Window to Heaven
V
Read: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV
Percentage of Function
Hardin tried to tell himself the less he said to this young deputy the less chance she’d give him another stick in the gut. His shoulders, ruined from too many hours and too many days of paddling against the wind, hurt from the strain of the cuffs almost as bad as his stomach. No position he could shift into eased the pain. He wanted to double back into the fetal position, clutch at himself, and find oblivion, but he couldn’t. The seat belt locked him in place.
His mind adjusted. Pain only meant percentage of function lost. This wasn’t the first time he wished his body had gauges to help him re-calibrate. Pain meant nothing.
The need for revenge coursed through him, a thing he’d fought all his life. Could he get it? He swung back and forth. In his house he had eighteenth century furniture that more properly ought to belong in a museum. What did this wealth amount to if the lowest entry level government functionary could ram a stick in his gut and expect to get away with it?
Should he get his revenge? No, this time he’d fight it, and this time he’d win.
Headlights from the next car on this lonely gravel road gleamed off the bobbed blond hair under her patrol hat. That she looked decent might be an illusion. Character had nothing to do with appearance, and, yet, he couldn’t shake the hope that he hadn’t judged her too far wrong. Why, alongside his desire for revenge, did he also hold a conflicting desire for her to prove decent, he had no idea. Did his objective assessment, so far as he was capable of making an objective assessment of anything, that she was pretty make such a difference? Whatever he felt, his very real anger served to confuse him only further. That under pressure, under that moment of decision, her response was action and not the more usual hesitation made him admire her that much more. Niggling correctness meant only so much if you were caught short, and died because you moved too slow.
His little lurch forward when he stumbled out of the high truck shouldn’t have been enough to trigger her response. She could have taken a step back easily enough. She had crossed a line and used his stumble as her chance to right some kind of a wrong he knew nothing about, more an impulse than planned action. Impulses, he had long ago learned, were more difficult to cover than considered action. She had to be feeling the weight of doubt.
There would always be that little bit of extra leeway given to a lone female officer, and she used it. She looked the perfect picture of young professionalism: the good, dedicated, idealistic officer holding the line against the forces of darkness. Almost anybody would look at her, then look at him, and decide that if she nailed him with a stick there had to be a good reason, and be ready to let it go. When he walked on all of the charges, they’d say, well, at least she had that.
She had every reason to believe she could stick him with the drunk driving charges, but for some reason she must believe he was guilty of much worse.
But what?
He generally didn’t agonize over the sins of the past, so far as he could tell. More than one therapist had said that post traumatic stress was subliminal, and you never escaped your past whether you understood it or not. You couldn’t blame a therapist. They wanted the financial wherewithal to be able to make down payments on a widescreen TV same as anybody else. For that they had to have a long term client base with problems that would never entirely go away.
He looked at it like this: you were there. They were there. Then they weren’t. He tended to forcibly forget.
Unless he learned what was behind her assumptions, and those would never show up in the charges she would file, he’d never know why she did this. A little questioning might get it out of her. Deeply angry people wanted to say why, but she’d be cautious. That she was clearly shaken by how much she’d hurt him might be just the wedge he needed.
“Officer, may I ask you a question?”
“Tell it to the judge.”
“What’s on my mind wouldn’t be of interest to a judge.” He softened his voice, eased the edge of anger out of it.
“What then?”
“Your diction is all wrong.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
He pressed on.
“The utter absence of any kind of nasal twang. Your speech reminds me more of a newscaster than of the high up hills.”
“I could say the same of you. Aside from the thick accent, you sound more like a university professor than a farmer.”
“That’s curious. I haven’t yet said that much.”
“I can tell.”
“Or you already know something about me.”
“Stories follow you.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“And given human nature being what it is, those stories don’t emphasize my magnanimous charitable spirit.”
“They don’t.”
“That explains me. How about you? Where did you go to school?”
“The University of Virginia.”
“University of Virginia graduates don’t come back to this county to become deputies.”
“True enough.”
“The sheriff is an educated man. He went to the University of Virginia himself, but the rest of the department holds our indigenous speech patterns. I can’t see you fitting in with them very well. They’d have a natural suspicion of educated people.”
“So I have found out, but this is more than enough about me.”
“You’re an enigma, Officer R. Model.”
“And I intend to remain one as far as you’re concerned.”
Asking her why she hit him would turn the conversation sour, and he’d lose his small wedge of rapport. “Some things you can’t hide. You’ve never hurt anyone before tonight, and it bothered you more than you expected.”
“Unlike you, who it wouldn’t bother at all. That kind of callous familiarity with violence might be expected of a veteran, a senior law enforcement officer, or someone with a similar background, but from a man of your background it’s disturbing.”
“You didn’t come to that kind of conclusion from anything you learned tonight.”
“I didn’t.”
“Besides, what do you know of my background?”
“Surprisingly little. And that’s a problem.”
“Which means it’s no accident that you were waiting for me here tonight.”
“I can’t comment on procedure.”
Wrong tack, that line would go nowhere.
“I’m just going to say it, Officer R. Model. Something’s wrong here. You don’t fit.”
“I do my job.”
“I’m sure you do, but it’s below your educational and social level. Every other officer in the department will recognize that immediately and make your life living hell.”
“That’s my concern and not yours.”
“Which is far from a denial. What did you do before? There’s no real point in holding that back. Do you really believe I don’t have the resources to find out?”
“I did criminal defense law in a major firm.”
“And you successfully defended someone who used his newfound freedom to commit an even more egregious crime.”
“Yes.” Her voice broke, almost into a sob. “Dammit, yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re laughing at me.”
“No.”
“I suggest you don’t, Sir.”
“And that’s because you believe I’m one of those major criminals ordinary law enforcement never touches.”
“Evidence points in that direction.”
“I don’t really care about what you see as evidence. I just want to left alone.”
He turned to the darkened window to stare out at what? The blackness? This blackness was coming back to haunt him.