Window to Heaven
VII
Read: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, VI
Bitter and Old
The automatic doors of the hospital emergency room opened with Deputy R. Model, hanging onto to Hardin’s arm guiding him. It could almost form an image he’d like to keep — stepping forward briskly into the sharp air of a spring night, a beautiful young woman on his arm — other than the small detail of the handcuffs: that and he was just now beginning to be able to walk upright without pain. Oh, well, maybe that wasn’t so far out of character. Beautiful young women had a tendency to hit him, if most of the time, most of the hits tended to be figurative. As a group, could he expect all of them to have metaphor? When she opened the car door, she had asked him if he were able to walk in on his own power or whether he needed help from the emergency room staff.
Sandy appeared as if out of nowhere.
This was going to bring the worst out of R. Model. He had sensed a softening in her, a little more willingness to listen. With the Sheriff challenging her every action that was going to shrink into nothingness.
Ignoring his deputy, his first words were, “You look like shit.”
A quick glance at R. Model and Hardin noted her stiffen. The ruined uniform trousers bothered her, but he saw that she quickly realized that Sandy’s remark was directed to him and weren’t a reference to her uniform.
“I suspected I might. This public valet service you run isn’t to be recommended.” He didn’t need to glance again. He could feel R. Model’s fingers tightening on his arm.
Sandy turned toward her. “Get those cuffs off him.”
“Sheriff, you don’t know what he’s done.”
“Did I ask? Do what you’re told.”
If R. Model’s bearing didn’t alter in a way he could put words to, palpable humiliation rolled off this young officer. The pleasure Hardin expected to feel eluded him. The humiliation of this over-earnest young woman gave him no satisfaction.
This was the Sandy he never saw, deep authority in his voice.
His hands free, he towered over both the deputy and the sheriff. His size alone made her shrink a bit into herself. As soon as she had the cuffs off, she took a step back, then another, to have a chance at her service automatic, her baton, or her Taser should he turn violent or run. The Tueller drill, based on a public and prominent shooting of a knife-wielding perpetrator, taught that a man charging with a knife at twenty-one feet or closer could kill the average officer before he could reach his service weapon, and Sandy, he could see, trained his people to appreciate the jeopardy.
“Stand your ground,” Sandy said to her, irritated boredom sharpening his tone.
She stopped backing up mid-step to make an awkward half-stumble forward.
A glance and Hardin took in those narrowed eyes, staring back at him. To her he was a target only.
Sandy gestured to her. “Walk with me. I want to hear what you have to say.”
R. Model blanched at the idea that her boss left him free to roam the halls of the emergency room unsupervised.
He turned back to Hardin. “Get yourself some damn coffee, and if there’s any left bring me some.”
“Sir, that could affect the blood test.”
“Dry up.”
Hardin allowed himself to smile. Sandy had to assume, if based on nothing more than the reek of Bourbon, that he was as guilty of drunk driving as his deputy said he was, but he didn’t feel the need to use the opportunity to make this as humiliating an experience as his authority would allow. A little gesture, a joke, made all the difference in the face of the inevitabilities of human experience.
He sat in the hospital waiting room while they walked the corridor and said whatever they said. He gulped the bitter and old coffee, which was just the way he wanted it. Hell, he was bitter and old. The coffee suited his mood. It had just the right bite.
When they appeared around the corner of the hallway again, R. Model looked less happy than she had before.
He couldn’t help but note Deputy R. Model was slightly taller than Sandy as they walked back to him. The sheriff had always hated being short. He couldn’t like much being bald either. An idle thought occurred, how much of this lack of physical presence could be behind Sandy’s relentless pursuit of prominence in the public arena?
He handed a paper cup of coffee to Sandy, which the sheriff accepted, and another to the girl, which she pointedly refused by looking away, leaving him with the awkwardness of figuring out what to do with it.
What he did was sip from one cup and then the other one he had set down but hadn’t quite finished. He announced, “Two-fisted drinker. What the hell. That’s I’ve been accused of.”
“Not funny,” R. Model answered.
“I’m not in the mood for your gallows humor,” Sandy said before he turned to R. Model. “Start the procedures for the blood test.”
As she left, he turned back to Hardin and said, “You want to tell me what the hell this is all about?”
“I thought you just heard.”
