Shockwave (7 page)

“I guess so. I never really thought about it.”

“I’m not a medical doctor. I’m a social worker.”

“A guy’s on suicide watch in the jail, they call in a social worker?”

“Mack is an L.C.S.W.,” Dolly said, “a licensed clinical social worker.” She wasn’t being defensive with me. She wasn’t really talking to me at all. Mack wasn’t going to play the credentials game, fine—but she’d be damned if he allowed modesty to get in the way of information.

I just nodded, as if I understood what she meant—I knew Dolly would explain it to me later.

“One homeless population has really advanced coping skills,” Mack said. “For them, being homeless is a lifestyle, not something they were forced into. Maybe they were travelers, once”—he paused just for a second, maybe he could see the
gitan
in my blood as easily as I saw Russian in his—“like they jumped off a freight just to see what they could scrounge, and found they liked it here. The weather is good year-round—that could have played into their choice, too.

“The other group is completely different—mentally ill or addicted to something. Or both.”

“Drunks?”

“Alcoholism, sure. Around here, meth is more common.
But anything you can drink, snort, shoot, or … It’s a long list. Still, just about any way you play that, getting locked up somewhere along the way is part of their deal.”

“Wouldn’t some of those ‘advanced coping skills’ get you locked up, too?”

“That’s the truth,” he said, smiling thinly. “But there’s a difference between the merchants who don’t want homeless camps blotting the scenery during tourist season and locals who are scared of people walking around who smell bad, look worse, and talk to themselves.”

“I’ve seen those. Both of those, I guess. But I’ve never seen you before.”

“You never saw my face,” he said. “And I don’t wear a suit and tie to work.”

I nodded. No reason for this guy to know I could pick a visitor out of a crowd just by his stance. It was as easy for me as picking up a red dot on a black screen. Or putting one on an enemy’s chest.

“The cops usually don’t bother them. Any of them. The MICAs—Mentally Ill, Chemically Addicted—they could be carrying everything they own with them, or else they’ve got some kind of ‘residence’ … you know, a place to sleep, or even get help. The ones who
chose
the outside life, they don’t want anything to do with the government. No ‘programs’ for them. If they’ve got a check coming—maybe from the VA—they’ll have some local address, give the owner a piece to hold the checks. Just go down to the library any morning right before it opens, you’ll always see a few of them. Waiting to check on their e-mail.”

“Their e-mail?”

“Yep,” Mack said, showing that thin smile again. “The library has free Internet access. It’s a lot cheaper than a PO box. So many of them use it that there’s a sign-up sheet.”

“And this guy they grabbed—?”

“Homer. He’s an ambulatory schizophrenic. Stays outside as much as possible, because the voices can’t get to him as easily if he’s not indoors. But he only really feels safe after dark.”

“So how did he get that guy’s watch?”

“God gave it to him,” Mack said, not the faintest touch of sarcasm in his voice. “He was walking along the beach. Just before the sun comes up, you can see the sky start to lighten. The voices are really strong in the daytime. But Homer knows you can’t rely on the sun—it can get so foggy near the ocean that you can hardly see it at all at sea level. That’s why God gave him the watch—so he could keep track of time.”

“He took it off the body?”

“That’s my guess. It’s not like they matched a serial number or anything. But who else besides a White Power guy would have an ‘88’ with a pair of lightning bolts through it engraved on the back of his watch?”

“If the … crazy guy, okay? … if he was wearing that watch, how would the cops have seen the
back
of the case?”

“Homer took it off and showed it to them. He wanted them to know he’d have better control over the voices now.”

“They weren’t even looking—?”

“For suspects? Probably were. Not thinking any homeless guy actually did the killing, but they know those folks—the permanent ones, I’m saying—they don’t miss much that goes on around here, so …”

“But wouldn’t those people, the ones who are homeless by choice, wouldn’t they keep lunatics out of their camps?”

“Well, see, there’s more than one homeless-by-choice crew. The older ones—the ones with e-mail addresses and camping gear—they stay to themselves. But there’s also the kids. The ones we call ‘emancipated by abandonment.’ Not runaways, throwaways. They won’t have ID, won’t have prints on file, and their parents—their biological parents—wouldn’t file Missing Persons on them.”

