Window to Heaven

VIII

Read: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, VI, VII

Was She Worth It?

A half an hour later, the technician came into the waiting room with the results of the blood test, which he handed to Sandy in obvious deference to his status as senior law enforcement officer present. After a studied glance, he announced, “No significant traces of alcohol.”

His eyes on Hardin, he handed off the document to R. Model without looking at her, as if it were used tissue paper she could dispose of for him.

R. Model took a hard look at the document before turning livid, her foot hitting the floor almost in little girl petulance. “How can this be? He reeks of alcohol. Something’s wrong with the test. He got to the technician. I know he did.”

Sandy called for the technician to return. The matchstick of a young man looked bored and surly.

“Son, do you know who this man is?”

“His name is whoever it says on the test results. I checked his driver’s license,” he said the words as if he resented the small breath required.

“Have you ever seen him, met him, or done business with him, or even heard of him before tonight?”

“No, Sir.”

“Thank you. You may go.”

Sandy turned to her. “The test is the test. He would have had some kind of handgun. Return it.”

“Guns aren’t allowed in the hospital, and he still hasn’t answered for the assault charge. It’s evidence.”

“You are under my direct orders.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Hardin watched her disappear into the darkness to retrieve his Colt. Any of the budding natural empathy toward him he had started to see develop on the ride into town had just wilted under Sandy’s grueling cross-examination. He’d likely never get it back. He shouldn’t be thinking about the girl, and he shouldn’t be feeling anything for her after what she had just tried to do to him, and would still do, given half an opportunity, an opportunity she intended to devote herself to seeing realized.

Sandy interrupted his thoughts. “I saw the way you’re looking at her. She’s my officer. Don’t be doing that.”

Did he? Did he look at her the way he’d look at a woman, this child? The words checked him, brought him back from far away and long ago, from a time when he might have been different had he chosen better. He laughed a bitter laugh. “You’re mistaking the dead stare of a tired man for prurient interest.”

R. Model returned with the Colt and handed the empty weapon with the slide locked back butt first to the sheriff.

An underhanded gesture from Sandy produced the leather double magazine holder and its two spare magazines along with the loose magazine she had removed from the pistol, which she brought forth from her jacket pocket and clearly had hopes of not returning. Having to return more than she wanted produced more petulance. “I don’t believe anyone outside of law enforcement should have a right to own such a thing. This one is clearly military surplus, a weapon of war.”

Hardin could almost see the steam coming off Sandy. He waited for it.

“Young lady, to get that shiny badge you had to swear an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. If anything in your conscience gives you any problems or regrets with that Oath, say so now.”

She just stared at him.

“I’m waiting for a direct statement, Officer.”

“No, Sheriff, I have no problems with my Oath.”

“I needed to hear it. Good.”

After easing the slide down and lowering the hammer with his thumb to protect the old warhorse from unnecessary wear, and perhaps to avoid that hard metal against metal sound that would have created a deep sense of foreboding to anyone in earshot, Sandy said to him, “This is one of the old 1911s. First time I’ve seen you with this one. World War I would be my guess. Not much on sights. You’ve given up on modern sights?”

Hardin said as he took possession of the slab-sided 1911 and its magazines, “Made in 1918 after the big war production got rolling. 1917 would have been better. I don’t see that well anyway now. I can pretend the sights are target Bomars.”

“Nice. I don’t see so well either. Does pretending help?”

“I like to hope it does.”

“I’ll keep that under advisement. By the way, you’re free to go,” Sandy said.

“No, he’s not.” R. Model looked like she wanted to tackle him again. “He still has to be processed for the assault charges before he’s released.”

“Before that happens you’re going to have to convince the Commonwealth Attorney,” Sandy told her, in that bored tone he had perfected before he was fourteen.

“And you will have already talked to him?” Her light coloration turned dark.

“Yes. The most we could hope to convince a judge of is that you honestly believed you were in jeopardy. If we succeed there, you’re legally in the clear, and your troubles fall back into the purview of departmental policy. That you were actually attacked is unreasonable. He lacked motive.”

Hardin realized he had stepped squarely into the middle of the dynamic between R. Model and Sandy. He could just hear Sandy muttering, “I’m going to fire that bitch,” although that was something he would never tell Hardin. And the lawyer in R. Model would scream, “Sue the son of a bitch.” Neither would ever act on their impulses because the day either did would mark the last of these exchanges and both fed off them whether they realized it or not, or if they did, they wouldn’t be willing to admit it.

Sandy continued, “And you failed to follow correct departmental procedure in a stop by allowing him to get that close. To cap it all, he knew he hadn’t been drinking, and even if he had been, a drunk driving charge pales compared to an assault on an officer. This man has been in the community a long time with a clean record and reputation. He’s well known in the state. It’s a matter of he said/she said. His word will carry more weight than yours. If you file, it’ll be an automatic suit against the department. Even if your story were true, and I know you believe it, it’s unreasonable.”

R. Model ought to have appeared chastised and humbled. Instead Hardin recognized the building rage, a thing between them that he and the young woman shared, and Sandy did not.