“Her report is kind of lean on details. Nothing about why, which she couldn’t have known anyway.”
“Does the reason make any difference?”
“How the hell will I know unless you tell me?”
Hardin waited. Sandy didn’t show much on the outside. The man was pissed but resigned. If the evidence pointed that way, he’d face the full wrath of the law. In their younger years, they’d both done their share of drinking. He wasn’t going to convince Sandy that a drunken spree was beyond or beneath him, and with the results of the blood test coming out he didn’t need to, if part of him felt the tension that the test would show what the officer wanted it to show.
By rights he should know better than to answer. With the assault part of the charge, the incident rose to a felony, especially since any response to such a simple question might be arguably admissible without a Miranda warning under the excited utterances ruling. But hell, this was Sandy. He’d tell him what he could.
“You still smell the stale Bourbon. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking. You agree then that her conclusion that you were drinking was reasonable?”
“I do. But you’re not asking. No use now. The blood test will show what it shows.”
“She said you assaulted her.”
He had this frown, the same frown Hardin remembered from the fourteen-year old boy. Wrinkles, bald head, softening middle from too long hours behind a desk, but some things never changed.
“That confuses me.” This was where he had to pull back in deep. If anything he said, anything in the tone of his voice, hinted at the flashes of anger he felt for this young woman, Sandy would believe he deserved what he got. Anger disturbed people. Sandy had long known of his killing rages, and he wouldn’t excuse them.
“In what way?”
“Since she hit me, I’ve been trying to figure out why.”
“You don’t have the righteous indignation of the innocent,” Sandy said.
“Let’s stop dancing around the abstract vagaries of what can and cannot be proven and go right to the heart of the subject.” He looked dead at Sandy. “Do you think I would hurt that young woman?”
That stopped him. Sandy didn’t answer immediately, and Hardin could see him pulling back from where he had assumed he would go with this as he muttered something inarticulate, possibly along the lines of his usual statement of the inability to know what happened, when he abruptly answered, “No.”
“There’s a reason you haven’t already fired her. I did get out of her that she has a law degree. You can’t bear to think that you can’t find a use for a person with that level of education whether you’re willing to openly show it or not.”
“Yes, there’s that.”
“But no practical experience in the real world. She doesn’t know what she thinks she does about the law,” Hardin said.
“How could she?” Sandy asked. “And the only reason you do is that you’ve harassed the state and every major corporation you’ve come in contact with by filing lawsuits more designed for publicity than gain.”
“She thinks I’m dirty.”
“Reasonable conclusion. Unexplained wealth. We’ve had reports of flights landing in your fields late at night. Can you tell me anything about those?”
“I’ve been gone a lot. Haven’t met my responsibilities.”
“I know.”
“What do you think?”
“Life is complicated. I’ve known you a long time, and I’ve never looked to you as an example of purity. Neither do I believe you’re involved in anything like what this girl thinks you are.”
“I’m not. I’ve heard the stories about the flights. Checked to see the tracks. I’ll take care of it.”
“Don’t. That’s our job.”
“My Goddamn land.”
He saw the anger in Sandy at those words. The hell with it. He was angry too with more reason.
“Are you going to tell me what you’re involved in?”
“I can’t.”
“Suit yourself, but remember I did offer my help, and if you change your mind that offer’s still open. For the moment, I’m going to assume that your business is of no concern of a small time rural department until real evidence forces me to alter my position.”
“It isn’t.”
Sandy turned whimsical. “I wish it were like the old times, nights on the river, hunting, fishing.”
“I wish for that too.”
He wished Sandy hadn’t read all that Skeeter Skelton, Bill Jordan romance about the law when he was young, books about shooting, chasing bad guys across the desert, where everything seemed clear-cut, where the line between good and evil was pronounced and marked. It did a permanent set on his brain. And the thing was, even then, it was just Romance. The line between right and wrong was as complicated then as it was now. Once Sandy had told him, he liked his job mostly, except for the hurt children. That stayed with a man. Gave him a sight to live with that couldn’t be unseen.
He needed somebody he could talk to, but it couldn’t be Sandy, never again. He’d taken the Oath to the Constitution all those years ago, and the implied loyalty to a government institution and precepts of justice would always stand between them.
Continue reading part VIII