The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga #2) - James Lee Burke Page 0,115
her little hand on the bills and put them into the pocket of her dress. “There’s a police car out yonder. Don’t be going near them with what you got on you.”
“No, ma’am, I won’t. Thank you.”
I got into my heap and drove away. I thought I heard a fire engine screaming, but I could see no emergency vehicles in the vicinity. At the red light, the sound was so loud that I was sure my heap was about to be cut in half. Then the light changed and the world went silent and I drove home like a man who had been struck deaf.
AFTER I BATHED, I rinsed my clothes clean under the faucet and wrung them dry before I hid them at the bottom of the clothes hamper. Then I scrubbed the tub with Ajax. When my father came home, I told him everything.
“I wish you hadn’t done that,” he said.
“I didn’t see any other way out of it, Daddy.”
“That’s an interesting perspective. Can the rest of us do the same thing? ‘I don’t like this, I don’t like that. So I’ll just punch someone in the face.’ Sound reasonable to you?”
“Not when you put it in that context.”
We were in the kitchen. The backyard was in shadow. The cats were sitting on top of the redwood table, and Major was jumping in the air at a mockingbird that kept dive-bombing him from the telephone wire.
“How bad was the Atlas boy hurt?” my father said.
“I didn’t ask. He’s not a boy, either.”
“It doesn’t matter what he is. You shouldn’t have attacked him.”
I gestured out the window. “How about Major and Skippy and Snuggs and Bugs? Who speaks for them?”
He cut his head. “You make a point.” He opened the icebox and looked inside as though a bottle of beer or wine waited on a shelf. As I said, my mother didn’t allow alcohol in the house. If that was what he was looking for, he was out of luck.
“Want to walk over to the icehouse?” I said.
“No, not really.” He sat down at the breakfast table.
“What are we going to do, Daddy?”
His collar was unbuttoned, and there was a V of bright red sunburn on his chest. His fingernails were clipped and pared and clean, every hair on his head in place. “It’s time to make some people do their job.”
“Which people is that?”
HE MADE AN appointment with Detective Dale Hopkins, the plainclothes investigator who had busted Saber and me for vandalizing Mr. Krauser’s home. We met with him in a tiny windowless room that contained no furniture except a wooden table and three chairs and a D-ring inset in the concrete floor. The door was made of solid metal. Through the crack, I could see officers in uniform walking back and forth in the corridor. Hopkins wore a suit the color of tin. He did not bother to shake hands with me or my father. The skin of his face was as taut as a drumhead. He carried a clipboard with him. Perhaps intentionally, he clattered it on the table when he sat down. He had the worst nicotine odor I had ever smelled. “This is in reference to Vick Atlas?” he said.
“Vick Atlas and my son,” my father said.
“So what about Vick Atlas and your son?” He smiled as though trying to be polite and pleasant.
“We want to know if Vick Atlas is all right,” my father said. “We want to apologize. You’re the same gentleman I spoke with on the phone, aren’t you?”
“We’re not in the apology business, Mr. Broussard. Vick Atlas isn’t pressing charges. So all sins are forgiven.”
“I don’t think I’ve made myself clear,” my father said. “My son is sorry for what he did. If he’s not, he should be. That is only part of the reason for our coming here. We believe the Atlas family plans to do us harm. What my son did was wrong. But he was acting in defense of his animals. Can you tell me why people like Jaime Atlas and his son and their ilk are allowed to do anything they wish, including the murder of others?”
Hopkins’s eyes were like glass, the pupils like seeds. “I got no opinion on that.”
“That’s remarkable,” my father said.
“I didn’t catch that.”
“Isn’t it obvious something besides a teenage squabble is going on? The Harrelson and Atlas families are involved, a schoolteacher has committed suicide, my son lives in fear for his life, and you seem to see or hear nothing.”