Read Online Shockwave by Andrew Vachss - Free Book Online

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 upthe 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