“There’s another group of kids you haven’t even mentioned,” Dolly cut her way into the conversation, the edge of her voice razor-ready. “Some of my girls are ‘homeless,’ too. Their parents may not have a place to live, but they’re
trying
, not giving up. You can be the best father in the world and still lose your job. You can be the best mother and get so sick—diabetes, cancer, it doesn’t matter—that your medical bills drive the whole family into bankruptcy. That’s the address some of my girls have: ‘homeless.’ And you know
where
that address appears? On their school records! And if you think
their
parents don’t go over their homework with them, or that any of
my
girls treat them any differently, you’d be dead wrong.”

You’d be dead to Dolly
, I thought to myself.
You bring some weed over here, Dolly gives you a second chance. But you look down on other girls because your parents have money and theirs don’t, you’re not welcome in Dolly’s house. Ever
.

Mack set his jaw, bowed his head very slightly, said, “I know,” to Dolly. “
Everybody
knows.”

Dolly flashed him a smile, unclenched her fists, and just barely stopped short of giving him a kiss on the cheek. Mack’s posture changed, too—not as dramatically, but you couldn’t miss how relieved he was. Alienating Dolly wasn’t something a man who did his kind of work would ever want to do.

“I was talking about those kids who don’t have anyone but themselves. Some were in custody. Abused kids in ‘group homes,’ JDs from ‘community corrections,’ all the same once they take off. They all hang together. And they don’t ask questions. The only rule they have is that you don’t get aggressive with them.”

“You’re saying it was
those
kids who let Homer hang around?”

“Yep. The permanents, they’re scared of crazy people. Even the circuit riders, the ones who drop off for a while but never stay, they’ve got enough sense to keep their distance from them.
But the kids, they seem to actually like them. Damaged adults, I mean.”

“As long as they’re not violent,” Dolly added.

“Yeah,” Mack agreed. “Whatever’s going on in their heads doesn’t matter, so long as it’s not telling them to get physical.”

“And there’s no way this Homer could possibly have killed that guy they found on the beach?”

“Possible? Sure.” Mack shrugged. “
Anything
is, right? But that doesn’t make any more sense than Homer does when he tries to ‘explain’ something. He’s never … physical. Not with anyone.

“Plus, he’s scared of adults. He knows they don’t like him—that’s the way he puts it—and he knows, from the state hospitals he’s been in and out of all his life, that what he calls ‘big people’ will hurt you.”

“Orderlies, you’re saying?”

“I’m not saying anything; I’m repeating what Homer told me,” he said, his voice going just a little softer. From the way Dolly put her hand on his forearm, I guessed his voice got softer when his temper got closer to the surface.

I just held his eyes, waiting for some information I could actually use.

“Homer’s about five foot two, and he’s damn near emaciated. On top of that, he’s almost sixty.”

None of that meant much to me. I once watched a little Filipino guy who was probably older than this Homer cut a man’s throat so fast I barely saw his hand move. The other guy was a big merc with a bigger mouth. But nothing would have happened if he hadn’t decided it would be funny to snatch the Filipino’s beer off the counter and pour it over his head.

The merc should have known better—it was the kind of place where part of the help’s job was to drag unconscious men out by their ankles and dump them in the alley, then throw some fresh sawdust over the floor. The merc didn’t size up
the bar, and he’d walked in alone. Maybe he spotted me and thought I’d back him up. Maybe he was already drunk. That wouldn’t have made a difference—he was a stupid bully even when he was sober.

“He ever get beat up?”

“Homer?”

“Yeah.”

“I told you—”

“Not in some hospital. Or criminally insane wing of a prison. I mean on the street.”

“Not that I ever heard of. Why’d you ask?”

“To see if he was good at protecting himself.”

“Yeah, all right. No, not a chance. Screaming’s the only weapon he’s got. And that’s never helped him much.”

“Then what’s the big deal?”

I could feel Mack stiffen. Watched his eyes try to look through my skull to the wall behind me. When he took a breath, it was through his nose. The little whistling sound told me that whoever had tried to fix the break hadn’t done a great job of it. Probably had a deviated septum by now. And health insurance. But he’d never gotten it fixed.

