usual share of angst stored up. But it wasn’t Janet. He didn’t recognize the number, except to see that it was a local call.
“Hello?”
“H-hey, CJ.”
“Hey back. Where are you?”
Dennis had to say it twice before CJ got it.
“What are you doing in jail?”
“Your c-cousin filed an assault ch-charge.”
CJ could scarcely find his voice to reply, but he managed.
“Have they set bail?” he finally asked, understanding that his anger wasn’t going to help his friend.
“Yeah, and I was hoping you c-could call my p-parents and let them know,” Dennis said. CJ heard someone on Dennis’s side say something, but he couldn’t make it out, and Dennis responded with what must have been a hand over the mouthpiece. Then he was back. “I have to go.”
“What’s your parents’ number?”
Dennis gave it and then hung up, leaving CJ standing in the middle of someone else’s kitchen, nursing a level of anger he hadn’t felt in recent memory. And since he was making a habit out of making bad decisions, he decided to add another one to the list.
It took him a while to find Richard’s house—a nice, maybe three-thousand-square-foot place in a new subdivision. He parked at the curb, and as he walked to the door he saw movement by the front curtain. The door opened on the first knock.
“You must be Abby,” CJ said.
Even though his cousin’s wife greeted him with a smile, it was appropriate to call her a timid creature. CJ noticed that she was trying to keep the right side of her face obscured by the partially open door, but he’d seen enough to know that Richard had hit her hard—and that he was left-handed.
“Is your husband here?” he asked, trying to keep his voice low, even though seeing Abby rekindled the anger that had ebbed during the drive over.
“I’m here,” he heard Richard say. “Don’t just stand there, Abby. Let my cousin in.”
CJ nodded his thanks as she opened the door and stepped aside. He found Richard in the living room, holding down a recliner that was parked dead center in front of the television. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and the sight of his gut, and the fact that there was a single cheese curl perched near his navel, made CJ grimace.
“I suppose you’re here about your Indian friend,” Richard said. He gestured to a sofa that was half-covered in newspapers. “Take a load off.”
“I want you to drop the charges,” CJ said, ignoring the offer.
Richard had gone back to watching TV—a Western—and didn’t respond right away. When he did, his eyes never left the set. “And why would I do that? He coldcocked me and then gave me a few more when I was down. I never even had a chance to defend myself.”
“So now you know what it’s like,” CJ said, parroting what he’d said to Julie earlier, and it was the sort of comment that could pull someone’s attention away from a good movie.
“What did you say?” Richard asked, more than a hint of menace in the words.
“I said you deserved everything you got. Actually, I think Dennis let you off easy.”
CJ wasn’t a large man, certainly not as big as Dennis, but he was bigger than Richard. Too, he was standing up, and not under the influence. He had no doubt he could put his cousin on the ground if it came to it, and he wasn’t sure yet which way he wanted things to go.
Richard knew all of these particulars; a lifetime of picking fights with the weakest prey had honed that skill for him. He would not be baited.
“Get out of my house,” was all he said, and there didn’t even seem to be much anger in the statement.
CJ ignored the directive, taking the seat he’d been offered on the sofa just a minute ago.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” CJ said. “You’re going to go down to the police station first thing tomorrow morning and you’re going to tell them that it was all a misunderstanding—a little roughhousing that got out of hand.”
Before he answered, Richard lifted the cheese puff off of his stomach and ate it, and it took a fair amount of effort for CJ not to allow his disgust to reach his face.
“I don’t see that happening, hoss,” Richard finally said. “What are you going to do—beat me up too? You’ll just wind up in the same cell as your friend.”
“No, I’m not going to beat you up, Richard,” CJ said. He leaned forward, making sure he had