral reception. Now a very worn green USF sweatshirt hung loosely over work pants and boots. Everything hung too loose. One bootlace wasn’t tied.
He stared as long as he could, then squeezed his thumb and forefinger into his eyes.
Muñoz stood next to him. “Are you all right, sir?”
Big Ed nodded. “Long night,” he said. “We thought, we thought…”
“Sure. But he’s not. Not even close.”
“He’s not close,” he repeated. And suddenly a shudder went through him and he was crying.
Hardy went out to the reception area, where a small boy with the beginnings of a shiner and a large red knot on his forehead sat stoically as his mother explained to the receptionist how he’d stepped on the tines of a rake and the handle had popped up and hit him in the face.
Hardy walked outside into the bright sun. He was hungry. The place on Gonzalez’s main street sold burritos the size of a suitcase for $2.49, and Hardy bought three, chewing on one while he carried the other two, wrapped, back to the clinic.
Muñoz and Ed, talking by the sheriff’s car, took the food. Big Ed seemed a little better.
“Sorry I didn’t recognize you in there,” he said to Hardy.
“How’s the boy?”
“Still sleeping. You have any idea who did this?”
“I wish,” Hardy said. “You reported him missing. Did he run away, or what?”
“What’s the other option?” Muñoz asked.
Hardy shrugged. “It’s unlikely, but he might have been kidnapped.”
“That’s crazy,” Ed said. “We don’t have any money.”
“It might have been to keep him quiet. Maybe he knew something.” The two men chewed their burritos. “About Ed, I mean.”
That stopped Big Ed. “What do you mean? They say Eddie killed himself.” He swallowed hard.
“I doubt it. I doubt it very much.”
“Well, then, what…”
Hardy could see it was almost too much for the man. His hand went up to his eyes again. He shook his head as though trying to clear it.
The receptionist came to the door. “The boy’s awake,” she said.
At least he wants to be home, Big Ed was thinking. That’s something. Being back home. He’d said it. Daddy, take me home. Daddy. Nobody’d called him that in ten years. It was always either Dad, Pop or Ed. Well, if Steven wanted Daddy now, Daddy was taking him home. There he and Erin might be able to figure out if and where they’d screwed up so he wouldn’t want to run away again.
He looked around to the back seat where Steven lay, sleeping again, strapped down by the seat belts.
“He okay?” Hardy asked.
Ed nodded.
Muñoz and Hardy had thought it’d be better if Ed didn’t have to drive back alone with his son, so they arranged that the sheriff’s one deputy would drive Hardy’s car back to the city later.
Ed again glanced into the back seat. He couldn’t look enough at his son, couldn’t really believe yet-after the fears of last night sitting up with Erin, his daughter Jodie and Frannie-that Steven, along with Eddie, wasn’t dead and gone forever. Whatever had happened, whatever he’d been through, at least he was still with them, breathing. He must’ve sighed with relief, because Hardy looked over at him.
This guy Hardy was driving well-slow and careful. No bumps on the kid. And it was a good thing he was driving-Ed was pretty sure he couldn’t have kept his mind on the road.
They were up to San Mateo. The sun was behind the mountains already. Where had the hours gone to? In another half hour they’d be home.
Maybe sometime today Erin had gotten some sleep. He hoped so. She hadn’t slept now in almost a week.
Erin. His thoughts, as always, were never far from his wife. He didn’t know how they were ever going to get over this time, though something told him they would. Well, almost. They’d never be the same, of course. The wound-losing Eddie-was too deep to ever heal completely, but there would be something- some new challenge that would get things into a new perspective. At least, he hoped so.
Why had his boy run away?
“You have any proof somebody killed Eddie?” he asked suddenly.
“Nope.” But then Hardy told him what Cavanaugh had said about Sam Polk-the drug thing.
“That’s something,” Ed said. “I knew something was going on with Polk. Eddie and I kind of argued about it.”
“That’s what Cavanaugh said-that Eddie wanted another opinion.”
“When did you talk to Jim?”
“Yesterday. Last night. He thought he might have something of a lead. I was going to check around a little today, but then this morning…” He ticked his head toward the back seat.
“I don’t know why you’re doing this, but thanks.”
Hardy kept his eyes on the road. “I knew Ed and Frannie pretty well. Her brother’s my best friend.”
Turning west up the 380 now as dusk deepened, passing the huge cemetery with its thousands of white squares, gridding the grassy fields, marking the graves of military dead.
Ed reached behind the seat and rested a hand on his son’s leg, feeling the warmth of it through the blanket. Steven stirred and moaned softly, but didn’t open his eyes.
“Almost there,” Hardy said.
He’d made a dumb turn coming up this way, even though it was the most direct route. The cemetery was closing Ed up, and Hardy swore at himself-he should have remembered it. Maybe he could distract him a little, get his mind off it. “Your friend Father Cavanaugh is some kind of character.”
“Jim? Yeah. He’s a great guy.”
“Only thing I can’t figure is why he’s not a cardinal or something-at least a bishop.”
Ed smiled. “I know. He’s got that flair, don’t he?” He paused. “But if he were a bishop, he’d have to leave Erin, and I don’t think he’d like to do that.”
That remark surprised Hardy. He must have shown it. “It’s no secret he’s in love with my wife,” Ed said, but then held up a hand. “No, no, not like that. He’s one of us. Erin’s his best friend. He’s hers. Except maybe for me.” He smiled again. “Except sometimes I’m not sure of that either.”
“I think that’d make me nervous,” Hardy said.
“Well, after thirty years, I figure Erin’s my gal. We’ve talked about it, but she says the physical thing just never was there with Jim.” He shook his head. “How do you figure that? She prefers a galumpf like me, she says. I figure it’s her one flaw, but believe me, I’ll take it.”
Hardy glanced over at him. He said it in such a self-effacing way, you almost missed the serene confidence. This man knew, without a trace of doubt, that he knocked his wife out.
“It’s good to know they don’t always go for the movie stars, not being one myself,” Hardy said, relieved they had finally gotten by the cemeteries, into Daly City and all the little boxes on the hillsides.
“I don’t think they’d let Jim be a bishop anyway.”
“Why not?”
Ed shrugged. “He’s not political enough. Done a few unusual things. For a priest.”
Such as coming to me for his confession, Hardy thought, but asked, “Like what?”
“Oh, nothing serious. Just stuff.”
Okay, they weren’t going to talk about it. But then… “It took him about twice as long as anyone to get out of the seminary. They kicked him out twice.”
“Kicked him out?”
Ed shrugged. “Well, it was the fifties, early sixties. The Church thought it had a lock on these guys. Any little thing, they’d say you didn’t have a true vocation and boot you. Not like now, where if you’ve got a history as a gunrunner to Nicaragua you still got a pretty good chance, they need priests so bad.”
“So what did he do?”
“Jim?” Ed laughed, remembering. “I should know. I went with him. He got about two weekends off a year, and so this one time we got plastered and took in some strip shows-Erin was at school so the two of us were ripe for some hijinks. But the problem was, the next day he showed up back at the seminary hung over and confessed everything. Bad scene. They put him out for a semester to rethink his vocation.”