He was a young man, not a kid. But I’d seen harder stares, from harder men, before I was half his age.

About five seconds passed before he understood that he was wasting his time. Still, he said, “What’s the big deal?” with more hostility than he probably realized.

“Yeah, that’s what I said. This guy’s got a guaranteed insanity defense, no matter what he might have done, right up to murder. So they put him back in some crazy-house, how does that hurt him, really? You said yourself, he comes and he goes. At his age, the way he lives, who knows how long his next visit would have lasted, no matter what the reason for it.”

“Homer’s terrified of being locked up.”

“Don’t they have drugs for—?”

“Homer doesn’t need to be locked up to be on medication. He’s got his disability check, and it’s sent to us. We bank it, and we only give him so much a day
—after
someone watches him take his meds. That way, he knows he always has a place to go. And we’re always sure he’s taking his meds. The
right
meds, not something that’d turn him into a zombie.”

“There’s more, Dell,” my wife said. “If Homer didn’t kill that guy—and even the cops don’t really think he did, but they had to take him when he showed them that watch—somebody else did.”

“Dolly, I’m not trying to act cold-blooded, but … so what? Guy like that—the tattoos, his record—probably a lot of people could have a reason to kill him. That’s a job for the cops.”

“Which cops?” Dolly shot back. “The locals? The Sheriff’s Office? The State Police? Knowing where a body was found doesn’t tell you where a murder happened. Or even if it
was
a murder.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay?” Dolly and Mack, speaking as one.

“I’m not sure what you want me to say.”

That made it Dolly’s turn. “Dell, couldn’t you … kind of find out something? Maybe it didn’t happen around here—and you’re probably right, that body was just another kind of driftwood—but if it did, there could be something really dangerous still out there. Something close. We have to make sure.”

“We.” Once Dolly said it that way, she was making it mine, too. And telling me it was time to take my turn.

M
aybe I tried only because I didn’t want Dolly to lose face—who knows what she might have told this guy about my … capabilities.

Or maybe because I couldn’t resist that trusting look in my love’s eyes.

That video ninja had been my one hope. And I hadn’t banked on it. Sure, I knew it had to be him who took that picture. But I also knew he wouldn’t have had his videocam trained on the ocean, so he wouldn’t have tape of the body being thrown up on shore. He’d have nothing that would clear this Homer guy.

Plus, I’d never get that video man near a witness stand. His image capturing was another version of the movie those psycho mass-killers watch in their heads as they randomly mow down targets. For people like that, suicide is always their exit strategy.

So some
other
need had driven him to send that photo to the papers. That was the only hand I had to play, but winning such a small-ante pot hadn’t amounted to much. Sure, I’d confirmed that the video ninja
had
been there when the ocean threw up that body, but I knew he would have been long gone before Homer arrived—he wasn’t the kind of man who’d hold up under questioning, and he was smart enough to know it.

And, from what Mack said, if the beach
hadn’t
been deserted, Homer never would have gone anywhere near the body.

No point in asking Homer what time that wristwatch was showing when he took it, or even if he actually took it off the dead man’s wrist. I didn’t speak whatever language a schizophrenic does, but maybe Mack could get some answers from him.

My best guess was that one of the local papers got the e-mails—no message, just the attached photo—before the cops knew anything about a body on the beach. But even if the first paper to check its e-mail that morning thought the picture was some kind of hoax—the composition was so intricate that it could be a Photoshop-aided prank—they’d still call it in.

Playing it safe. If the photo turned out to be real, they could
run the story later. And the last thing they’d want to do was get on the wrong side of the local police—they were a great source of press releases.

The cops would have moved quick on this one: dead bodies on the beach weren’t part of the town’s image. The photo was anonymous, so the papers couldn’t say they were protecting a source. Not that they’d ever hold anything back, not around here. Every elected official, every government office, every funded “program” … they all worship the same three idols: Cooperation, Collaboration, and Consensus. None of that requires any of them to actually
do
anything, but it’s great for making it look as if they’re all devoted to serving the public. And it’s not like some “investigative reporter” is going to find out otherwise.