were tanked up! What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking about my frat brothers.”
“What?”
“My fraternity in college. Tappa Kegga Brew.”
“Very funny.”
Steve sat up. Abe put an axe through his head. He closed his eyes and groaned.
“Easy there, big fella,” Gincy said.
Steve rubbed his eyes, then his temples. The ax stayed in, chunked down through his brain and behind his eyes and hit the water.
Steve cried into his hands. Couldn’t stop.
He felt Gincy next to him, then an arm around his shoulder, squeezing hard.
Steve fought to speak. “What . . . am I . . . gonna do?”
“Just be here,” Gincy said. “That’s all for now. That’s enough.”
For one night, it was. Gincy sat with him until Steve was cried out and finally fell asleep on the sofa.
Dreamless.
46
Steve woke up at 4:00 a.m. and decided to slip out of town right then. Like an outlaw getting sprung from jail, wanting to leave under cover of darkness.
His head felt like Rocky Balboa’s punching bag. He made some coffee and left a note for Gincy, and got on the road.
It was a peaceful drive, actually. Seeing the sun come up as he approached the mountains was a good sign, a hopeful sign.
He got to his new office before most of Verner was awake. The labor of moving his stuff in helped clear his head. At eight he unhitched the trailer and drove to a real ham-and-eggs place and ate his fill.
So here he was. It was Saturday, and he was already weaving himself into the fabric of small-town life. Invigorated, he wanted to do something, get going. And then it occurred to him there was somebody he needed to see.
The house wasn’t much to look at. Could have used a coat of paint. About twenty years ago. The front yard was dirt and yellowing grass with a couple of old lawn chairs, bleached by the sun, sitting in the middle. But what was there to view from here? The front yards of some other houses equally run down.
Not a great place for a medical doctor to retire. As Steve knocked on the front door, covered by a screen, he wondered if this could really be the right place.
It was late morning in Tehachapi, a high-desert town known primarily for its prison.
He knocked again. The guy who answered was not a medical-looking man. He wore a white T-shirt stretched out by an ample gut. Looked about forty, with brown hair worn long and stringy.
“Yeah?” he said through the screen.
“My name’s Steve Conroy. I’m looking for a Dr. Walker Phillips.”
“Why?”
“I have an urgent need for some information from an old autopsy he did. It involves a family member. My brother.”
Long pause. Then a shake of the head. “I don’t think so.”
“Does he live here?”
“No.”
“But you know him.”
“So?”
“It’s really important. I’m a lawyer, and I’ve come all this way—”
“Look, all I know is Dr. Phillips used to live here. I don’t know where he is now. He hasn’t been around for, oh, a year.”
“A year?”
“Give or take.”
“Any idea where he went?”
The guy shook his head. “He said something about back east, but that’s all I know.”
And all Steve knew was the feeling that this guy was not telling the truth. He took out his wallet, the one with Gincy’s twin twenties in it. “If it’ll help you remember,” Steve said, “I can make this a financial transaction.”
The door, which he’d almost shut, opened again. “What’re you saying?”
“How’s twenty bucks sound?”
“Insulting.”
“Forty?”
“No way.”
Steve shrugged and did the walk-away routine. He was two steps from the door when the guy said, “Okay.”
Back Steve came, fishing the bills out of his wallet. The guy opened the screen door and put his hand out.
“Information first,” Steve said.
“He’s out back.”
“He lives here?”
The guy snatched the bills out of Steve’s hand. “Listen, he’s an old man who’s drinking himself to death, right? He’s got some sort of income and he pays me rent and just asks to be left alone. Every now and then I run some errand for him. I get him his food and his liquor. He doesn’t do anybody any dirt. He’s quiet. So don’t go getting him all upset, okay?”
“Thanks.”
Steve went around the side of the house and walked down the driveway. The place was a small duplex. The back portion looked even more worn than the front. A small, square dwelling. Looked like it might have been the garage at one time. A place for an old car not a dying old doctor.
He knocked on the door. Waited. The