Looking at it from the outside, it startled him. She was so wrong. Could it be that in some of those times of building rage — those times when he never questioned the purity of his rightness — he was just as wrong? The injustice of the stick in the gut was forgotten. This little insight was far worse.

Sandy wouldn’t quit. “Gray-haired old men just don’t start abusing women. There’s always a history, and he doesn’t have one.”

Hardin noted that Sandy was already in his protect his officers mode, although if R. Model saw it, he picked up no indication. The law was that she had to reasonably believe she was in jeopardy. Unsubstantiated fear, no matter how real, didn’t meet the standard. And Sandy would never publicly admit that her actions weren’t based upon fear but what she believed as righteous anger. They liked to fight each other. R. Model had the advantage of the certainty of youth and her law school education, Sandy the years of practical in court experience.

“This isn’t right,” she said. “And I protest your willingness to offer legal advice to a suspect.”

Hardin turned toward her. “I know you can’t believe this, but I meant you no harm.” His use of past tense careful and intentional, he wasn’t altogether sure how he felt now.

”You’re dirty, and I’m going to prove it.”

It was a confirmation that he had lost the gains he had been beginning to make with her.

“That’s quite enough. Go back on patrol, Officer. Just as soon as you do something about your appearance. You look like you’ve been rolling in the gravel.”

With a growl, and a parade ground worthy turn on her heels, she left.

Hardin looked square at Sandy. “So from now on will I have your girl-deputy dogging my steps, pulling me over, looking for something, anything? And if I look cross-eyed at her that baton will be back in my gut. And when she does every feminist in the state will applaud her actions for making one more strike for the sisterhood.”

“No, I’ll take care of it.”

“At the expense of her believing you’re corrupt. Why don’t you just fire her?”

“Because I see in her what you see in her. Maybe she doesn’t belong in law enforcement. She’s meant for better things, but I won’t see her life or her career blemished because of a too strong dose of idealism.”

Hardin let out a bitter little enunciation that he supposed someone might mistake for a laugh. The difference between him and Sandy was that he was supposed to be the romantic fool, chasing rainbows that always receded into the far corners of the Arctic, and Sandy was the practical one, the grounded one. Only in rare moments did Sandy show that there wasn’t that much difference.

“Do you need a ride?” Sandy asked.

“No, I’ve got a place in town. It’s not much of a walk. I need the night air. I’ll call somebody from the farm to pick me up in the morning.”

“A bit of advice before you go, Hardin. I can see it in you. It rankles what this young woman thinks of you. There’s nothing you can do about that. Any attempt to win her over is going to blow up in your face, and she’s still a sworn officer. Stay strictly away from her. Part of the price of what I do is the number of people who will hate me. You haven’t had to deal with that to the same degree, and I hope you never will. Changes in your situation will put you more in the public eye and with that comes some mostly unpleasant judgments that there’s nothing you can do anything about.”

Just as he turned to go, Sandy called him back.

“Yes?”

“Are you going to tell me or not, how it is you come in here reeking of whisky, yet manage to pull a blood test that shows zero alcohol?”

Hardin smiled. “A woman threw the whisky in my face.”

“Did you deserve it?”

“Yes.”

“This woman, she’s caused you a lot of trouble. Was she worth it?”

“Yes again.”

“That’s all I needed to hear.”

They laughed long. They laughed as much for what was gone, the memory, for what couldn’t be, what couldn’t come back, as for the moment.

Outside of the hospital, in the first shadow he could find, he shoved a magazine into the .45, cocked and locked it, and removed and topped off the magazine before returning the holster and the double magazine holder to his belt, leaving his back magazine one round short. R. Model had kept that one round he had in his chamber.

Oversight? Perhaps? Probably? Or could it be that she recognized his .45 ACP cartridges as reloads? His round nosed bullet was a cast Lyman 452377, a configuration dating back to the 20’s, one not seen so much nowadays — one he had cast himself — perhaps the most famous cast bullet ever designed for the .45 ACP. She wouldn’t recognize that. What she might recognize was that reloads weren’t that common at a crime scene, and if she had one of his in possession, and forensics recovered a .45 bullet she could compare the two. She wouldn’t know that the Starline brass he used wasn’t available in a factory loading, but with the help of a good forensics man she could find out soon enough, given a proven need.

He walked, his apartment a good mile. He might have a moment here and there he didn’t regret, where he could take some peace, but he wouldn’t be right until he returned North. He could smart under the injustice of the young deputy’s attack, say she didn’t have the evidence, say everything was angle of view, but what did he believe himself?

He wanted to be in a place where it was just him and the country, where an abstract judgment of character was irrelevant, where either he was big enough for the country or he wasn’t. Why did he love that thought? Why did he want to put himself in a place where nobody was big enough or lucky enough? Luck he had come to consider as a measured finite quantity, like water in a glass. No man knew how much luck he had been allotted, but he was sure he had poured most of his out on hard ground, too infertile to grow anything.

Continue reading part IX